Cul-de-Sac (12 page)

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers,” she replied, then talked a little about the wine.

He listened, adding nothing.

“Before I forget,” she said, “there was a guy in your office earlier … I found him standing behind your desk, he wouldn’t tell me his name.”

“What’d he look like?”

“About sixty, dressed like someone on the way to or from the golf course … said he was a friend of yours but I think he was lying about that.”

“Don’t know any golfers. You leave a door unlocked?”

“No. He knew why I came to you, he knew about Cul-De-Sac.”

Camel told Annie about his conversation with Jake Kempis, about the call Eddie got from the retired state police investigator. She asked if he thought any of that was connected to Cul-De-Sac, Camel said he didn’t know. They sipped at the wine and purposely didn’t catch each other’s eye, then Annie said, “In some ways you
have
changed.”

“Fourteen years.”

“You don’t seem angry anymore, your anger used to frighten me. Remember that fight you got in with that big red-faced guy on the beach?”

“Yeah.”

“Pow, pow, pow,” she said, throwing a flurry of blows with her left hand that caused the glass in her other hand to spill a little wine on the floor. “Sorry,” she said, looking around for a towel.

“Leave it.”

She stopped looking for the towel and told him, “That fight was over before it got started.”

“Stupid of me.”

“He was a jerk.”

“Yeah but all we had to do was move on down the beach. He was there with his wife and kid, remember? I ask him to turn down the radio, he’s got to show the wife and kid how he’s their protector. It wouldn’t have hurt us none to move on down the beach.”

“You were showing off for me.”

“And he was showing off for his family … ends up with a busted nose, humiliated in front of his wife and kid. To what point?”

“Prove you were the baddest dog on the beach.”

“Yeah well …”

“What?”

“Mostly now I stay up on the porch.”

“Just stopped being pissed off at the world?”

“I guess.” He poured them each another glass of wine. “I used to wake up in the morning, like you said, pissed off at the world, I was mad before anything happened to make me mad, by the time I got out there among people I was loaded and cocked, I don’t know why, never did figure it out, not like I had some trauma in childhood to make me angry all the time … but it was there, I could feel it like a knot in my stomach.”

“And it just went away?”

“Right here in this room, or at least that’s the first time I knew it was gone. A crew had been sent by the building manager to paint the place before I moved in, I specified that I wanted the walls white. All my working life I’d been looking at institutional green, I wanted plain white walls. I come in, the crew’s just finishing up … every wall here was painted green.

“I said to the crew chief the walls are supposed to be white. He didn’t take it very well. I guess he’d had a rough day, everybody on his ass, it’s Friday afternoon and he didn’t have room enough for one more complaint. So he said to me, ‘Well, pal, they’re not white, they’re green.’ He told me I’d have to put in another work order, they’d catch me next cycle through, six months maybe. Then he told his guys start wrapping it up. Ignoring me. Daring me to say anything.

“In the old days that’s when the knot in my gut would’ve started twisting. I never had to work up an anger, never had to summon it
 … it just came on its own. So I stood there staring at that crew chief, waiting for the anger to hit, like waiting for a drug to take effect … any second now I’m going to shove his face against those wet walls, tell him he’d better start licking that green off. And either he would fight back or he wouldn’t. Guy probably could’ve beat the shit out of me, not that that ever stopped me before.

“But it never arrived. The anger. I just wasn’t mad. I didn’t feel twisted up inside, had no desire to fight the guy. I don’t know. Maybe you really do get wiser as you get older, maybe it’s just a lower hormone level.

“This crew chief, seeing that I’m not going to do anything, he decides to exploit the situation, tells me, ‘You got any problem with my work, keep in mind I could turn you in for setting up an apartment here.’ Because the building is supposed to be commercial space only, no residential.

“I showed him the work order that specified white walls and I said, ‘I had to look at green walls in the army, green walls all the time I was a cop … I was just hoping to get away from green walls, that’s all.’

“He asked me what I did in the army, I told him I was an MP and he said yeah I might’ve been one of the MPs hauling him out of the cathouses he used to frequent back when he was in the Army, and I asked him where he served, he said he did a tour in Nam, so I told him, ‘Welcome home.’ Because most of the guys never got a parade, never got welcomed back … and his whole attitude changed, he said he had a brother-in-law who was a cop and we talked about that for a while, then he took the work order, looked at it, looked at me … says he and his crew would be back Monday morning to repaint the whole place white. Said he knew where some carpet was left over from a big job, he’d arrange for it to be delivered after the painting was done, have it laid for me too … no charge. Apologized for the screwup with the paint. We went down to The Ground Floor and had a couple beers together.

“And afterwards I’m thinking, Jesus Christ,
it’s that easy
? I wanted to call people, tell them I was sorry for being such a hard case, I hadn’t realized there was an option. Wanted to call bars
where I’d been in fights, apologize to guys I’d beaten up for no good reason—”

“Did you want to call me?”

Camel didn’t answer right away, he was unaccustomed to talking so much and finally settled for telling her, “I thought about you a lot over the years.”

“Not enough to write back, return any of my calls.”

“I guess not.”

“Did you keep my letters?”

“No.”

“Paul’s kept everything I ever wrote to him, even notes I left for him in the first apartment we rented.”

“There’s a better grade of man around now.”

“You think men like Paul are weak sisters.”

“No.”

Annie ran a fingertip around the rim of her glass. “I wanted to marry you so bad, I was going to show up one day on your doorstep and slit my wrists in front of you just so you’d have to take care of me.”

“It wouldn’t have worked.”

“You would’ve let me bleed to death?”

“No I mean us getting married.”

“Why?”

He poured more wine, finishing the bottle. “You got pregnant that summer?” The question caught Annie off guard but of course Camel already knew the answer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

She was afraid if she tried to speak right now she’d start crying.

“You were the best thing that ever happened in my life,” Camel told her.

Now she couldn’t even look at him or she’d start bawling.

There was a long silence but it didn’t make either of them feel particularly awkward, almost as if they were soaking up each other’s presence, reacquainting themselves by osmosis.

“I better have some coffee before I drive out there,” Camel finally said. “Would you like a cup?”

“No thanks.” Her voice seemed to be okay. “A cup of tea would be nice.”

Camel went to the counter by the sink, Annie watching him from behind. “Do you like living here?”

“It’s convenient.” The truth was, living here made Camel crazy, especially at night when he couldn’t sleep and had nowhere to roam. He surprised himself by confessing to her, “I wish I had a house.”

“Really?”

“When I was married I had a great house, two-story Victorian with a double set of stairways … I loved walking around at night when everyone else was asleep, checking on things, going out into the yard, coming back in.” It struck him as a novel idea now, to have grass under his feet anytime he wanted. “I used to end up down in the basement, putter around with my tools.” He remembered how, when the circular saw came on, the light bulb hanging from its wire over the workbench would dim like it was wincing from the power draw. Living here in this single room the only night-roaming options open to him were crossing over to his one-room office and standing in there or taking to the building’s hallways and stalking those empty corridors, getting bored stares from the guard who walked from one box to the next putting in a key to prove he was there.

While Teddy stood at the counter getting the tea ready, Annie came up behind him and slipped an arm casually around his waist, her hand resting on his hip where she felt the big revolver. “Armed and dangerous.”

He grimaced a smile.

“That summer we spent together you kept your guns locked in the trunk.”

“I was afraid you’d shoot me.”

“I might’ve.” She tugged on the revolver’s grips. “Let’s see it.”

Camel dried his hands and brought out the .357 magnum revolver but wouldn’t let Annie hold it.

She asked him if his work was dangerous.

“No.”

“Then why—”

“I’ve been armed my entire adult life, I wouldn’t feel right without them.”

“Them?”

From an ankle holster he brought out a five-shot .38 special revolver, from the pocket of his sports coat he produced a five-shot .22 magnum revolver … laid all three of them on the counter like evidence of a crime.

“Jesus Teddy.”

“I know. It’s … strange. When I’m cleaning one pistol, I always keep another nearby, loaded and ready. This little twenty-two magnum? In the shower I put it in a sandwich bag and keep it on the soap dish.”

“What in the world are you armed
against
?”

“I don’t ask that question anymore, I stay armed on faith.”

“Scary.”

He agreed it was. “You take lemon with your tea right?”

“You remember.”

He remembered from their summer together that Annie put a wedge of lemon in everything she drank … the gin, the soda, the water, the tea, even the coffee they brewed at three
A.M.
so they could stay up to see sunrise over seawater and then drink beer on the beach, Annie pushing a wedge of lemon down the beer bottle’s long neck.

He remembered Annie naked and in bed, the sheets twisted on her legs, sheets that stayed damp with sweat and humidity, Annie did too … her small breasts topped with swollen red nipples, her white freckled skin betraying with purple bruised accusations everywhere he had squeezed too tightly, sucked too hard. He remembered that everything of her also tasted of him. Camel would haul himself from bed and drink a quart of water straight down, dehydrated from loss of sweat and spit and semen.

“If you don’t have lemon …” she said as he continued standing there, staring off.

“Bought a nice one yesterday.”

Camel found the lemon and placed it on a cutting board admiring
its yellow perfection, at the end opposite the stem stuck out a nipple almost exactly the size and hardness of Annie’s as he remembered them. Camel took knife in hand, anticipating the smell. The lemon did not disappoint: summer childhood lemonade memories came with the juice that ran out over his fingertips and onto the cutting board. The high sharp odor of lemon soaked sinus deep and made his jaw hinge pucker, made him salivate.

He looked at Annie. “All the shit I’ve been through, I brought it on myself. Divorce, keeping people at arm’s length, getting kicked off the force, not being there for you when you needed me, general hard-ass alienation … I read a phrase once that described it perfectly: tragedy without drama.”

She stayed close to him. “You probably realize now what a mistake you made turning me down … in fact you’re going to ask me to leave Paul and marry you, aren’t you?”

He waited a beat then said, “Yeah, why don’t you leave your husband and marry me?”

“No … I can’t.”

Camel squinted and turned back to the counter to cut another wedge of lemon. “Fair enough.” Raising lemon-wet fingers to his mouth, he anticipated sourness before tasting it.

“Me too,” Annie begged, offering her open mouth.

When he put those fingers to her tongue, she shuddered.

Either it was the cocaine and pills or Growler really was clinically paranoid, absolutely convinced that a conspiracy had not only framed him for Hope’s murder seven years ago but was also manipulating him now that he was out of prison. How else to explain Kenny Norton’s address? Growler had left Cul-De-Sac to score some additional pharmaceuticals, came back to find a sheet of paper taped to the door: Norton’s address. Too excited to bother checking on St. Paul, Growler got back into the rental car and started driving. But he’d been away from the area a long time and got lost, couldn’t find the address and began suspecting it was bogus, became convinced again he was being manipulated, anonymously given this address just to set him off on a wild goose chase … but why, he never knew
why
.

Just after eight
P.M.
Growler stopped at a convenience store to get directions. When he stepped up to the elevated checkout counter a pimply clerk pointed him to the back of the line.

Growler asked his question anyway, “How do you get to Lee Street?”

The clerk was already turning away, ringing up a quart of skim milk for some old fart fumbling for exact change.

Growler burned a dead-eyed stare at the clerk, a white kid with
a big nose and a large gulping Adam’s apple … one of those perpetual adolescents who could’ve been seventeen or twenty-seven, long hair and a face full of scabby old pimples fighting for space with a fresh crop of juicy red ones, the kind of kid you’d suspect as a chronic nose-picker.

“Where’s Lee Street?” Growler asked again.

Ignoring him the clerk raised a set of bored brown eyes to the next person in line, a working mom holding an oversized package of disposable diapers in her right hand, balancing a crying baby on her left hip.

Growler tried hard to keep his anger tamped down, safely coiled … but working just as hard against this good intention was the cocaine he’d snuffled on the way here, twisting knots in his paranoia, putting a flame to the same rage that led him to kill the Raineys. Growler couldn’t keep his hands from jangling, like he was trying to shake them dry. The mom sat her brat and the diapers up on the counter, went searching in her purse for money.