Life's Work (24 page)

"What was your diagnosis?"

"Precancerous lesions of the chest. A suspicious spot on the liver. Testicular tumors. I recommended a biopsy on both the liver and the testes. And I also recommended that the girl go to a specialist and have their baby tested immediately. The possibility of chromosomal damage in a case like Parks's was extremely high. Good Lord, he'd been playing with one of the fundamental fluids of life."

"Did he have the biopsy done?"

Phillips shook his head. "His reaction to my diagnosis was complete denial. To him it was inconceivable that his body could let him down. I suppose it was also impossible for him to accept the fact that he'd brought this trouble on himself."

"When did you see him last?" I said.

"Ten days ago today," Phillips said. "He agreed to stop taking steroids for a few months. He also talked about taking a few days off from training camp and visiting his mother in Montana. I think he still thought that a little rest and some chicken soup would make the tumors go away, like a cold. I gave him some capsules to take antidepressants to help him through the drying-out period. And he agreed to come back for some follow-up blood tests in six weeks."

"So he hadn't taken any steroids for several days prior to the murder?"

"If he kept his word, yes."

"And during that time he would have been experiencing a deep depression -possibly a violent one."

"The way a man reacts when he kicks any powerful drug," Phillips said. "He certainly would have been reflecting on his mistakes. From what I've heard the girl did go to the obstetrician I recommended, and the baby was severely deformed. Parks was convinced that there would be nothing wrong with the child, just as convinced as he was about the health of his own body. In fact, I think he looked on the baby as a test case -proof that I was an alarmist and that his girlfriend was behaving like a fool."

"How did she react to your diagnosis?"

"She was very frightened and very concerned for Parks and for her unborn child."

I got up to go. "Thanks," I said. "You've been a help."

"I hope so," Phillips said dismally. "In some cases, it's hard to know."
 

I thought about Parks all the way back to the Delores. If it was all so sad, I wondered why I felt like laughing. And yet that was exactly what I felt like doing. All he'd wanted was to be the best football player he could be, and he'd ended up murdering C.W. and his child, giving himself cancer, and growing breasts. Everyone that he'd believed in, everyone except for Bluerock, had betrayed him. Even his own body had betrayed him. And at the end, he hadn't even been able to turn to the girl, to C.W., whom I now thought had really loved him, and who had tried to make up for the way she, too, had betrayed his trust. In his mind, she was part of the problem -she and the child she was carrying-even before Walt told him the ugly truth. Just two more reminders of the impotence and disease that were ravaging his own body.

He had never been much of a thinker. He'd relied on his instincts, on what his body told him to do. But on those last few nights, even that circuit had sputtered and failed. At the end, there had been no thought at all. Just Bill and those antidepressant pills and the reflection of his body and the dark, hot space in between. Maybe he just sat there waiting for someone to fill that space another face, another body, someone to blame. Dr. Ashram had told C.W, about the baby on Thursday. I assumed that she'd told Bill the same day. So by Friday, the truth had become undeniable, and this pathetic, putupon, self-created Frankenstein had had no defense left against it, except the all too ready violence that had been brewing inside him in the heat. The news that C.W. had betrayed him to the police and was going to betray him again in front of the grand jury must have been the spur that had let that violence loose, that had sent it hurtling outward against the symbols of the larger betrayal he had visited on his own body. He hadn't just killed the child, he'd killed himself -the part of himself in her that was disease and madness incarnate.

What was left of him after that bloody act wasn't worth saving. I even knew where to look for him, now. Phillips had told me where he was headed-back home, back to Mom, back out of it all. He wasn't going to make it back. Perhaps he'd kill himself on Mom's embroidered rug, a final reproach to the woman he'd obviously never been able to please. Or maybe the diseases themselves would kill him. Most likely, Walt Kaplan would do him that favor. I was sure that was where Walt and Mickey and the hired gun, Habib, were headed -to tuck Bill safely away in some Montana woods, where he would never come back to haunt them in the jury box. Why Walt had decided to go to that extreme, I wasn't sure. Something had him scared. Maybe it was the murder itself, or the savagery of it. Bill Parks was clearly a madman, and madmen are unpredictable.

As I pulled into the parking lot behind the Delores, I tried to think of a way to explain it to Bluerock -to explain what a dreadful, farcical mess his friend Parks had made of his life. But the truth was, I didn't want to explain it, didn't want to listen to Otto's inevitable rationalizations, his gripes and protests. I was weary of Bill Parks, and I didn't want to hear Otto extol the pristine ideals of athleticism again. There was nothing wrong with his ideals. It was the man he was defending who'd gone indefensibly bad.

I trudged upstairs, unlocked the door, and opened it, to my surprise, not on Bluerock but on Laurel's friend, Stacey. I must have done a double take, because it took me a good moment to realize that Bluerock was sitting there too.

"Hello, sport," Otto said with a disturbing note of solicitude in his voice.

I glanced at him then took a closer look at Stacey. She was sitting in the desk chair, a straw purse in her lap, her hands on her purse, her head slightly bowed. She was still dressed for vacation in a light summer dress. Only all of the high spirits had gone out of her face. She looked the way Bluerock had sounded -as if someone had died.

"What are you doing here, Stacey?" I said uneasily. "You're supposed to be on your way to Hawaii."

She raised her head slowly. It was obvious that she'd been crying. Her punky makeup had been scrubbed off, probably because the tears she'd been shedding had made a mess of her face. Her eyes were red and puffy, and there were marks on her cheeks that she'd missed when she was washing up, little black crow's-feet where the mascara had bled down.

"Where's Laurel?" I said.

Stacey bit her lip. "She's gone," she said in a trembling voice, and began to cry. She put her hand over her face and sobbed out loud.

"Somebody better tell me what's going on here," I said nervously.

"Take it easy, sport," Bluerock said. "The kid's had a tough day."

"How did she get here?" I asked him.

"I told her to come over the last time she called. She's the one who's been calling you all afternoon. She'd been sitting alone at the airport for about five hours."

"Alone?" I said. "What happened to Laurel?"

Bluerock gave me a grim look. "She says Laurel met three guys at the airport. The meeting had apparently been prearranged. Laurel told Stacey that she was going to go to her house and talk to these guys, and that she'd be back at the airport in an hour. If they missed their flight, they'd catch another, later this afternoon." He glanced at Stacey, who was still sobbing loudly in her chair.
"Laurel never came back."

I walked over to the girl and pulled her hands from her face. She gasped as if I'd torn her clothes off.

"Why'd she go with them?" I said, pressing my face into hers. "She must have given you a reason."

"She knew them," the girl said helplessly. "She said she'd done business with one of them -a great big guy with a beard."

"What kind of business?" I said angrily.

"I don't know!" Stacey said, staring fearfully into my face. "She was friends with them. She didn't act scared. She went off on her own. And she never came back."

"Christ!" I said furiously. I felt like slapping Stacey's stupid, frightened face.

"Take it easy, Harry," Bluerock said.

"'Take it easy,' " I repeated sarcastically. "C'mon," I said, hauling Stacey to her feet. "Where are we going?"

"To her house," I said.

"I don't want to go there," Stacey said, trying to pull away from me. "I don't want to get in any trouble."

I stared at her for a moment, hearing those words again. The same ones Laurel had used about her friend G.W.

"Just get the fuck out of here, then," I said, between my teeth. "Go on. Get out!" I shoved her toward the door.

She turned back to me from the doorway, her face tearstained and terrified. "Don't I get to go to Hawaii?" she whined.

If Bluerock hadn't jumped to his feet and grabbed me by the arms, I think I would have slugged her. She took a quick look at my face and ran down the hall.

"C'mon, sport," Bluerock said. "Let's go."

"I've got to call the cops first," I said with real dread in my heart.

"I'll do it," Bluerock said, picking up the phone. "I won't give my name. Otherwise it could be a long night."
 
 

The Newport cops had responded to the anonymous tip and were camped at Laurel's apartment by the time Bluerock and I showed up on the scene. I met one of them, a patrolman, coming down the apartment house stairs to the courtyard. From the ashen look on his face, I could tell that the worst had happened.

"Somebody must have really hated her," the cop said, looking sick.

Bluerock eyed me with concern. "You sure you wanna go up there, sport?" he asked.

I pushed past the cop and walked up the six flights to Laurel's apartment. There was a knot of plainclothesmen at the top of the stairs. I recognized one of them, a lieutenant of detectives named Driscoll.

"Hi ya, Harry," he said. "What're you doing here?"

"I knew the girl," I said.

"Yeah?" He gave me a sympathetic look. "Maybe you better not go in there now."

"I think I have to," I said.

Driscoll shrugged. "It's up to you."

I followed a short uncarpeted hallway decorated with posters of Dan Marino and Joe Montana into a small living room, furnished sparely in bright primary colors. A cherry-red sofa. A yellow beanbag chair. An electricblue plastic parsons table between them. Some wickerwork hanging from the ceilings. An asparagus fern on the window sill. Another set of posters -John Travolta and Kris Kristofferson- on the walls.

A second group of cops -forensic men, judging from the pop of flashcubes- were gathered in the bedroom. I walked over to the doorway and looked in. Then I went over to the couch and sat down heavily on the cushions. Bluerock came over to me. So did Driscoll.

"The lab thinks it was Parks again," Driscoll said, after a time.

"That's what they were meant to think," I said, feeling the dullness, the lassitude of shock, spreading through me. Each part of me slowly falling asleep.

"You all right, sport?" Bluerock said. I nodded, although I wasn't all right.

"It's the same MO," Driscoll went on. "And they found some physical evidence that ties Parks into it. It was Parks, all right. The crazy bastard."

I looked up at Bluerock. "You think it was Parks?"

"You know what I think," he said. "I'm going to need a drink," I said to him.

He raised me to my feet as if I were a child. "Can you make it downstairs?"

"Yeah," I said.

But halfway down the stairs my legs gave way, and I had to lean on him until we got to the car.
 
 

We went to the Busy Bee.

I had three double Scotches in the space of a half hour, and I didn't even feel drunk. Just dead inside. About halfway through the fourth Scotch, I did start to feel the liquor. Around the fifth, I got violently ill.

I managed to make it to the john, but I didn't make it to the stall. I threw up in one of the washbasins, banging my head on the porcelain sink and sliding to the floor. I sat there on the tiles until Bluerock came in and picked me up again.

"This is getting to be a habit with you," he said with a grimace. "Let's go back to your place. Get some rest."

I shook my head. "We gotta go after them," I said to him. "They killed her."

"I know it," Bluerock said. "We'll take care of them in the morning."

"Gotta go," I said stupidly.

Bluerock hauled me out of the john.

Hank Greenburg, the bartender, took a look at me and made a face. "Christ, Harry, are you all right?"

"He's fine," Bluerock said, as he guided me toward the door. "Just had a little too much to drink."
 
 

I woke up around seven the next morning, feeling nothing but a cold, vicious rage that covered every inch of me like a rank sweat. I didn't even try not to think about Laurel, about the way she had looked when they'd finished with her. In fact, I fed myself on the image, turning it over in my mind again and again, until I was angry enough to butcher them the way they had butchered her. She'd been a greedy fool, greedier and more foolish than I had imagined. But for a few days I'd thought of her as mine.