Earth Angel (8 page)

“Thank you,” she said. But she didn’t move. She looked over my shoulder with an odd expression that made me look, too.

Two uniformed police, a man and woman, were walking very quickly straight for me.

T
HE DETECTIVE TORE OPEN A PURPLE FOIL PACKET AND REMOVED A
purple tablet. He dropped it into the glass of water in front of him. The water foamed and fizzled as if it were boiling.
It turned purple. He looked up at me and grinned. “Cool, huh?”

I didn’t respond. I’d been sitting at the police station for over an hour before this guy finally came over and told me to
follow him. He was about fifty, but with a boyish Charles Grodin face and a fist-sized birthmark in the shape of Idaho on
his neck. He brought me into this little room. I looked around at the walls, which were covered with travel posters of Montana.

“There
isn’t
one,” he said, staring into the foaming glass.

“One what?” I said.

“One-way mirror. Like in the cop shows. This room doesn’t have any spy glass.”

“I thought that was two-way mirrors, because you can see through it both ways.”

“Common fallacy.” He sipped from the glass, licked the purple foam from his upper lip. He smiled happily. “Shit, that’s good.
Just like Fizzies. You ever have Fizzies?”

I shook my head.

“Too bad. When I was a kid, everybody had them. They were tablets, like Alka-Seltzer, except when you dropped them in water,
they turned the water into a soft drink. They had all kinds of flavors. Then they just disappeared. I wonder why.” He sipped
again, smacked his lips. “My nephew’s a food chemist for Kellogg, works on artificial flavoring for cereals. In his spare
time he made these new tablets, just like the old Fizzies but fortified with vitamin C. Wants me to invest in it. What do
you think?”

I shrugged. “How should I know?”

“I don’t know. You’re walking around with fifty grand in cash, I figure you must know something about finance.”

“The money is legally mine, I told the other officers all that.”

“Yup, and it all checks out, too.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook. He flipped it open and
studied his notes. “You’re Dr. Season Gottlieb, from Irvine, California. You inherited a bunch of money recently. Your boyfriend
shot some people and was killed by the police. All checks out.”

“You haven’t heard of me? You haven’t heard of the shootings at the clinic?”

He drank more of the purple water and shook his head. “Believe it or not, Ms. Gottlieb, we’ve got our own crimes here in Chicago.
I don’t go looking for cases in other states.”

Again, I was relieved. I’d just assumed my face had been memorized by every law enforcement official in the country. I figured
the cops probably suspected me of something, maybe being an accomplice. During the investigation the police had been extremely
kind to me, but I thought that was just a cover, trying to get me to admit to something.

“If everything checks out,” I said, “then why are you holding me?”

“We’re not holding you. We’re questioning you.”

“What right do you have to question me if I haven’t broken any laws?”

He looked me in the eye, his face suddenly stern. “I don’t think that’s an area you want to pursue, Dr. Gottlieb. My advice
is we keep this on a friendly basis, you being here to show cooperation.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “Because
if you want to be charged with a crime I‘ll find one and I‘ll fucking make it stick, too. You understand me?”

I tried to keep my face as hard as his but I didn’t feel that confident. “Why am I here?” I asked.

He leaned back against his chair and frowned. “The little girl said you tried to give her money. We check with her mother,
seems you tried to do the same with her. Hard to know how to interpret this. The mother’s worried there’s some kind of insurance
scam involved, or even a child molestation thing. I mean, you did lie to the mother about who you are, right?”

“Did you tell them who I really am?”

“Not yet.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”

He picked up the glass and swirled the purple water around, watching the small whirlpool inside. “Why would they care who
you are?”

“Don’t you guys read the local papers? My fiancé shot and killed her cousin in that shooting spree.”

He set the glass down and looked at me with surprise. “So you wanted to give them fifty grand because your boyfriend killed
their cousin?”

I nodded. It sounded dumb coming from him.

He started laughing. “You must’ve been shocked as hell when the mom didn’t take the money. Heh, heh. Christ in a bottle. Then
you try to give it to the kid and she calls the cops on you. Man, your luck couldn’t generate the light on a lightning bug’s
ass.”

I stood up. “Can I go now?”

He pointed to my chair and gestured for me to sit.

“I haven’t committed a crime, Detective. No one’s at risk, the community is safe from my largess. There’s no reason for me
to be here.”

He gestured again at my chair. “Please,” he said softly.

I sat.

“Here’s the deal, Dr. Gottlieb. I can see what you were trying to do, trying to help out that family. That’s nice. But you
were deceitful in your methods and ended up scaring both the mother and the daughter. Right now that woman is sitting home
afraid some strange kidnapper or molester is after her daughter.”

“Do you think she would have taken the money if I’d told her who I really am?”

He shook his head. “Probably not. But that’s not the point. You meant to help, but you just made things worse. For them and
for yourself.”

“Well, I promise not to approach them again. Does that finish our business?”

He stared at me without speaking, just looking at me, trying to decide something. Finally he sighed. “You got any friends
in Chicago? Somebody who can come down and pick you up?”

“No.”

“Don’t answer so fast. Chicago’s a big town. Just about everybody knows somebody here. Think about it.”

“What for? I already told you I wasn’t going to bother the Grovers.”

“I’m not thinking about them, I’m thinking about you.”

“Me?” I smiled. “I’m perfectly fine. The little voices in my head tell me so. And as soon as the mother ship arrives you’ll
be as sane as I am.”

He laughed. “I don’t mean to imply you’re not fine, Dr. Gottlieb. It’s a very generous thing you want to do. It’s just that
I’ve worked with victims before. Sometimes they
blame themselves for things that happen, things they can’t control.”

“I’m a doctor, Detective. I spent my time in the psychiatric rotation.”

He picked up the glass of purple water and drank. “Tastes just like grape. The kid’s a genius. Sure you don’t want to try
some?”

I shook my head.

“You think of anybody you know locally yet?”

“You can’t keep me here, not legally,” I said.

“I have no intention of keeping you here, Ms. Gottlieb. You are free to go. Would you like me to have an officer take you
to your hotel?”

I looked at him and he looked at me. I could see that he really was trying to be helpful. “I do know somebody,” I said. “I
haven’t spoken to him in a couple years. He might have moved.”

“Give me his name, I‘ll get his number, listed or unlisted.”

I gave him Daryl St. James’s name and he left the room. Daryl had been in med school with Tim and me. A brilliant mind who
knew his medicine as well as many of the teachers. But he lost interest somewhere along the line, acing some tests and not
even showing up for others. Eventually he flunked out. Tim and I sent a wedding invitation to his parents’ address, and a
few weeks later a wedding gift without a card arrived from him with a Chicago return address. I had yet to write a thank you,
though I guess returning the gift would be more appropriate now.

The detective opened the door waving a piece of paper. “Got it,” he said. “Let’s go give him a call.”

I sat at the detective’s desk and dialed the number.

“Gotham City,” the voice answered.

“Daryl?”

“Yup. Who’s this?”

“Season Gottlieb.”

“Jesus, Season. I heard about Tim. I’ve been meaning to write. I’m sorry.”

I interrupted him and asked him to pick me up at the police station. He asked if he should bring a lawyer and I said no, I’d
only been helping the police. I hung up the phone.

“He’ll be right over,” I told the detective.

“Good deal.” He handed me the bag with the fifty thousand dollars. “By the way, since the good Samaritan thing didn’t work
out…” He reached into his jacket and pulled out half a dozen foil packets, all different colors. “You’ve got grape, cherry,
strawberry, cola, root beer, and cream soda. Try ’em, see what you think.” Then he handed me a slip of paper with his nephew’s
name and phone number. “If you’re really looking for something to do with that money.”

“T
HIS IS WHAT
I
MOST REMEMBER OF YOU
,”
HE SAID
. “T
HE ONE THING
that sticks in my mind—”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” I said.

“It’s nothing bad. Just something that happened back in med school. You probably don’t even remember it, but it struck me
somehow. I don’t know why, but whenever I think of you, it’s what I picture.”

“It’s not the autopsy thing. Christ, I wasn’t even involved. Well, maybe technically.” He was referring to a patient who had
died from multiple gunshot wounds, a transient who stumbled into a gang turf war. Dr. Devon had valiantly tried to save him
in an eight-hour operation that finally turned hopeless and became merely an academic exercise in emergency techniques for
the benefit of the med students. The next morning Dr. Devon was going to lead us through the autopsy. A couple of hours before
the class arrived, Tim sneaked into the morgue and planted a Pez dispenser in the form of Tweety Bird deep in the body’s chest.
Later, when Dr. Devon found it, he plucked it wet and slimy from the wound and said to the rest of us, “Well, class, looks
like a .44 or .45 Pez. We find the person who
has the Sylvester the Cat dispenser, and we’ve got our killer.” He popped open Tweety’s head, plucked out a Pez, and tossed
it into his mouth with a crunch. Then he offered one to Tim, who also ate it. Tim became an instant legend and the favorite
of Dr. Devon. Everyone assumed, since I was Tim’s girlfriend, that we’d done it together, so I basked in some of the reflected
glory.

“The Pez autopsy,” Daryl laughed, slapping the steering wheel. “Shit, I’d forgotten about that. Okay, that’s two things I
remember about you.”

“Not me. It was Tim. I was just the lookout, and I tried to talk him out of it the whole time. If you’re going to remember
me for something, it had better be something
I
did.”

“It is. But it’s so small, you probably don’t even remember. It was the Christmas party, our first year. Remember? At, uh,
what’s-his-name’s house? Kid with the bowling-ball Adam’s apple.”

“Kyle?”

“Right. Kyle Leopold. He had that gigantic waterbed that he was always talking about in front of girls even though he never
got laid once in med school. But everyone else borrowed it to screw on. Like a rite of passage or something: you couldn’t
practice medicine until you humped on Leopold’s waterbed. You and Tim ever do it there?”

“I don’t remember,” I lied. Tim and I had made love on that thing a couple of times, but neither of us much liked it. Too
much motion and Kyle’s room always smelled of pine air freshener, which he sprayed before and after anyone used his room.
“Did you use it?” I asked Daryl.

“Hell, yes. Ginny Farr and I spent five days on that thing housesitting for Kyle over Thanksgiving vacation.”

“You and Ginny Farr?” I turned to look at him. He looked at me. He was behind the wheel of his car, the same old Datsun he’d
driven in med school. Even then it had over a hundred thousand miles on it. He’d had it painted since
then, a bright, candy-apple red, but it was a cheap paint job and reminded me of a pale old woman with too much rouge on her
cheekbones. “‘Ginny, Ginny, Ginny. Ginny, won’t you please come home,’ “ he sang. “Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. We
used to play that song all the time. She complained that Ginny was not a very popular name with song writers. Actually, the
song is about Jenny, not Ginny, but I don’t think she ever knew. Close enough.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. He navigated us through the dense Chicago traffic without any fuss or attitude, treating
me as if it had only been seven days instead of seven years since we’d last seen each other. His hair had been short and spiky
back then; it was long now, blond and shaggy, hanging past his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.

“Peter Horton,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re wondering who I look like. Peter Horton, the guy who played Gary on
thirtysomething
. That’s what people are always telling me.”

“Wasn’t Ginny Farr married?” I said.

“Still is. They live in Buffalo, New York. Have two daughters. He’s a chiropractor, she’s a dermatologist. They’re very happy.”

He pulled the car into a narrow alley and wove the car around the trash bins.

“You ever see her?” I asked.

He laughed. “You mean do we have one of those
Same Time, Next Year
deals. Medical conventions in Hawaii where we fuck for a week on the beach and then return to our mundane lives of quiet
desperation?”

“Something like that.”

“No. She sends Christmas cards that include a little family newsletter addressed to ‘Dearest Friends and Family.’ I have no
idea why I’m on the list, we didn’t exactly end our affair on the best of terms. Her husband found out,
threatened to leave her, she asked me what to do. I told her to go back to her husband, she threw my baseball autographed
by the entire Cubs team through my window. Never did find that ball.” He swung the car into a parking spot behind a brick
building. The parking space had yellow stenciling: “Reserved for Gotham City. All Others Towed. No Kidding!”