Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (3 page)

“You scratched your face.”

“I had an itch,” he said.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Some people’s bodies release adrenaline when they’re stressed or when they lie. Adrenaline causes the capillaries to expand—hence, your itchy nose.”

He knew he was staring at her, that his jaw was probably on the ground. “Fine. Here’s the truth. I know who you are,
Lauren Matthews
, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting you upstairs.”

The imperious look on her face settled into its previous blankness.

“But I guess you knew that too, didn’t you?” he said.

She nodded.

“Because I have a ‘tell’?”

“Everyone does,” she said, almost a little shyly now. “And anyway, it’s a good thing.”

“How’s that?”

“Lots of people touch their faces when they lie. It means they’re
uncomfortable doing it—and that they don’t lie often. For you . . . ” She opened up a microscopically tiny black purse and pulled out a beautiful silver pen. “For you, it means you’re willing to fib a little to protect a friend. But that you’re probably not going to make a regular habit of lying because you don’t think it’s right.”

He couldn’t help it; he stepped back a little as she bent to write her name on the back of a postcard that one of the local bands had dropped off. He wished he could say that meeting her in the flesh had dispelled all the myths about her from the television and newspaper reports. But if anything, her appearance had only confirmed the typecasting.

“Listen,” she said. When she looked up at him, her gaze was neither pleasant nor challenging. In person, her eyes were a strange color: a coppery pond lit with sunlight and flecks of mossy green. Peering into them felt as oddly compelling and intimate as looking deep into the center of a tiger lily. He decided he liked her better on TV.

She went on. “I don’t want to cause any trouble for him. I really don’t. I just . . . I need to speak with him. And I hope he’ll want to speak with me too. As soon as possible because I have to get back to Albany. So please? If you wouldn’t mind?”

She folded the postcard in half and held it out for him in small fingers.

He didn’t take it right away. “I can’t promise he’ll see you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

He looked at her—her jet-black mascara, her white gold necklace and diamond solitaire, her glossy, cherry cola hair—and he believed her.

“Fine,” he said. He took the card and shoved it into his shorts pocket.

“Thank you,” she said. There was something uncomfortably
still and placid about her, as if she breathed less air than he did or needed to exert less energy to hold herself upright. “I don’t think I got your name.”

“I didn’t give it to you.”

“But I’m asking.”

He smiled. “Well, in that case. It’s Will Farris.”

“Are you Arlen’s friend?”

“Since we were thirteen.”

She nodded. And before she turned and left, he was surprised to see that something about the information had made her glad.

For a moment after she was gone, he leaned against the counter, his blood buzzing with the same loathing and fixation he’d felt toward her during Arlen’s trial, now magnified to monolithic proportions without the filters of miles, pixels, and commercial breaks. He had the urge to kick something. But if anyone had a right to be angry, it was Arlen. Not him. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Yeah?”

“Donnie?” he said. “Will Farris. You still got that old toy cannon collecting rust out back?”

Donnie laughed. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again. I ain’t coming down on the price.”

“That’s okay,” Will said, a little breathless. “I’ll take it.”

He hung up, and waited for the relief to set in.

In the late afternoon, rain fell on all of Richmond with no exceptions. It washed into the gutters and sluiced into drains, and in Carytown young people with bright umbrellas ducked beneath awnings and into cars. Will, who had not been caught in the summer storm, stood and watched the downpour from the window of
his rental apartment, where he’d once lived and where Arlen now stood at his side. The wind blew hard and flung drops of water against the glass.

“Hoo-
wee
,” Will said. “Bad out there.”

“It’s . . . incredible,” Arlen said.

They stood for a moment, watching. When the storm began to let up, they went together into the bathroom, Arlen standing in the doorway and Will bending over the toilet bowl. He lifted the lid of the old beige tank, turned brownish by years of buildup, and he plunged his hand inside.

“I got a joke for you,” he said as he worked. “How can you tell when a lawyer is really, really cold?”

“I give up.”

“He’s got his hands in his
own
pockets.”

Arlen made a noise, a cross between a groan and a chuckle, and Will felt a bit happier. He adjusted the flap in the back of the toilet so it created a tighter seal, and the hiss of running water was silenced a moment later. Will stood, put the heavy porcelain lid back on the tank, and wiped his hands on a towel. “All fixed. If it starts running again, let me know and we’ll get a new flap. But you oughta be okay.”

Arlen stood leaning against the doorjamb of the closet-sized bathroom, and yet his face was as blank as if he were daydreaming from some scenic vista. He was a big man—he’d always been big—but the soft fat he’d grown up with was gone now, replaced by cords of hard muscle. His eyes were very round and pronounced, flecked with gold. A few freckles peppered his dark skin.

“Arlen?”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes clearing. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have known how to fix it.”

“Naw. Don’t sweat it,” Will said, struck by Arlen’s situation—his perfect lack of adult experience. He didn’t even know how to
adjust the flap in a toilet tank. In some ways, taking in Arlen was like taking in a teenager instead of a grown man.

They walked into the small living area. There was no furniture apart from an old pink couch fit for a nursing home and a small television propped up on a cardboard box. The apartment was simple and practical enough—even a little cheery when the blinds were open and the sun came in—and Will was glad he could offer it to his friend. He dropped himself into the cushions, took off his baseball hat, and blotted the sweat from his forehead with the front of his shirt. When he spoke, he did his best to sound casual. “You had a visitor today.”

“Eula?”

Will’s heart sank. “No. Lauren Matthews. Remember her?” Arlen was quiet. Thunder rumbled, weakening in the distance. “All these years, and still wound tighter than a Gibson guitar.”

“What she want?”

“She didn’t say,” Will said, and he tried not to show that the question bothered him. What
did
Lauren Matthews want with Arlen? He thought of her—her sheath of a dress, her sharp little face. He had the sense, even when he stood in the same room with her, that she was looking at him from behind a two-way mirror, so that he couldn’t quite get a read on her but she saw everything about him.

He’d never perfectly grasped what it was about her that somehow both attracted him and repelled him. Lauren was the perfect opposite of his ideal woman in every way. He liked women who weren’t afraid to be a little bit broken down, rusty around the edges—women who were confident and knew how to get their hands dirty and have fun. What he did not like was pretty, better-than-thou redheads who started snooping around at his best friend’s apartment, causing trouble for a man who’d had more trouble in his life than most people could stand.

“She say anything?” Arlen asked.

“Not really.” Will pulled his hat back on. He dug into his pocket for her contact information. Her handwriting was neat and blocky—she could have been an architect if she hadn’t gone into law. “She left this address and phone for you.”

Arlen held out his hand. He looked at the postcard for a long moment as if it might tell him something—a secret message, a code to unpack letter by letter. Will saw the transformation: Arlen’s face, usually as placid as a mountain lake, turning stormy.

“This woman—” Arlen shook his head, choking off words.

“What?”

“Nothin’.”

“She’s a little bit of a freak, isn’t she?” Will said—anything to keep Arlen talking. “Like she’s part psychic.”

“Naw, she ain’t psychic.” Arlen’s fingers twitched at his side. “Man, if I could tell you how many times I dreamed… He met Will’s eye full on—a stare tough as oak. “All I’m saying is that I couldn’t’ve committed the act of murder
before
they locked me up.”

Will hesitated. The boy cop’s words echoed in his ears:
Prison will change a man
. “And now?”

“I’m just saying—that girl best not be coming around if she knows what’s good for her.” He crumpled her note in one fist and tossed it back to Will. “Throw it away.”

Will shoved it in his pocket, out of sight. He didn’t think his friend was capable of murder. Exaggeration, maybe. But not murder. Arlen was angry—and he had every right to be.

Will looked hard at his new tenant—his shoulders that were more muscled now, his eyes that had lost some of their light. The outlook for men released for false imprisonment wasn’t exactly good. Prison life was a life of violence, where the potential of threat—physical and otherwise—lurked everywhere, ubiquitous
and unavoidable as the institutional fluorescent lighting. What kind of man did Arlen have to become to withstand years behind bars? Lambs among wolves did not survive.

Will got to his feet.

“You heading down?” Arlen asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes I actually have work to do. Care to come with?”

Arlen may have considered it a moment, but he shook his head.

Will walked across the tiny living room to the door. “I got another one for ya,” he said. “If a lawyer, a judge, and a jury consultant were trapped on a desert island and you could only save one of them, would you go to a movie or out to a bar?”

“I ain’t going back to jail,” Arlen said. “I’d save them all.”

By evening, Lauren’s secretary, Rizzi, had called three times. The whole office had gone mad as hatters in Lauren’s absence—mercury in the watercooler. Burt was a complete bear, calling on the interns for tangential research that he obviously didn’t need but absolutely had to have right away. Lauren’s colleague Bryce Pinker was furious because Lauren’s biggest case had been temporarily dumped on him, and he was trying to get Rizzi to take his kids to band practice. And, to top it off, the copier had died.

“It’s nuts here without you,” Rizzi said. “Like an eclipse, when all the birds go crazy because it’s night in the middle of the day.”

Lauren chewed an antacid quietly so Rizzi couldn’t hear. “I promise. I’ll be back soon. This shouldn’t take too long.”

“The quicker, the better.”

“Have you heard anything about when they might be having the vote?” Lauren asked.

“Nothing unexpected. But don’t worry, hon. I’m your eyes and ears.”

“Good,” Lauren said. “You know how much I want to have my name on the door.”

“Well, maybe being away for a day or two will make them see that you should have been a partner two years ago instead of that deadbeat Rich Weller. But what do I know? I’m just the secretary.”