Apprehended (5 page)

“Broken things can be fixed,” he said firmly. He bent down to take a look at it, pushing the switches and buttons on the side panel. Nothing.

“Can they?” she was saying. “Surely not all of them. That thing has been broken for years.”

He turned back to her, inexplicably irritated by her lack of faith.

“Did Professor Joseph Darren ever even
try
to fix this thing?”

Her eyes widened a little, and she smiled again. “No, he just went out and paid someone to put in this ceiling fan. He thought the air conditioner was too noisy anyway.”

“That ceiling fan doesn't do much to cool it off in here,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his Swiss Army Knife.

“No, it doesn't. But it was cool enough for Joseph,” she replied, watching him open the knife to a screwdriver implement and start to remove the panel.

I'll just bet it was cool enough for him. The professor apparently had ice in his veins. But was it cool enough for you, Kaylie?
His thoughts were brought up short when he pulled the panel away. The problem with the air conditioner wasn't difficult to find. The power cord had been disconnected from the on/off switch terminals. Deliberately.

That son of a bitch.

“Jim?”

He was too angry to reply. He followed the cord back toward the bed.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at her, hearing the alarm in her voice. He must have frightened her somehow. He realized he was scowling and headed right toward her. Did Joseph Darren stalk toward her like this in anger, hurt her? He took a breath.

“I'm just going to unplug it. Your—” He stopped himself. He needed to get a grip. He had just been about to tell her of Joseph Darren's deception, and here she was, not a widow for one full night yet. “—your air conditioner is going to be easy to fix. I'll need for you to get up for a moment and let me move the bed away from the wall. The outlet is behind the bedstead.”

She was looking up at him again, in that way she had looked at him several times this evening.
What are you looking for, Kaylie? Tell me
. Her lips parted, almost as if she had heard him, and she clutched at the sheets beneath her.

He waited.

“Jim—” she said, but then looked down, away from his eyes. She stood up and walked away from the bed.

“Kaylie?”

She shook her head, still not looking at him.

He shrugged and reached for the bedstead, and heaved it away from the wall. He bent to unplug the air conditioner, and stopped short. There were footprints on the wall behind the bed.

Two footprints, to be exact. From the soles of a woman's athletic shoes. A little garden dirt, perhaps.

Two feet, toes pointing up, slightly apart.

He looked at Kaylie, then back at the footprints. He bent down. While the wooden floor under her side of the bed was dusty, something had slid along the floor under his side. He looked more closely, and saw white paint chips missing off one slightly bent rung of the bedstead. The paint chips were on the floor, in the area between and beneath the footprints. He gripped the top of the bedstead, thinking of the single wineglass, picturing her beneath the bed, bracing her feet against the wall, straightening her legs as she pulled . . . the way the direction of the rope marks on the neck would match up with a suicide-by-hanging. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, it was all still there before him. He slowly straightened.

“He came home one day about twenty years ago and announced that he was going to get a vasectomy,” he heard Kaylie say behind him. He couldn't bring himself to look at her. He bent down again and unplugged the air conditioner cord, then walked back to the window.

“He had decided that I wasn't going to have any children. He had his child. Lillian. Did you know that child hated me? Not so much anymore, but it was awful when she was growing up. I don't think she would have hated me so much if Joseph hadn't told her that I was the reason he didn't marry her mother. He lied. To me and to Lillian and to God knows how many other women. He lied all the time.”

“Yes, I know he did,” Jim said wearily, and knelt to begin replacing the wiring Joseph Darren had undone.

“Today he told Lillian that she should get rid of the baby.”

The screwdriver stopped for a moment, then went on.

•   •   •

He finished replacing the panel and got to his feet, looking out the window at the smoke, which had turned the moon blood red.

Without looking back at her, he knew she hadn't moved. She stood there, silent now.

“Kaylie, I'm an officer of the law.” For the first time, his chest felt tight as he said that.

“Yes,” he heard her say.

He walked over to the outlet, plugged the air conditioner in, listened as it hummed to life, giving off a dusty smell of disuse.

“You fixed it!”

He looked over at her, at the way her face was lit up in approval and admiration.

“Yes,” he said, and moved the bed back against the wall.

•   •   •

He walked back to the air conditioner, adjusted its settings. He closed his eyes and bent his face to it, letting the cool air blow against him; felt it flattening his eyelashes and buffeting his hot skin.

“Kaylie.”

“Yes?”

“Go turn the clothes dryer off.”

•   •   •

She hesitated, but then he heard her leave the room, heard her going out into the garage. He looked out the window and saw the headlights of other cars coming toward the house. He stood up straight, lifting his fingers to his badge, feeling the now-chilled metal beneath them.

Fifteen years as a deputy sheriff, only to come to this.

•   •   •

Why tonight, he wondered.

A Fine Set of Teeth

I saw Frank drop two cotton balls into the front pocket of his denim jacket and I made a face.

“Those won't help, you know.”

He smiled and said, “Better than nothing.”

“Cotton is not effective ear protection.”

He picked up his keys by way of ignoring me and said, “Are you ready?”

“You don't have to go with me,” I offered again.

“I'm not letting my wife sit alone in a sleazy bar. No more arguments, all right?”

“If I were on a story—”

“You aren't. Let's go.”

“Thanks for being such a good sport about it,” I said, which made him laugh.

•   •   •

“Which apartment number?” Frank asked as we pulled up to the curb in front of Buzz Sullivan's apartment building. The building was about four stories high, probably built in the 1930s. I don't think it had felt a paintbrush along its walls within the last decade.

“Buzz didn't tell me,” I answered. “He just said he lived on the fourth floor.”

Frank sighed with long suffering, but I can ignore someone as easily as he can, and got out of the car.

As we made our way to the old stucco building's entry, we dodged half a dozen kids who were playing around with a worn soccer ball on the brown crabgrass lawn. The children were laughing and calling to one another in Spanish. A dried sparrow of a woman watched them from the front steps. She seemed wearier than Atlas.

Frank muttered at my back about checking mailboxes for the first of the three flights of stairs, but soon followed in silence. Although Buzz had moved several times since I had last been to one of his apartments, I knew there would be no difficulty in locating the one that was his. We reached the fourth floor and Frank started to grouse, but soon the sound I had been waiting for came to my ears. Not just my ears: I heard the sound under my fingernails, beneath my toes and in places my mother asked me never to mention in mixed company. Three screeching notes strangled from the high end of the long neck of a Fender Stratocaster, a sound not unlike those a pig might make—if it was having its teeth pulled with a pair of pliers.

I turned to look at Frank Harriman and saw something I rarely see on his face: fear. Raw fear.

I smiled. I would have said something comforting, but he wouldn't have heard me over the next few whammified notes whining from Buzz's guitar. A deaf man could have told you they were coming from apartment 4E. I waited until the sound subsided, asked, “Should we drop you off back at the house?” and watched my husband stalk over to the door of number 4E and rap on it with the kind of ferocious intensity one usually saves for rousing the occupants of burning buildings.

Q:
 What's the difference between a dead trombone player and a dead snake in the middle of a road?

A:
 The snake was on his way to a gig.

The door opened and a thin young man with a hairdo apparently inspired in color and shape by a sea urchin stood looking at Frank in open puzzlement. He swatted a few purple spikes away from his big blue eyes and finally saw me standing nearby. His face broke into an easy, charming smile.

“Irene!” He looked back at Frank. “Is this your cop?”

“No, Buzz,” I said, “that's my husband.”

Buzz looked sheepish. “Oh, sorry. I've told Irene I'm not like that, and here I am, acting just
exactly
like that.”

“Like what?” Frank asked.

“I don't mind that you're a cop,” Buzz said proudly.

“That's big of you,” Frank said, “I was worried you wouldn't accept our help.”

Buzz, who is missing a sarcasm detection gene, just grinned and held out a hand. “Not at all, man, not at all. It's really good of you to offer to take me to the gig. Guess Irene told you my car broke down. Come on in.”

Buzz's purple hair was one of two splashes of color in his ensemble; his boots, pants and shirt were black, but a lime green guitar—still attached by a long cable to an amp—and matching strap stood out against this dark backdrop.

There was no question of finding a seat while we waited for Buzz to unhook his guitar and put it in a hard-shell case. The tiny apartment was nearly devoid of furniture. Two empty plastic milk crates and a couple of boards served as a long, low coffee table of sorts. Cluttered with the several abandoned coffee mugs and an empty bowl with a bent spoon in it, the table stood next to a small mattress heaped with twisted sheets and laundry. The mattress apparently served as both bed and couch.

There were two very elegant objects in the room, however—a pair of Irish harps. The sun was setting in the windows behind them, and in the last light of day, they stood with stately grace, their fine wooden scrollwork lovingly polished to a high sheen.

“You play these?” Frank asked him in astonishment.

Without looking up from the guitar, which he was carefully wiping down with a cloth, Buzz said, “Didn't you tell him, Irene?”

“I first met Buzz at an Irish music festival,” I said. “He doesn't just play the harp.”

“Other instruments, too?” Frank asked.

“Sure,” Buzz said, looking back at us now. “I grew up in a musical family.”

“That isn't what I meant,” I said. “He doesn't just
play
it. He coaxes it to sing.”

“Sure and you've an Irish silver tongue now, haven't ye, me beauty?” Buzz said with an exaggerated brogue.

“Prove my point, Buzz. Play something for us.”

He shook his head. “Haven't touched them in months except to keep the dust off them,” he said. “That's the past.” He patted the guitar case. “This is the future.” He laughed when he saw my look of disappointment. “My father feels the same way—but promise you won't stop speaking to me like he has.”

“No, what you play is your choice.”

“Glad to know at least one person thinks so. Shall we go?”

“Need help carrying your equipment?” Frank offered. I was relieved to see him warming up a little.

“Oh, no, I'm just taking my ax, man.”

“Your ax?”

“My guitar. I never leave it at the club. My synthesizer, another amp and a bunch of other equipment are already at the club—I just leave those there. But not my Strat.”

Q:
 How do you get a guitar player to turn down?

A:
 Put sheet music in front of him.

On the way to Club 99, Buzz talked to Frank about his early years of performing with the Sullivan family band, recalling the friendship his father shared with my late mentor, O'Connor.

“O'Connor told me to come to this music festival,” I said. “There was a fifteen-year-old lad who could play the Irish harp better than anyone he'd ever met, and when he got to heaven, he expected no angel to play more sweetly.”

“Oh, I did all right,” he said shyly. “But my training wasn't formal. She tell you that she helped me get into school, Frank?”

“No—”

“It was your own hard work that got you into that program,” I said.

“Naw, I couldn't have done it without you. You talked that friend into teaching me how to sight read.” He turned to Frank. “Then she practically arm-wrestled one of the profs into giving me an audition.”

Frank smiled. “She hasn't changed much.”

“Sorry, Buzz,” I said, “I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was!” Buzz protested. “And I never could have gone to college without your help.”

“Nonsense. You got the grades on your own, and all the talent and practice time for the music was your own. But when your dad told me you dropped out at the beginning of this past semester, I just figured—”

“I loved school. I only left because I had this opportunity.”

“What opportunity?” Frank asked.

“The band you're going to hear tonight,” he said proudly.

I was puzzled. “It's still avant garde?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I guess I never thought there was much money in avant garde.”

“Not here in the U.S.—locally, Club Ninety-nine is about the only place we can play regularly, and they don't pay squat there. Our band is too outside for a lot of people.”

“Outside?” I asked.

“Yeah, it means—different. In a good way. You know, we push the envelope. Our music's very original, but for people who want the Top Forty, we're a tough listen. That's the trouble with the music scene here in the States. But Mack—our bass player—came up with this great plan to get us heard over in Europe. We made a CD a few months ago, and it's had a lot of airplay there. We just signed on for a big tour, and when it's over, we've got a steady gig set up in a club in Amsterdam.”

“I had no idea all of this was happening for you, Buzz. Congrats.”

“Thanks. I'm so glad you're finally going to get to hear us play—three weeks from now, we'll be in Paris. Who knows when you'll get a chance to hear us after that—Frank, it's been awhile since Irene heard me play and—oh!” He pointed to the right. “Here's the club. Park here at the curb. There's not really any room at the back.”

He had pointed out a small, brown building that looked no different from any other neighborhood bar on the verge of ruin. A small marquee read, “Live Music. Wast Land. No Cover Charge Before 7 P.M.”

“Wast Land?” Frank asked. “Is that your band?”

“The Waste Land. The ‘e' is missing. And the word ‘The.' ”

“You named the band after the poem by T.S. Eliot?” Frank asked.

“You've read T.S. Eliot's poetry?” Buzz asked in unfeigned disbelief.

“Yeah. I think it made me a more dangerous man.”

I rolled my eyes.

Buzz sat back against the seat and grinned. “Cool!”

Q:
 What band name on a marquee will always guarantee a crowd?

A:
 “Free Beer”

As we pushed open the padded vinyl door of Club 99, our nostrils were assailed by that special blended fragrance—a combination of stale cigarette smoke, old sweat, spilt beer and unmopped men's room—that is the mark of the true dive. I was thinking of borrowing Frank's cotton and sticking it in my nose.

Behind the bar, a thin old man with tattoo-covered arms and a cigarette dangling from his mouth was stocking the beer cooler, squinting as the cigarette's smoke rose up into his own face. He nodded at Buzz, stared a moment at Frank, then went back to his work. We were ignored completely by the only other occupant, a red-faced man in a business suit who was gazing into a whiskey glass.

“I thought you said the band was meeting here at seven,” I said as we walked along the sticky floor toward the stage. I glanced at my watch. Seven on the dot.

“The others are always late,” Buzz said. He set up his guitar, then invited us into a small backstage room that was a little less smelly than the rest of the bar. It housed a dilapidated couch and a piano that bore the scars of drink rings and cigarette burns. The walls of the room were covered with a colorful mixture of graffiti, band publicity photos and handbills.

“Is there a photo of your band up here?” Frank asked.

“Naw. Most of those are pretty old. But I can show you photos of the other members of the band. Here's Mack and Joleen, when they were in Maggot.” He pointed to two people in a photo of a quartet. Everyone wore the pouting rebel expression that's become a standard in band photos. The man Buzz pointed out was a bass player, about Buzz's age, with long, thick black hair. The woman, boyishly thin, also had long, thick black hair.

“That photo's about ten years old. Mack and Joleen were together then.”

“Together?”

“Yeah. You know, lovers.”

“They aren't now?”

“No, haven't been for years. But they get along fine.”

Q:
 What's the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?

A:
 With a drum machine, you only have to punch in the information once.

“Over here's a photo of Gordon. He's a great drummer,” Buzz said. “He hates this photo. He said the band sucked. Its name sure did.”

He pointed to a photo of a band called “Unsanitary Conditions.” Buzz was right—I didn't think too many club owners would be ready to put that on their marquees. The drummer, a lean but muscular man, wasn't wearing a shirt over his nearly hairless chest. He had also shaved all the hair from his head. He held his drumsticks tucked in crossed-arms. He was frowning. It didn't look like a fake frown.

Live, updated versions of two of the band members arrived a few minutes later. Gordon looked pretty much the same as he did in the “Unsanitary Conditions” photo. He was wearing a shirt, and he had short orange hair on his head, but the frown gave him away.

“Her royal-fucking-highness is late again, I see,” he seethed, then upon realizing that Buzz wasn't alone, smiled and said politely, “Hi, I'm Gordon. Are you Buzz's folks?”

Frank snorted with laughter behind me.

“Oh man!” Buzz said in embarrassment. “These are my friends. They aren't
that
old!”

“Oh, sorry,” Gordon said. “Buzz, did you listen to that tape I gave you?” He broke off as the door opened again.

Pre-empting a repeat of Gordon's mistake, Buzz quickly said, “Mack, these are my
friends
. Frank and Irene, this is Mack.”

It was a good thing Buzz introduced us. Mack was now balding, and his remaining hair was very short, including a neatly-trimmed beard. I judged him to be in his mid-thirties, closer to our age than Buzz's, with Gordon somewhere in between the two.

“Hi, nice to meet you,” he said, but seemed distracted as he looked around the small room.

“No,” Gordon said, “Joleen isn't here yet. Shit, can you imagine what touring with her will be like?”