Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  “The feds are interested in me.”

  “Only the cocksure get caught by the feds. You’re too cautious for that.”

  “I’ve had enough, Rita.”

  Rita heaved a sigh. “So your mind is made up.”

  “With your permission.”

  Rita half rose from the huge sag of the chair and then fell back into it with a smile. “First of all, I don’t want your business. I don’t need it. Second of all, you got it running like a science. Big people in Boston need to finance something fast, they always count on you. Somebody else might not be so reliable. You see the problem? You’re too good. You’re a fucking whiz kid, that’s what you are.”

  Louise smiled weakly.

  “You mentioned a small matter still hanging. Is it more of this?” Rita pounded her right fist into the palm of her other hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’d better take care of it before we get down to serious talk.”

  “I understand.”

  Rita picked up her punch glass and drank fully, and Louise closed her eyes to refresh them and to keep her thoughts from getting out of hand. Rita said, “About this time Mario usually gives me a massage. I got a bad back, you know. How’s yours?”

  “I’ve not had a problem.”

  “He hasn’t quite got the touch yet, but he’s learning. He can use the practice if you want to join me.” Rita threw out a confidential smile. “Might make you feel better.”

  Louise laughed lightly. “You forget I’m wounded.”

  “He’ll go easy.”

  The sun fired its last rays through the wall of window. Louise said, “What the hell, why not?”

  Rita raised a hand. “Help me up.”

  • • •

  “I feel so alone,” Ben Baker said, and Mrs. Mennick swiftly turned to him.

  “You’re not alone, Mr. Ben. I’m right here.”

  “No, in here,” he said, tapping his temple. “In my head. That’s where I live every minute of my life.”

  “We all do, Mr. Ben, every one of us. That’s how God made us.”

  “He made my head different. He put too much of me in there. He had no right.”

  “He made you special,” Mrs. Mennick said, and tried to smooth his hair, the fine gray strands springing up between her blunt fingers. “You’ll always have someone to care for you. I’ve got nobody. My husband died, and my children don’t bother with me.”

  “You have your brother.”

  “I look out for him same as I do you, Mr. Ben. See how lucky you are?”

  “I don’t feel lucky,” he said, a hint of calamity etched into his face, and she abruptly stepped back to view him better.

  “Did you take your medication?”

  “You saw me.”

  She shook a finger. “But you’re smart, Mr. Ben. You can fool me.”

  A little later he went outdoors, where in its final blaze the sun looked like meat. Shadows ran deep, carrying the scent of cut grass. Near a trellis he observed a Japanese beetle boring a perfect hole into an unborn rose, which grieved him. He knew the bud would never blossom. At the far side of the house he saw Mrs. Mennick’s brother, who had finished his work but was hanging around.

  “Hello, Howard.”

  His face in shadow, Howard barely looked up. He was sitting on a marble bench with a beer can in his hand and an empty one beside him. “Hello, sir.”

  Ben ventured closer. He sometimes suspected that Howard stole things, but he was never sure what they might be, though he knew Mrs. Mennick occasionally deposited loaded grocery bags in the back of Howard’s truck, food Ben assumed was going to waste. And once last winter he had seen Howard wearing a scarf much like one he seemed to remember owning. He said, “What are you still doing here?”

  “Waiting for her.” The voice was gruff. “Taking her to the movies.”

  Ben stiffened. “I’ll be alone.”

  “Yeah, I guess you will.”

  “She didn’t tell me that,” Ben said. In the shadows he could not tell whether Howard was smiling or scowling. “She’ll be coming back, won’t she?”

  Howard swigged beer. “This is where she lives, isn’t it?”

  “I’d better check just the same,” Ben said nervously, turning quickly. He trod on grass that was amber in the dying light, the scarlet sun sinking away. Howard’s large lips twisted over the rim of the beer can.

  “You little puke.”

  The words were uttered in hardly more than a whisper, but Ben heard them and spun around as if he had been punctured in the small of the back. A breeze swept across his hot face. “Do you mean me?”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “What you said. I heard you.”

  “Couldn’t have, sir. I didn’t say anything.”

  “You did!”

  Howard crumpled the beer can. “No, sir.”

  Back inside the house, Ben listened for Mrs. Mennick and heard her in one of the downstairs bathrooms. He crept into the kitchen, ran his finger down the list of numbers she kept next to the wall phone, and dialed the one at the bottom. “Be there!” he said in a desperate whisper, but it was not Louise who answered but her mother, whom he had never met, not his fault, Louise’s. She had always made excuses. He asked for her in a shaky voice, and Mrs. Leone, whose mind was obviously elsewhere, answered in Italian. “I can’t understand you,” he shouted. “What are you saying?”

  In English she said, “What do you want?” He could not hold back the tears. “My wife.”

  • • •

  A little after nine in the evening a convenience store on Broadway, near the Methuen line, was the scene of an armed holdup. Shots rang out. Witnesses on the street said they saw a skinny dark-haired man in a warmup jacket, jeans, and red sneakers run from the store into an alley. A woman inside the store, who had flung herself to the floor at the first shot, gave an opposing description. By nine-thirty heavily armed police officers, one with a dog, were searching the side streets. At nine forty-five Captain Chick Ryan arrived at the store and viewed the blood-spattered body of the male clerk, which lay in a heap behind the counter. Turning to the detective in charge, Chick said, “He hasn’t moved, has he?”

  The detective, a weary-looking man whose partner had recently died of a heart attack, said, “No, course he ain’t moved.”

  “Then I guess he’s dead. What happened?”

  “Lone gunman,” the detective said. “Woman customer said he demanded money from the register and the clerk refused to open it.”

  Chick made a face. “Never throw a stickup guy off his rhythm. Otherwise he goes bananas, this is what happens.”

  “Sometimes he shoots anyway.”

  “You got more of a chance the other way. Bet he was a spic. Am I right?”

  The detective said, “All we know is he had dark hair and some kind of bright jacket. When the clerk wouldn’t open the till, the guy pumps four, five shots into him and runs off with no money.”

  “Had to be a spic,” Chick said. “First one I ever busted was maybe twenty years ago, Peter’s Sweet Shop, two in the morning. I’m checking doors, there he is inside. You know how many arms he had? One. The other was a stump. You know what he had in his pockets? Cookies.”

  “This guy had two arms.”

  “I’m not saying it’s the same guy. You being smart with me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Where’s the medical examiner?”

  “We’re waiting on him.”

  Chick took a candy bar off the rack and unwrapped it. “You want one? They’re free.”

  “No, thanks,” the detective said.

  Chick took a bite. “Too chewy,” he said, and threw it away. He brushed past an officer dusting for prints and stepped outside the store. The night air was alive with whirling lights. Two blocks had been cordoned off, and officers were rerouting traffic. Crowds had gathered behind the barriers. When a reporter from the Lawrence paper, a young woman provocatively wide-eyed, approached
with a steno pad and asked for a statement, he reeled off what he knew and added that the suspect was a Hispanic.

  “Oh?” she said, scribbling. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Then get your facts straight.” He sighed as if the task might be hopeless for her. “You want, I’ll have lunch with you, give you the real lowdown what’s bringing this city down.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “For both of us,” he said with his best smile. Then he moved off smartly, for the medical examiner had just arrived, a shuffling man with lazy eyelids, whose breath smelled of an after-dinner mint. Chick said, “Hope we didn’t disturb you, Doc.”

  “Where’s the victim?”

  “In there. Good thing you showed up. We were about to slice him up, sell him as sandwich meat.”

  “You’re quite a guy, Ryan.”

  “So are you, Doc,” he said, and wheeled around, for there was a flurry among the officers. The radios in the cruisers were squawking. A young uniform rushed to him.

  “I think we got him, Cap’n. He was spotted on Oak Street, near Jackson. Our guys had to shoot.”

  “That’s what they got guns for. They hit him?”

  “They said he was down.”

  Chick ran to his car, waving to officers to clear a way for him. The car, unmarked, started up thunderously. He slammed the portable dome light on the roof, activated the siren, and rammed the gearshift into Drive. Barriers were heaved aside. The crowd parted. With the siren wailing and lights flashing, he sped to Oak Street; within minutes, squashing a cat along the way, he made it to the Jackson Street area and skidded to a stop. A crowd had gathered, children were running about. Chick leaped from the car and elbowed his way along the sidewalk, where two young officers, his favorites, were waiting. Each was in riot gear. The stout one, bulldoggish, was trembling, but the other one, knife-thin, was smiling. The suspect lay in the gutter.

  The thin one said, “We got him, Cap’n.”

  “I can see that. He alive?”

  “No way.”

  “Which one of you hit him?”

  The stout officer lowered his head and breathed into his shirt. The thin one said, “We both did.”

  Chick strolled to the gutter, but there was little to see. The body did not seem whole, only approximate. “What the hell did you use?”

  “Shotguns, Cap’n.”

  Chick nodded slowly. “Spic, huh?”

  “No, he was white.”

  “You sure?”

  “I saw his face.”

  “I knew him,” the stout officer said in a strained voice. “He worked at Snelling’s Car Park. They called him Snooks.”

  “It must’ve fit,” Chick said, stepping back to the officers. “You guys did good.” He slapped the thin one on the shoulder and said to the stout one, “Buck up, for Christ’s sake. You’re a hero.”

  The trembling increased. “It’s different than I thought, sir.”

  “Different than what?”

  “Shooting rats.”

  THIRTEEN

  TOO MANY THINGS were falling off the edges of Emma Goss’s memory. She could not remember the name of the boy whose family had coerced him into asking her to the senior prom, who on that memorable night had sent a lovely corsage to the house but never showed up himself, the chore too much for him. She remembered the names of all her teachers in her senior year except the name of the one she had admired the most, a kindly man with tousled gray hair who had drawn her aside before graduation and wished her the very best in life. If he could see me now, she thought and leaned her face against a chill window to still the noise in her head.

  She looked at her watch, the band loose on her wrist. There were too many long hours in the day now, and she was ready for bed by eight o’clock, sometimes seven, the bed a luxury now that she had it all to herself, her only locus of solitude, which Henry resented. He stayed up most of the night nursing his hand, banging about, hoping to wake her. Sometimes he did, but she merely turned over and went back to sleep, no longer fearing her dreams, in which she now always seemed a spectator, never a player, so that she woke untouched by any unpleasantness her subconscious might have conjured up.

  She moved from the window to the bed, which she had left unmade. She began straightening it, her ear tuned to the kitchen, where Henry had begun to stir. She heard him shuffling about, knew he was looking for her, and stood perfectly still as if her heart stopped. All the beating was in her mind. He appeared in the doorway and held out his hand. “Stay out,” she said.

  “I just want you to look at it.” He swayed into the room as if the motions of a boat dictated his step. “I think it’s looking better, don’t you?”

  It looked neither better nor worse to her. She said, “Yes, it looks better.”

  “And I got less pain in my arm. That’s a good sign, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Now get out.”

  He stared at her with a dismay that turned to anger when she resumed straightening the sheets. “You’re not going to bed, are you, for Christ’s sake? It’s only six-thirty.”

  “I need my sleep.”

  “You get too much,” he said, aggrieved. “I’m up all damn night. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “But you got problems, Mrs. Goss. You got bills piling up. I’d write the checks out for you, but I can’t on account of my hand.” When she said nothing, he hung his face out. “You don’t care if they cut the power off? You going to sit here in the dark?” He raced his good hand through his shaggy hair. His jaws were stubbly. “We got no food in the house. We were supposed to go shopping, remember?”

  “Go yourself,” she said softly.

  “You got to do something. The house is dirty, starting to stink, you know that?”

  She fluffed a pillow.

  “You don’t give a shit, do you?” Something went out of him. “You don’t care, why should I?”

  She revealed no feelings. Her trick was in pretending she had none.

  “My hand gets better, I’ll leave,” he said.

  She turned her back on him. “You’re never going to leave, I know that.”

  He swayed from the room with the same sailor step with which he had entered. She closed the door without clicking it shut, for she knew the sound would rouse him, possible incite him. He did not want to be shut out any more than he was. With a light and almost carefree step, she returned to the bed and gazed down at it, pretending it was smaller, not this bed at all but her childhood bed. She yearned for her pigtails, Girl Scout shoes, innocence. She wanted her coloring book, her cutout dolls, her bedroom with animals on the wallpaper and the sweetness of a cleaner air blowing in on her. She wanted her diary, every page pure. She wanted to split open her Donald Duck bank and rake her fingers through a wealth of pennies, some Indian heads, gifts from her grandfather, who had served in the Spanish-American War and was photographed on a horse. Henry called through the door.

  “I’m going for pizza. You want some?”

  “No,” she said in a clear voice.

  Undressing, she heard him back the car out of the garage and pictured him battling the wheel with one hand while protecting the other. In bed she nestled well under the covers and listened to a stiff breeze that mimicked the rush of her breathing, as if there were a connection. For a long while she did her best to remember the name of the tousle-haired teacher who had been so kind to her. It was on the tip of her tongue when she fell asleep and dreamed she was watching a man disrobe in a kind of bathhouse. He made a neat pile of the garments and then took off his legs, shook away his arms, and smiled. The head stays on, he told her. Queer dream. Senseless, she told herself while dreaming it, ridiculous, and woke up. Henry was staring down at her.

  “The pain’s come back,” he said.

  She paid no attention and drifted into another dream that made less sense than the first. The nicest part was knowing unequivocally that none of this was real, that sho
uld she choose she could easily float away. She woke again, gradually, her head turning. Henry had crawled into bed and lay against her. She pressed a foot against him, but he would not move. “You don’t belong here,” she said.

  He hung his hand near her face and moaned, “Kiss it and make it better, Mrs. Goss.”

  “Then will you go?”

  “Yes,” he promised.

  • • •

  Barney Cole spent the afternoon with Arnold Ackerman in Boston, box seats in Fenway Park, a makeup game between the Sox and the Tigers. Five dollars rode on it. Cole had the Sox and lost, which he could not understand. “Clemens pitching, I should’ve won.”

  “He’s won too many games,” Arnold said, accepting the five as if it had been his from the first throw of the game. “Law of averages was pressing on him. It’s like ragweed in August. You can’t escape it.”

  Though the hard chairs hurt their haunches, they stayed seated while the crowds pushed toward the exits. Crews were already on the field smoothing down torn turf, erasing every trace of the contest. Arnold wrinkled his brow from too much sun on his semibald head and loosened his lizard-skin belt: too many hot dogs from a vendor who had borne a startling resemblance to one of the Three Stooges, Moe.

  “Looking out at the field, Barney, I remember all the times your father and I sat here, maybe even these same seats. A big game for us was when the Yankees came to town. Williams against DiMaggio, that’s the way we saw it. Your father couldn’t understand how I could root for the New York Italian over Williams. He thought it was perverse.”

  “Actually DiMaggio was from San Francisco.”

  “I’m talking about the team, Barney, not where the hell he was born.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Not your fault. You don’t know better. We took your mother to a couple of games, but she didn’t enjoy herself, and to be truthful we didn’t like having her there. It was like we had to entertain her. But they were close, your mother and father. It was no surprise she passed on so soon after he did.”