Unleashed (6 page)

A tall, thin woman with mousy brown hair in her mid-thirties, whom I recognized as Fiona, broke away from the pack and headed my way. "Have you heard the news?" she asked. I looked at her with my haggard, hungover eyes. She was wearing a floral-print, ankle-length skirt and a white tank top. She was smiling at me.

"Yeah, I heard."

"Isn't Snaffles one of yours?" I nodded. The woman furrowed her brow, clearly not satisfied with my one-word answer. "You're new, right?" She decided to try another tack.

"Yeah."

"How are you liking the job?" I could tell that the rest of the run was listening to us. Elaine and Marcia sat on a bench nearby, not even pretending to have their own conversation while a couple of women with big sunglasses wearing expensive sweatpants inched closer.

"Look, I don't really want to talk." My head was pounding from the night before and I couldn't get rid of the image of that faceless body, especially now that I had a face to go with it.

"There are rumors that you found the body," she whispered, leaning toward me, attempting to create an intimacy between us. Her breath smelled like she'd been chewing bubble gum. A strange scent on a full-grown woman.

"Oh, yeah?" I said.

She waited a moment for me to continue and then gave up. "All right, well, if you want to talk, we're all here for you." She gave me a big smile before returning to the bench where the other dog-walkers waited. I heard Marcia say something about shock and grief as she dropped a tiny bag of shit into the nearest trash can.

Left alone, my mind wandered in disturbing directions. I shuddered as I remembered the chill in the alley, the unnatural color of Joseph Saperstein's skin, and the pool of congealed blood at my feet. Snowball and I left the run to the whispers of the crowd. All those people, enclosed in that little fence, were scared. You could smell it. I was the breathing, walking reminder that a respectable man's face had been blown away where they lived—where they did their grocery shopping, where they picked up their prescriptions, where their dogs played. The place where you couldn't even hear the highway.

###

W
hen I got to Snaffles' door, I took a deep breath, inserted the key, and creaked the door open. "Who's there?" a clearly intoxicated female voice asked from another room. That's when I realized that I should have knocked.

"I'm sorry, I'm the dog-walker." A woman I recognized as Mrs. Saperstein stumbled out from the kitchen holding a nearly empty glass. I could smell the Scotch on her from the door.

"Well," she paused to regain her balance, "Isn't that nice? Life goes on. You want a drink?" She held her glass out toward me. Mrs. Saperstein was about my height with the lean body of a jogger. Her skin was tan and her hair bleached blond. If she hadn't been so drunk, I probably would have called her pretty.

"Um, well, I'm working, so maybe another time." Her eyes filled with tears. "Or right now would be fine," I said.

"Great," she replied as she started back to the kitchen. I heard her smash her shin on the dog gate and swear. I followed her over the gate and said hello to Snaffles. While she pulled out a clean glass and began filling it with ice, I prepared Snaffles food. "You know what happened?" she asked me. "It's all over the papers. You must know." She sloshed Scotch into my glass and then refilled her own.

"Yes, I do." I wondered if I should tell her I found the body.

"He was an asshole, you know," she said, leaning on the counter. "He was an asssshooollle."

I figured now was not the time to tell her anything. "Oh," was all I said.

"He loved that dog, though." She gestured her glass in Snaffles' direction. Scotch spilled over the lip. Snaffles abandoned his lunch and began licking it up. "He didn't love me. No, no, he did not."

"Oh." I sipped my Scotch. It burned my throat and helped a little with the shooting pains inside my head.

"I should have left him years ago. He was having an affair, you know."

"I didn't."

"Why would you? But I knew. I'm not a fool, you know."

"Of course not."

"Women know these things, you know. You can't pull the wool over my eyes. I can see through the wool."

"I understand." She leaned back and examined me.

"You look like you understand. I'm gonna tell you something that I probably shouldn't. But I don't care, not anymore. What's the point of caring, I ask you."

"Uh, the point of caring is—"

"Exactly. You don't know the point." I shook my head. "That's because there isn't one." I wondered if that is what she had planned to tell me that she thought she shouldn't. "I was having an affair, too," she whispered loudly and then laughed. "He deserved it, the fucker." She looked into her glass and became quiet. Then she asked, "Are you married?"

"No."

"You got a boyfriend?"

"Nope." She thought about that for a moment while she sipped her drink.

"You know, I thought when I got married everything would be wonderful." She released a snort of a laugh. "And now he's dead, and I don't know why. And Julen wants to marry me. He thinks this was fate." She laughed again. It was hollow and a little frightening.

"Julen?"

"The man I'm having...had...what tense should that be in?"

"You mean the man you had the affair with."

"Yes, but what tense should it be with?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither. Strange all the things you realize you don't know when your husband has been murdered." She refilled her glass again. "Julen wants us to run away together." She spilled more Scotch, this time down her shirt. She didn't notice.

"Hmm."

"Hmm is right, honey." She leaned toward me. The smell of Scotch was overwhelming. "He's the doorman," she said in a harsh whisper.

"Wow."

"He's Latin."

"Wow, a Latin lover."

She giggled. "I like you. You're nice."

"Thanks." Snaffles began to whine.

"That damn dog. He used that dog against me. He used him as an excuse to go to her house. That whore, that home-wrecking whore. Stupid dog." Her eyelids drooped.

"Do you think maybe you should lie down?"

Her glazed eyes met mine. They brimmed with tears and what looked a lot like sorrow.

"Sure. I'll lie down."

I helped her to the bedroom and laid her on her side.

"I'll walk Snaffles and then I'll be back," I told her, but she was already asleep.

When I returned Snaffles 45 minutes later, Mrs. Saperstein was still sleeping soundly. When I came back at seven to give Snaffles his evening walk, the apartment was dark and I could hear her snoring in the bedroom. I peeked in at her. The room was bathed in twilight, and she was lying on her back with her bleached-blond hair spread out on the pillow. Her jaw was slack, her arms flung wide at her sides. I felt a pang of sympathy for her. She was a widow now, a drunk, passed-out widow.

The doorbell rang. I jumped, and Mrs. Saperstein moaned, then turned over. I scurried quietly on tiptoes to the front door, and I looked through the peephole as the doorbell rang again. A handsome young Hispanic man in a blue and gray doorman's uniform stood outside with his hat in his hand. He looked nervously up and down the hallway, then reached for the bell again. I opened the door quickly, trying to stop him from waking Mrs. Saperstein. He took a step back when he saw me.

"Hi, I'm Joy, the Sapersteins' dog-walker," I said.

"Hello, I'm Julen, the doorman." He turned his hat in his hands and looked down the hall again.

"Can I help you with something?" He looked back at me, his eyes large, brown and tortured.

"I need to talk with Jacquelyn," he caught himself quickly, "Mrs. Saperstein."

"She's napping right now."

"Is she OK?" he asked.

"I believe so," I said.

"She is a very sensitive woman." He caught himself again and, realizing he had said too much, turned and headed back toward the elevator without another word.

###

"T
his is just shocking," James said, sitting across from me at the little table in his yard. Blue slept at our feet and Aurora was perched in the tree above us, pissed that Blue slept at our feet.

"Trust me, I know."

"I mean, you find a dead body, you know the guy, or at least his dog, then you find out the widow is having an affair, you meet the guy she is having the affair with."

"That sums it up." I sipped my mango margarita.

"Well, no, I forgot the part about you fucking Marcus. That was dumb." He shook his head at me.

"I know that," I said.

"Joy. I'm sorry. I can't imagine how you feel," he said, his tone softer.

"I feel weird. Really, fucking weird." I stared into my half-empty glass, hoping to find a better word than weird. None came.

"It's awful," James said.

"I feel—" I was trying to make him understand something I didn't understand myself. "—my whole life has changed in the last week."

"Is there anything I can do?" James asked, refilling my glass.

"Besides that? No, I don't think so. I just need to put this behind me."

"That seems to be the only option."

I wondered if that was true.

"James?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm thinking something crazy here."

"I like crazy. What's up?"

"I've spent my whole life putting things behind me, right? I mean I've jumped from crappy job to crappy job, from crappy boyfriend to crappy boyfriend."

"The crappy part is true, but I don't know if that's putting things behind you so much as moving forward."

I cocked my head at him and wrinkled my brow. "I would say it's more like standing still."

"I think you have made progress," James said.

"My point is, maybe I shouldn't put this behind me. Maybe I should do something about this."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, but something. I mean this guy is dead."

"That's true."

"And I knew him."

"You knew his dog."

"And maybe I could do something to help him."

"He's dead."

"But what about—I don' know. I just don't think I can put this behind me." I stopped talking and sipped my drink, my brain buzzing.

"I say you solve the murder, bring the killer to justice, and save the day in general." James clinked his glass against mine and smiled.

I laughed. "Look, right now my life is picking up dog shit and drinking. That's about all I got going on." He nodded. "The point is I don't want to stand still anymore. I want to do something. Something real."

"I don't know what you mean," James said.

"You know, like you. You do real stuff. And Hugh does real stuff."

"I create looks for TV advertising. I don't know if I would consider that real."

"But you do something. You contribute to society."

"What would those dogs do without you?"

"You're being sarcastic again."

"Look Joy, if you want to do something, then do it. You can do anything you put your mind to."

"I don't know if you could say anything cheesier if you tried."

"How about, I have faith in you." He smiled at me and I knew it was true. He did have faith in me. "And one day you, too, will have faith in you."

"I was wrong. You can get cheesier." But I was touched and felt loved. And as I finished off the last of my margarita, I felt that I could do anything I put my mind to.

O
scar the cat met me at Charlene Miller's door and rubbed himself against my legs. I refilled his food and water dishes. Alone in the sink sat the glass Charlene had been drinking out of the last time I saw her.

"Is that strange?" I said to Oscar. He ignored me and concentrated on his food. Reaching into his bowl, he pulled out a piece of kibble with his paw, then another, followed by a third. He ate them off the floor, making loud crunching noises.

I wandered into her bedroom. It was a mess. The sheets and blankets were all twisted around. Clothing and shoes littered the floor. The bedside lamp was knocked over. I moved further into the room, careful not to touch anything. A book lay open on the floor next to a pot of moisturizer as if they had been pushed off her bedside table when the lamp fell. Small, dark-brown droplets fanned across the pillowcase. The apartment felt strangely still, and I suddenly wanted to leave.

Oscar took no notice of me on my way out. I closed and locked the door, then realized I was being silly. So she had left in a rush. That didn't mean anything. I was just being paranoid. She said she had business to take care of. It must have been urgent business. The cat could have knocked all that stuff off her nightstand. Was my room at home in any better shape? My clothing and shoes were all over the place. But I still felt anxious. I stood outside her door wondering what to do when my cell phone rang. I jumped and then chastised myself for being so jumpy.

"Hello, this is Detective Mulberry."

"Hi."

"This is Joy Humbolt, correct?"

"Yes."

"And you are the same Joy Humbolt who found Joseph Saperstein's body, correct?"

"Yes." I thought about what a glaring coincidence it would be if there were another Joy Humbolt with my phone number who had not found the body of Joseph Saperstein.

"I would like you to come by the precinct so that we can have a conversation," the detective continued.

"When?"

"As soon as possible. This is a murder investigation," he said.

I checked my watch, I didn't have time before my next walk, so I told him I could come by around eight that night or early the next morning. He made a sound like that wasn't good enough but said, "Tonight will be fine. I will see you around eight, correct?"

"Correct." He gave me directions to the precinct on 67th Street, then hung up without saying goodbye.

###

"L
ook, I'm trying to tell you what I know but you keep twisting my words around. I know what I saw and I know—"

"There's no need for that tone of voice, Missy," Detective Mulberry told me with what I suspected was a smile on the edge of his lips. He looked like he was in his late thirties. Crow's-feet radiated from his eyes, and deep lines around his mouth gave him a permanent scowl. Mulberry took up most of the other side of the desk. He wasn't fat but wide. The guy looked like he was made of boulders.