Authors: Bill Loehfelm
Fresh Kills (9 page)
For the second time, she didn’t rise to the bait. She just stood at the stove, flipping the pancakes.
“So you were there with Purvis,” I said. “You two discuss anything I should know about?”
She set a plate of half a dozen enormous pancakes in front of me, put butter and syrup on the table. “Eat.” She sat across the table, half an apple in her hand. “I ate my share before you got up.”
I polished off half the stack before I spoke again. “Joyce told me some things. About the shooting. About the man, the car.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” I said. “It is what it is. I just wanted you to know that I know.” I swallowed the last of my coffee, got up for some more. “Not much for Waters and Dickhead to go on.”
Julia was quiet for a long time. “I wanted to see it. The corner.”
I crossed my arms, resting the warm coffee mug in the crook of my elbow. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me. “I just wanted to. It was so . . .” She picked the seeds from the apple core, dropping them one by one on the kitchen table. “It was so ordinary.” She pressed each apple seed under her thumb, turning her hand until it cracked. “Where were you all night? Looking for a man in a car?”
She’d heard me banging the door open. I leaned back against the counter. “Maybe I should’ve been, but no, I wasn’t.”
She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms over her chest. “Joyce stays open till after four now?”
“I took my time coming home.”
“Promise me,” she said, “promise me you won’t do anything stupid over this.” She spread her hands on the table, stared down at her fingers. “Waters is convinced you’re going to make a mess.” She grinned. “I don’t think he likes you much.” The grin disappeared. “I know he doesn’t trust you.”
“Fuck Waters,” I said. “He doesn’t know the first thing about me. I’m no fan of his, or his moron partner, either. The only reason I’m around at all is because of you.”
“I know that,” Julia said. “So promise me.”
“Anything stupid is a real broad category,” I said, returning to my seat.
She crossed her arms again, waiting.
“Okay, okay,” I said. It wasn’t an easy promise to make. Her asking for it annoyed me. Why was everybody so worried about me? All I wanted was to get the week over with. I noticed she was staring at me again. What? She wanted more?
“Messing with Purvis qualifies,” she said. “Forget about your history with him for the week.”
“He’s the one with the history problem. I’m over it; I’ve been over it. Remember? I won.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I’m talking about me, not Molly.”
I pointed my fork at her. “Messing with you qualifies him for an attitude adjustment, cop or not. Just like last time. He’s already gotten his first warning.”
Julia stood to clear the table. First thing she did was take my fork away. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Leave him alone.” She leaned over me, kissed my cheek. “I can handle Purvison my own.” She laughed as she loaded the dishwasher. “Is he really still pissed at you over Molly?”
“It’s more like again,” I said. I couldn’t help it. Maybe I wasn’t as over it as I thought. I couldn’t pass any chance to one-up him.
Julia swung around to look at me, dirty frying pan in her hand. “You’re not. Tell me you’re not. You told me she was practically married.”
Oops. Not somewhere I wanted to go right then. I glanced at my bare wrist. “Hey, look at the time. I thought you wanted to go to the Mall.”
The Mall was someplace else I didn’t want to go, but even that was better than sitting through my sister’s cross-examination. “I’ll go get ready,” I said, pushing up out of my seat. “Be back in a flash.”
I left Julia in the kitchen, still frozen with shock. I grabbed some fresh jeans from my bag and headed upstairs to shower.
She stared at the TV, flipping channels with the remote.
“Day after Thanksgiving, crack of dawn,” I said. “Maybe earlier. I’m not looking to hurt anyone.” I sat next to her on the couch, pulled on my boots. “Let them impeach me, I’ll be smiling Tricky Dick-style all the way to the chopper. I wouldn’t serve a day in jail, either. The neo-hippies and trustafarians would flood in from Boulder and Seattle, spring me and make me the granola king. Dave Matthews would play the coronation and I’d get laid like crazy.”
Julia clicked off the tube. “So now you’re gonna be president?”
“Why not? Why let the rich boys have all the fun?” I tightened my belt. I was down to the last notch. “A couple more election cycles and I’ll be old enough. I’d be an awesome president. I don’t like anybody and I don’t owe anybody. We’d have a truly independent man in the Oval Office for a change.” I looked around the den. “Growing up in this house, I understand oppression and tyranny. I could operate with only the best interests of the little people at heart.”
She turned to me. “But the little people like their malls. Your sister likes her malls.”
“Ah,” I said, wagging a finger, “but is that in their best interests?”
Julia tossed my car keys in my lap. “I don’t think your past would hold up under scrutiny. And I don’t think Molly’d appreciate
Dateline
camped outside her door.”
Dateline
camped outside her door.”
“Molly needs a little more excitement in her life,” I said, standing, putting on my jacket. “We going or not? I want to get this over with.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m excited about,” she said, throwing her arm over my shoulder as we walked down the hall. “Spending some quality time with you.”
“Quality time?” I said. “At the Mall?”
She smiled at me as I locked the front door behind us, letting me know I was free to talk but she was going to ignore what I said. She looked at my car. “I can’t believe this old beast is still running,” she said. “It’s older than you.”
I studied my car, a gold Galaxie I’d bought for a couple grand half a dozen years ago. I’d earned the money washing dishes. She looked rough, dings and dents here and there from Staten Island potholes and drunken kisses at guardrails. Under the hood, though, all her parts were in order. Never stalled, always started on the first turn, even in cold weather. I’d never learned shit about cars and she’d cost me a fortune over the years. It was worth it though. When I was a kid, I’d wanted a convertible, something long and sleek, but when I went looking, long and sleek was way out of my price range.
Then I’d seen the Galaxie, parked on a North Shore side street, “For Sale” written in soap across the cracked windshield. It charmed me. I hadn’t seen an awful lot of them around Staten Island, for one, where the IROC and the Monte Carlo reigned as princes to the mighty King Cadillac. A week later I was paying for it, the retiring firefighter who was parting with it looking askance at the paper-clipped piles of twenties I dropped on his kitchen table. “Dishwashing,” I’d said. He’d nodded. “Tip-outs,” I’d said. “Uh-huh,” he’d said, still not looking at me, pulling the clips off and counting each stack to five hundred. I was about to tell him to keep his goddamn car if he didn’t like where the money came from, but then he handed me the keys.
Now, looking at her six years later, I realized that except for my leather jacket, I’d hung on to that car longer than anything else I’d ever had.
“She’s a beauty,” I said. “Never lets me down. Though the gas mileage stinks. It’d cost me a fortune if I ever drove it anywhere.”
“You love the old gal so much,” Julia said, “do her a favor and give her a bath.”
I pointed down the block and a half to Richmond Avenue. “Bus stops right there. Runs to the Mall all day, every day. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“And miss my quality mall time with my brother?” she said. “Never.”
“That’s a cute expression, by the way,” I said. “‘Quality time.’ Back in therapy? What are we going to talk about next? ‘Closure’? Maybe we’ll ‘make amends’ and ‘turn it over’ while we’re at it.”
“Careful, big brother, your twelve steps are showing,” Julia teased. “That was your gig, remember?”
I walked around the car and unlocked the passenger-side door. I’d taken a shot at AA after I dropped out of college. I told my sister, and no one else. The way she reacted, you’d have thought I was Christ back from the dead. But I’d had all the Jesus I could handle in high school and had heard enough about what a loser I was at home. It didn’t take. Julia took it hard when I dropped out. I felt bad about it, but not bad enough, I realized, to go back to the meetings.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Get in.”
Julia slid past me into her seat. I closed her door too hard. She jumped. Great. Great start to your quality time, I thought.
The night’s rain had cleared and the bright sunshine in my eyes revived my headache. The royal treatment at breakfast and the long hot shower had done wonders for my mood. Now, I could feel it turning black again. I slipped on my shades as I climbed behind the wheel. Julia had a pile of paperbacks on her lap, retrieved from the floor of the car. She read the authors’ names to me.
“Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett. Oh, a classic, Edgar Allan Poe. I remember him from what? When you were in the eighth grade?”
I said nothing. Just started the car and backed out of the driveway.
She opened the cover of the Poe. “Aww, look. Look what it says. John Sanders, Junior. Homeroom 8-203.”
“This is quality time?” I asked. “Breaking my balls?”
Her smile vanished; she turned away to look out the window. For the second time in three minutes, I felt like a complete dick. I fought my mood. I wanted Julia to have at least one afternoon of peace before the real shit started.
“Sorry,” I said. “Tim, from work, wanted to borrow those. The Poe is for his kid. He’s gotta do a paper on him for school.”
“That’s sweet of you,” she said.
“Tim’s covered a lot of shifts for me,” I said, “and he’s got a smart kid.”
She looked at the books one more time then tossed them into the backseat. “I thought maybe you were writing again. Remember those cop stories you wrote in high school?”
“Unfortunately. God, they were awful. Too much time watching
Hill Street Blues
.”
Hill Street Blues
.”
I’d spent hours locked in my room writing those stories. I thought they were brilliant. They were terrible, and all were minor variations on the same theme: the handsome rogue cop forced by a damsel in distress into bucking the captain’s orders one more time, his badge, his heart, and his life on the line. There was much kicking in of doors, much tumbling down staircases in cheap motels. Corny one-liners flew faster than bullets. Just the memory pained me.
“I can’t believe I ever showed those to anybody,” I said.
“They weren’t so bad,” Julia said. “I mean, you were fifteen, sixteen? They were good for your age. They were exciting. Lots of action. You should’ve stuck with it. Every time I watch reruns of
NYPD Blue
or
CSI
, I think of you and those stories. All that tough-guy talk, always a pretty girl in there somewhere.” She smiled. “Mom liked them, except for the curse words.”
NYPD Blue
or
CSI
, I think of you and those stories. All that tough-guy talk, always a pretty girl in there somewhere.” She smiled. “Mom liked them, except for the curse words.”
“Mom was biased,” I said, “and too generous. She wanted to throw a party if we passed a spelling test.”
“True,” Julia said. “Dad ever read them?”
“Fuck, no,” I said. “I don’t think he could read anything that wasn’t written in X’s and O’s. Except for maybe box scores.”
“Ever ask him to?”
I frowned. “Please. By then, I knew better.”
“Ever show them to Molly?”
“She thought they were okay. Thought the girls always looked like her.”
“We all knew that,” Julia said. She turned in her seat. “She told me once, when she was over at the house for something, that you wrote her the most beautiful love letters.”
“Christ,” I said. “She told you that?”
My throat caught. I had written Molly love letters. Piles of them. Because it wasn’t enough we saw each other all the time, that we talked every day on the phone. Forget cop stories, I could’ve been in the CIA, the way I snuck those letters out of the house and into the mail around my father. I caught myself reciting her parents’ address under my breath. “Overwrought teenage bullshit,” I finally said. “Full of criminally bad poetry. I pray to God she burned them.”
“
I
thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard,” Julia said.
I
thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard,” Julia said.
“You overestimate me.”
Julia turned in her seat, her hands pressed to her chest. Her eyes were big with the memory. “C’mon, Junior. Imagine being a fourteen-year-old girl and hearing your big brother was a closet romantic, a poet.”
“A normal fourteen-year-old would think it’s gross,” I said.
“Even then I knew I wasn’t normal.” Her face lit up again. “I was so flattered Molly would tell me that. God, I thought she was the coolest girl I’d ever met. I thought if I could be like her, someonewould write me love letters.” She paused. “I’d love to see her again. Tell her that.”
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