I wish you hundred hugs.
Love, Benjy.
P.S. Greetings from Kara Bolka.
THIRTEEN
Sam Weitz called me at work to ask if I’d like some life insurance.
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because everyone should have life insurance. Didn’t you just get beat up?”
“Yeah.”
“There you go.”
“What does that have to do with anything? If I died, whom would I leave the money to?”
“You evidently aren’t up on the latest advances in the insurance paradigm. It’s not just about dying. There’s protection for long-term medical absences, for example. So you can keep getting paid. Haven’t you seen those commercials with the duck? What if you were laid up and couldn’t be a reporter anymore?”
I was tempted to tell him my salary, so he’d understand that if I couldn’t make it to my job at the Littleton Journal, I could always follow the path of upward mobility and go to work at McDonald’s.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I think I’ll forgo the insurance, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s your funeral,” he said, then added, “poor choice of words.”
“No. It’s funny.”
“Really?” he said, his voice brightening. He’d probably been called a lot of things as an insurance agent. Annoying, boring, bloodsucking-funny might’ve been a first. “Well, if you change your mind…”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“Okeydokey.”
Norma asked me if I wanted anything to eat. She was making a lunch run next door; Nate had already put in his order for moo goo gai pan and fried wontons.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“You always say you’re not hungry, and then I have to give you half of mine because I feel God-awful sorry for you.”
“That’s me,” I said. “The proverbial object of sympathy.”
Maybe she took her cue from Hinch on that score. After all, Hinch had felt God-awful sorry enough to hire me.
“I can’t interest you in a half-pint of shrimp chow fun, huh?”
“Sure,” I said. “I could use a little more fun in my life.”
My attempt at a witticism flew right over Norma’s head.
I’d put the phone down after Sam’s call, then immediately picked it up again, only I’d forgotten whom to call. Then I realized I hadn’t forgotten, but had simply run out of possibilities.
There was no Ed Crannell listed in the entire city of Cleveland.
I’d tried everything in a hundred-mile radius and come up empty.
I wanted to ask Crannell whether the face he’d glimpsed through the oncoming windshield had been black or white.
Cleveland never heard of him.
The one in Ohio? I’d asked Crannell to be sure we were talking about the right Cleveland.
He’d nodded and told me he was a pharmaceutical salesman.
I tried that next. Wrote down every major drug company I could think of, then called each one of them and asked for an Edward Crannell.
No such salesman on payroll.
Maybe he was part-time, I suggested. Freelance?
There was a freelance saleswoman at Pfizer named Beth Crannell. Couldn’t be her I was looking for, could it?
No, it couldn’t.
Okay. There was a clear pattern developing here. No skid marks and no Ed.
I called the sheriff’s office.
He’d have all the valuable particulars from Crannell’s license. Assuming those particulars were in any way, shape, or form true. Assuming the license wasn’t bought mail-order or forged.
Sheriff Swenson wasn’t in, a female officer informed me. He would have to get back to me.
Something else was gnawing at me, of course.
I hadn’t forgotten. No. The note from Belinda Washington’s room hadn’t slipped my mind, been summarily dismissed, or relegated to the file of very strange things.
Happy hundred birthday.
Love, Benjy.
Could it have been another Benjamin?
Someone, for instance, not her dead son?
Sure. This was possible. Given the fact Benjamin Washington had died fifty years ago in the Aurora Dam Flood, even plausible.
I called Mr. Birdwell.
“Did a middle-aged black man visit Belinda before her birthday party?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” he responded.
“Well, who would know if someone visited someone in the home?”
“Guests would have to register at the front desk,” he said. “What’s all this about?”
“Trying to get hold of a relative who might’ve stopped by,” I explained. “Could you check for me?”
He sighed and said he’d get back to me.
Twenty minutes later he called and said, “No one visited Belinda in years.”
“Really? What if someone didn’t want to register at the front desk? What if they decided to just waltz in? Couldn’t they?”
“No,” Mr. Birdwell said. But he’d hesitated before saying it, and it came out defensively enough to make me think he was lying.
I drove back to the home.
I parked two blocks away in front of an aging Rexall.
I tried to ignore the midday heat. Natives are fond of noting there’s no humidity in the California desert. True. They conveniently leave out the part about the 110-degree summer temperatures, which make it feel as if you’re breathing in a sauna, and the murderous Santa Ana winds. The Santa Anas are murderous, but not in the way you might imagine. They don’t blow you away like the wolf huffing and puffing at the pigs’ door; they kill you by attrition, by blowing so incessantly that people go mad. Just ask John Wren, who’d allegedly gone Littleton loco-reclusive and squirrelly enough to barricade himself in the Littleton Journal one night, before absconding to parts unknown. It’s true. Suicide rates soar during the Santa Anas.
Speaking of suicide.
I’ll admit to contemplating it once or twice back in New York. Not seriously-not like I was about to do it that very second, the way OSS agents dropped behind enemy lines must’ve fingered the strychnine capsules sewn into the waistbands of their pants. They knew what Gestapo interrogation entailed; there had to be true comfort in knowing peace was a simple swallow away. If it got bad enough.
During my agonizing stretch as a public piñata-for a while I was assaulted by daily articles, from sensational exposés to sober treatises on how good reporters go bad-it had now and then been comforting to consider the eighteen stories from my apartment window to the graffitied sidewalk below.
When I reached the nursing home, I ignored the front door.
I meandered around the back, where an expanse of brown lawn sloped down to a muddy pond, choked with cattails and milkweed. There was a metal gate circling the backyard, but I simply reached over and flipped the latch. Evidently, Mr. Birdwell was more concerned about residents wandering out than visitors wandering in.
There was no one strolling the lawn.
This wasn’t surprising since the brutal heat would’ve been lethal for your average 80-year-old. The raucous hum of the massive air-conditioning unit sounded like an army of angry cicadas. I walked up to the back door and turned the knob.
It trickled open.
Anyone could’ve walked in this way. If they hadn’t wanted to be noticed or have their signature dutifully added to the guest register. If they’d wanted to make a surprise visit.
I walked in and was immediately enveloped by an artificial chill.
I passed two male orderlies, one of them pushing a wheelchair-bound patient who looked comatose. Neither orderly asked me what I was doing there, demanded ID, or redirected me elsewhere.
I made it all the way to Belinda’s old room.