‘Shall we have a word with her?’
‘Thought we might. But I got a description, so wait while I first give it to the patrol car down there in case he suddenly decides to come back.’
‘He won’t do that,’ said Bob and held up the used insulin pens.
‘What’s that?’
‘Insulin. He’s diabetic. He needs these shots daily and you keep them in the refrigerator, but there are none there now. He’s taken them with him.’
Mrs White stared at them in alarm from behind the security chain. Based on the little they could see Bob guessed her to be at least seventy, height about five three, black, fond of the colour yellow.
‘Tomás? That’s not possible!’
‘May we come in, Mrs White?’ asked Kay.
Mrs White unhooked the security chain and opened the door. Bob and Kay followed the yellow-clad figure into an apartment that was a little larger than Gomez’s. It had at least one extra door which Bob assumed was to a bedroom.
‘Tomás gave me this,’ she said and pointed to the yucca palm standing in a pot in a corner of the room. She shuffled into the kitchen area. ‘Tea?’
‘No thank you, Mrs White, we’d just like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Well, all right. But I can tell you right now you’re mistaken. Tomás would never shoot at anybody.’
‘What makes you say that?’ said Bob as he looked around. It was the apartment of a lonely elderly woman. With old and probably much-loved objects and family photos, to remind her of their existence. Well-looked-after but antiquated furniture. There was a cage with a chirping canary to keep her company.
‘Tomás was the very spirit of neighbourliness. If there was some shopping needed doing, or something in the apartment that needed fixing, he was always there to help.’
‘One and the same person can be helpful at the same time as capable of shooting someone,’ said Bob. He knew he couldn’t stay here long, could feel the anger building up inside him already. It wasn’t so much Mrs White’s naive replies as that yellow bird sitting so stoic and unmoving on its perch and singing that high-pitched monotonous song that was drilling its way inside his head, drilling into an exposed nerve and pretty soon would precipitate an irrational outburst of anger. Damn that Alice!
‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Tomás?’ Kay asked quickly.
‘Anything else?’ Mrs White poured tea into two cups. ‘Hm. Funny when you ask like that, we talk together so much I ought to be able to tell you a whole lot. But the truth is, Tomás doesn’t talk a lot. And never talks about himself.’
‘What work does he do?’ asked Bob.
‘Casual work. Labouring jobs, that’s the impression I get. He’s a real handyman. And an artist as well.’
‘What kind of artist?’ asked Kay.
‘Some kind of sculptor. He made something, I have it in the cupboard here, would you like—’
‘No thanks,’ said Bob. ‘Did he say anything about where and who he worked for?’
Mrs White stuck out her lower lip, shook her head and handed one teacup to Kay.
‘He didn’t talk much, you say; it never occurred to you it was because he might have something to hide?’ Bob ignored Kay’s warning look. She was of the newer school of investigative theory that believed the open question would give a more informative answer. Bob was old school. That meant no theory, just go ahead and ask anything you’re curious about.
‘No,’ said Mrs White. ‘I don’t think Tomás is selling dope, if that’s what you mean. Tomás is silent by nature. I guess you could say I do most of our talking. Don’t get me wrong, when Tomás does open his mouth he speaks like a schoolteacher. He uses so many words I’ve never heard before. Did you know this used to be a nice neighbourhood?’
‘Did it?’ said Kay.
‘Oh indeed. Then came the crack epidemic of the eighties. Because it was an epidemic. A plague, that’s what it was. It swept over the whole country, and overnight we were back in the dirt again.’
‘I know,’ said Kay.
‘Do you?’
‘I grew up between two crack houses.’
‘Yeah, well, then I guess you do know.’
Bob glanced down into the courtyard again. The techs should be here any time now. If not that was just more ammunition for those who claimed the police took their time about things when the neighbourhood involved was black or Latino. A few kids were throwing pebbles at the patrol car down below and the officer stepped out and yelled at them, but the kids just ran off, laughing.
‘Now there’s more shooting, guns and gang wars here than ever before,’ said Mrs White. ‘But what does Mayor Patterson do? Right, he pulls the police out of here because he knows that after Minnesota made private prisons illegal it’s cheaper for the authorities if the folks down here shoot each other than if they have to be responsible for locking them up. Or am I wrong?’
Bob gave Kay a pleading look which she responded to with an imperceptible nod.
‘I don’t know how the mayor’s office thinks about these things, Mrs White,’ said Kay. ‘But back to Tomás Gomez. When was the last time you saw him?’
‘Oh, that wasn’t but a short time ago.’
‘A short time ago?’
‘Yes, right after that crack out there.’
Bob turned toward them. ‘Just now? Did he say anything about—’
‘What did you talk about?’ Kay interrupted. Open questions.
‘As far as I recall he didn’t say a word. But I could see something was wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ asked Kay.
‘Yes. He was wearing sunglasses, and he was so pale. Looking back, I think he’d just been crying. Tomás is a very sensitive man, you know. He doesn’t show it, but you can tell, that’s often the way of it, the sensitive ones protect themselves with silence. But I know for example that he was very upset when his cat died. That’s why I told him to have it stuffed. Same as Pippi here.’
Bob turned to the canary in disbelief. It was still sitting there motionless on that perch, but only now did he notice the tiny speaker below the swing, next to the water dish. Mrs White laughed, and Bob realised that the look on his face had betrayed him.
‘Mr Lunde’s a very skilful taxidermist, though sometimes I think he can be a bit too particular. Anyway, Tomás is still waiting to get his cat back. Have you ever lost anything like a much-loved pet, Miss Myers?’
Kay shook her head.
‘What about you, Mr Oz?’
Bob looked at her. Fingered the condom in his pocket. The drilling started up again. He really had to get out of there.
6
Ghosts, September 2022
We’re back in downtown. I tell the taxi driver to wait for me and I get out. The city is awake by now and I hear the whistle blow as the subway train glides out of the station behind me. In front of me is a statue of Mayor Hubert Humphrey. Before he was mayor he was vice president, as well as a presidential candidate. During one of our trips to the USA, Dad brought us here and told us that the man up there on the plinth was half-Norwegian and that his mother, Ragnild Kristine Sannes, came from the same place in Norway as our family. She’d been one of twelve children and had fled from poverty in Norway to a country in which she would give birth to a child who would one day be just a few votes short of becoming the most powerful leader in the world. That’s what was so fantastic about this country, our father explained to us. That someone from a humble background — like the man who won that election, Richard Nixon — could end up at the very top. When we got back to Oslo, I bought a map of America and hung it over my bed, along with my posters of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. It was only later that I realised my father had been lying. In the first place, more or less all presidents except one during the previous hundred years were millionaires, and as for the American dream of social mobility, you had to work your way far down the list before you found my beloved USA, right behind Lithuania, South Korea and Portugal.