Practice to Deceive (10 page)

She pushed herself upright, took a step backward.

“I’m just an average guy trying to help a little old lady get her money back from a thief.”

“‘Average’ is the last word I would use to describe you,” Monica said after her brain reset.

“See, I knew you liked me.”

“I didn’t say—”

“How ‘bout I pick you up at seven-thirty?”

“Mr. Taylor, I certainly will not have dinner with you.”

“Some other time, then,” I said, glad she turned me down. Cynthia would never have understood.

Monica made her way to my door, stopping only long enough to say, “Remember what I told you.”

“About what?” I asked.

The slamming door was her answer.

D
EATH THREATS
? I hadn’t made any death threats.

I picked up the folded paper. The burden of proof is pretty low; still, you have to give the court some evidence of actual menace before it’ll be moved to issue a restraining order. No doubt Mr. Field embellished his story just a tad in his affidavit—if he’d had any real evidence, this would have been an arrest warrant.

Death threats. I wondered what other crimes he’d accused me of, accusations that now are part of a court record somewhere.

Man, I hate liars. Don’t you?

T
HE PHONE RANG
five times.

“Twin City Florists,” a woman answered.

“Hi, my name is Levering Field,” I told her, shifting the cell phone from one ear to the other. “I would like to have two bouquets of a dozen roses each delivered this afternoon. No, make that three bouquets of a dozen roses—one white, one yellow, one red. Send the white roses to Amanda Field.…” I gave the florist Amanda’s address. “The yellow roses go to Ms. Crystalin Wolters.…” I spelled that name and recited the address. “And the red roses go to Monica Adler. Just a moment …” I had to look up the address of her law office.

After I gave the florist Levering’s credit card number and expiration date, she asked me if I wanted cards included with those bouquets. I most certainly did.

“For Amanda Field write: For Crystalin, the only woman I will ever love.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me correctly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“For Crystalin Wolters, write: For my darling wife, nothing will ever make us part.”

“Yes, sir.”

“For Ms. Adler write: For the best attorney in North America. Sign them all: Love Ring.”

“Mr. Field?”

“Yes?”

“Is Ms. Adler a divorce lawyer?”

“You’re very perceptive,” I told the florist. “From now on you’re going to get all my business.”

I
DROVE PAST
Eastcliff, turned east then west, and parked a block away from Levering’s home where I could clearly see both his front door and garage. I wondered vaguely how much the house would fetch if it really were on the market, then asked aloud the question I always ask when confronted by ostentatious displays of wealth: “Why wasn’t I born rich instead of just good looking?”

I couldn’t tell you exactly what I was looking for. But I saw plenty, starting with a silver ’73 Cadillac that had seen way better days—the rocker panels were rusted, and the rear passenger taillight was missing. The Caddy stopped in front of Levering’s door. A young black man slid out from behind the wheel, glanced up at the house, then gave his horn two long blasts. He was wearing an Oakland Raiders warm-up jacket—the preferred attire of hoodlums everywhere. He sounded his horn a few more times. A moment later, the front door opened, and Emily skipped out. The girl’s mother was behind her. She shouted something, but the daughter ignored her. The young man settled inside the car, slamming his door. Emily was soon sitting next to him and the car sped away. Amanda watched from the front stoop as the car turned left and sped out of sight, cradling her head with both hands as she had when the cops brought her daughter home. She went back into her house and I wrote down the license plate of the kid’s Caddy on a notepad I carry, asking myself the same question Freddie had asked earlier: “You got a problem with a black man and a white woman bein’ together?”

A
T FOUR-THIRTY
by my watch, a blue van with
TWIN CITY FLORIST
painted in gold on both sides came to a stop in front of the Fields’ residence. A young man carrying an oblong box made his way to the door and rang the bell. Amanda answered and smiled. The delivery man handed her the package and left without waiting for a tip. Amanda went inside, shutting the door behind her. A few minutes later she emerged from the back door, carrying the box over her shoulder with both hands.

She walked purposefully to the garbage can next to the garage and kicked the lid off with her foot. Then she smashed the box onto the rim of the can. Over and over again she brought the box down hard, like it was something she was trying to kill; white rose petals and bits of green stem flew around her. She kept swinging the box until it broke in two, and then she threw both halves into the can. She collapsed to her knees, holding the rim. Watching through the binoculars, I saw her chest heave and her shoulders shake. I felt about as big as a period at the end of a sentence.

I
DIDN
’
T LEAVE.
The sadist in me wanted to see what would happen when Levering rolled up. But ten minutes after Amanda staggered back into her house, she was on the move again, with a fresh coat of lipstick and a determined look on her face. She drove a dark-green Pontiac Grand Am. I gave her a half-block head start.

I wondered if she intended to confront Levering in his lair, but instead of driving west to Minneapolis, she went south, catching I-494 and staying with it until she was in Bloomington. I followed her as she took an exit near the Mall of America. Was she going shopping? No. She turned off, drove past a hotel that served both the mall and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, pulled into the driveway of a small office complex. The words
ADOLPH POINT
were carved into a monument at the mouth of the driveway. Amanda found an empty space in the first row of the parking lot and hurried inside the building. I watched from the back row.

Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the office building—with a man. The man had his arm draped over her shoulder. She leaned into him as they walked; he kept looking around as if he was afraid of being noticed. I suspected he wasn’t Amanda’s big brother.

That suspicion was soon confirmed. After giving her a hug and helping Amanda into her car, he moved quickly to his own, a Buick Regal. The two cars left together. They didn’t go far. They both pulled into the hotel’s parking lot. Amanda and her companion were walking arm in arm when they went through the hotel’s front doors.

I actually said aloud, “Have a good time, Amanda.” But that didn’t make me feel any better about what I had done to her.

“A
RE YOU FAMILIAR
with Minnesota’s stalking laws?” Cynthia asked from my kitchen table.

“Vaguely,” I answered.

“I’ll get copies,” she volunteered. “We’ll review them tomorrow. Carefully.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

Cynthia shook her head. No, not her.

I stirred my beef Stroganoff mixture while the egg noodles boiled. Cynthia sat at the table, paging through the latest edition of
The Sporting News
. I watched her from the stove. She shook her head over an article. Something about Albert Belle’s contract.

I wondered if Cynthia knew she was beautiful. Certainly her clothes were beautiful; her makeup, her poise, her manners, her speech—she had paid enough for them. But when she looked in the mirror each day, did she see the pure physical beauty that existed beneath all that, or had the years on the street, the years spent dancing naked before leering imbeciles, stripped away her ability to judge her own value?

I asked her, “Do you know you’re beautiful?”

Cynthia fidgeted in her chair. “Where did that come from?”

“Just answer the question, Counselor: Do you know that you’re beautiful?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Objection, hearsay. The court requires the witness to answer according to her own knowledge.”

“Taylor, what are you doing?”

“Just answer the question, please. Do you know that you are beautiful?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Do you know—”

“Yes, I suppose I do. Lately I’ve come to think I’m beautiful. Is that all right?”

“Yes, it is. That’s good. I’m glad.”

Cynthia set my magazine aside—she didn’t like sports, anyway. She regarded me carefully, watching as I drained the noodles in a colander.

“I’m still angry,” she announced.

“I know,” I said.

I poured the noodles into a glass bowl, then poured the Stroganoff mixture over the top and tossed. People who have eaten what I set in front of them will tell you I’m a helluva cook. Don’t you believe it. A good cook can improvise, can create from scratch. Me? Without my recipe books I couldn’t scramble eggs. Don’t tell my mom.

Cynthia helped herself to a plate of the Stroganoff, ate a forkful, and promptly requested ketchup. Talk about angry.

“It’s not that bad,” I said, not referring to the food.

“I think what you are doing is horrid. What you did to that poor woman …”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said in self-defense. “But not the rest.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand you. I would never have guessed that you would … stalk … a man.”

I frowned.

“That’s the correct word,” Cynthia insisted. “That’s what you’re doing. And it’s terrible.”

“Is it?”

“You’re telling me you don’t agree?”

“Like I said, I’m sorry about Amanda but not the rest. You see, I know something about Levering’s life right now. I know how his stomach churns and his head throbs. I know how he fears every phone call and jumps at every knock on his door. I know how he’s unable to eat, unable to sleep at night; how he’s reluctant to rise in the morning. I know all this and the thought of it makes me happy.”

“What kind of man are you?”

“The kind of man you call when you want to get two hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars from a thief.”

SEVEN

T
HE PHONE CAUGHT
me on the way out. Levering Field was on the other end. He was angry. I know because he told me so. And because his voice crackled like the electric sounds of a welder’s torch.

“Enough!” he yelled. “I have had enough!”

“Enough of what?” I answered innocently, aware that he was probably recording the conversation.

“You know fucking well,” Levering insisted.

“Should we be talking? Your lawyer served me with a restraining order yesterday that said I’m not supposed to have any contact with you.”

“You listen to me, you little prick—”

“Hey, hey, hey! Be civil or I’m going to hang up.”

“You stay away from me and my family.”

“I swear to God, Mr. Field, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never gone near you, and I didn’t even know you had a family.”

“You liar!”

“Listen, if things are not going well for you, don’t blame me. Blame your bad karma”—it was probably the first time I’ve ever used that word. “Nasty things happen to nasty people.”

“Once more, Taylor. One more time, goddamn it—”

“Frankly, Ring, I’m disappointed,” I told him. “I just never thought a man could have as much money as you do and not be smart. As for your threats, you’re doing it all wrong, man. You want to scare someone, you have to be scary. Tell you what. Rent
Kiss of Death
at the video store—the original black and white, not the remake—and pay close attention to Richard Widmark’s performance. Chilling …”

“You sonuvabitch!”

“See, what he’d do is he’d giggle. There’s this great scene where he ties a crippled woman to a wheelchair and throws her down a flight of stairs; giggles all the way through it.…”

“Fuck you!”

“You should try that. Giggling, I mean. Worked for Widmark, made him a star. Maybe it’ll work for you. It has to be better than the patter you have going now—”

Levering slammed the phone down, nearly puncturing my ear drum.

I stared at the now dead receiver, outraged. “Some people have no telephone manners.”

Since I had the phone in my hand, I dialed my friend in the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department again. Yes, he’d received the twenty-five bucks I sent him; was there anything else he could do for me?

“Now that you’ve mentioned it, could you run a plate off a silver ’73 Caddy for me? Usual fee?”

Five minutes later I learned that the Caddy belonged to a Kareem Olds, 19, who lived in the lower apartment of a duplex on Collins Street in St. Paul. “That’s Railroad Island,” said the deputy, who was familar with the 150-year-old, decidedly blue-collar neighborhood on the east side of St. Paul, surrounded, like a moat, by railroad tracks. For another twenty-five, the deputy was happy to run Olds’s vitals through the NCIC. No wants, no warrants, no arrests, no convictions.

I
PARKED ON
Selby Avenue in St. Paul, not far from the hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald used to hang out and a bar where August Wilson wrote some of his plays. It’s the area the real estate types call Cathedral Hill, named after the magnificent church that looms above downtown St. Paul—the biggest, grandest church in the Midwest, some say. It was designed by the French architect Masqueray and has a definite Notre Dame feel to it.