The Shallows--A Nils Shapiro Novel

by Matt Goldman

  Irving said, “You turned her down. We both heard the conversation.”

  “Yeah, well. I changed my mind.”

  “What’s the problem with working for Robin and us?” said Norton.

  “You have disparate goals.”

  Norton and Irving looked at each other. They either didn’t understand how Robin’s goals could be different from theirs or they didn’t understand what disparate meant.

  “Well,” said Norton. “That puts us in a tough spot.” He scratched his huge forehead then fidgeted with the knot of his necktie. I could tell he wasn’t used to wearing one. “We can’t have you interrogating Kjellgren if you’re not working with us.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t need to talk to him.”

  “But you’re the one he wants to talk to,” said Irving. “Not us. Just you. What are we supposed to do?”

  “No idea, but you have a problem. The FBI will be here in a minute. So will Minneapolis PD. They’ll know how to deal with him.”

  Norton said, “We want to question him first.”

  Robin said, “Couldn’t you just work for them for an hour, Nils? That wouldn’t be a conflict, would it? That would give you a chance to talk to him before everyone else gets here. He wants to see you. He must have a reason.”

  I turned to Irving and Norton and said, “What do you think? Hire me for an hour?”

  I sat in the Greater Lake Minnetonka Police Station’s interrogation room, which looked like it had never been used. I glanced under the table and chairs to see if they still had price tags. Norton led Arndt Kjellgren into the room. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and his face was scraped from when he belly-flopped onto Christmas Lake Road. The officers sat Kjellgren in a chair directly across from me.

  Kjellgren looked down, sighed something venomous, then said, “I want to talk to Shapiro alone.”

  Irving said, “You comfortable with that, Mr. Shapiro?”

  “So comfortable I might order room service.”

  Irving and Norton nodded like boy soldiers then turned and walked out. After the door shut, Arndt Kjellgren looked up and stared at me through the tops of his eyes.

  “The FBI will be here any minute,” I said, “so if you want to talk, then talk. I assume you’re pissed about me slamming you with my car door, so I wouldn’t waste your time on that.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. Are they watching us?”

  “Normally, I’d say yes, but with these guys I don’t know if they can find the On button.”

  He nodded, then braced for my answer before he asked the question. “Did you sleep with Robin last night?”

  “No. She slept on my couch because she’d had too much to drink.”

  “Nothing happened between you two?”

  “She came over late afternoon. We talked. She drank some wine. Too much wine. She hadn’t eaten all day. I went out to dinner. When I returned, she’d drunk more wine and was passed out on my couch. I threw a blanket over her and went to sleep in my room.”

  Arndt Kjellgren stared at me like I was a bug crawling up a wall, half curious and half like he wanted to squish me. He took a few slow, audible breaths then said, “I want to hire you.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to work for me.”

  “Get in fucking line.”

  “I’m serious. I was outside Robin’s house, but I swear it was to protect her. Someone was going to break in tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t have a name. They would have hurt her if they needed to. If they wanted to.”

  “Where are you getting your information?”

  “I can’t tell you. But I promise you it’s the truth. One hundred percent, man. I swear.”

  “Why couldn’t Robin get ahold of you today?”

  “I turned off my cell. For her safety.”

  “I got to tell you, Arndt, you’re sounding kind of crazy right now. You say you were lurking outside Robin’s house to protect her, but you won’t tell me what or who you’re protecting her from. Or how you know. I wouldn’t take that case even if I were available, which I’m not.”

  Kjellgren moved his head around as if he was doing a neck-stretching exercise. He kept doing it as he said, “You need to trust me. You need to fucking trust me right now.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I trust you. There are three law enforcement agencies that don’t give a damn what I think. One of them is the FBI.”

  Arndt Kjellgren opened his eyes and said, “I did some shit I’m not proud of.”

  “Like tape-welding me into my place last night?”

  “I don’t care about that. I’ve done other things. I can’t talk about them. Unless we can talk in private. With no one listening in.”

  “That’s not up to me.” I looked out toward the lobby and saw badges filing in. “Your time’s up, Arndt. The FBI is here. I can’t help you.”

  He said, “Look at me. Fucking look at me. I keep records.”

  “Okay—”

  “Listen to me! I keep records. Of my sculptures. Who buys them. It’s recorded. I know. Because of the records. I know.”

  “Because you keep records.”

  “Yes. I have a collection of records.”

  “Just say what you’re trying to tell me, Arndt. You have nothing to lose. Just—”

  The door swung open. Detectives Norton and Irving entered, followed by FBI Agents Coleen Milton and Delvin Peterson. Arndt Kjellgren said, “Protect her, Shapiro. Don’t leave her alone. Keep her safe!”

  Irving escorted me out of the interrogation room and said something about invoicing the department for my time. I told him I wouldn’t do it, and he had a mini meltdown, saying I promised and have to invoice them or they could get in trouble for allowing me to interrogate a person of interest, especially in the interrogation room. I asked who they’d get in trouble with. Irving rubbed his orange hair but didn’t answer.

  I agreed to drive Robin home, and we left Arndt Kjellgren with the FBI and a handful of Minneapolis cops I didn’t know. I opened the passenger-side door for Robin as if she were a date or an infirm person. She gave me a tiny smile as I shut the Volvo’s heavy door. I walked around to my side and, in the orange glow of sodium vapor lights, saw what the careening Arndt Kjellgren had done to my driver’s side door. Two grapefruit-sized dents disfigured the panel. It had taken almost a year, but my hockey-mom-mobile had finally lost its virginity. It was about time.

  We didn’t talk much on the short drive back to Christmas Lake. The clock on the dash read 1:04 A.M. when Robin said, “Would you please stay with me tonight?”

  I had professional reasons to say yes and professional reasons to say no. Robin’s air-conditioning cast the tie-breaking vote. I said, “Of course.”

  She looked at me with a tiny smile, and her eyes danced in the dash light. She caught a glimmer in mine I hadn’t intended for her. It was an accidental discharge and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The glimmer came from my sudden sense of freedom. Micaela’s pregnancy uncaged me for the first time in over a dozen years. The counterintuitiveness of the feeling floored and delighted me. Having a child with someone is supposed to make you love the person more. Plenty of greeting cards and religions say so. I don’t believe in destiny, but if I did, I’d say something stupid like Micaela and I were meant to have a child together. That was why we couldn’t let go of each other, a simple preprogrammed biological drive to procreate. Like salmon swimming upstream. Unwavering. Now I was free to leave like a stag or grizzly bear or golden retriever who’d been used for stud. It felt wrong that it didn’t feel wrong. It could only mean one thing: Micaela Stahl wasn’t my person. Now, I was free to find her, whomever she was.

  “You seem happy,” said Robin, interrupting my wonderment.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve always wanted to catch a fugitive with my car door.”

  Robin laughed then said, “No. You’re thinking about something else.” Her tone s
hifted to serene. “Or maybe someone else?”

  “Life can be surprising and weird sometimes.”

  “You’re telling me…” Robin looked out the passenger window at the blackness along the road. I watched her reflection in the glass. She said, “Do you think Arndt’s telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a strange dude, your boyfriend.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  I wasn’t sure I should share the information with her, but since I had no idea what Arndt had meant, it was worth the risk if Robin could fill in the missing pieces. A risk of what, I wasn’t sure. “Arndt said he was outside your house to protect you. That someone was going to break in. And he said he keeps records of who buys his sculptures. He kept talking about the records, that they are the reason he knows. He said records so much I wasn’t sure if he meant his files and bills of sale for his sculptures or the thousands of vinyl records in his studio. Do you have any idea what he meant by that?”

  “None.”

  “Maybe he hides documents in the record jackets with the vinyl? I don’t know…”

  She looked away from the dark and turned her shoulders toward me. “Is he going crazy? Like Van Gogh or something?”

  “Maybe. Check your mail for an ear.”

  Robin half-smiled. I pulled into her driveway and stopped my freshly dented Volvo just shy of the garage. She said, “Thank you for staying.”

  “It’s my turn on the couch.”

  She opened her door and stepped out of the car. I did the same and followed her over the pebbled pavement. She was about to put her key in the lock then stopped and looked at me in the soft gold glow of a filament bulb hanging above the front door. She said, “There’s no need for you to sleep on the couch.”

  I had no idea if she said that because, unlike me, she lived in a real house with a guest bedroom, or maybe she wanted me to sleep in her bed. But I had no intention of doing that. Her husband had been dead forty-eight hours. Her boyfriend, an apparent lunatic, was in jail. But all I managed to say was, “Your house. Your rules.”

  We walked inside. She said, “Wine? I’m opening a bottle.” She saw my hesitation. “We also have—I also have scotch, vodka, gin…”

  “Scotch.” She told me where it was, and I retrieved a bottle of Old Pulteney. Never opened. I couldn’t find a proper whiskey glass so I poured a couple ounces into a stemless wine glass, bemoaned the improper vessel, then joined Robin in the living room, sitting on the other wing of an L-shaped sofa. We drank and didn’t say much then Robin said, “Time for bed.” I answered with a nod. She finished the last of her wine, set the glass on a big low coffee table made of frosted glass, stood, and walked over to me. “This is kind of awkward, but with all that’s happened, I wouldn’t mind you sleeping in my bed.”

  I said, “I’m not comfortable with that.”

  She said, “Too weird?”

  I looked up at Robin. She’d missed a button on her blouse, and I could see her dark summer-tanned stomach and the underswell of her breast. Either she hadn’t worn a bra all night or had slipped it off when I went hunting for the scotch.

  I said, “I’ll take the room closest to yours.”

  “Please,” she said. “I just need a person next to me.” Robin turned and walked away. There was a slim chance Arndt Kjellgren wasn’t crazy. He said, “Protect her, Shapiro. Don’t leave her alone. Keep her safe.” A slim chance indeed. I followed her into the bedroom.

  18

  Robin and dead Todd’s master suite overlooked Christmas Lake via a wall of glass with two sliding doors that led to a deck. Porch lights and dock lights showed the lake’s edge, a black oval in the middle. A single reading lamp on one nightstand diffused a soft glow into the cavernous room. The modern minimalism gave extra depth to the negative space. A step-counter would beep with delight if you tried vacuuming the place.

  Two nightstands, a king-sized bed, and small seating area near the wall of windows were the only furniture. The nightstands had digital clocks, votives made of handblown glass, and one paperback: Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I guessed it might have been Todd’s. Not finishing it added an extra layer of tragedy to his death. Everything else was hidden by built-in drawers—a whole wall of them—just like in a morgue.

  Robin hit a button on the wall. A sheer shade lowered from above the windows, its electric motor humming as it replaced the blackness with a sheet of soft ivory. Robin said, “Let me get you a toothbrush.” She disappeared into a closet and reappeared half a minute later with an electric toothbrush head, its bristles blanketed in a squirt of toothpaste. “This is new. You can use Todd’s bathroom if you’re comfortable. There’s a handle in there. The police took his toothbrush head yesterday along with most everything else.” She head-motioned to a doorway within the suite.

  I said, “Thanks,” then started my journey toward dead Todd’s bathroom. I stepped into the blackness and a motion sensor turned on a light revealing a walk-through closet. The clothes were gone. Ivory carpet and walls. More built-in drawers. I opened a few. Empty. I continued past a comfy-looking chair and ottoman then stepped into Todd’s bathroom. A creamy limestone floor under white cabinetry.

  Separate bathrooms are the most worthwhile rich-people indulgence. They’re even healthier for a relationship than separate vacations. Privacy and personal time when you need it most help avoid shame and bring your best self to the marriage. Todd and Robin had separate suites, starting with their closets and ending with showers, toilets, tubs, and dressing areas.

  Todd’s bathroom wasn’t taped off, so the Greater Lake Minnetonka Police Department had probably checked the drain traps in both the shower and sink. They’d taken his towels and toiletries. Todd’s shower contained the kind of metal bar you see in bathrooms for the elderly and disabled, something to hold on to for stability. Only that and the electric toothbrush handle resting on its charger remained. I put on the new toothbrush head, brushed my teeth, returned to the bedroom, removed my shoes, and sat at the foot of the bed.

  Robin Rabinowitz stepped out of her closet wearing baby blue gym shorts and a white tank top. She smelled of lotion and astringent. She walked to the left nightstand, removed an LED candle from the votive, turned it on, and set it back inside the votive. She smiled at me and walked around to the other nightstand.

  “Electric candles. I would have figured you for real fire.”

  “You would have figured right,” she said, “but Todd was always worried I’d fall asleep with an open flame.” She turned on the other candle then turned off the reading lamp. The fake flames danced, lifelike, blurred by the thick bubbled-glass votives.

  I said, “Did Todd have any leg or balance problems?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Did you buy this house from elderly people?”

  “We didn’t buy it from anyone. We had it built. Why do you ask?”

  “Why is there a safety bar in Todd’s shower?”

  “Oh,” she said, “that. Todd’s father fell in the shower a few years ago and broke a hip. It was touch and go for a couple of weeks—he almost died. Todd wanted to live in this house for the rest of his life. He had the bar installed so it would be there when he got old and needed it.” Robin walked back to the lake side of the bed and sat. “Guess he got his wish.”

  “What wish?

  “To live in this house for the rest of his life.” She got under the covers. I crawled up toward the headboard and lay on top of the covers.

  She said, “Thank you for being here. I’m just … scared.”

  “Understandable.” I shifted to my right side and faced her. She smiled, then turned her back to me and settled in an arm’s distance away. I was about to ask her whether she always slept with fake candlelight when she wriggled herself backward like a worm across a sidewalk. She pressed her back into me. She found my left hand, pulled it onto her shoulder, then placed her hand on top of mine. Then she reached behind my back and pulled me into h
er.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t lie in your dead husband’s dent and do this.”

  “We’re not doing anything. I just need you close. It’s my only chance of getting any sleep.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t know what to do with my right arm so I just laid on it until it went numb. I wanted to leave but didn’t. It took me a long time to fall asleep on the big bed in the cool air next to the woman who smelled of lotion and astringent.

  I woke just after 5:00 A.M., having slept only a couple hours. Gray light filtered in through the ivory shades, voiding the room of color. The loon on Christmas Lake cried its echoey whistle. Robin slept on her stomach, her head facing me. She must have just turned that way because pillow marks creased her cheek. I was contemplating whether or not to wake her when she opened her eyes.

  She blinked a couple times then said, “Hello,” in a voice weak and scratchy.

  “Good morning. I have an early appointment. I have to go.”

  She nodded, but said nothing.

  I said, “I’ll talk to you in a few hours.”

  She nodded one more time. I left, locking the door behind me, drove home and slept in the hot coat factory until nine, when I woke to a ringing phone. I took a sip of lukewarm water from my bedside table then answered.

  “Mr. Shapiro, this is Detective Irving of the Greater Lake Minnetonka Police Department. I have some sad news. Arndt Kjellgren and Robin Rabinowitz are dead.”

  19

  “What? Say that again?” I took another sip of water.

  Detective Irving said, “You’re my first call. It’s uh … oh, boy … shocking. We got a nine-one-one call from Mrs. Rabinowitz’s house, but when the operator answered she heard nothing. Just a hang-up. One of our officers went to check on Kjellgren. She thought maybe he got his hands on a cell phone and had made a threatening call to Mrs. Rabinowitz. But instead, uh geez, she noticed Kjellgren had escaped.”