Authors: William Lashner
Dawn shambled up the dark city street like an arthritic old man, arms pumping, gums working, a lot of action but not much forward movement. Yeah, sure, the metaphor is strained, but just then so was my bladder.
I was sitting in my car waiting for the day to break, and I was in pain. I had asked Phil Skink, my private investigator, if he had any tips on staking out an apartment. “Other than paying someone with half a clue to do it for you, mate?” he said. “Yes, Phil,” I said, “other than that.” Pro bono, Latin for “on the cheap.” So this is what he told me. Make sure there is no way out the back door of the building. Check. Use a car that fits in socioeconomically with the neighborhood. Check. Reconnoiter the neighborhood to find the best place to set up. Check. Park in front of a store or a bar. Check. Sit in the front passenger seat so it looks like you’re waiting for someone. Check. Sit low. Check. Have a cover story in case a cop or neighbor gets curious. Check. Buy your coffee small. Well, there was maybe where I might have messed up.
I started early, well before old man dawn even put on his surgical socks, and so a small cup of coffee was simply not going to do it for me. Grande or venti? What about big? Whatever happened to just plain big? Give me something big, I said to the barista, who was not young, pierced, and rude but was fat, Greek, and rude, who worked the counter of my diner, and who would have punched me in the face if I called him a barista. Something big, I had said, and now I was paying for it.
I jiggled my leg, thought about dry things, kept my eye on the door beside Tommy’s High Ball on Daniel Rose’s West Philly street. I was parked across from his building and down a bit, in front of a still-closed bodega. Nothing had yet gone in or out that door, but I knew, I just knew, that the instant I left that street to empty the soggy, storm-tossed sea that was my bladder, the door would open, the mark would exit, the morning would be lost. So I waited and watched and jiggled my leg and thought of desert sands, of camels and Bedouins, of all manner of desiccated things. Which was when I started comparing the dawn to Horace T. Grant.
I wasn’t good at this, I was not the patient type, I wanted to go home and pee, but Julia Rose had said her boyfriend had moved out. I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t believe that she was lying because she wanted to. She was lying because someone else wanted her to lie. Daniel had said his name was Randy. Julia had said Randy didn’t want to be involved. But he was already, wasn’t he? If I was going to get a grip on Daniel’s situation, I needed to learn what I could about Randy. His workplace was a start. Hence my stakeout.
It was a little after seven-thirty when the door beside Tommy’s High Ball finally opened. The man who came out was medium height, thick-shouldered, with glasses and short blond hair. He wore a blue work shirt with a name stitched over the pocket and matching blue pants.
Outside, standing now in front of the door, legs spread, he shook a cigarette from a crushed pack, lit it, inhaled, picked a piece of tobacco from his teeth.
I slumped low in the car. The man exhaled through his nose. There was something dangerous about the way he held himself, in his big hands, in the two violent streams of smoke. He looked left, looked right, looked at me. And then he headed my way.
I slumped lower. My knees hit the dashboard. He kept coming.
I was trying to slink all the way beneath the seat when he knocked on the roof of my car.
I looked up through the window.
He smiled. “Hi,” he said.
I waved back, sat up straight, opened the door so we could talk.
“Is there a problem?” he said.
“No, no problem. Just sitting here, in front of the store, waiting for a friend.”
“The store’s closed,” he said.
“Then it might be a while.”
“I’ve been watching out my window,” he said, still smiling. “You been here for over an hour.”
“Has it been that long?”
He pulled the door farther open. “Why don’t you step on out for a moment.”
“I’m fine.”
“There are kids in this neighborhood, mister,” he said. “We don’t need perverts hanging around.”
“I’m not a pervert.”
“Then why’s your leg shaking like that?”
“I have to pee.”
He looked in the car, saw the blue paper coffee cup sitting in the cup holder. “You should have gotten the small.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Just get on out,” he said, and I did. I gave him a close look as I stood before him, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. He was still smiling, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. He had big teeth. The name stitched on his shirt was
RANDY
, the store name on the other breast was
WILSON PLUMB
-
ING SUPPLY
.
“We got a quiet neighborhood here,” he said. “Lots of families, children. We look out for one another. We don’t like strangers with shaky legs hanging around. Give me your license so I can tell the police your name if I see you around here again.”
“My name’s Victor Carl,” I said.
His smile faltered for just a second, just long enough for me to know he recognized it.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m Daniel’s attorney. And who I was waiting for, actually, Randy, was you. Do you have a moment?”
He leaned forward and then smiled again. “No,” he said. “I have to get to work.”
“You want a lift?”
“I’ll take the bus.”
“No, really. It won’t be a problem. I’m very impressed with you acting to protect the neighborhood. It gives me more confidence about Daniel’s situation.”
He turned his head, looked at me sideways. “I’m just doing my part.”
“You sound like you know how to handle yourself. Do you have a law-enforcement background?”
“I’ve had some experience.” Pause. “I was in the army.”
“It shows. Let me give you a lift.”
He thought about it for a moment, glanced up at the window of his apartment, made his calculations. “Sure.”
I stepped away from the open door and gestured him inside. “We’ll stop for coffee. You know a place near here?”
“A couple.”
“Good, but let’s find one with a pot.”
“You don’t need to be worrying about Daniel,” said Randy Fleer—that was his full name, I learned—as I drove him to the warehouse in Northeast Philadelphia where he worked. “I’ll take care of him. Julia, sure, she’s a bit, well, yeah, right. I understand why the judge might have had concerns with just her around. But I’ll take care of Daniel now on in. He’s a good little guy, just needed a man in his life. And here I am, so he don’t really need you no more.”
“That’s good to know, Randy,” I said. “But I’m a little curious as to why you told Julia she should keep your name out of our discussions.”
“She tell you I told her that?”
“It was pretty clear, the way she was acting. And she said you weren’t together anymore.”
“But you didn’t believe her.”
“No.”
“Only woman I ever met who couldn’t lie worth beans. Listen, I work. I got this job at Wilson’s, and sometimes I help out a buddy who does contracting work. Drywall and stuff. I don’t have time to sit all day waiting for some judge to tell me how I should be dealing with that boy. And even with all I’m working, I can’t afford health care for us now. That’s how come Julia and me, we aren’t married yet. She’s still on the state health-care program for herself and Daniel. I heard if they knew I was living with them, they’d kick them off.”
“Are you living with them?”
“Off and on.”
“Do you have a place of your own?”
“Not right now. It doesn’t make sense, what with the money for rent they charge, even in that dump Julia’s living in now, over the bar. But I have plans for us, for the three of us. As soon as I pay off some debt and get ahead of the game, I want to buy us a house. There’s a nice neighborhood in Mayfair where some buddies from work live. I know what Daniel needs. I want us to be a family, I do. He deserves that. A boy deserves the right kind of family.”
“There are things Julia has to do for Daniel,” I said. “The judge has ordered her to attend certain classes, to show up at the hearings, and to take him to the doctor. And she has to do something about his teeth.”
“They’re a mess, aren’t they? She spoils him. Her idea of raising a kid is to give him a taffy and leave him in front of the television. And at night he sleeps with a bottle in his mouth.”
“Is that good for him?”
“It keeps him calm.”
“Can you make sure she takes him to the dentist?”
“I don’t know if the program she’s on covers tooth stuff. It’s just his baby teeth anyways.”
“If I find you a dentist who will look at him without charging, will you make sure she takes him?”
“Sure, of course. Yeah. And I’ll make sure of the other stuff, too. I’ve always wanted to have a son, someone to throw the football with, to watch the games with. Daniel’s my chance, and I mean to do it right. You should see him run. Like the wind. He could be something. He’s a good kid. I’ll take charge of him.”
“Okay.”
“How long you going to be around?” he said.
“As long as the judge thinks I’m needed.”
“Why don’t you tell him that everything’s okay now?”
“First, it’s a her.”
“Figures.”
“Second, as long as there is some concern about Daniel’s situation, I think she’ll want me involved. I want to make sure his health is seen to, his teeth, and that his mother does all she can to take care of him.”
“I told you, I’d take care of him.”
“Were you ever in jail, Randy?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I was just wondering. The homemade tattoo on the back of your hand sort of gives it away.”
“I was in for a check thing. Just a short stint. And then I was hanging with the wrong guys, and we got stupid. I mean, sure, I admit I have a past, I don’t deny it. Except let me tell you, they say it’s the army supposed to make a man out of you, but for me it was the joint. I want to make up for what I lost. Whatever I was, whatever I done, now I want to do the right thing by that boy. And Julia. I want us to be together, maybe have another one of our own. We’re going to be a family.”
“That would really be the best thing for him,” I said.
“I know it.”
“But I thought there were four of you,” I said. “Doesn’t Julia have a daughter?”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“Does she or not?”
“No.”
I kept driving. Sometimes, as a lawyer, you have to put your finger in someone’s face and call him a liar, and sometimes you just have to be quiet and let the silence talk.
“I want us to be a family Daniel can be proud of,” he said finally.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t have to. It ain’t your family. You won’t be living in Mayfair. You married?”
“No.”
“Got any kids?”
“No.”
“How was your family life growing up?”
“Crap.”
“So what the hell are you talking about? You don’t know nothing.”
“Maybe not.”
“My place is right up here.”
We were on a busy street just off Roosevelt Boulevard. There was a brick showroom fronting a large warehouse and yard. Heavy pipes, bins, and boxes lay out in the yard, along with a forklift. Men in hard hats were standing around the forklift, drinking coffee, holding themselves in the blurry, motionless stasis that men fall into in the mornings, waiting for the workday to begin.
I parked the car. When Randy got out, I got out, too.
“Where you going?” he said. He had been pretty amiable through our chat, but something about my last couple of questions had withered our budding relationship, and there was now a bite of anger in his question.
“You don’t mind, do you, Randy, if I ask your boss about your work history? The judge might want to know.”
He glanced at the yard for a moment and then shrugged. “Go ahead,” he said. “I work my ass off here, and I never miss a day.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That says a lot.”
He gave me a look, thought about saying something more, and then thought better of it. I watched as he walked away. Yeah, I know, I hadn’t pushed it about the daughter and followed my unanswered questions with others that he would also leave unanswered. I hadn’t done the whole cross-examination thing. But the line between anger and rage is a narrow one, and while I wasn’t really concerned with weathering any storm I provoked, I wasn’t living with him, was I?
But that didn’t mean I didn’t have questions still.
I want us to be a family Daniel can be proud of,
he had said. What the hell did that mean? I wondered. And even as I asked it, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
We were talking about Bob.
“I think he’s marvelous,” said Carol Kingsly as she picked at her salad. “Mystical, almost. When he works on my teeth, my jaw tingles.”
“I’m not sure that tingle is the right word,” I said.
“Oh, yes, yes, it tingles,” she gushed, in a way that made me wonder if she was talking about more than her jaw. Dr. Bob? Yikes.
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“Only for a few weeks now. My yoga instructor recommended him. Do you do yoga?” she said.
“No, but I bend over sometimes to pick up a beer.”
“You should do yoga. It’s very spiritual. And so good for the skin. My instructor, Miranda, is fabulous. Amazingly limber. She would speak about her dentist in hushed tones, said his chakras were very open, especially his heart chakra. That’s the energy source that reaches out to heal. How could I not give him a try? Before him, I went to a
Philadelphia
magazine top doc, one of the most respected in the region, but I never felt as comfortable in his chair as I do with Dr. Pfeffer. And with what he’s done for my friend Sheila, I think he’s something close to a saint.”
“Is that possible for a dentist?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I always thought dentists fell somewhere between blasphemers and sodomites in the seventh circle of hell.”
“Victor.”
“I have sensitive gums.”
Carol Kingsly smiled and, all credit to Dr. Bob, her smile was fabulous.
I had fished her number from my shirt pocket, screwed up my courage, placed the call, and invited her to lunch. She was so happy to hear from me it was shocking. I repeated my name three times and carefully explained who I was, to be sure she didn’t think I was some other man named Victor Carl. And now here she sat, across the table from me at some trendy bistro not far from Independence Hall, flashing that fabulous smile. But it wasn’t only that smile I was interested in, or the lithe body, or the pretty eyes that were bluer than I remembered from the washed-out waiting room. No, I had an ulterior motive for asking Carol Kingsly out. I wanted to talk about Bob.
Who the hell was he? Where did he come from? What was he really after?
I like to help
, he had said repeatedly. Sure, and I like corned beef, but that didn’t answer those questions or the big one that had sent me into his office in the first place: Was it merely a coincidence that Whitney Robinson, François Dubé’s trial attorney, and Seamus Dent, the eyewitness with the troubled past who testified at François’s trial, had both been patients of Dr. Bob’s?
“Where’s Dr. Bob from, do you know?” I said.
“I’ve heard Albuquerque, I’ve heard Seattle. He spent some of his childhood in Burma, from what I understand.”
“But no one knows his hometown?”
“His history is a little vague, and I think he likes it like that. He only gives out bits and pieces to his patients. He practiced in Baltimore immediately before he bought a practice up here, I know that, and his diploma is from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, but his name on it is smudged just enough to make one wonder.” She smiled, licked her lips. “No one is certain of his details.”
“An international man of mystery.”
“Exactly. Can I ask you something, Victor, something that has been puzzling me?”
“Of course.”
“That tie. Is it an heirloom?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you would decide to wear such a thing. I could only imagine that it was some barbarous custom, passed down the generations, father to son, like a family curse.”
“Alas, for a lawyer ties are part of the uniform.”
“No, not ties in general. I think ties in general are wonderful things, anything roped around a man’s neck is a step in the right direction. But why would you wear that tie?”
“It’s very convenient, wash and wear.”
“Do you know the number one fashion rule, Victor?”
“What is that?”
“Never wear anything you can clean in the dishwasher.”
“I like my tie.”
“Victor, don’t be silly. After lunch we’ll go to Strawbridge’s and pick out something more suitable.”
I rubbed my tie with my thumb, enjoying the way it crinkled at my touch, feeling the delicate ridges of the polyester. “You mentioned a friend of yours,” I said to change the subject. “Sheila, was it?”
“Yes. She was also in class with Miranda. A nice girl, but a little sad, a little frumpy, you see. She was still pining over an ex-boyfriend who was always calling her but just wanted to be friends, and she was being harassed at work by her boss. Nothing was going right in her life. Miranda had been trying for years to open up Sheila’s sacral chakra, the one that flows from the abdomen and has to do with emotional health and sexuality, but had been totally unsuccessful. She was just stuck. Then one of Sheila’s wisdom teeth became impacted.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“And Miranda urged her to see Dr. Pfeffer.”
“Double ouch.”
Carol narrowed her eyes disapprovingly at me. “You are such a coward. We’re going to have to do something about that. Anyway, she went to see Dr. Pfeffer, and it turned out that more than her teeth got fixed. It’s been four months now and the change in Sheila has been astounding. She’s more vibrant, more alive than ever. She lost weight and looks fabulous. Just last week she got engaged to a podiatrist.”
“Every woman’s dream.”
“Oh, but it is, Victor. A podiatrist. Think of the shoes she now can wear.”
“And you attribute this change to Dr. Bob?”
“I can’t be certain, but it seems more than a coincidence, doesn’t it? She visits Dr. Pfeffer, and the next thing you know the creepy ex-boyfriend stops calling. And when Sheila, ever the codependent, tries to contact him, he won’t take the call. Strange, huh? And then the boss, the jerk who had been giving Sheila all kinds of trouble, gets transferred to Fresno. And guess who got his job?”
“I get the idea. And the podiatrist?”
“He’s also a patient of Dr. Pfeffer.”
“Of course he is.”
“I mean, it’s been astounding. And to top it off, Miranda says that all Sheila’s chakras are blazing. So when Dr. Pfeffer called and asked if I’d be interested in meeting one of his patients, I jumped at the opportunity.”
“Of course you did.” Now I knew why she was so happy to hear from me.
“And I have to tell you, Victor,” she said, flashing again that bright smile, putting her warm hand atop mine. “I’m very glad you called. I have a feeling this is going to be wonderful.”
It wasn’t long after we left the restaurant that I felt her warm touch on my neck, my collar, before I felt her loosening my tie.
“First we have to get rid of this monstrosity,” she said as she undid the knot. When the tie was off my neck, she held it at arm’s length with two fingers, as if holding the tail end of a dead possum, before dropping it into a trash can behind the department store’s tie counter. “Then we’ll find something that better suits your colors.”
We had walked a few blocks north to Strawbridge’s department store, where Carol had led me straight to men’s accessories. With a calculating eye, she examined the silk ties arrayed beneath the glass. “May we see that one?” she said to the clerk, pointing at a wide, pale blue paisley. “And that one, too?” she said, indicating something yellow.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I sort of like my ties thinner.”
“With those lapels?”
“And it’s not really my—”
“Just try it, Victor. You won’t believe what a difference the right tie can make, even to a boring plain blue suit like yours.”
I ended up with the yellow one around my neck.
“Nice,” she said as she backed away. “Very becoming.”
Becoming what? I wondered. Really, now, a yellow tie. I was neither an investment banker nor an interior designer, and yellow does nothing to hide the inevitable gravy stains. Yet I had let her knot a yellow silk tie around my neck. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because I liked the feel of her warm hands around my throat, I liked the way she bit her lower lip as she groomed me, I liked the mint smell of her sweet breath as she leaned in close to be sure the tie lay cleanly beneath my collar. And the damn thing actually didn’t look half bad with my suit. It did make me look different, sharper. When I examined my new look in the mirror, I had the sudden urge to say “debenture” and “taupe.”
“Now,” she said, “about that watch. Timex, Victor? Really, now.”
We were leaning over the watches, ogling the Movados, when I said, “Wait here one moment. I’ve been looking for a new wallet, and there was one that caught my eye.”
I delayed my move until the salesclerk was showing Carol something ridiculously slim and ridiculously expensive. Then I slid over to the tie counter to rescue my thin red strip of polyester from the discarded wrappings and receipts in the trash can.
“Sorry, old friend,” I said as I rolled it up and gently placed it in my inside jacket pocket.