But oh no, you couldn’t say that in open court. So go ahead. Just make me the bad guy. Blame it all on me. It’s okay. I can handle it. Make me the scapegoat for all your little sky-is-failing hysteria. That’s what I’m here for.
“Mr. Bon-fig-glio,” the judge said, picking his way cautiously over the rocky terrain of syllables. “I have to tell you that my initial inclination is to deny your motion. This defendant has been in my courtroom many times over the years, testifying as a police officer, and he’s always been very punctual and conscientious about his appearances.”
“I understand that, but things have changed,” said the Demanding One, a chinless wonder preening before the bench. “I’d like to request a sidebar. There are elements pertaining to this matter that can’t be discussed in open court.”
Mike turned to look at him, the wound under his gauze festering. So this was the thanks he got: lies, rumors, insinuendo. A few words mumbled into the judge’s ear about him being the target of an on-going homicide investigation. Sepsis was setting in. His immunity had been compromised. It wasn’t just the nail coming off these last few days. He’d lost all his natural protections. Not a single cop had shown up from the department today. How surprised could he be? These last few weeks he’d felt like his skin was being stripped off a layer at a time. You take a man’s job, his reputation, and his family and what does he have left? A wound rubbed raw, oozing blood and pus.
The judge was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bonfiglio,” he said. “This is a small-town courtroom, not a secret military tribunal. You either put up or shut up, evidencewise.”
“Then I’m asking your honor to set bail at one hundred thousand dollars to insure this defendant’s next appearance.”
The judge looked wearily over at the defense table. “Can you do twenty-five thousand?”
For a few seconds, Mike didn’t react. There was less than seven hundred dollars left in the account. He wouldn’t even be able to pay Gwen for today’s appearance; already she’d told him he’d have to get a public defender if he was charged for the murder.
He started to steel himself for another night in the county lockup. Valhalla. Wasn’t that supposed to be where heroes went after they died? He thought about the endless hullabaloo of the cell block and the seething hiss of the shower room, where he knew that someone would eventually be waiting for him.
“I can do it,” said a voice behind him.
Mike turned to see the old man with the gunmetal hair slowly getting to his feet and coughing into his fist.
“I can give you ten percent cash bond right now, and I’ll put up my trailer as collateral for the rest,” the old man said, his voice choked and dry from years of smoking Lucky Strikes and breathing in foul tubercular prison air.
The judge stared at him for a while, only gradually putting the familiar face into context. “Sure about that, Patrick? If he bolts, you lose the roof over your head.”
The old man spread his arms, ropey muscles still taut across his chest.
“Ah, for Chrissake, let me take ’im home, Hank.” The old man started to maneuver his way up the center aisle. “He’s the only son I got left.”
55
LYNN STUDIED THE detective’s expression after she handed him the photo in the police station parking lot. But the shaved head remained smooth, and the black loop of his goatee stayed loose around his mouth. He would’ve been a hard man to be married to or to play poker with.
“I’m a wreck about this,” she said.
“How’d you know we were looking into the wood protector anyway?”
“Jeffrey told me himself when I saw him at the train station. I guess he must’ve forgotten that I took those pictures.” She chewed her lip. “Not that I made a big point of showing them to him later.”
Finally she saw a slight back-and-forth movement of Paco’s eyes as he scanned the picture of Jeff spraying wood protector on the back deck.
“He did it, didn’t he? He actually killed Sandi.”
Like most cops she’d met, he acted like almost any question from an ordinary citizen was a potential violation of protocol.
“Have you shown anyone else this photo?” he asked.
“No. I just told my husband about it on the phone and made a print for you.”
“I’d like it if you kept quiet about it and asked your husband to do the same. We have an investigation going on.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “I just feel so terrible about Mike.”
“What about him?” A wavy line squiggled across his forehead, as if it were measuring amplitude.
“I don’t know. I figured you must’ve started looking at him as a suspect after I filed that complaint against him. Mr. Davis told me that you arrested him yesterday.”
“Yes, we did.” The wavy line deepened. “Fact, he’s in court right now. But lemme ask you something.”
“What?”
“Did he do everything you said he did when he came to your house?”
“Yes.”
“Did he stop your husband in his car after he complained to the chief?”
“I guess he did.”
“And did your husband pay off Muriel Navarro to file a statement against him?”
“No, of course not.” She heard the hesitation in her own voice as she realized how much she didn’t know about Barry lately. “At least not as far as I’m aware of.”
“Then you got nothing to worry about.” The wavy line flattened. “Mike made his own problems. Once a man decides to pull the roof down on his own head, ain’t a woman alive can stop him.”
56
HANGING ON. THAT RAIN gutter was still hanging on to the front of the house, Jeff Lanier noticed as he came down the porch steps to get the morning paper. He’d been meaning to get up on the ladder and drill a couple of new holes to screw it back along the eaves, but he had to be careful about looking too handy these days. And the truth was, he’d always had a fear of heights.
Had it ever since he was an eight-year-old going up in the Cessna his father rented outside the base in Frankfurt. Horrible things, those dinky propeller planes. You felt everything inside them. Every little dip and air pocket, every tiny bit of turbulence and wind resistance. To this day, a part of Jeff still felt the tremors whenever his feet left the ground. He’d felt it that afternoon over Labor Day weekend when Sandi made him go up on the ladder to clean the leaves out of the gutter. Lazy cunt. Couldn’t do it herself, could she? Had to get him up while he was watching the Mets-Phillies game. She probably liked that part of it best. Making sure he never got too relaxed. Never missing a chance to remind him that he needed to earn his keep around here since they were borrowing so much from her father. Never passing up an opportunity to make him feel like less than a man.
Probably he should have just told her to go take a Valium and lie down. Maybe then she’d still be alive.
But she could never leave anything alone. She was like a little rat terrier once she got her teeth into something. She kept nagging him and nagging him, even though she knew all about his vertigo. So all right. He’d put down the can of Diet Sprite and left the game on. How many leaves could there be in the gutters at the beginning of September anyway?
But, of course, she had to make everything harder. Don’t put the ladder down in my flower bed. Don’t lean it against the side of the house, you’ll leave a mark on the shingles. The dizziness started as he put his foot on the second rung. Don’t touch my ivy. Don’t leave a handprint. By the fourth rung, he was starting to get a little nauseated. Watch out for the trellis (she had to have the same one her friend Lynn had). You’re crushing my day lilies. He had to move the ladder again. Sure you don’t want to do this yourself? he’d asked her as he climbed up again. Don’t hang on to the gutter, she’d warned him as he reached the top.
The air had seemed thinner up there, the humidity stilling everything but the insects. This one mosquito kept circling his head, drawing close to one ear and then to the other
just as he was about to swat it. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, as he reached into the gutter. The leaves had a deep moist primordial odor, as if they’d been trapped there since the Mesozoic era. But then the ladder began to tilt, unbalancing him.
Instinctively, he’d grabbed the side of the gutter, trying to right himself.
Don’t do that! she’d shouted from below. You’ll tear it off the house.
Standing on the top rung, some fifteen feet off the ground, he’d tried to shift his center of gravity, but it was too late. One leg of the ladder was sinking deeper into the soil below.
Help me, he’d said. Hold it for me.
But he’d already started to lose his footing. The ladder gave way just as she stepped on the first rung. Then there was nothing holding him up. Blue sky and gray clouds receded as his hands flailed out, catching the edge of the gutter.
Let it go! she’d shrieked as he dangled above her, hanging on for his life.
I can’t. I’ll fall.
But you’re going to break the gutter off. Just let go of it.
And with those words, his marriage probably ended. Because in that moment, he realized she cared more about this damn house and the image of perfection than she did about him. The gutter had wrenched away an inch from the eaves, and he fell then, landing hard on his flank beside the rosebush, leaving a bruise from hip to knee.
She’d actually giggled as she’d helped him up and brushed him off. Are you all right? she’d asked. But her concern was an act. Just another role she was playing: the worried little wife. He’d seen the truth when he was up on the ladder, looking down. He was a thing she was arranging in her life, an element to be handled and moved around. It wasn’t so much that he’d decided to kill her then. It was that the idea of killing her became just a little bit less of a stark impossibility.
He looked up and saw that the drainage pipe leading from the gutters down to the ground was leaning to the left. He must have kicked it when he fell. An accident, just like the one a few weeks later.
He snap-locked that door mentally. Technically, he was the one who’d been wronged. She’d lied. She’d betrayed him. She’d been talking to a divorce lawyer behind his back. She was going to take everything from him. Her father was going to cut him off and make him sell what was left of the business at garage-sale prices.
And then he found out that she’d been screwing the fence guy. Yeah, okay, she’d finally glommed on to the fact that he’d been getting a little on the side himself these last few years, so she was probably just looking for some payback with this cop, but come on. She’d had two kids and a lumpectomy. All that life and death stuff, it wasn’t exactly an incentive to keep fucking her, was it? He had to get it from somewhere. But she was doing it in their house, as well as the motel up the parkway. She didn’t even have the decency to do it in another state, the way he did on the road. She was reckless, that’s what she was. Looking for trouble, fooling around with that guy Fallon. What if the kids had come home early one day? Did she even think for a second about what that could do to them? And then after she’d died, he realized she’d left her diary lying around, as if she wanted him to find it. He had to tear out all the pages about himself. You had to admit it: the woman just had no common sense or consideration.
“Hey, slick, I’m glad I caught you. Looks like you’re going somewhere.”
Paco Ortiz came up the path just as Jeff was rising with the blue-wrapped Times in his hand.
“Oh.” He buttoned his Armani jacket. “I’m just on my way to a business meeting in the city.”
“Yeah? So how’s it going?”
“Good.” Jeff gave him a mournful smile. “Well, I mean, good as can be reasonably expected. Kids are trying to adjust. We’ve all been through a lot.”
“We sure have.” The detective grinned, showing a few more teeth than Jeff would’ve liked. “That boolshit be so thick sometime I feel like I’m a need a periscope to see above it. You know how I’m saying?”
His Nuyorican accent seemed heavier today, as if he was ladling it on for effect. Jeff found himself looking behind the detective a little, half-expecting to see dirt tracked onto the porch.
“So, what can I do for you today?” He looked at his Raymond Weil watch nervously. “I’m sorry, I’m in a little bit of a hurry.”
“Hey, that’s all right,” the detective said, glancing back at the red Benz in the driveway as if he had all the time in the world himself. “I just had a couple of follow-ups. I guess you heard we locked the lieutenant up.”
“I thought that was on a separate matter.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that. Town this size, everything eventually connects. Right?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not from around here originally.”
“Riiiiight.” The detective snapped his fingers without making a sound. “I’m not a native either. But I’m learning.”
“Anyway …”
“Yeah, anyway, I’m a want to ask you about something you said the last time.”
“Okay.”
“Remember how you told me you were no good at fixing things around the house?”
“I don’t recall saying that specifically. I might have been feeling a little overtaxed right at that moment.”
“I hear you.” The detective smiled and reached inside his jacket. “Can I tell you your exact words?”
“Sure.”
All right, Jeff thought. What’s he doing here? What does he want? His eyes went up to the detached gutter beside the roof and then came back, just as the detective pulled out his notebook.
“You said, ‘My wife said we were married almost ten years and she never even saw me pick up a screwdriver.’”
“Did I? Well, I guess I was feeling helpless.”
“Do you remember why that came up?”
“No, not really.” Jeff tugged lightly at the end of his tie.
“We were talking about some of the work the lieutenant had done on your backyard fence. Does that refresh your memory?”
“Perhaps a little bit.”
His eyes fixed on a rolled-up eight-by-eleven manila envelope that the detective had sticking out of his windbreaker pocket.
“You said, ‘I don’t get that involved.’”
“I was probably exaggerating slightly.”
“Can I show you a couple of pictures?”
“Certainly,” Jeff said. “Could I stop you?”
A cold tongue of apprehension flicked the back of his ear. Whatever it is, don’t look surprised. Don’t react. He’s playing with you.
The detective put the notebook away and took the envelope out, slowly unwinding the red twine that fastened it shut. He slid the first picture out and presented it with a kind of half-formal flourish.
The first thing Jeff noticed as he took the black-and-white print by its edges was how much younger he looked in it. Gray had yet to powder his temples. Those two little divots hadn’t deepened between his eyebrows. His jawline still had its youthful sleekness. Sandi, on the other hand, looked like she’d been yelling at him all morning. She had those dark circles under her eyes and taut brackets around her mouth. He willed himself not to look at her throat.
“Okay,” he said, handing it back to the detective. “Her friend Lynn took this awhile ago, when we were still at the old house. She was trying out a new camera, I think.”
“Got quite an eye, that lady.”
“Yeah, she’s a pro.”
The detective handed him the second picture, and immediately Jeff’s stomach shriveled to the size of a peanut. The goggles and black gloves made him look a little like an astronaut. The white spray tank glowed brightly against the backdrop of the French doors and drab shingles. The tarp had been carefully spread over Sandi’s plants so he wouldn’t kill them this time. And, of course, the gallon can of Thompson’s Wood Protector was in plain sight in the corner of the frame.
“Well, I never said I was totally useless around the house,” he said, co
olly handing it back.
Got quite an eye, that lady.
“I’m just a little confused about why you said that originally.” The folds in Ortiz’s grin sharpened—a smooth operator this one. “You said the wood protector belonged to the lieutenant.”
“Obviously I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Otherwise I would have remembered that picture. He’d told Sandi he didn’t like Lynn hanging around with the camera. He’d said that, hadn’t he? She makes me feel like I’m in a zoo. This is our house. When’s she going to leave? He’d always been suspicious of all her friends, but Lynn especially. She always managed to be just around the corner when you were having an argument with your wife. He remembered how much she’d annoyed him that day with her new camera, to the point where he wanted to rip it from around her neck and throw it in the bushes.
“Looks like you’re ready for the cleanup too.” Ortiz held the picture up so they could both look at it. “You got the gloves. The goggles. The tarp over the plants.”
“My wife asked me to be careful spraying the deck, so I wouldn’t hurt her flowers.”
“Good for you. Lot of guys wouldn’t be that considerate.”
The Last Good Day Page 40
