The Good Kind of Bad (29 page)

Detective Zupansky pulled his chair closer to the table before unfolding a pair of glasses from his jacket breast pocket. On opening his file, he selected various documents, including one with Joe’s mug shot and another containing a list of dates and offences.

‘Why is a detective from Violent Crimes here to see me?’ I asked.

‘Is that what I said? Sorry, ma’am, force of habit. My department and Missing Persons have recently merged. Slip of the tongue.’ He didn’t deem me worthy of eye contact until he brought out the big guns. ‘Can I ask why you haven’t reported your husband missing, Mrs Petrozzi?’ His large hands clasped together, resting over the paperwork.

‘Missing? He’s not missing.’ My attempt at casual was weak, the panic woefully disguised.

‘You’re married to Joseph Alphonso Petrozzi? An employee of UPS, where he’s a courier?’ Zupansky enquired, reading aloud from the file.

‘That’s right, though I think they fired him.’

He peered at me from over his glasses. ‘And you last saw him, when?’

When he was lying dead on our kitchen floor?
‘Um, two weeks ago? I’m not sure. He was never the stay-at-home husband or anything.’
Cool, calm, composed; that’s me.

‘You don’t think it’s weird your husband disappears for weeks and no one’s seen him, at all?’

‘Look, Officer—’

‘Detective,’ Zupansky corrected.

‘Detective,’ I repeated, with a hint of disdain. ‘Joe left me a month ago, not before telling me he’d met another woman and they were leaving Chicago together. He left, and I’m getting on with my life, end of story.’ It was a convincing lie. Surely, he had no choice but believe me.

‘You weren’t sure if it was two weeks ago but now you know it was a month? Which one is it, Mrs Petrozzi? Or would you prefer we used first names?’

I gave Zupansky an unimpressed flash of my eyebrows. ‘Mrs Petrozzi is fine. I am still married to him, after all.’

Zupansky expelled a breath that seemed to go on forever. ‘So, you’re telling me Joe’s gone some
where
and with some
one
,
but you’re clueless on either? Not only that, but he’s left you for good? I hope you don’t mind me saying, ma’am, but you don’t seem, what’s the word . . . upset?’

This guy was good.

‘My wife takes off with another man, and hey, I’m at least a
little
pissed.’

I needed a counter move, and fast. ‘Upset? Joe was a violent alcoholic who beat me. I’m sorry I’m not bawling my eyes out because he decided to inflict his awfulness onto somebody else.’ I was surprising myself. The lie was so convincing even I believed it, though the only real deception was Joe’s choice to leave.

‘You haven’t filed reports over any attacks, and Mr Petrozzi is not a registered alcoholic,’ Zupansky shot back, checking the papers.

‘What? I
did
file a report. Detective Thomasz from District 31 took a statement.’

Examining a print out, he shook his head. ‘Not according to the file.’

‘The file’s wrong! Are you saying I’m making this up?’ I pushed the hair aside, pointing at my forehead. ‘That’s where he kicked me. This cut on my arm is where Joe threw me from a car. Shall I take my clothes off now, or are you still convinced I’m lying?’

‘Ma’am, please. I’m not doubting you, but you enter a wrong letter on the computer keyboard and records get misplaced. How do you spell your last name?’

‘P-e-t-r-o-z-z-i,’ I enunciated, though after presenting myself as number one suspect, I calmed my tone to something more mellifluous. ‘What’s all this about, Detective? What’s Joe done this time?’

‘You father-in-law reported Joe missing on July 17
th
.’

‘What?’ I asked, a little too loudly.

‘Joe visits every Sunday, but he’s not answering his phone and the visits have stopped. You know his dad well? Nico?’

I smiled and Zupansky took note, adding a half grin of his own.

‘Something funny?’

‘I know as much about Nico Petrozzi as you do, Detective. I’ve never met him.’

‘You’ve never met your father-in-law?’

‘Joe told me his dad died in a car crash, but he’s actually playing checkers in a Skokie nursing home. How sick is that?’

Zupansky didn’t answer, and instead stared down at the file. ‘This woman he took off with. She have a name?’

‘I don’t know. There were so many, I lost count. Cristal, Courtney, something like that, though their stripper names won’t be their
real
ones. I don’t know where they went and I really don’t care, but I do know he’s not coming back.’

‘Oh?’ As the pitch of Zupansky’s voice rose, I felt like kicking myself.

Messily, I cleared my throat. ‘Isn’t it obvious? He didn’t tell his father he was leaving. He wanted to sneak away into the night.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell his father he’d left?’

‘As I just said, I don’t know him.’

‘He knows
you
. He knew Joe had a wife who worked at Faith on LaSalle. You still sure you’re not acquainted?’

Joe told his dad about me but told me his dad was dead? Why? ‘Look, I’m sorry Mr Petrozzi won’t see his son again but Joe is not a good man. Everyone is better off without him.’

I was more than overplaying my role. If Joe’s body ever was discovered, I’d have means and motive and be heading for a long stretch inside. There was an uncomfortable pause. My unfaltering stare didn’t faze him. He clicked and un-clicked his pen. Cleared his throat. Steepled his fingers. I couldn’t tell if he was buying it. Reading his reactions was impossible.

‘We’ll be in touch, Mrs Petrozzi. If you think of anything else or he turns up on your doorstep, begging for forgiveness? Give me a call.’ He sighed wearily, placing his card on the desk and, after collecting his papers, he left the room.

I let a tear gather but blinked it away. There the white card lay, teasing me. I picked it up, letting my fingers trail the cutting edges until I broke the skin, the slick of blood oozing out over my fingertips.

Back at my desk, and after the paranoia began eating away, I was all ready to confess to Detective Zupansky. One little phone call, that’s all it’d take. I stared at my desk phone, pondering how much Zupansky knew. Every day Joe was being forgotten a little more, but he’d never truly be gone. There would always be another Zupansky, waiting in the wings, armed with more dangerous questions. It was then I realised he’d never be gone. Joe would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

Zupansky must’ve known more than he’d let on. He had to be keeping
something
back. His visit was an off-the-Richter type development in our little disaster movie and Evan needed to know, if he didn’t already. Joe’s father may have put the brakes on the forever freedom, and not only mine.

Evan was ignoring his phone, so I walked the long way to his apartment on West Superior. Night replaced dusk as I strode the streets alone, delayed by Quentin’s extra workload. The lamps were a dull orange, throwing out hardly enough light, though as I turned each block corner I wasn’t afraid. I peered down the alleyways, hoping a mugger lurked in the darkness.

I yearned to place myself in danger, to be hurt like Joe. My life meant nothing so long as I awoke to the truth, to the threat, to knowing the police were onto us, and somehow they saw the body in the boot and the shovel and the grave, that they were there when the rain fell, that day in the woods.

I didn’t want to be left for dead, I didn’t want to die, but the world was out of balance, the scales skewed. Joe may have been a heartless bastard, but what’d happened to him was still wrong.

Outside Evan’s building on West Superior, it took a while before he answered the buzzer, his mouth overflowing with food when he did.

‘Yeah, speak,’ came his crackled reply.

‘Evan, it’s me. Are you busy? I need to talk to you,’ I asked, hopping from foot to foot out on the street.

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Not really.’

‘You sure? It’s just I’m . . . busy tonight.’

‘Busy enough for Joe?’

My husband’s name was like Open Sesame. I was buzzed up, but it wasn’t long before I found out why he’d been eager to get rid of me.

In Evan’s living room, I forced an uncomfortable grin at her, feeling like a spare part. ‘Evan . . . you should’ve said you had company.’

She was there, the beer festival-opening Brandi. Her bottle-blonde extensions and an electric blue dress my mother would’ve described as ‘underwear’ were draped over
my
sofa, the one where I’d lain bruised and bloody. A Papa John’s pizza lay half-devoured on the coffee table, and the adjacent bottle of Rioja was fast approaching empty.

‘Hey, no, it’s fine. I’d like you to meet Brandi, my girlfriend. Brandi, this is . . . a friend.’

‘Hi,’ I said, accompanied by the lamest wave ever. She was how I’d pictured the waif, Evan’s
ex
-wife, though this version had much bigger boobs (double E-cup? Pah!), ratty blond hair extensions and a face full of collagen. Only twenty-one? Someone had been telling porkies. She couldn’t frown if her life depended on it.

‘I hear your dad’s some big shot chef . . .’ I began.

‘Brandi, I’d better call you a cab. It’s way past your bedtime,’ Evan interrupted, evidently not keen on us making friends.

‘But I thought I was staying here tonight. I’ve missed you, baby.’ Her bottom lip jutted out, and a wink accompanied the voice so sweet I could feel my teeth rotting.

‘Honey, there’s been a change of plan, all right? My friend from work has some urgent . . .
work
stuff we need to go over.’

Oh, please. Evan’s gravelly tones had become as sickly as hers.

‘Wow, you’re a cop too? That’s so brave, you being a woman and all? I could never go round shooting at bad guys. I’d be too scared I’d hurt somebody.’

‘Guns will do that, honey. Best leave it to the professionals,’ Evan added.

‘You’d be surprised, Brandi,’ I chipped in. ‘Seems like they’re letting anyone on the force who thinks they’re a crack shot these days.’

That earned me a killer stare from Evan before he spent the next five minutes fussing and fretting around his girlfriend, before Brandi was bundled into a cab post-haste.

‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’ Evan asked, his back to the wall by the fireplace after she’d gone.

‘You mean with Joe?’

‘Forget Joe! How about why you’re here? How about why you happened to swing by during our intimate evening?’

‘What, you mean with Barbie?’

‘It’s
Brandi
. Her name is Brandi,’ he said, karate-chopping his hand to drive home the point.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. You think I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t life-or-death important? A detective came to Faith today, asking about Joe and why I hadn’t reported him missing.’

‘You filed a missing report then? Great. Glad we had this chat.’ Shaking his head, he began ushering me toward the door.

‘Will you get off me?’ I replied, pushing him away. ‘Why do you think someone came to see me? Mr Petrozzi Senior beat me to it.
He
filed the missing person’s report, Evan. Joe is officially MIA now.’

There wasn’t a flinch. ‘Who was the detective?’

‘Didn’t you hear me? Joe’s Houdini act is under investigation!’

‘Tell me who came to see you!’

‘Here. He gave me his card. Read it and weep,’ I taunted, pulling the card from my pocket and flinging it at Evan.

He leant down, snatched it off the floor, retrieved his glasses from the neck of his Cubs T-shirt and read aloud, ‘Zupansky? Are you freakin’ kidding me? And why has this card got blood on it?’

Okay, maybe he wasn’t so calm.

‘They know, Evan. They know he’s dead and we’re going to jail.’

He flung the card into the fireplace. ‘Will you stop with this prison shit? No one is going to jail.’

‘Then why did Missing Persons, Violent Crimes, whatever, come to interrogate me? You know Joe’s car isn’t outside the apartment anymore? I went and checked. They must’ve towed it away. There’ll be a record of that somewhere. Maybe it’s just me, but why would a guy skip country and leave his car behind?’

‘Plenty of people leave their cars behind. Do you know how many cars are abandoned in the city each year? You’re thinking too much. What’s with you?’

‘What’s
with
me? How about you and me sort of drove out of Chicago with a dead body in the trunk, got out beside a wood and . . .’

‘Enough! You think I don’t know what’ll happen if they find out? Don’t think we’re on different pages here.’

I could’ve gone to the police, but hadn’t. I could’ve called Zupansky, but didn’t. I could’ve done those things, though deep down I was too much of a coward to expose
myself
.

‘And why do you even care?’ Evan continued. ‘After everything that dick did to you, after all the blood he drew, you ran to
his
side. I should be the one worrying if this is heading south, not you.’