‘I confess I didn’t realise it was quite so much.’
‘That’s not just the unpaid parking fines. It also includes reminder fees and the cost of keeping the car here for the past four weeks. This isn’t a parking lot.’
‘I know, but it’s expensive, isn’t it? Love your earrings, by the way.’
Stella looked up. The man smiled. She didn’t smile. She rarely did at work. It didn’t pay.
‘If you want to take the car you have to settle up first.’
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way, Stella.’
Nor did she like the fact that they had to wear these name tags, as if she was a waitress in some restaurant.
‘You can transfer—’
‘You take cash, Stella?’
‘Er, yes. In principle.’
The man produced a bundle of notes and began to lay them on the counter in front of her.
‘I swear by paper, see. The paperless society, that isn’t for me. The paperless marriage, for example. No, there’s no obligation there, Stella. Too easy to just run from it all.’
The notes looked smooth and as if freshly ironed, as if they came straight from the bank. As he peeled off the fifty-dollar bills and laid them down he counted them off in a loud, steady voice. There was something about his voice, a wounded sensitivity that made her feel as though it was the last of his money he was laying down in front of her.
‘Two thousand three hundred,’ he announced finally as he looked down at the few notes that were left in his hand. Peeled off one last one and held it out to her with a broad smile.
‘And this one is for you, Stella.’
Stella Cibulkova didn’t smile at work. Not usually. But today she laughed.
Bob left the Star Tribune building carrying a paper mug of coffee and with today’s newspaper under his arm. Got into the Volvo that was so illegally parked he’d left his ID card easily visible on the dashboard. Opened the paper. He’d read somewhere that the Situations Vacant column would soon be gone completely from the paper. It was bound to be true, he just didn’t know if he believed it. The only police job vacancies he found were in neighbouring states, none of them detective level, naturally. He carried on looking, but after a while realised he wasn’t taking in the words, that his thoughts were somewhere else completely. He was a cop. Had been all his life, never wanted to do anything else. He’d fulfilled that dream, even managed to join the Homicide Unit. He’d managed it, though it hadn’t been easy. He was a good detective. Not brilliant, not the type with supernatural intuition or intelligence, not FBI material. But solid. Someone who made up for everything he lacked by never giving up. Now and then there had been friction with his bosses, of course, as when he couldn’t let go of certain cases once other priorities had been announced. He didn’t have the highest number of cases solved or even the highest-percentage success rate. But that was because he always angled to get himself the most difficult cases, the most time-consuming ones that often ended up being shelved. He had a few feathers in his cap, but a case being difficult didn’t necessarily make it high-profile, and those were the ones his colleagues snapped up.
Bob took a sip of coffee. He had a car and a roof over his head, what more could a man need? Why does a man need a job when he doesn’t have a family to look after? He folded the newspaper and put it down on the passenger seat. He could easily have picked up a Star Tribune somewhere else besides the paper’s headquarters, but it was here he had come. He looked across to the far side of the little central park. The sun sparkled on the glass facade of the building housing Alice’s psychology collective. How often had he stood in front of that entrance, waiting to pick her up on those bitterly cold winter days when you didn’t want to use your bike or even wait for the bus? Or when it was dark. Not that Alice had a phobia about the dark — that would be him. That, and horror movies. She never tired of reminding him of the time he borrowed Psycho from a video store. It was soon after they’d met, and she’d told him she liked horror movies. They’d reached the scene where Lila Crane, to the accompaniment of hysterical violins, walks toward the back of the old woman in the rocking chair. Alice knew that Bob knew it was a mummified corpse sitting there because they had told each other they had both seen the movie before. But in the dark Alice saw Bob with his eyes tight shut. Later, when some friends were visiting, Alice told that story, and said that was the moment she knew she was in love with him.
Bob checked the time. How fucking slowly it crawled along. Maybe look for a bar?
Easy, easy, easy.
We talked about loneliness.
He looked at his phone. Made up his mind. Found the name and made the call.
‘Hi, Rooble, Bob here.’
‘Hi.’
‘Listen, I’m really sorry I haven’t managed to drop off that barbecue.’
‘Forget it, Bob. Really. You’re doing me a favour by hanging on to it.’
‘You’ve got something there, I really ought to be charging. Our place isn’t exactly a parking garage.’
Rooble laughed.
‘Hey, just to satisfy my curiosity, how is the Gomez investigation coming along?’
‘Not good,’ said Rooble. ‘It’s like he’s vanished into thin air, no trace at all.’
‘Have you done anything else besides send out a BOLO?’
‘We’ve spoken to everyone we know of who had some connection with him, but there aren’t many. The janitor, landlord, neighbours. But they don’t know much. Nothing, really.’
‘Did you get Myers’s report from the neighbour we spoke to?’
‘Sure we did. But that didn’t give us much either. It’s never easy with people like Gomez who aren’t registered anywhere. You don’t find employers, relatives, school friends. Perfect situation for somebody working as a hit man, of course.’
‘Good job he isn’t then,’ said Bob.
‘You sure about that?’
‘A hit man doesn’t shoot his own neighbour. He doesn’t miss. He doesn’t leave the gun bag behind in the apartment along with a lot of technical traces.’
‘You’re right there, Bob. But vanishing completely the way he’s done, that’s pretty good.’
‘To go missing for two days isn’t difficult. Day three is when the planning has to start.’
‘Just like you say, Bob.’
Rooble. Always diplomatic, always listening. Humble when it paid to be, firm when necessary. The boy would go far.
‘I gotta go, Rooble. But can you keep me in the loop, d’you think?’
‘On the Gomez case?’
‘Yes. I’ve got a homicide that’s similar, so I’m wondering if there might be a connection. Just call this number, I’m working mostly from home at the moment.’
‘OK. Which homicide would that be?’
Bob hesitated.
‘Good to know in case there’s information there I can use,’ Rooble added.
Bob hoped Rooble didn’t notice the amount of time he needed before answering. ‘It’s on the Saint Paul border so there’s some uncertainty about the jurisdiction. I’ll let you know if I get the case.’
‘OK,’ said Rooble. ‘Nice to talk to you, Bob. Say hello to Alice.’
They ended the call.
Bob glanced down at the newspaper, which was still open at the Situations Vacant column. He tore out the page, took a Swiss Army knife from the glove compartment, flipped open the little pair of scissors and started cutting the page into strips.
Alice stood by the window in the kitchen of the psychology collective. She’d made herself a cup of green tea and was looking down at the park. Her thoughts were still preoccupied with her last patient, a teenage girl with an eating disorder. The girl had made progress over the four years she’d been coming. And Alice had too; she no longer saw Frankie in every patient under twenty who entered her office and wondered what her daughter would have looked like now. Alice’s gaze fell on a Volvo parked on the far side of the park. It was the colour, not the make, that awakened the memories. Mustard yellow. Bob loved that colour, that was why they had agreed that she would choose the make — a family car, strong on safety features — and he — the dandy — would choose the colour. She noticed that unconsciously she had begun to smile. But then she recalled the message he had left on her machine yesterday, about how he was reneging on their agreement about the house, and she stopped smiling. The estimate they’d been given on the house was so high that they both knew Bob couldn’t afford to buy her out, so they’d agreed that she was to get the house at market price while he got the car free of all debt. All that remained were the signatures on the transfer of ownership papers. That would be the last practical link between them. Would she miss him? No, she didn’t think she would. But she could be wrong about that, some days she could be overcome by a feeling of missing him. Missing those times when she left here in winter and got into the warm car waiting outside, where Bob had put on a song he wanted her to listen to, and him looking like she was the one doing him a favour by letting him pick her up and transport her back home like a princess. And now this was all that remained after twelve years together, a signature. Could things have been different? If what happened that day had never happened, would they still be a couple?