Riders on the Storm

by Ed Gorman

  Ted said, “We started telling him how lucky he was to have Karen and all he said was that he hoped she’d understand someday. Then he changed the subject right away.”

  “It kind of sounded like he’d said good-bye or something,” Ted said.

  “Yeah, like he was moving on.”

  “Maybe he’s not as back together as we think he is. Maybe he was just saying that he hopes that Karen understands all he’s put her through. He has to be feeling at least a little guilty about things.”

  “That’s for sure,” Ted said. “All the shit my wife and kids’ve had to put up with while I adjusted to not having a right arm.”

  “I’m the same with Denise and my kids. I feel guilty for not being able to walk. It’s irrational but I can’t help it. I see other dads playing ball with their kids—”

  He started to choke up but stopped himself.

  There was just no doubt about it.

  War was fucking wonderful. Just think of all the parades. Just think of all the medals.

  Just think of all the O’Shays.

  23

  HE SMILED AS SOON AS HE SAW ME.

  He sat in the same chair he’d been in when I visited him before but now he was dressed in the kind of shirt and trousers he’d wear under his white medical jacket at the veterinary clinic. No Sears for him.

  The room was filled with late afternoon sunshine and the heavy blue smoke of his cigarettes. “Well, look at you, Sam. If you were just a couple feet taller you’d look like an adult.”

  Strained, but better than the eerie state of withdrawal he’d been in since the murder.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “Had lunch with Greg and Ted. Greg said you sounded a whole lot better.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  The first minutes of conversation had come easily for him. But now the mouth pinched and the eyes narrowed and he sighed shakily. When he started to speak it was in the slow, precise way that Greg had described.

  “I was sitting at home after the ER and I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be part of the group again. I didn’t really get a chance to express myself at the party—at least as I remember it; I was sort of hammered—so I guess I got it in my head that if I could talk to Steve—just the two of us—he’d see why I’d joined that anti-war group. And then I’d tell him that I was dropping it. And then we’d be friends again. Not just Steve but everybody. Buddies. That’s all I could think of.

  “So I called Cherie’s where Steve hangs out a lot to see if he was there. He was, so I drove out there. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me so I kept on knocking them down and finally I made it to my car somehow—it was practically parked in the woods—and I passed out. And when I woke up the parking lot was almost empty. I got out to take a leak—I was still pretty drunk—and that was when I saw Donovan on the ground. I was so wobbly I remember almost falling over him. Then somebody hit me from behind across the back of my head and it was maybe half an hour later before I came to.”

  “Do you remember calling me from home earlier?”

  “Yeah. I was having a really bad panic attack and I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe you could help me. But as soon as I hung up I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to go out to Cherie’s and talk to Donovan. What a stupid idea that turned out to be. Man, I remember trying to drive home after I found the body. I was so terrified I couldn’t keep the car on the road. I even got so confused at one point I wondered if I really had killed him but couldn’t remember. It was like being in the psych hospital again. Days when I couldn’t think clearly. I pulled off the road to the place where the police found me. I know Foster still thinks I killed Donovan but I didn’t.”

  “I know that, Will. And so does Karen.”

  His cheeks tinged red suddenly. His eyes closed and he swayed forward, then checked himself. He had to clear his throat to speak. “I’m going to say something you won’t want to hear, Sam.”

  I waited him out.

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought. I know how much I owe Karen. And I don’t have to tell you how much I love our daughter. But the thing is—” He wrung his hands. His gaze fled to the window. “The thing is that I think I’ve had such a hard time adjusting after coming back home because the marriage isn’t right, Sam. And that’s not Karen’s fault and it’s not mine.”

  I still said nothing.

  A big dopey grin. “There’s this young woman I hired, Sam. And she’s been with me now for—”

  Oh God. At least four married friends of mine had laid The List on me over the years. They wanted my approval, even permission in a strange way. I barely listened to Will’s List. I knew it by heart.

  She’s just so much fun. My marriage hasn’t been fun like this in a long time.

  She makes me feel younger. I even look younger when I’m shaving in the morning.

  She has these ideas for my business. She’s my lover but she’s also like this brilliant thinker.

  I know what it’ll be like for my little daughter—I know how selfish I’m being—but kids get over it eventually.

  It’ll be tight for a while money-wise with the settlement and all—her fucking lawyer is an assassin—but I can ride that out, too.

  And did I mention the sex? I swear to God I got it up three times the other night. I haven’t done that for years.

  “I didn’t want it to happen. It’s just that April—”

  “Her name is April?”

  “What the hell, Sam. Is there something wrong with being called April? It’s a pretty name.”

  “I was just surprised is all. April, I mean.”

  “I know what you’re doing here.”

  “Doing? What’re you talking about?”

  “You’re taking Karen’s side. You’re making me the bad guy.”

  “No, I’m not.” But I was. All Karen had done for him.

  April.

  “If you sat down and talked to her for a few minutes you’d see what a sharp girl she is. And you’d like her. And not just because she’s so pretty. She came up and saw me yesterday and I have this whole different mindset. Don’t I sound happy?”

  He did. Given the fact that he was still the number one suspect in a homicide, he sounded ridiculously happy.

  “Karen knows you had an affair with Cathy Vance. She found those letters you wrote her.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I don’t blame her for being hurt.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  “Cut me some slack here, man. Look at all I’ve been through.”

  He was feeling sorry for himself but he deserved to, the poor, suffering, aggravating bastard.

  “What’s the point of writing all these letters and then not mailing them?”

  A shrug. “Oh, you know, most of them are so sentimental they’re sort of embarrassing. But they made me feel better just writing them. I probably should’ve thrown them away.”

  “So when does Karen get the news?”

  “I’m not ready to tell her yet. This whole thing with Foster has to be cleared up. And then we have to wait a while because April has to tell her husband and she’s a little bit afraid.”

  “You didn’t mention she was married.”

  “This is pretty complicated. She’s not telling anybody about it and neither am I. Karen’s coming up in an hour and bringing a sandwich from Mike’s deli. It’s tempting to tell her but I won’t. I’m just so damned happy, Sam, I had to tell somebody. I got so caught up in the anti-war thing I just stayed drunk and fucked up my life totally. Now I have a special reason to get this Donovan thing over with.”

  This Donovan thing. A small but annoying problem. Who hasn’t been accused of murder?

  “I was thinking maybe you’d forgotten about that. What with April and all.”

  “God, Sam, are you mocking me?”

  “A little.”

  We were silent for a time.

  “We still friends, Sam?”

  “Yeah, but you piss me off f
or Karen’s sake.”

  “And you of all people don’t have any right to judge me. All the affairs you’ve been in and out of.”

  “But I wasn’t married.”

  He was quick.

  “Sounds like that’s about to change.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Great. You should’ve married Mary a long time ago. How about we both be happy for each other?”

  Damn him. I cared about him and I’d stand by him no matter what. I hadn’t heard him this happy since he’d come back from Nam.

  “Are you still sure Anders killed Donovan?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But even after last night with the heroin, Foster still doesn’t think he had a motive to kill him.”

  “Maybe he was afraid that Donovan was going to the feds.”

  “That’s what I told him. But no sale.”

  “We just need to figure this damned thing out.”

  “Yeah, I guess ‘we’ do.”

  “You’re mocking me again.”

  I was. What he was about to do to Karen and Peggy Ann still pissed me off.

  “Not really. I’m irritated with you and I’m irritated with me. I’m being a judgmental asshole and you’re not concerned enough with Foster. He still wants to put you in prison for life.”

  From the door I said, “Will, you need to think back through the whole night. Concentrate on every single thing you can remember from the time you left your house to the time the police found you in your car. You said somebody knocked you out. Really focus on that. There may have been some little thing you’ve overlooked. You can be a big help to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. You’ve been working so hard for me. I really appreciate it. You know I do.”

  I nodded. “Yeah; yeah, I do.”

  O’Shay got his gimp.

  I felt sorry for the kid, obviously. He appeared to be about fourteen years old, the Irish altar-boy type right down to his freckles and brief nose. They were on a platform so heavy with American flags I was surprised it didn’t crash to the ground. This was a nooner; employees at a steel plant in Cedar Rapids had been treated to free hot dogs and burgers and soft drinks over their lunch hour in exchange for putting up with twenty minutes of lies and patriotic treacle. Pure TV.

  “I swear to you, this young man’s fate will be avenged. We will never allow barbarians like the Vietcong to slaughter and wound our troops. The anti-American crowd says that we should stop ‘carpet-bombing,’ that we’re killing too many innocent Vietnamese. What they’re too stupid to realize is that there is no such thing as an innocent Vietnamese. Young or old, they all have one thing in common: they hate Americans—we went there to help them, after all—and won’t be happy until we’re all dead.”

  A funny thing happened to the ear-shattering applause that should’ve followed such a red meat line. Maybe it was because the workers were holding hot dogs or burgers or soft drinks and couldn’t manipulate their hands to make the resounding noise O’Shay was used to. But even the poor kid in the wheelchair didn’t show much outward enthusiasm for O’Shay’s psycho remarks. Even if the kid was pro-war, he’d been there and seen a good number of innocent Vietnamese.

  I got up and walked over to the TV and clipped it off.

  Mary came back with an ice-cold bottle of Hamm’s for me. She’d been upstairs with the kids. I’d tried it, but given my mood I wasn’t much company. I did get an especially wet kiss from Kate which I hadn’t earned and a compliment on my two-day-old haircut from sweet, sensible Nicole.

  “Feeling any better?”

  “Afraid not. Thanks for putting up with me.” She had brought a can of 7UP along for herself. She curled up beside me on the couch. “Is it Karen you’re feeling bad for?”

  “It’s everything. Foster’s obsession with Will and Anders getting off on a murder charge and Karen, sure, of course. I don’t know how she’ll handle it.”

  Mary kissed me on the cheek and took my hand. “How about we just sit here and try to relax?”

  For the next hour we watched a rerun of The Untouchables. As much as I liked the show occasionally, I never understood the American public’s fondness for gangster lore. Predators who prey on weak and defenseless people didn’t exactly make me want to spend much time with them, especially when they were as stupid as most gangsters are. Cunning, yes, but most of them—with the exception of the grand eccentric Bugsy Siegel—don’t make for riveting drama. Unless you’re into bloodbaths. I’d graced Mary with this sour speech a few times before. She deserved to be spared tonight.

  When the call came, I was just about to head for home.

  “It’s Karen, Sam. Will must have decided to tell her about this April tonight. She just keeps sobbing and sobbing. You really need to go over there.”

  I went.

  24

  KAREN GREETED ME IN A WRINKLED—KAREN IN SOMETHING wrinkled!—white blouse and red walking shorts. In her left hand was a Chesterfield and in her right a very dark drink. It was now ten minutes after nine.

  “I didn’t expect you to come over.”

  “Mary’s worried about you and so am I.”

  Her eyes were reddened from crying but she was apparently more in control of herself than she’d been on the phone with Mary. “I haven’t seen Peggy Ann in two days. I just don’t want her to see me this way. Thank God for my sister. I’m so damned selfish.”

  “Yeah, that’s you. Selfish.”

  “Let me get you a beer.”

  There were at least two ashtrays overflowing. There was a water ring from a glass on the mahogany coffee table. A blue-covered throw pillow had fallen on the floor. A section of the newspaper hung from the phone stand. In a fair number of homes this would be normal everyday life. But in Karen’s case this signaled breakdown.

  After handing me my bottle of Hamm’s, she walked over to the couch and sat down. I admired her most excellent legs and waited for her to talk.

  She began by patting a small stack of papers next to her. “I’m going to try very hard not to cry.”

  “Cry all you want, Karen. Seriously. You’ve helped me through some real bad nights of my own.”

  “I’m sick of crying, Sam. And now I’m sick of trying to save this marriage.”

  So he had told her.

  “I went to see him tonight and he acted like everything was fine. I know you were there earlier. Anyway, by the time I left there he was almost like his old self.”

  So he hadn’t told her.

  “Then I got home and I made the mistake of going in his den again. Since I found those letters I’ve become compulsive about it. It’s as if I’ve conditioned myself to distrust him. As far as I know, he was faithful to me all the time we were married up until he got back from Vietnam. Maybe he’s ‘acting out,’ as the man at the VA told us. I didn’t find anything in his den tonight but when I looked in the front closet I saw this valise I bought him for his birthday a few years ago. It was leaning against the wall so I picked it up.”

  She paused to sit up very straight and to take a deep, deep breath. Then she picked up the sheaf of papers. “He has a new girlfriend. I shouldn’t say girlfriend—he tells her he wants to marry her.”

  I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. The war had destroyed him. The old Will, the good, compassionate, clear-thinking Will had been killed along with the little girl his bullets had ripped apart.

  She held them out to me. “Please take these, will you, Sam? Read them. See how far gone he is.”

  I knew what I’d find in the papers. April. But I had no idea how I’d respond.

  I got them all right and I came back and sat down and put them in my lap all right but I didn’t read them. Not right away. Because when I did read them she was going to ask me if he’d said anything about the woman he was writing to. And if I lied to her and she later found out that I’d lied to her she would never trust me again.

  She lighted anther cigarette but it took three angry little attempts to make her silver lighter light. But
it wasn’t the lighter that wasn’t doing well, it was her.

  “Read the one on top, Sam. Even when we were first going out he didn’t say things like that to me.”

  Now I lighted a cigarette. It took me two matches.

  I lifted the top white sheet of typing paper and read the first paragraph.

  You’re my first thought in the morning and my last at night. At first you were only my heart, but now you are my soul as well.

  I had the semi-serious idea that he’d found an article or even a little paperback that listed all the things a love song should contain.

  And it went on that way for the entire page. If there was a romantic cliché he missed, I couldn’t find it. I tried not to think, cliché or no cliché, of the effect all the cornball language would have on poor Karen.

  I raised my head and when our eyes met, I shook my head. She started crying then.

  “Read a few more. See what I’m up against.”

  “Oh, I think I’ve got the idea here good enough, Karen.”

  Crying more now. “Please just read a few more. Look how much he loves her.”

  “You’re punishing yourself, Karen. I don’t want to help you.”

  “Just get to the one where he says he wants to have children. Children—I don’t know how he could even think of such a thing. Isn’t Peggy Ann enough for him?”

  The children reference was not in the next letter nor the next one nor the next one. But there in the middle of the following one was that word—“children”—and it might as well have been in neon. Yup, he and April would have a whole passel of wee ones and they would live somewhere over the rainbow and speak only in the language of the worst romance novels. And their wee ones would speak the same language, too, and in time have their own passel of treacle-speaking wee ones. What he was outlining was the hammiest Broadway musical ever created.

  But then I glanced down a few lines and when I saw that partial sentence I realized that Will had lied to me.

  “I’m so sorry, Karen.”

  I had a difficult time not bursting out the door. I really needed to get going.

  I put the papers down. “I want to call Mary. All right if I use the phone in the kitchen?”