Bad Radio (4 page)

Blue lights were strobing against the hallway walls as police cruisers pulled up to the nearby private drive, reserved for ambulances and other emergency vehicles that made their too-frequent trips to the home.

Anne was sitting on the couch, a wadded up tissue in one hand. Her eyes were cold and hard now, furious. “Why?”

I wish I could have told her I didn’t know, because I knew damn well that being connected to this in any way was going to make me a target for her anger. But it was better that she was angry at me instead of being eaten up by the thought that her grandfather had been brutally murdered for no reason. “You ever see what was in this box?”

“That? They killed him for a souvenir? It was just a goddamn piece of metal he picked up in the war! He said it reminded him of his last big fight. It was worthless. Why would they want that?” It was more of a challenge than a question.

Faint sirens filtered in through the broken glass in the other room, growing louder by the second. “It was a piece of metal, right? Curved like a one-quarter of a flat ring, about six inches long? Kind of like a metal ruler, but curved. And it had two sharp spikes sticking out from the back?”

Before I could say anything else, the front door slammed back against the wall and two police officers entered the room with their weapons drawn. They took one glance at the two of us, and then both of them swiveled to point their guns at me, the guy with the blood all over his shirt.

“On the ground! Now!”

Hands out and fingers spread, I got down on my knees, then on the ground. I said, slowly and clearly, “I have a weapon behind my back, under my shirt, and a license to carry in my wallet.”

“Mike, he’s okay, his grandfather knew my grandfather. He came here with me,” said Anne. “He’s … he’s in there,” she said, pointing at the bedroom. She turned away and her shoulders shook, fury melting into grief in the space of a heartbeat.

“Both of you stay here.” The officer that Anne had spoken to walked to the bedroom, while his partner kept me covered. He came back a minute later and nodded to his partner, who removed my pistol and wallet. He looked at my ID and my concealed carry license, and then backed up.

“Okay, sir,” he said, “you can get up now.”

I stood up, and both men holstered their weapons.

Anne’s friend held out a hand. “Sorry, but you can’t be too careful these days. Mike Miller.” He had a round, boyish face and a mustache that looked like he spent a lot of time on it. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. I shook his hand.

“Abe Griffin. I understand. Better safe than sorry.”

“Dispatch said shots fired, that was you?”

“Yes. I fired at the man who killed Patrick.” I chose not to mention that Anne had also fired a shot.

“Hit him?”

I forced myself to keep looking at his eyes and not look away. “I don’t know. But he ran away under his own power.” Yes, Officer, I shot him dead in the center of his chest, but he didn’t even fall down, please lock me up for being crazy.

He turned to Anne. “Annie, are you okay?” She wiped her eyes and nodded. “Can you tell me what happened?”

When she spoke her voice was low and steady. I didn’t know if it was strength or shock that I was seeing, but knowing who raised her, I suspected the former.

“We were talking to my grandfather and there was this crashing sound from the parking lot. Abe went to see what it was, and as soon as he was gone two men broke in and…” She stopped and ran a hand hard over her eyes. “And attacked my grandfather.”

“You remember anything else?”

“No. Mike, they killed him for nothing! He’s just an old man in a nursing home, why would they do that? He didn’t have any money or jewelry or anything! They just killed him and grabbed whatever they could out of his dresser.”

Mike hugged her hard, which I don’t think is standard police procedure.

“You want to stay with us tonight? April can make up the guest room. She’d love to see you.”

Anne shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m okay. Really.”

He looked at her, clearly unhappy, then at me. I shrugged.

“Alright, but call me if you need anything, okay?”

“I promise.”

We spent the better part of an hour giving our statements while the small room filled up with uniforms of all kinds. Local cops, state troopers, medical examiner’s office, paramedics, photographers, the whole circus had come to see Patty “Cake” Wolinsky, lying on the floor in his hospital pajamas. It was a lesson that I had already learned when Maggie died. There is no dignity in death.

They let us go, even though I raised a couple of eyebrows with my lack of a telephone number, cellular or otherwise. If not for Anne’s roots in town, I would have spent the night in jail, at least.

The parking lot was a nightmare of rotating and flashing lights of every color, painting the busy, serious folks rushing around in lurid, disco colors. I walked over to the remains of my faithful truck, now surrounded by photographers and automotive forensics guys like ants on a grasshopper.

“This your truck?” asked an unsmiling man holding a camera the size of his head.

“It was.”

“Yeah. Sorry, but you’re not getting it back for a while. We’re going to impound it for the investigation. But we’ll contact you when you can pick it up.”

“Sure. You mind if I get my bag out of it before I go?”

“Sorry, man. No can do.”

I nodded, unsurprised.

“I’m so sorry about your truck, Abe,” said Anne from right behind me.

I turned to face her. “Not your fault.”

“Let me drive you home. You’re stranded out here, without even a change of clothes. It’s the least I can do.”

“That’s kind of you, really. But you’ve been through a lot tonight and it’s a long drive. You wouldn’t make it back until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I think you should go home and get some rest. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get home fine.”

“Please? I really don’t want to go and sit at home by myself right now, okay? Since your truck is all smashed up, I’ll drive you home. I want to.”

The entanglement of obligation. The sticky, unbreakable bonds of helping or being helped. These are exactly the things I didn’t want.

“Okay. Thanks.”

5

A
nne drove us away from the frenzied lights and swarming officials and towards the relative quiet of the highway. Barely half a mile away, all traces of the commotion were lost behind us. People don’t realize how secretive the world really is, easily swallowing up wonders and atrocities alike, aided only by a few yards of distance and people’s unwillingness to look.

Anne was discovering the truth of this now, having spent her entire life with her grandfather, and only tonight getting her first glimpse of his world.

I watched her drive in silence for a few minutes. Her face was stiff and her knuckles were white on the wheel. I’m not good at comforting people, but I gave it a try. “Hey,” I said. “You want to stop somewhere and grab a bite to eat? It’s a long drive and I missed supper. I bet you did, too.”

She inhaled, like she was remembering to breathe. “Yeah. Some coffee probably wouldn’t hurt, either.”

We pulled into a greasy spoon called Ginger’s, drawn in by a billboard boasting “All night breakfast and burgers! Never closed since 1961!”

The night was still young, so the place was noisy and crowded. We stood in front of the battered hostess podium until an unsmiling woman swooped in and acknowledged us with a terse nod, grabbed a couple of greasy plastic menus, and towed us into the fray.

“Can we have that booth by the window?” I asked. She changed course in mid-stride, slapped the menus down hard on the table, and left without a word.

“I think she likes me,” I said, sliding into the orange vinyl splendor of our booth. A tiny laugh escaped Anne’s lips with a sound that could almost have been a sob. She settled back into the booth and some of the tension left her face.

The coffee started coming as soon as we sat down, which was the second sign of a truly great diner, the first being surly-but-efficient service and the third having to do with heavenly pie coming out of a pit of a kitchen whose grease accumulation was now a structural feature. The coffee tasted surprisingly good to me, but that might only be because I’ve been drinking nothing but my own for the last couple of years.

I ordered a cheeseburger with a side of hash browns — you never eat at a roadside diner without getting the hash browns — and Anne got some kind of egg white omelet with broccoli in it called the Guiltless Pleasure. I’m sure the name was half right.

While we waited for our food, I kept an eye on our car, which was easy from the booth by the window. I didn’t expect any trouble, but I’d look pretty stupid falling for the same trick twice in one night.

Anne excused herself to go to the restroom, so I spent my time alternating between watching the car and the bathroom door at the rear of the restaurant.

All around me people were sharing meals at crowded tables. The sudden sound of laughter would occasionally ring out clearly over the general din, granting the shabby diner a more festive air than I would have expected from a roadside hash house. I guess life hadn’t stopped while I was hiding out on my farm after all.

Guilt nudged me because I felt good sitting here about to share a meal with another human being, surrounded by happy, energetic people. This feeling of guilt was born of … what? Penance for feeling anything but grief? Loyalty to the past? Cowardice? I honestly didn’t know. Withdrawing from the world hadn’t been a choice, it had been a straight, inevitable path. For the first time in five years, I felt the tiniest twinge of regret about my decision to end my time in the world.

Anne and the food arrived at the same time, and for a few minutes there was only eating and nodding at each other with full mouths and raised eyebrows. As I expected, the hash browns were outstanding. The cheeseburger was good, too, especially since it had more bacon on it than any of the breakfasts I could see.

“I can’t believe you’re eating that,” said Anne.

I shook the softball-sized burger at her, making the greasy bun flop. “This is what we used to call food. That stuff you’re eating would make a monk cry.”

She rolled her eyes at me, which I took as a sign that she was feeling a little better.

We made small talk while we ate. I figured that when she was ready to talk about more serious things, she’d bring it up on her own. We were waiting for a couple of slices of pie when the dam broke.

“I’ve been going over what happened tonight in my head, over and over again. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

I didn’t say anything. I’m sure it would have sounded good to tell her that it would be okay, and that eventually she would stop thinking about it, but that’s never been true for me. If anything, some scenes carve themselves a permanent place in your mind the same way that the unceasing flow of a river creates a canyon.

“You and my grandfather only spoke for a minute before … before everything happened, but I can’t make any sense of it. How did you know his old army nickname was Cake? Even I didn’t know that until last year, and that was from reading his old letters from the war when I was helping to move his things into the home.”

I shrugged. “I told you I was Abe Griffin.”

“I’m serious. Also, he said a word I don’t know. Baitbag? And then you said it was like Warsaw, and he agreed. What was that about? Did you know that my grandfather was wounded in Poland in the war?” She looked at me for a long second, her eyes going hard. “Did you set this up? He seemed to recognize you as soon as you walked in. Have you been visiting him? To convince him that you were his old army buddy? Is that why he sent me to get you?”

I nearly choked on my burger. “Are you asking me if I secretly set up this whole meeting so that I could shoot my own accomplices and then wait around to get questioned by the police afterwards? After I arranged to make sure you knew where I lived? I don’t know what you do for a living, Anne, but I’m going to bet that your day job isn’t police detective.”

She put up her hands. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. Nothing makes any sense, and I don’t know what to think. Just, please, help me understand what’s happening.”