A Farewell to Legs (29 page)

Meanwhile, back at the window, there was something
about that last threatening phone call that had bothered me since
I’d hung up the phone. I can’t say I had recognized the voice, but
there was a certain familiar cadence to the sentence being uttered
that I couldn’t deny. I’m very good at remembering sound—I have a
“photographic ear.” I can remember lines of dialogue from movies I
saw when I was a child, but my eye is not nearly as talented, and
quite often, I forget what I’ve seen. Never, though, what I hear.
So there was something about that sound, the syntax, the tone of
voice, which I’d heard before. I just couldn’t quite place it, like
the bass line of a song that runs through your brain until you can
dredge up the melody and identify the music. It was nagging at
me.

“. . . and he never even checked to see if
I’d been in before for a hiatal hernia,” my mother continued,
disgusted with the state of medicine these days. The fact that
these days were undeniably better than those days wasn’t really
relevant. The fact that the days two hundred years from now would
inevitably be better than now, and that she wouldn’t be here to see
them was annoying. I could sympathize with that.

The children were devastated when their grandmother
left, which is to say that Leah tried to turn one hug into
seventy-five, and Ethan actually called down from his room, where
Play Station was, to say good-bye. The dog, whom my mother had met
earlier, followed her to the door, tail wagging eagerly, assuming
that she was going to take him for a walk. Instead, Abby did the
honors after my mother left.

I had trouble sleeping that night. It wasn’t dread,
since I did-n’t really think I’d be in much danger no matter what
happened (but then, I’m usually wrong about such things), but more
a feeling of disappointment that kept me awake until one-thirty.
Abby slept peacefully, even though I had told her about my plans
for the next day and she, supportive spouse that she is, had
informed me that she would never speak to me again if I got myself
killed, which seemed reasonable.

Warren was up when I got out of bed at seven-thirty,
after having tossed and turned fitfully, while sleeping just a bit
overnight. Everyone else was still asleep, and the fact was, he did
have nice big brown eyes and floppy ears, and his tail wagged quite
adorably when he thought you were going to take him out. So what
the hell—I took him out.

Much as I hate to admit it, I found the experience
to be pretty enjoyable. You could think more clearly when you were
concerning yourself with nothing more than the toilet habits of an
animal considerably lower to the ground that you are. And since
very few humans are lower to the ground than I am, I found a
certain comfort in Warren’s short little legs attached to the big
basset hound paws. He was disproportionate, which seemed just about
right for my household.

Damn mutt was growing on me.

It was during the walk through Edison Park, two
blocks to the east of my house, that the facts of the Legs Gibson
story all came together in my head. There was only one way it all
made sense, and even though the sense it made was pretty
nonsensical, as that other great freelance writer Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle used to put it—and I’m paraphrasing—when the impossible is
eliminated, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be
true. Sir Arthur used up all the good lines for the rest of us.

By the time I reached the house, carrying my plastic
bag with Warren’s contribution to the walk inside it, I had
convinced myself that I was right. So I dumped the bag in one of
our outside garbage cans (no sense bringing that stuff into the
house), marched inside, and called Barry Dutton’s office.
Strangely, at eight on a Saturday morning, the chief of police
wasn’t in. Barry and Mason Abrams were proving that you can’t ever
find a cop when you need one.

I left Barry a message detailing what I had planned
for the day, then called Abrams’ number and left him the same
message, knowing he wouldn’t be back until Monday. Maybe he’d check
his messages. In any event, the cops should know what a freelance
writer knows, whether the writer really knows it or not.

Abby came downstairs a few minutes after I got off
the phone, dressed for her morning run around the park. She, of
course, looked ravishing, but in an athletic way. I gave her a kiss
and held her too long.

“I have to take Mr. Dog for a walk,” she said.

“Mr. Dog and I just got back,” I informed her, and
her eyebrows rose a couple of feet from their normal position.

“Oh, really?” she said, her voice indicating
amusement. “So you’re starting to like Warren, huh?”

“I never minded Warren,” I said, using all the spin
techniques I learned during my disastrous six months in public
relations. “But I don’t want to be the first line of responsibility
for him. It was the concept of a dog I opposed, not the particular
dog himself.” I gave my wife another squeeze for good measure (and
because I wanted to), and she went off to exercise, laughing to
herself at how easy I am to manipulate.

On Saturday, you can count on Ethan to sleep until
roughly Sunday, so I wasn’t expecting him downstairs anytime soon.
Leah, however, rarely sleeps late, and sure enough, Abby was barely
out the door before she came downstairs, brushed past me like I was
part of the furniture, and launched herself at the dog, who looked
positively terrified at the sight of this eight-year-old female
projectile advancing on him.

“Look at that
face!”
she cooed, and went
about informing the dog, at great length, of how adorable he
was.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said to my daughter, who
at one time in her life, however briefly, had believed me to be the
most wonderful person on the planet.

“Good morning, Daddy,” she replied by rote, and set
about petting the dog until surely his fur would be worn off.

I hadn’t expected Stephanie to call until late in
the afternoon, but the phone rang about eleven in the morning, when
Ethan was just coming down the stairs, dressed in the boxer shorts
and Star Wars T-shirt he had slept in. The kid was born to live in
a frat house. I pointed to my clothes and then upstairs, indicating
that he should get dressed. He walked past me into the kitchen.

“I’m in the car, and I just passed Baltimore,” Steph
said. “I called ahead to the Hyatt, and I’ll be in Room 716. Check
in time is three, and I should be there by three-thirty. Can you
meet me there as soon as I get in?”

“Sure,” I told her. “Call me as soon as you’re in
the hotel. I’m only a few minutes away.”

She agreed and hung up, choosing not to make small
talk. The tension in her manner was palpable, and I wondered if she
were afraid that I knew something, or afraid that I didn’t. I had
my suspicions, but I couldn’t be sure.

Abby, fresh from a shower, could cause most grown
men to weep openly, but I have grown hard-hearted in the fourteen
years we’ve been married, and only got a trifle teary-eyed. I told
her about Stephanie’s call, and gave her the timing for the rest of
the day. She wasn’t happy about it, but agreed that I had the right
idea. Then I called Mahoney and told him. He’d been in his garage,
where he has every tool in the world and a set of free weights,
pumping iron and planning to construct a built-in stereo cabinet
for his home theatre. I asked him if being perfect took up a lot of
his time, but he said I’d have to ask his wife.

He showed up at my door in the Trouble-mobile, his
work van with the bald tires, old dents, and only half of all the
tools in the world, at 1:45, as planned. I gave Abby a kiss, a long
one, and she gave one to Mahoney. A short one, I was pleased to
note. The kids were attempting to wash the dog with a garden hose
and a bucket, and finding that beagle/bassets do not much care for
water, and are downright averse to soap.

Mahoney walked over and touched Warren under the
chin. The dog looked up, and immediately sat. His tail wagged, but
he never moved. Mahoney told him to stay, and walked back to where
I was standing with Abby. The dog didn’t move.

“Nice dog,” Mahoney said.

We got into the van and drove the enormous distance
into New Brunswick in about four minutes. The Hyatt is just past
the Raritan River, over the bridge from Midland Heights, and we
were in the lobby (luckily, there is self-parking at the Hyatt, or
we’d have had to endure the horrified look of a valet at the sight
of the Trouble-mobile) by two o’clock on the nose.

“Have you figured out how to get into the room
before Stephanie gets here?” Mahoney asked casually.

“Follow my lead,” I said. “If check-in time is
three, they’re cleaning the room just about now.”

We took the elevator up to the seventh floor and
walked down the aisle to Room 716. Sure enough, both 716 and 718,
next door, had their doors open, and the cart with the cleaning
supplies was parked between the two.

Vacuuming could be heard from 716. Mahoney and I
looked into 718, saw what we needed to see, and walked inside.

The rooms were adjoining rooms, and the doors were
open on both sides so the maid could get in and out of either room
whenever she needed to. At the moment, she was busy working on the
rug in 716, and didn’t hear or see us in the adjoining room.

“Has she done the bathroom yet?” I hissed at
Mahoney. He stuck his head in and nodded, yes, the bathroom had
been cleaned.

We scuttled into the bathroom. Fortunately, the
shower had a door, not a curtain, and we both managed to get inside
and wait without causing so much commotion that the maid, in the
next room with the vacuum going, would notice.

“This is not my idea of a great Saturday afternoon,”
Mahoney said. “If I’m going to spend time in a shower with someone,
I’d prefer it not be you.”

“Quiet,” I told him. “We have to make sure we get
out before she locks those adjoining doors.”

Sure enough, after about fifteen uncomfortable
minutes (being fully clothed in a small shower with another man is,
at best, awkward), the maid in the next room seemed finished with
her work. I signaled Mahoney, and we crept out of the shower and
into Room 718.

The door was still open, but I saw the cart move
past it and toward the next pair of rooms. She was getting ready to
finish up.

Mahoney and I scampered through the adjoining door
and into the shower in 716, just to be safe. Within a minute, the
adjoining doors were closed and locked, and so was the door to the
room we were stuck in. I looked at my watch.

“We’ve got about an hour and fifteen minutes,” I
told Mahoney, and we walked out of the shower, no cleaner than we
had been before we got in, and into the room.

I reached into the canvas bag I’d brought and took
out the snacks we’d agreed upon. Wow! Fat Free Chips for me, a box
of Ring Dings for Mahoney. I had a bottle of Diet Coke, and he
satisfied himself with orange soda. We were an elegant pair.

It was, of course, a classier hotel room than I’m
used to, since our family budget doesn’t always allow for a wet
bar, a Jacuzzi, and a king-size bed.

“We should have used the honor bar instead of
bringing our own,” I said. “Then we could have charged Stephanie
for the snacks, at about three bucks for a bag of peanuts.” I sat
down and arranged the food on the table. “Plenty of time.”

“Great,” said Mahoney. “I’ll brush up on my
canasta.”

Instead, he actually lay down on the bed (after
removing his shoes—ever the gentleman, my best friend) and went to
sleep, leaving me an armchair in which to ponder the meaning of
life in its many permutations for a little less than an hour. I
would have gone to sleep myself, but Mahoney’s snoring could
probably be heard in Princeton, NJ, a good sixteen miles to the
south.

That’s why we were caught so completely off guard
when the hotel room door opened and the dark trench coat, the dark
glasses, and the awful toupee told me that Gibson had entered the
room. He was concealing a gun in his right hand.

“Come on in, Legs,” I said. “Sit down. Relax. Take
off your hair.”

Louis Gibson tore off the dark sunglasses and stared
at me. “I’ve always wondered why you called me that,” he said.

M
ahoney was barely awake,
and shoeless, and therefore not a terribly useful deterrent to
violence. He sat up and started glaring at Legs, who stood in front
of us with the hotel room door closed and the gun fully visible
now.

“Actually, it was the reason I knew you were alive,”
I said. “But I’m never going to tell you why we call you that.”

“How will I go on?” Legs said with what he uses for
sarcasm.

“You were right, then?” Mahoney asked.

“Yeah. Legs, here, has been alive the whole time.
You killed your own brother to cover up your embezzlement and give
the cops no reason to look for you, didn’t you, Legs?”

Gibson didn’t answer, but he did take a roll of duct
tape out of his trench coat pocket, and motioned Mahoney into the
desk chair. Mahoney didn’t move right away, so Legs put the gun
closer to my face and cocked it. That convinced my bodyguard that
it might be a good idea to sit in the chair.

“See, Legs here”—and I could tell every time I used
that name it annoyed him, so I resolved to use it as often as
possible— “skimmed thirteen million off all the sincere
conservative maniacs who sent him money, and he needed to be able
to cover it up so he could go on living with all the money, even
after the cops or the IRS found out about it, right Legs?” He was
trying to figure out how to tape Mahoney to the chair while still
holding the gun, and was having a hard time doing it. “You want me
to hold the gun for you while you do that, Leggsy?”

He pointed the gun at me. “Stop calling me that!” he
said. “Just trying to help.” Legs went back to pulling on the edge
of the tape with his teeth, while moving the gun back and forth
from me to Mahoney. I don’t know why, but the image of Legs holding
a gun on me just wasn’t all that frightening. Maybe because it was
Legs. He’d always been annoying. He’d always been a
self-congratulating pest who never conceded that anybody but he
could be right, but he was never what you’d call scary. “I can
understand your need to cover up the theft, Legs, but your own
brother! Isn’t that just a little cold?”