“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
“I have to give a lecture in thirty minutes. Can’t you come now?”
Some people think I have no customers but them. “No,” I said. “I can’t come now. I’ll be there by three, but not sooner. Isn’t Mrs. Lancaster there?”
“I don’t know where Helene is. Look, I’ll leave a key under the mat for you. An hour will be fine.”
I tried to hurry up and finish at Mrs. Berger’s. I found the bad washer and installed a new one, but when I went to turn the water back on, the main valve broke. It happens in old houses sometimes, and it meant Mrs. Berger would have no water until I replaced it. It would be another hour of work at least, maybe two. I went upstairs and broke the bad news to Mrs. Berger, and then I called Cal.
“Would you have time to do me a favor?”
“Right now I’m sitting in my truck on State Street eating a honey-glazed donut,” he said. “But when I finish my donut, I might.”
I explained about Richard Lancaster smelling gas.
“All right,” he said, “but tell him who’s coming.” Cal is careful with white customers who don’t know him. I know he’s had trouble before, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. He makes a point of wearing a very official-looking uniform, with Watkins Plumbing emblazoned across his jacket in big red letters. I, on the other hand, don’t wear a uniform at all.
“I’ll tell him,” I said, “but he won’t be there. The key’s under the mat.”
I left Mr. Lancaster a message on his cell phone, and for good measure I looked up their home number and left a message there too.
About twenty minutes later, Cal called back. I knew it was him because my cell phone said so. But I almost couldn’t recognize the voice because I’d never heard Cal’s voice an octave higher than usual and talking so fast he tripped over his words. It scared me just listening to him, because even without being able to understand him it was clear he was terrified.
“Slow down,” I said. “Are you all right?” All I could imagine was that one of the Lancasters had been home and thought he was breaking in and pulled a gun on him, and what was I thinking, asking him to check on my customers for me when I knew shit like this could happen? That went through my brain in the half-second it took Cal to catch his breath.
Then he said, still high and fast, “Nicky, you got a fucking body over here, and gas pouring out the basement, and I called 911 and pulled her out but you better get over here NOW, I think she’s dead, Nicky, and gas everywhere, oh, here they come.”
He hung up, but not before I heard the sirens behind him.
I don’t know how I made it there in one piece. I was shaking so bad I could hardly hold the wheel steady and I don’t remember driving that half-mile, only that I didn’t stop for lights and it was like one of those dreams where you’re running but can’t move, as if the air has turned into molasses and you’re stuck in it. But somehow I was eventually parking behind an ambulance and two fire trucks and running toward the house where a group of firefighters was kneeling in a circle on the front lawn. I could see something on the grass in the center of that circle. Something gold, her hair in the sun, and that gold was the only bright thing on that lawn, almost lost among the dark heavy coats of the men around her. I ran toward her and it was like dream running. It took forever. One of the firemen stood up and then I saw she was lying on her back, and as I ran I saw the gash on her head, the blood drying in a rusty stain across her forehead and into her hair. One of her arms was flung out to the side as if she were pointing. Pointing at me. I ran toward her until someone called my name, and only then did I turn and see the police car.
It was parked on the far side of the fire trucks. There was a cop standing with his back to me, and in front of him, pinned between him and his cruiser, was Cal, jammed spread-eagled against the door, his face turned sideways against the vehicle’s roof. The officer was patting him down.
“Nicky,” he called again, and my legs worked and I ran up to them, yelling.
“Officer, stop!” I said. “Cal didn’t do anything! I sent him over here, I’m the plumber, he’s a plumber too, his name’s Cal Watkins, see on his jacket, but it’s not his job, it’s my job, I asked him to check on my job for me, everything was fine yesterday, he didn’t do anything, he just got here.”
I went on like that while the cop put Cal in handcuffs and told him not to move. Only then did he turn and look at me. Crew cut, blue eyes, baby-faced, still young. We could have gone to high school together.
“Officer.” My voice was really shaking. I took a breath and tried to focus. K. Milner, his name tag said. “Officer Milner. I was working in that house yesterday and I found a gas leak and fixed it. But the homeowner called me back and said he still smelled it. I was busy and I asked Cal to go. He has nothing to do with this.”
“I told you,” Cal said to the cop, his face still pressed against the top of the cruiser, “I found a lady laying at the bottom of the stairs in a house full of gas and I carried her out. I’m a veteran. I’m the one who called you.”
Milner ignored this. He was looking at me. “You were working in there yesterday?” he asked.
“Yes, but I fixed the gas leak. They couldn’t even smell it. I found it and I fixed it and I don’t know what happened, but—”
“Nicky,” Cal said hoarsely, “stop talking.”
It was too late.
“Turn around,” Milner said to me. “Hands behind your back.”
I didn’t move. A sick feeling broke over me like a wave and for a second I thought I might pass out.
“Why?” I asked.
“A lady’s dead in a gas-filled basement and you’ve just admitted you’re the one who worked on the gas.” Milner’s baby face looked harder suddenly. “Hands behind your back,” he repeated. “You’re under arrest for criminally negligent homicide.”
I saw a flash of silver in his hands, and a flash of light zigzagging off the silver like the beginnings of a migraine. I’d never been in real handcuffs before, and they hurt.
He left us in the back of the cruiser while he went to talk to the firefighters. I was crying and shaking and couldn’t stop doing either. Cal was silent and rigid beside me.
“Cal,” I tried through chattering teeth, “I am so sorry.”
“I don’t need your apologies, Nicky, I need your lawyer.”
“I swear there was no gas leak when I left yesterday. I tested it and everything.”
“All I know is, I knock on that fancy door and nobody answers, I let myself in like you said, and the smell of gas is so bad my eyes water. I open the basement door and the gas just about knocks me over, and at the bottom of the stairs is a lady lying crumpled in a heap. So I run down the stairs coughing my lungs out and carry her out of there and dump her on the lawn and call 911 and now I’m in cuffs in the back of a cop car. Meri’s concert is tonight, Nicky. Am I gonna see Wanda and Meri again?”
“Of course you are, Cal. I promise. It’s my fault you—”
“It might be your fault, but you can’t promise anything. Once they separate us down at the station, anything can happen. To me, not to you.” He shook his head. “You don’t know.”
“I know I fixed that leak, Cal. I know I—”
“You think that matters? When a few months ago I’m working and a guy calls the cops and says there’s a black man impersonating a plumber breaking into his neighbor’s house? Lucky for me the customer was home to explain to the cops I was her actual fucking plumber, but you understand what I’m saying? Anything can happen, Nicky, to me. And right now I’m sitting here in cuffs for trying to save a lady I never saw before in my life. Am I gonna get out of this? Alive? That’s on you.”