Wendy met me in the front room, from where I knew she’d been listening, and silently escorted me to the door.
“He’ll be fine,” I told her quietly. “Try not to worry too much.”
Her eyes brimming with tears, she leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for coming.”
It had been one of my favorite meals-a taboo when Gail was at home-a Velveeta and jam and mayonnaise sandwich, followed by a can of fruit cocktail. The thick, sweet, cloying memory of it lingered in my throat as I roamed the house, like a tourist in a museum.
The downtown apartment I’d lived in for almost twenty years had acquired the patina of an old bear’s den-comfortable, shabby, not too pristine, and very familiar.
Not like this house at all.
Lurking behind the furniture, barely covered by the coat of fresh paint and new carpeting, were the shadows and sounds of countless succeeding families, none of whom I’d known, dating back to when the core of the huge place had been built as a farmhouse in the early 1800s. These were not bachelor digs, nor were they truly ours yet. This was still so new to me that I felt like a guest at a dinner party, wandering in search of a bathroom.
But there were a few familiar touchstones-items half lost among Gail’s more numerous things-that reminded me of where I’d been born and brought up, and of the small house I’d owned when I’d been married. When Brattleboro was an overgrown village, and the police department had consisted of a small handful of ex-farmers.
Cancer had taken the marriage, and the house, and any hope of a family, and had encouraged me to enter a years-long emotional hibernation. Perhaps a different form of cancer-sometimes malignant, sometimes benign-had also transformed the erstwhile sleepy town of Brattleboro.
Buying this house with Gail had evoked mixed emotions in me, a sense of both moving ahead and traveling back-directions I felt were fraught with dimly perceived peril, and which became highlighted in her absence.
It was a large house, many times remodeled, with blond oak floors, dark beams set against glimmering plaster walls, skylights and double-paned bay windows tastefully spread throughout. The kind of house I’d visited on only a few occasions.
I went from room to room, remembering the two of us placing the furniture, choosing the colors of the paint, my watching how thoughtfully Gail made me feel a part of her decisions. A few of my possessions were logistically but self-consciously present in each one of the rooms. I still had a bachelor pad-two rooms upstairs, filled with my junk, sacrosanct. Gail had told me she’d never enter there uninvited and had requested the same limitations on her suite down the hall.
I didn’t go upstairs, though. Fresh from my visit to the Klesczewskis, I was soaking up the air that we shared, searching for her presence.
I lay on the bed much later, the phone in my hand, my eyes staring at a blank window full of night.
“You sound lonely, Joe,” Gail said.
“I am-and a little ticked off. I had a good life once, surrounded by my books and my music and my junk food. Life was balanced. I could go for walks, or stay at the office, or go visit you, if you were around. It was pretty good.”
“You miss that?” she asked gently.
“No. I wish I did. You ruined everything.”
Her laughter filled my head.
16
Tony Brandt banged his coffee mug down on the counter with a curse and sucked on a scalded finger, checking his clothing for stains.
“Now you know why people say the stuff’s a health hazard,” I told him as I poured myself a cup from the officers’ room urn.
“I don’t have time to drink it anyway,” he muttered, now inspecting his finger. “Just force of habit.”
“Got a date?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Early-morning head-bashing session over at the high school. All this talk of gangs has got them worked up, just like we hoped. Shit-I’m running late.”
He abandoned his mug on the counter and walked quickly toward his office. I took a side door into the hallway that separated the main part of the department from the detective squad across the way. For the second day in a row, the hall was empty of reporters. The last of the TV trucks had left the night before. As ironies would have it, the press had put us on the back burner just as our momentum was building.
Dennis DeFlorio hailed me from the short flight of steps that led to the Municipal Building’s rear double doors and the parking lot beyond. He was carrying a bulging, battered briefcase in one hand, and the ubiquitous donut in the other.
“Joe, where were you last night? I was looking for you.”
“I went to visit Ron.”
He walked down the hallway to where I was waiting, taking another bite along the way. “I got some good news about the gunman with the tattoo-the one they called Ut. And Dan Flynn called late-said his INS contact confirmed that Sonny and Truong are one and the same. No doubt about it.”
Down the hall, near the rear steps, Tony Brandt burst from the department’s main entrance. He was wrestling into his jacket, holding a folder in the other hand. “See you later,” he called over his shoulder and promptly fell headlong down the stairs.
Dennis and I broke into a run to see what was left of him.
Brandt was curled up against the double doors, clutching his ankle. The floor was littered with the oversized confetti that had exploded from his folder. “Jesus H. Fucking Christ. I think I broke the goddamn thing.”
We clattered down the steps to his side. I gently pried his hands away from his ankle, undid his shoelaces, and removed both the shoe and sock underneath. Dennis, looking a little hapless, began gathering the sheets of paper.
“Can you wiggle your toes?” I asked. “Hurts like a bitch,” he said between clenched teeth, but the toes moved slightly.
I felt around the ankle, which was beginning to feel warm and spongy. There were no hard bulges or any signs of a broken bone. “You may have broken it-but it could just be a bad sprain.”
By this time, several people had collected at the top of the small stairwell. “Better call an ambulance,” I suggested.
“No. Out of the question,” Brandt half yelled.
Everyone stared at him. “I’ll go to the hospital, but in a car. I don’t want an ambulance.”
“That’s crazy. They…”
He grabbed my arm with an unmistakable ferocity. “No ambulance. They’ll turn this into a goddamn circus. I’m sick of being front-page news. Besides, what the hell can the ambulance do now? Slap some ice on it and make a lot of noise? Just put me in my car.”
I glanced out the glass doors at the parking lot and the department’s four-wheel-drive Jeep station wagon, generally reserved for the shift patrol lieutenants. “All right. We’ll take you in the Jeep. You’ve got to keep that foot elevated and your car’s too cramped.”
The crowd thickened measurably, and Tony capitulated. “Fine-whatever. Just get me out of here.”
I yelled over my shoulder for someone to call the ER and let them know we were coming, and then I helped Dennis form a chair with our interlocked hands. We lifted Tony up and out the door, carrying him to the waiting Jeep with as much speed and gracefulness as possible.
We’d just gotten him settled into the front, with the seat tilted back and his foot propped up on a folded jacket on the dashboard, when Harriet appeared by my side with a bagful of ice cubes. “There’s someone on the phone for you,” she added, “from the Montreal Police.”
“Damn.” I’d forgotten I’d left a message last night for Jean-Paul Lacoste-Dan Flynn’s Montreal contact-asking him to call me as soon as he could.
“Go ahead, Joe,” Tony told me, “I’m all set.”
Dennis was already sliding in behind the steering wheel. “I’ll drive. Harriet, could you make sure they meet us with a wheelchair?”
I half smiled at this unusual show of foresight. “All right. I’ll also have someone call the school and tell them not to expect you.”