Surprise Party

by Katz, William

  "Yes."

  "That's right. When they go East they try to erase it. Really too bad, young fella. Omaha's a great town. You should be proud you came from there." He winked at Marty, a reprimanding wink.

  "I am proud," Marty replied. He felt he had to say it. "I left when I was young. The accent melted."

  "Yeah," the old man said. "I've lived there all my life. Don't need anyplace else."

  Wonderful, Marty thought. A local booster. He didn't want to change seats and make his discomfort obvious, but he didn't want this pep talk either.

  "What part you come from?" the man asked. Now he turned completely toward Marty and Marty could look into his bloodshot, alcoholic eyes and get the full scent of Scotch head-on.

  "Upper north," Marty replied, then quickly pulled the airline magazine out of the seat pocket in front of him.

  "So do I," the local booster said.

  Christ, Marty thought, I needed this. Then he felt a sharp chill race through him. Hey, maybe this guy recognizes me. Maybe he knew me as a child. Maybe I look familiar and he's just probing to place the face. Even with the sunglasses, he may know.

  "That's nice," Marty replied, flipping through the magazine.

  "What's your name?"

  Marty stopped reading for a moment. This was becoming serious. "Harvey," he answered. "Len Harvey."

  "Durant is mine."

  "Hello, Mr. Durant."

  "You goin' to that part of town?"

  Think fast, Marty thought. You've got to shake him. "Not immediately," he said.

  "Oh, that's too bad. I could've given you a lift."

  "Thanks," Marty replied. "That's real nice. Real Omaha nice."

  "That's the spirit," Durant said. "I like you."

  "You're very kind to say that."

  "I'd like to drive you wherever you're goin'. Doesn't matter. It's Omaha nice."

  "Oh, I couldn't accept that."

  "Sure you could."

  "No, really. I'm meeting people. It's business."

  "Okay," Durant answered. "Tryin' to be helpful. I'll be lookin' for you in our part of town."

  Marty didn't answer. Stay rational, he thought. The old guy's a certifiable drunk. He's no threat. Even if you run into him again, what can he do? He can bother. That's what he can do. He can cramp a killer's style. Marty swore to do anything to avoid him.

  It was a bumpy landing in Omaha. Marty stepped out of the plane ahead of Durant, walking briskly, losing him in the crowd. Durant headed for the baggage area, Marty did not. He'd always kept a small overnight case in the office, with two days' supply of basic needs. He'd taken it right on the plane. Goodbye, Mr. Durant, he mused. Hope you drink a lot in the next few days and forget everything.

  Marty walked to the Hertz counter to rent a car, and once again he used his American Express card. He planned to be far away when the bill came in the little windowed envelope.

  "Preference?" the blue-uniformed lady at the counter asked.

  "Buick Century," Marty replied.

  The lady checked the computer. "We're out of that type," she said. "I can give you a Chrysler LeBaron."

  "That'll be fine," he answered. He presented his license and credit card, and a Hertz bus took him to the car pick-up station.

  The car was a late-model, two-door LeBaron, blue, with the dashboard ashtray missing. Hertz could put Marty in the driver's seat, as long as he didn't smoke.

  He knew the route. He'd driven it before on a few visits back, just as he knew the routes into places like Elkhart, Indiana, and Evanston, Illinois—towns he'd used to construct his falsified past. He drove slowly and carefully. This was not the time to have an accident or attract the attention of an Omaha traffic cop. A few drops of rain began to splatter the windshield, instantly heightening his sense of caution. He checked the gas gauge. Full. He wouldn't need more gas during his stay.

  He flipped on the radio.

  "And now for the daily farm report…"

  He changed stations.

  Frank Sinatra. "Love and Marriage." A fifties song, played by one of those nostalgia stations. That was the correct mood. Marty rode with that music all the way to his old neighborhood.

  The old neighborhood.

  Clapboard houses. Some close together. Some on isolated lots. A rural feel, though it was only eleven miles from Omaha's center. Not a neighborhood in the block-after-block sense, with parallel streets and a group of stores. This was more of an area, a state of mind—one main street and a few side roads, none with streetlights. There was a row of stores, including a supermarket and a hardware store, and the inevitable bar, where the boys from a local aircraft-parts plant liked to hang out after work. It was one of those desolate sections that any respectable, ambitious person wanted to leave, yet always come home to, for it was a part of the countryside that seemed never to change, never to go with the tide, never to join the modern world. Nowhere, USA.

  Marty saw the house—that strange green clapboard with pink trim that Mother had demanded, set apart from the others, on a small hill with no trees.

  Abandoned.

  Partially boarded up.

  Home.

  14

  "I'm here. I'm here, Frankie."

  Marty remembered the voice. He stood on the same spot, at the side of the house. Dad had taken the bus home—the car had been broken and there'd been no money to fix it.

  "Frankie, where are you?"

  The voice had been cheerful. It had always been cheerful, no matter how hard times were. Now Marty ran to the front of the house, as he had that December fifth.

  "Hi, Dad." He remembered saying it.

  Dad had the big carton cradled in both arms. "Happy birthday, Frankie." Frankie'd known instantly what was in the box. All he'd been talking about was trains, trains, trains. And Dad had promised: "for your next birthday, if we can afford it." He'd gone ahead and gotten the trains anyway, even though he'd known he couldn't afford it. A broken-down car in the garage, brand-new electric trains in his arms. All right, Dad had been a dreamer. Impractical.

  "Come on inside, Frankie," he'd said.

  Marty walked up the front steps. The house was locked, as it had been for years, known as a murder site, unsalable. He couldn't go in, but he could look in. God, everything was always the same. The vandals never touched this house. There were rumors of ghosts, spirits that hung around protecting it. Strange how people believed those things.

  He remembered.

  The door had opened. Mom was there. No smile. Never a smile. She saw the carton with the trains, and exploded. "Bum!" she'd screamed. She'd screamed it about Dad, to his face.

  Marty didn't want to think about the rest just then. He only wanted to look through the windows and remember the good times—Dad pillow-fighting with him and Jamie, his younger brother; Dad playing his old banjo and singing war songs from Europe; Dad making those phone calls, those endless phone calls, trying to get work. The phone wire was still connected to the wall in the living room, Marty saw, although the phone had been ripped out long ago. And there was still an old dusty pillow in the floor, just where it had lain the night of December fifth. Yes, everything was the same, really—even the old RCA Model 30 television set. The ghosts were such good protectors, such reverent watchers in the night. Fine. Nothing should disturb what Dad had touched.

  Then, Marty heard a staccato voice behind him. "Hey, you lookin' for something, Mister?"

  He spun around. Incredible, but he hadn't heard the car engine as it pulled up. An Omaha police cruiser was idling, its patrolman-driver looking right at him from behind mirrored sunglasses.

  "Just curious," Marty replied, trying to smile, his own sunglasses his only disguise. But instantly he sensed that his answer was ridiculous, more likely to arouse suspicion than quench it. "I like this neighborhood," he went on. "This old house for sale?"

  The cop shrugged. "You'll have to see the county assessor, son." He was younger than Marty, but insisted on the "son." "That old house has quite a
story behind it."

  "Oh?"

  "Lady wasted her old man in there."

  "Jesus."

  "Big story—back in the fifties, I think."

  "Pretty spooky."

  "Yo. Nobody really wants that house. There's a real-estate broker about a mile down that there road—Calman Brothers—if you want to ask about anything else."

  "Thanks," Marty said. "I appreciate that."

  "Okay," the cop concluded, and drove off.

  Imagine, Marty thought: Here was a cop within thirty feet of him, as he went through the most profound ritual of his season of death, and the guy never suspected a thing. That's planning.

  Marty decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood, past his elementary school, its grassy playground filled with kids learning the rudiments of football, past the Avery house, where he'd spent some of his happiest hours playing, and past Doc Marsh's house. He stopped at that one—wood and brick, belonging to a dentist now—and he stared at the front door. Marsh had tried so hard to save Dad. He'd been one of the good guys.

  There were plenty of people out walking, some on their way to Christmas shopping. Marty recognized a few of the old-timers, but none recognized him behind his glasses. None of them meant anything to him anyway. He felt no visceral urge to speak with them, even about the old days, before December 5, 1952. These people hadn't helped after Mom killed Dad. They'd stayed away. They'd avoided Frankie and his brother on the street. They hadn't been nice, the way church-going people should've been.

  Marty suddenly felt a lump form in his throat. He knew why. The cemetery was just around the corner. He began feeling closer to Dad. The hearse had traveled up this bumpy, broken street, and people had stared out their windows. It wasn't normal to have a funeral procession with police cars, but this had been a special funeral, the funeral of a murder victim. The police had been there in case the crackpots came to disturb the family. A few had come anyway, with their leering eyes and pointing fingers. Frankie had heard one of them shout that Dad must've been an evil man. It wasn't true.

  The old cemetery was poorly kept. A lot of people had moved from Omaha, leaving graves behind them, not keeping up with maintenance payments, depending on the largesse of churches and the goodwill of the cemetery management to show proper respect for the remains of mothers, fathers, spouses, and children. Some respect was shown, but there were financial limits, so the grass was uncut, some stones were overturned, the obscenities scribbled on one monument went unscrubbed. Marty was angry. Dad shouldn't have to lie in a place like this. He deserved better. He deserved one of those hillside graves with olive trees around, with green grass good enough for a golf course, with flowerbeds and soft breezes. That's what Dad deserved. Marty gritted his teeth. He had the money to move Dad, but couldn't. To move a body required a court order. He'd have to reveal himself, ruin everything. Even an anonymous contribution for upkeep of Dad's plot might arouse suspicion. So things would have to stay as they were, at least for a time.

  There wasn't even a groundskeeper. Marty walked through the rusted, broken gate and stood for a moment, looking over the depressing place. He started walking again, taking the same route he'd taken that bitter December day in 1952. He heard the grass rustling under him. None of it was trampled, for rarely did anyone come to the cemetery, especially in the cold. A black dog jumped from behind a gravestone and started yelping. Marty froze. It had no collar, no license. A stray, and mean looking. Marty tried smiling at it. It kept yelping, then finally turned and ran.

  Marty walked on again. He felt the wind, and it triggered an almost photographic image in his mind of that day at the cemetery in 1952. There, to his left, was Al Ryder's grave. He remembered that American flag mounted on it in 1952, just after Al's body had been returned from Korea. It was one of the few graves still kept up. His parents must still be alive, Marty thought.

  And then…

  Dad. Squeezed amidst a bunch of others was a small, thin headstone, the cheapest available at the time. Now it was tilted toward the body at a 15-degree angle, and its base looked like it was coming out of the ground. The inscription was partly filled in with dirt, but was still clear: JOHN ALBERT NELSON, 1916—1952. He didn't live nearly long enough, Marty said to himself.

  He looked around. If anyone saw him now, there might be suspicion. But no one did. It was pure emptiness. So Marty knelt down reverently beside the grave, ignoring the tilt of the headstone.

  How did Dad lie? He still wondered, as he had at Dad's funeral, although he knew by now, as an adult, that bodies are placed face up. But always? Was there some law that required it? Dad's coffin had been closed during the service, so who was to know? Maybe the undertaker had put him face down. And once again Marty wondered if there was an expression on Dad's face, and whether it was that curious look he'd had just before it happened.

  "Like the lumber loader, Frankie?"

  Marty heard Dad's voice. It was so clear, so alive, as if carried on the wind as it swept over the gravestones.

  "It's the new lumber loader. Automatic. I saw it work at the store. Don't lose any of the logs, though. Okay?"

  Marty remembered that he'd never lost any of the logs. Even when he'd had to leave the set behind, when he went into the world, he'd kept the logs—because Dad had said never to lose them.

  "Dad, I may be away a long while," he now whispered, staring at the gravestone. "But I'll be back. You know I will. We're showing that Mom hasn't gotten away with this, aren't we? We're sure showing it."

  He edged over and tried to straighten the stone, but his strength wasn't enough. All he could do was clean the dirt off the front. "I want you to rest easy, Dad. I've got things under control. I'm playing with the trains. I'll even answer the Christmas cards for you. And I got that RCA Model 30 this time. We have things called video cassette recorders now. They play tapes of television programs. I got this old tape of Doug Edwards. Remember how you watched him? I'll play it the night of December fifth…for you, Dad."

  Suddenly, a vision of Samantha flashed through Marty's mind, but all he could see beneath her auburn hair was the face of his mother, and all he could hear was his mother's screaming voice. Samantha's transformation in the twisted depths of his psyche was beginning.

  "I failed you once, Dad," he said. "I failed you on December fifth, 1952. I should have saved you, but I failed. I'll never fail you again."

  He got up and stepped back.

  "Goodbye, Dad. Next time I see you it'll all be over." He left the cemetery.

  15

  The clatter of metal against metal rang through the Shaw apartment as the caterer's men brought in the last of the chairs and tables for the December fifth gala. Samantha and Lynne watched, assuming that the well-recommended caterer knew what he was doing. But Samantha held a floor plan in her hand, occasionally directing the placement of a particular piece.

  She didn't know what to feel. What do you feel in a situation like this? A great party coming up, a husband cleared of a ghastly crime, that husband shrouded in mystery, and yet, on the other hand, that same husband about to be a father. As linens started appearing on tabletops, Samantha slowly felt restraint slipping away and anticipation overtaking her. It was natural. Parties bring with them their own psychology. And Lynne was a great cheerleader. She still knew nothing of the trauma over Marty's past. Samantha had simply told her that the probing for Marty's old friends had never worked out—that they'd been too hard to find and too expensive to bring in. Lynne had bought it.

  "Over here," Samantha commanded, and a hauler switched direction and brought a round table to the front of the living room. He didn't acknowledge the order. People who haul for caterers never say much of anything.

  "I think you got a broken one," Lynne whispered as she saw a worker trying to steady a table that wouldn't get steadied. Samantha looked at him, he looked back, and again without a word, refolded the table and replaced it with another.

  Some of the furniture had been pushed to the sides o
f the living room, with some pieces stored in Lynne's apartment. "It looks so…commercial," Samantha commented as the workmen were just about finished.

  "You just watch," Lynne said, "I run four parties a month for my gallery. They start getting it together and you'll have the Waldorf right in your living room."

  "Think Marty'll like it?" Samantha asked.

  "He'll love it. Everyone loves a party in their honor. It's the American way, baby."

  Samantha knew that Marty was flying back to New York that very moment, only a day before the party. She'd spoken with him the previous night, when he'd called from a St. Louis hotel. He'd checked into the hotel to maintain absolute credibility to the last possible minute. Marty Shaw overlooked nothing.

  Of course he'd love the party, Samantha mused, just as Lynne said he would. And maybe—just maybe—he'd choose the special night, December fifth, to reveal his great secrets. It would be wonderful to end the mystery the night of the party. Of course, that was precisely what Marty had planned, but his interpretation was rather different.

  "Mrs. Shaw?"

  Samantha heard the voice and turned. A young, smallish man, about twenty, was at the door, which had been wedged open by the caterers. "Yes?"

  "Nick Auerbach, Dimension Video. The doorman thought I was with the caterer and sent me up."

  "Oh, yes," Samantha said with her ever-gracious smile. The name took a few seconds to register, but she knew Auerbach would be making the videotape of the party, and had come to scout the apartment for shots. "Please come in," she said. "The place is yours."

  Auerbach had no video equipment with him—only a clipboard and a pencil. Samantha showed him the apartment, and he made little sketches, noting measurements, table locations, and the colors of walls. After finishing, he sat down with Samantha at one of the tables. "I'll need some information from you," he told her.

  "Like what?"

  "Like whether there'll be any ceremonies or presentations."

  "Oh no, nothing like that," Samantha replied.

  "I beg your little pardon," Lynne interrupted. "Aren't we forgetting something?"