Distemper (19 page)

T
HE WACKOS REALLY STARTED COMING OUT OF THE WOOD
work then, and I don’t just mean Gordon. Gabriel has more than its share of what you might call “alternative elements” if
you were feeling generous, and “unemployed freaks” if you weren’t. They roam the Green in packs—when they have enough energy
for roaming—and although it’s amusing, sometimes it isn’t pretty.

The Green’s storefronts are evenly divided between the hippie (selling cheap scented candles and used clothes) and the yuppie
(selling pricey scented candles and new clothes that
look
used), and the local crunchy-slacker population likes nothing better than to mock the professorial wives as they sally forth
to stimulate the local economy. They mutter things like “cultural imperialist” at them, and it can get nasty. Last fall, the
wife of a chaired professor at the business school was actually charged with assault after she pummeled one guy with her Dooney
and Bourke handbag, screaming “socialize
this
, you little pisher.” When the DA tried to get an indictment, the grand jury gave her a standing ovation.

I mention this by way of explaining that although a certain number of psychics and soothsayers always flock to a big murder
investigation, in this case they didn’t have much of a commute. Besides the usual hippie contingent, our fair town is already
home to a glorious tapestry of tarot throwers, aura photographers, dowsers, channelers, gurus, shamen, spirit guides, and
readers of everything from palm lines to the grunge at the bottom of your latte.

And on Monday, I had to talk to all of them.

They’d staged an event on the Green—you couldn’t call it a sit-in, because you can sit on the Green all day and no one gives
a damn. They just called it an “Awareness” with a capital “A,” and although I should have asked them what they meant by it,
frankly I was just as happy not knowing. Apparently, “their gathering was intended to protest the police’s perceived indifference
to their possible contributions to the investigation.” At least, that’s the way I put it in my story; the truth was that they
were as frothing mad as you can get and still claim a connection to the Great Goddess.

“Those pigs don’t know shit,” one young lady was telling me. “We went trying to help them, man, and they just gave us some
mumbo-jumbo fucking crap about
procedure
, man, like they don’t even give a fuck that people are
dying
here, man.”

I scribbled it all down and tried to figure out if it would make any sense with the expletives deleted. I’d done six interviews
so far, and I hadn’t gotten a single quote my editors would let me run in a family paper. At least I was
learning that, along with peasant blouses and cutoffs, the word “pig” was coming back into fashion.

My latest interview subject was dressed for a day at the Renaissance Fayre, in a dark purple dress with a thin white underblouse
and some sort of corset laced up the front. She didn’t have much of a bosom, but the extra support gave the effect of two
big potato rolls on a tray. If I tried to wear the thing, I’d put somebody’s eye out.

She was in her mid-thirties, with dyed black hair that didn’t match her coloring, and dark purple eyeliner that did, at least,
match her dress. Her name—first, last, and only—was “Guenevere,” and when I asked her how she spelled it she said it was the
same way Malory did in
The Morte Darthur
. That shut me up.

From what I gathered, Guenevere and her compatriots had tried to tell the cops about the visions they’d had of the killer,
and they weren’t exactly satisfied with the response. The police had listened very politely, written everything down, and
shown zero enthusiasm for following up their leads. So they’d returned to the cop shop en masse to plead their case, wouldn’t
take no for an answer, and nearly got themselves arrested. I was starting to picture how Cody must have spent his weekend.

By Monday, they’d worked themselves into a tizzy. They decided the public had a right to know about the GPD’s lack of enlightenment,
so they took over the Green to air their theories about the murders and gather signatures, of which they had precisely twelve.
Even the Awareness organizers weren’t quite sure what the petition was for.

Believe it or not, the sight of two dozen rabid psychics doesn’t raise too many eyebrows around here. Gabriel
has its conservative and ultra-liberal extremes, but most people fall somewhere in the middle; this is a town full of leather-wearing
vegetarians, and lawyers who belong to the Green Party. The general consensus among the spectators I interviewed was that
the incense contingent couldn’t do any harm—and besides, the cops could use all the help they could get.

I stuck around for a couple of hours and managed to scrape together a couple of quotes that didn’t contain the f-word. I was
on my way back to the paper when I ran into Guenevere, who was sitting on a bench rolling a cigarette.

“You’re not into it, are you?” she said as I passed.

“Into what?”

She stretched her arm toward the pavilion where her friends were gathered. The gesture was broad and dramatic, like something
from
Swan Lake
. “The scene. You’re not into the
scene
, man.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t
subscribe
.”

“You mean you think I don’t buy it?” She nodded and lit her cigarette. “Well, you’re probably right.”

“You gonna give us a fair shake?”

“You mean in the story?” She nodded again. “Of course.”

“How come?”

“Because it’s my job not to take sides.”

“Nah, I mean how come you don’t believe?”

Because it scares me to meet a woman who washes her hair even less often than I do
, I thought. But I just said, “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you spiritual?”

“Um… no.”

“Come on, take a load off.” She patted the bench beside her.

“I have to get back to the paper.”

“Just sit down here for a sec. Think of it as research, man.”

“You know, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m not a man.”

She chortled herself into a racking smoker’s cough. “That’s a good one, man,” she said when she caught her breath. “That is
a
good
one. Come on, just give me your hand for a sec.”

“Why?”

“I want to tell your future.”

“That’s okay. Sorry to be all bourgeois and everything, but I’m one of those people who’d just as soon not know.”

Her eyes widened and she nodded solemnly, as though I was suddenly speaking her language. “I gotta respect that. Gotta respect
it. You can’t force the future on anybody.” Then she grabbed my wrist anyway.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading your
past
.”

“There’s a treat.”

She stared at my hand for several minutes, tracing the lines with her fingers and mumbling under her breath. I wondered how
long I was going to have to sit there, and whether I’d ever be able to live it down if someone from the newsroom walked by.
Then she looked up, and I saw that she had tears in her eyes. Actual tears.

“You poor thing,” she said.

“Me?”

“So much death,” she whispered, and I noticed she’d dropped the hippie vernacular. “So much death.”

“Jesus, I heard you the first time.”

“I hope I’m wrong.”

“That makes two of us.” She took a long drag of her cigarette. She really looked shaken. “Hey, come on, it could be worse.
At least it’s my past, not my future.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was both.”

On that happy note, I went back to the newsroom and started working on my story. I typed in all my notes, which I rarely do
since it’s usually a waste of time, but at least it was a way to avoid calling the cops. I had to give them a chance to respond,
but I knew just who the call was going to get referred to: one Detective Brian Cody. And since I hadn’t heard from him since
he crawled out of my bed and hit the road, I was in no hurry to make more of an ass of myself than I already had.

This, of course, is why your mother tells you not to get involved with people you work with. “Don’t hunt quail where you get
your mail” is her expression, but Mad puts it a bit less eloquently: don’t shit where you eat. Not that it’s ever stopped
him.

And in case you’re wondering… No, reporters are not supposed to cover people they’re sleeping with, or sleep with people they’re
covering. Clearly, I wasn’t behaving well. So much for that guest lectureship at Columbia J-school.

Okay
, I thought.
If ’tis done, ‘tis best done quickly. But ’tis even better done from the phone down the hall in the library, just in case
I decide to cry
.

I shut the door behind me, dialed the station house, and
was transferred to Cody inside of three seconds. I tried to gird myself.
Be professional. Be detached. Just get your quote and leave him to fester in his miserable pit of
…

“Alex, I’m so glad you called.”

His voice was warm, and it threw me for a loop. I’d been expecting the distant-and-awkward treatment. I pulled him out of
the mental pit I’d dropped him in a second before. Provisionally, at least. “You are?”

“Course I am.” He lowered his voice so it came out all rich and husky. “God, I miss you.”

“Yeah?”

“You probably think I’m the world’s biggest jerk.”

“Oh, uh… no. Why would I think that?”

“Because I haven’t called you.”

“Well, um… I haven’t called you either.”

“Yeah, but I’m the guy. I’m supposed to call.”

“So why didn’t you?” I couldn’t believe we were having this particular conversation with me in the
Monitor
library and him at the cop shop; I was willing to bet it was the first chat of its kind conducted between these two phone
numbers. I wondered which one of us would be the first to get the sack if we were found out. The chief would be mightily pissed,
but in the end I decided Marilyn would decapitate me with one mighty karate chop.

“You wouldn’t believe the weekend I had,” he was saying.

“Oh, yes I would.”

“These crazies kept coming around the station waving crystals at us…”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling. I’m writing the story.”

He was silent for a minute. “I thought you called… you know, because you wanted to talk to me.”

“I did want to talk to you. But I was waiting for you to call me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the guy.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“So can I ask you a couple questions for the paper?”

“Only if I get to ask one first. Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“Do you have time?”

“A man has to eat.”

“I could cook something at my place.”

“Nope. I’m taking you out.”

“Is that smart? What if someone sees us?”

He laughed again. “We’ll go someplace dark.”

He gave me the info I needed for the story, and I walked back to the newsroom looking way too happy. It had been a damn long
time since I’d actually had what might be described as a date, and I was positively giddy at the prospect. I felt as though
I should go get my hair done, or at least try to pull the dog hair off my sweater with some masking tape.

I filed the story at six and blew out of the newsroom before Bill could assign me anything else. I then spent some time trying
to make myself look like a girl. Cody picked me up at seven, right in front of the cop who was guarding my house. “What did
you tell him?” I asked as we rounded the corner at the end of my street.

He reached across the gearshift and put his hand on my knee. I was wearing a short velvet skirt with no stockings. Cody didn’t
seem to mind. “You’re interviewing me.”

He ran his hand up my thigh, and the skirt went with it. I reached under his collar to scratch the back of his neck. “Best
interview I’ve had in a while.”

“Keep that up and I’m not going to make it through dinner.”

“You started it.”

We managed to get to the restaurant without cracking up the car, but when we parked he grabbed me instead of the door handle.
He kissed me, hard, and if we’d been anywhere near our respective domiciles, dinner would have fallen by the wayside.

“We’re steaming up the windows,” I said finally.

He lifted his head from my cleavage long enough to take a look. “I’m not behaving like a gentleman, am I?”

“Like I’m behaving like a lady?”

“Yeah, but I think I’m living up to every macho-man stereotype there is.”

“You mean, like, sleep with the girl, don’t call her for four days, then jump her bones before you’ve even bought her a decent
meal?”

He laughed so hard I thought he was going to choke on my bra strap. Then he unwrapped himself from my person. “Come on, let
me buy you a decent meal.”

“On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You have to promise to jump my bones later.”

“I’d bet my shield on it.”

We went into the restaurant, and when he got a load of the place I could swear I saw Cody pat his gun. I couldn’t blame him;
if the New York mafiosi would only commute five hours to cap each other, Albertini’s would be the perfect place for it. It’s
three miles out of town in a lowslung
brick building shadowed by enormous trees; you risk turning an ankle just walking from your car to the front door. Inside,
as I’d promised Cody, the ambiance is on the dark side of inky. The checkered tables are set far apart from each other, the
only light comes from candles in brass holders, and the waiters never seem to look you in the eye. There’s no table-hopping
at Albertini’s—it would be considered unseemly—and if it’s your birthday nobody’s going to stick a candle in your tiramisù
and sing to you. The food is great, but the restaurant is never full, probably because they only accept cash, which weeds
out all the college students eating out on daddy’s Visa.

Cody and I were ensconced at a corner table, on the dining room’s even-darker margins. It was a good bet that most of our
neighbors were stepping out with persons other than the ones they married.