The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  Somehow, at that moment, Mom had made up her mind that she was going to go on. She’d forced herself back into the world, bit by bit, first taking on the kitchen, then getting back in the car, then navigating the A&P aisles. Trying to make that vibrating red into a stronger bloodline, as if she could will herself into remission. She’d staggered into Lynn’s first high school exhibit, anarchy on a black cane, determined to see at least one of her daughters finish the race for her. Even as a teenager, Lynn understood that the only real way to honor her was just to keep going.

  A knock at the studio door jarred her into the present.

  “Who is it?” she called out.

  Maybe it was the Dryer Man or the mythic Tree Guy, finally arriving to trim the maple branches that were threatening to break the bedroom windows. She hated it when contractors and landscapers showed up unannounced weeks after their supposed appointments.

  “Hello. It’s me,” she heard Michael Fallon say.

  Something in his voice made her think of the second drink of the night, the one where the novelty wears off and the potential for trouble begins.

  She opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “That was another song on the jukebox at the Copperhead.” He stepped in. “‘Hello It’s Me.’ Remember that?”

  “What’s up?” She pursed her lips.

  “Just a couple of follow-up questions.” He moved past her and looked around. “Hey, this is nice too. How much did it run you?”

  “Michael, I’m a little busy. Is this about Sandi?”

  “Of course. Why else would I be here?”

  He put his face up close to a picture on the wall. A family portrait she’d taken of Barry and the kids at dusk in Yosemite, the sky dimming like a hand was over the sun and the mountains cloaked in black velvet behind them.

  “You know, when I was down on the pile, at Ground Zero, there were a lot of photographers around,” he said quietly. “You had all these guys in emergency gear, still trying to see if they could save lives. All these firefighters finding body parts and cops’ guns going off in the heat. But then there were all these parasites with Nikons. I remember I saw a fireman’s arm under a pile of rubble, and I was trying to get somebody to come help me move it. And then I turn around and this bitch sets off a flash right in my face. I swear, I almost punched her.”

  “She was probably just trying to do her job.”

  “Sure she was.”

  He put his face even closer to the picture, as if he was trying to smell the chemicals through the glass. She remembered how this part of him had gradually started to unnerve her when they were going out. That eerie stillness he had, an almost animal alertness.

  “I hear you called Harold this morning,” he said.

  “I realized I had some information that might be useful after I left the house yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but you called Harold. Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make? You’re all working together, aren’t you?”

  He adjusted the frame on the wall, even though it had been hanging perfectly. “So why didn’t you tell me? You saw me when you were leaving the house.”

  “I don’t know. I guess it took me awhile to realize that’s what it could be.”

  “And what other information have you been holding out on?” He turned slowly, his eyelids drawn and darkened as if he’d been sitting in front of a fire for a long time. “Or am I supposed to get that from Harold too?”

  “Michael.”

  “Whatever you think of me personally,” he said, “I am still the one working this case.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Then why can’t I get a straight answer out of you? She was supposed to be your best friend.”

  She noticed a tiny blue mark at the bottom of his shirt’s breast pocket.

  “Do you have any leads?” she said.

  “That shouldn’t concern you right now. What should concern you is giving me the answers I’m looking for.”

  The blue mark darkened before her eyes. His pen had sprung a tiny leak.

  “It’s not like I’ve been deliberately holding anything back,” she said, trying not to stare at it. “It’s just that I was in such a state of shock yesterday that I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “You thinking more clearly today?”

  “I guess.” She shrugged.

  “Okay. Let’s get on with it. What can you tell me about the marriage?”

  “I don’t know.” She leaned against a file cabinet. “Not all that much more than I knew yesterday. They’d been under a lot of stress financially because of Jeff’s business. But you could see that just walking around their house.”

  “What else?” he said brusquely.

  The dot was gradually expanding, the indigo-blue ink finding its way along the network of white cotton seams.

  “It could be there was somebody else who got between them.”

  “You saying you heard she was seeing someone?”

  She nodded, wondering why he’d automatically assumed it was the woman at fault.

  “And who are you hearing this from?” His eyebrows gathered.

  “Do I really have to tell you?” she asked, reluctant to drag Jeanine into this.

  “This is a homicide investigation.”

  She nodded, seeing the point but still not wanting him to hear all the secrets of their tribe.

  “I just saw Jeanine Pollack at my book group.”

  “Okay. And what else did she say? Did she know who the guy was?”

  “No. She just knew Jeff had been depressed and maybe Sandi was looking for a way to give him a little zap.”

  “Figures,” he said, a corner of his mouth turning down.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A woman gets a man to pull the plow for her. And as soon as he comes up lame, she goes looking for another stud.”

  “I think that’s maybe a little simplistic,” she said.

  “Is it?”

  The blue eyes regarded her warily, as if challenging her to one of those old staring contests they used to have. Whoever looks away first loses. People used to say they got together because they were both like owls, hardly ever blinking. She dropped her eyes and saw the indigo stain had grown to the size of a dime below the pocket.

  “So did Jeanine say if he ever found out she was getting it somewhere else?” he asked.

  “That wasn’t my impression. But you’d probably have to ask her yourself. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Excuse me?” She squinted.

  “Never mind.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The stain was expanding like a bullet wound.

  “Michael, is this all really part of your investigation?”

  “Why? What else would it be?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, trying to take her eyes off the blot. “I just keep getting the feeling that you came here to talk about something else.”

  “Well, we still do have a lot of unfinished business, don’t we?”

  “I thought we’d decided to let that lie.”

  “Oh, did we?” His eyes locked on to hers.

  “We were talking about Sandi.” She looked away, trying to get him back on track. “And Jeff.”

  “I know what we were talking about. He stopped pulling down the Benjamins, and she started looking around. A man without his wallet on him isn’t worth a damn. Same thing as what happened with you and me.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  She had a sinking sense of déjà vu as she watched the blot change shape, like a nova exploding.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s not sugarcoat it. You dumped me because my mother kept books of Green Stamps in the cupboard. And my father drove a Rambler with the windows up in the summer so people would think he had air-conditioning.”

  “I thought we were talking about Sandi.” She tried to frost him
with a level glare.

  “We would be, but you already called Harold and told him everything, didn’t you?”

  He was less than three inches from her, closer than any man besides Barry and a few subway riders had gotten in eighteen years.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little unprofessional?”

  She raised her eyes, calling his bluff. Who’s going to blink first? Usually, you were asking for something if you looked at a man that long and hard.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “So why are we getting into all this?”

  “I dunno.”

  He stared back at her, letting the silence form. As it went on, it became heavy, then uncomfortable, and then dangerous. She thought of the long agonizing buildup in a pirate movie in which two ships slowly, slowly draw close enough to lower their cannons and fire a broadside at each other.

  “I mean, this thing with Sandi, it got me thinking about all this other old crap I got up in the attic,” he said finally, tapping the side of his head.

  “What are you talking about?” She stumbled back against a stool.

  “I’m saying it didn’t have to turn out the way it did.” A muscle worked along the side of his face. “With you and me.”

  “I’m sure both of us have regrets,” she said as calmly as she could. “But don’t you think we both have more important things to worry about right now?”

  He looked down, lost in thought for a half-minute. Letting the silence fill the room again.

  “It’s all right,” he said, just before it became unbearable. “I’ve decided to forgive you.”

  “You’ve decided to what?”

  “I’ve decided to let it go.”

  “Excuse me?” She blinked. “You’ve decided to forgive me?”

  “Why? You got a problem with that?”

  The threat in his voice was unmistakable. She remembered the time he hit her. That rattlesnake-quick backhand outside Gary Livingstone’s party senior year. A flash of light and she was on her back, bleeding from the mouth, his silhouette smoldering against the backdrop of sycamores. What stayed with her wasn’t so much the numbness in her jaw, the looseness of her bicuspid, or even the trickle from her split lip. It was the way he shut his eyes and twisted his mouth after he’d done it, as if he’d always known that this would happen but couldn’t stop himself. And how he’d picked her up like a broken doll and gathered her in his arms, kissing her and begging to be forgiven.

  “No, I don’t have a problem with it.” She noticed ink dribbling farther down his shirt like heart’s blood.

  “Good.” He nodded. “Life’s too short to hold a grudge. You’ve just gotta let that shit go so it doesn’t poison you.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.” She cast a quick look toward the door.

  “So gimme a hug,” he said, starting the staring contest all over again.

  “Oh, Michael, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Just one little hug.”

  “Really.” She returned his gaze, having reached the edge of her resistance. “I have to get back to work, and I’m sure you do too.”

  “Come on, one hug. It’s not gonna kill you.”

  Before she could answer, he took her in his arms, nearly lifting her off the floor. He was a couple of inches shorter than Barry, but broader across the chest, and something about the way he held her suggested that he still had some rights to her body, like a former house owner walking through old rooms. For a moment, she let her chin rest on his shoulder, remembering how good this used to feel.

  “Michael, come on.” She tried to gently push him away.

  His arms wrapped more tightly around her back, as if he were holding on to a mast. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s okay.”

  “No, Michael.” She felt his breath on her scalp. “Really.”

  But he wasn’t listening. “It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry.” His arms dropped down into a tightening loop around her waist, his ribs pushed against her breasts. She squirmed, trying to get away, bringing her knee up, and he took the turning of her hip as an invitation. One of his hands eased its way into the back of her waistband, searching for the plush dimpled spot right above the cleft. And as his musculature closed in around her, she caught a scent like red wine and glue and realized that she was about to end up with an indigo stain on her shirt as well.

  20

  JEFFREY LANIER SAT on his front steps in a Mets jersey and gray sweatpants, cradling a black mobile phone against his neck and disconsolately studying the search warrant before him.

  “So, what time can you get here?” he asked the defense lawyer his accountant had recommended. “I’m twisting in the wind.”

  “I got an evidence hearing for Skeezy G. in Manhattan in five minutes,” said Ronald Deutsch, his voice cutting in and out on the staticky line.

  “Skeezy what?”

  “He’s a big rap guy. He does that ‘Slap My Ass, Bonita’ song my son loves. Just tell me what the warrant says.”

  A half-dozen Riverside police officers moved through the big house behind Jeffrey, collecting carpet fibers and hair samples in plastic evidence bags and cardboard boxes full of clothes and papers.

  “Oh, God, let me look at it.” Jeff adjusted his glasses and leaned to one side as a young sergeant with a unibrow and a premature double chin hurried past him carrying his wife’s Dell laptop. “It says, ‘In the name of the People of the State of New York,’ blah, blah, blah, ‘there is reasonable cause to believe that certain property, namely clothes, tools, tissue, hair, bloodstain on the living room wall, kitchen knives,’ blah, blah ‘will be found at twenty-two Love Lane.’ Jesus, what a fucking nightmare.”

  He took off his glasses and put his wrist up to his eyes.

  “Whoa, where’d they get that business about blood on the wall?” said Ronald Deutsch on the cell phone. “I thought they only went in the bathroom to get fingerprints when they were there yesterday.”

  “I don’t know.” Jeff shook his head. “The only people who’ve been in the living room are me, the kids, the grandparents, the babysitter, and her friend Lynn …”

  Putting his glasses back on, he watched a dull glint of sun on a squad car’s chrome fender narrow into a hard white gleam.

  “Well, one of them must’ve said something to the police,” said the lawyer. “We’re gonna have to deal with that if we want to get the search thrown out later.”

  “All right, so what time will you be done in court?”

  Paco Ortiz came out of the house and stood beside him on the steps, waiting for him to take a break from the phone conversation.

  “The earliest I can be out to your place is four-thirty, buddy,” said the lawyer. “Sorry about that.”

  “Shit, that’s two and a half hours.” Jeff put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Sir, we don’t want to be taking your house apart unnecessarily.” Paco tugged on his earring. “So would you mind telling us if you have a workshop in your basement or some other place where you keep your tools?”

  “What tools?”

  “You don’t have saws, hammers, pliers?”

  “My wife said we were married almost ten years, and she never even saw me pick up a screwdriver.” He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “Ronald, are you hearing this?”

  “Only let them look in the areas specified by the warrant … ,” the lawyer said, electronic interference starting to scrub out his voice. “And … can you hear me? Don’t give them any … all right? And don’t answer any other questions until I get there.”

  “Ronald, I’m losing you.”

  The signal cut out as commotion rose in the house behind him. Couches were being moved, rugs rolled up. Tremendous banging echoed from the second floor. Jeff heard officers yelling at one another inside like a bunch of Bavarian tourists who’d just stumbled upon a beer garden. And then a long slow creak of wood timbers ending in a sudden painful c
rack brought him to his feet.

  “My children lost their mother two days ago and now they have to see their home torn apart?”

  “We’re being as careful as we can, but we need to be thorough.” Paco nodded sympathetically. “You can understand that. We all want the same thing here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course, but …”

  “In-laws got the kids?”

  “Yeah, they took them to Rye Playland, but …” Jeff felt all the blood start to drain from his head.

  He steadied himself against the railing. “You know, my little guy wants to have a party when Mommy finally comes back.”

  Paco raised an eyebrow. “You lay it out for him?”

  “He won’t believe me.”

  He heard the garage door being pulled open and pictured the apparatus of his breastbone lifting, revealing his raw beating heart.

  “I’m sorry to be putting you through this, Mr. Lanier,” Paco said. “We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

  The sergeant with the unibrow and the double chin came around the corner from the garage, toting a white-and-brown paint can. “Hey, look what I found.”

  He hoisted it high so they could all read the label for the gallon of Thompson’s Wood Protector.

  “Well, how about that?” Paco pulled his mouth over to one side of his face. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Sitting right there in the garage, when I first went in. I didn’t even have to look for it.”

  The detective smoothed his goatee and looked down at Jeff. “You want to tell me about this?”