Practice to Deceive (20 page)

C
YNTHIA HELD THE
front door open for me as I slowly climbed the outside steps of my house, using the crutches to swing my right leg up, my left leg hanging limp. I hobbled through the doorway and saw the debris. I dropped my right crutch and pushed Cynthia back toward the open door, hissing, “Stay out.”

With my right hand, I pulled the Beretta from its holster, activating it. I headed into the living room, moving slowly, leaning on the left crutch. The contents of the house were torn and smashed: paintings and photographs ripped from the walls; lamps, tables, and chairs tipped over and smashed; cushions slashed, their contents dumped on the floor. Even my aquarium had been overturned, twenty-nine gallons of water warping my hardwood floor, the dried, discolored bodies of golden barbs, black mollies, pearl gourmis, red swordtails, and silver angelfish littered among shards of broken glass and gravel. The sight left me nauseous with rage, anger, and sorrow churning my stomach. The only thing that could’ve made it worse would have been fire. But it wasn’t just willful destruction. My house had been searched.

I heard Cynthia call my name. I told her to come in. She looked at me and then the living room. “Wow!” she said. It got worse as we went from room to room.

S
ERGEANT
J
OHN
H
AWKS
was a New Mexico range cop come to Minnesota; a man who fit all of Hollywood’s criteria of what an ideal law enforcement officer should look like: tall, tanned, wearing a perpetual squint. He did not like Roseville, he did not like Minnesota, he did not like the entire Midwest for that matter. However, he did like his wife, a Roseville native who was once homecoming queen at Alexander Ramsey High School, and that’s why he had moved here.

“Anything missing?” he asked.

“Not that I can see,” I told him. I flashed on my guns, left undisturbed in the drawer of the pedestal of my waterbed, the drawer hidden by the sheets, blankets and pillows ripped from my bed and piled in front of it. “I’ll know better after I clean up the place.”

“We’re not going to catch who did this,” Hawks told me.

“I know.”

Hawks tapped my left foot. I was sitting on a rocking chair, my foot resting on a hassock. “You’re sure having your problems,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“I’ll send you a copy of the report for your insurance company.”

I nodded.

“I’ll also have my patrols keep a close eye on your place for a while.”

“I appreciate it.”

Hawks did a quick three-sixty, pausing briefly on Cynthia who was stacking my CDs on the dining room table. “See you around,” he said.

“Take care,” I told him. And then he was gone.

Cynthia left the table and moved to the rocking chair, kneeling next to it, her hands resting on the arm. I didn’t mind that she saw the tears in my eyes.

“The bastards wrecked my wife’s house,” I told her.

I
SENT
C
YNTHIA
home. She wasn’t happy about leaving. She wanted me to go with her, spend the night at her place. I declined the invitation, telling her I wanted to be alone for a while, telling her I would be fine. She kissed me before she left and said she was sorry about everything.

After Cynthia had gone, I started sweeping the glass off my dining room floor into a dustpan—not an easy thing to do on crutches. That’s where they got in, the dining room, through a window they’d smashed. Amateurs. A professional doesn’t smash anything. A professional goes through the door.

I sat on my good leg and pushed myself across the hardwood floors, dragging a kitchen garbage pail behind me, tossing what was irreparably broken, returning to the shelves and tables what was not. It was painful work, and not just because of the throbbing in my leg. It occurred to me as I went that none of the photographs of friends and family, the vases, ancient tea pots, candleholders, antiques, and collectibles were mine. They had all belonged to Laura. I had displayed nothing of my own. Four years after her death, the house still belonged to her. It still bore her personality, her taste. The sofa and chairs, drapes and rugs, tables and lamps: She had chosen them all. My contribution was merely a nod, a shrug, a curt “Whatever.”

Suddenly, I felt like a stranger in my own home, like I needed to introduce myself to the rooms and closets and furniture—like I needed to somehow make them my own. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to. They had belonged to Laura, not to me. Laura and my daughter were the only things in the house that I had truly considered my own. With them gone … What was I going to do? Gut the house and buy new stuff? Carve my initials in the doorframe? For the thousandth time since my wife and child were killed, I seriously considered moving.

I
T WAS PUSHING
eight
P.M.
, and I was still working on the ground floor. When my stomach started making gurgling sounds, I thought about stopping and fixing something to eat—the kitchen was largely undamaged; shattered plates and glasses, my silverware dumped on the floor, that was about it. That’s when I heard the loud knock on my front door. The Beretta was in my hand before its echo died. Using one crutch, I hobbled to the door, turned on the outside light, and peeked through the spy hole. It was a pizza delivery man, dressed in the red, white, and blue colors of a national franchise.

I opened the door tentatively, hiding the Beretta behind the frame.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Taylor?” he asked. “I have your sausage, Canadian bacon, and pineapple. Thirteen-fifty.”

“I didn’t order a pizza.”

A pained expression crossed the youngster’s face—this sort of thing must’ve happened to him all the time.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Course I’m sure,” I replied.

“Holland Taylor?” he said and recited my address.

“That’s the place, but I didn’t order a pizza.”

“Sorry to bother you,” he said and started down the steps.

“Wait!” I called, the aroma from the box causing my stomach to scream louder. “What kind of pizza is it again?”

THIRTEEN

I
SAVORED THE
pain as I shuffled to my Chevy Monza. A little pain was good. It was God’s way of reminding me that I came
this close
to meeting Him face to face, and wouldn’t I have to pay hell then.

Nick walked with me through the Park Service lot, slowing his gait so that I could keep up. Nick was not a happy man. I had kept his loaner for nine days without a word to him. He would have called the cops if he hadn’t read that I had already been arrested. As it was, his loaner had been held for ransom in the St. Paul Police Department’s favorite impound lot. It took me four hundred and twelve bucks to set it free, including towing charges.

He led me to the Monza. “Get ’hold of yourself,” he said, then popped the hood and unscrewed the radiator cap. “Look,” he said.

I did. Instead of rich green coolant, I found greasy black oil. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m sorry, Taylor. She’s gone.”

“No way!” I cried.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing I can do,” he told me.

For a moment I was seized with panic, would not believe him, vowed to get a second opinion. He nodded. He understood. He went into detail, listing damaged car parts and prices, but I only heard his voice, not his words.
She’s gone, she’s gone
, my mind repeated as I stared at the Monza. Tears welled up in my eyes. She was gone.

“Hey, Taylor. Taylor!” Nick shouted at me. “You’re not going to go postal on me are you, whip out an Uzi and start spraying the joint?”

I shook my head.

“Need a ride home?”

I nodded.

“Come on,” he said and led the way back to the shop, moving quickly. I followed on the crutches. I heard him muttering several steps in front of me, “Man, get a grip. It’s only a car.”

I
FOUND A
young man and his fiancee circling my house when Nick dropped me at my front door. The man smiled and approached with his hand extended, the woman following behind. I took his hand and then hers.

“Can I help you?” I asked. If they were clients, why had they come to my home instead of my office?

“It’s a beautiful house!” the woman exclaimed.

“Thank you.”

“We’d like to see the inside,” the man told me. “Your ad said you have hardwood floors?”

“Ad?”

A
SECOND SET
of house hunters was leaving just as Cynthia pulled into my driveway.

“Who were they?” she asked. Instead of explaining, I gave her a wet, sloppy kiss. “So, what’s the word on your car?” she asked.

After I explained about the Monza’s demise, Cynthia smiled.

“What?” I asked her.

“Do you realize that tomorrow is our twenty-third anniversary?”

“Excuse me?”

“Twenty-three weeks to the day since we started seeing each other.”

“How do women remember that stuff? Men never remember that stuff.”

“It’s genetic,” she answered. “Speaking of anniversaries, I think a gift is in order.”

“What do you give on twenty-three-week anniversaries? Paper? Cotton?”

“Cars.”

That stopped me.

“Cars?”

Cynthia smiled. “Let me buy you a car.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m rich, sort of,” she reminded me. “Let me buy you a car. C’mon. You need a car, and my buying it will cheer up both of us.”

Now, some men might have been offended by such a suggestion. And others might have been hurt. Me? I looked deep into Cynthia’s eyes. They were the color of Hershey’s Kisses, and sometimes I could see everything I ever wanted in them. Like now.

“Sure,” I said.

“Really?”

“Why not?”

“No macho nonsense?”

“None.”

“Honestly?”

“It’s a small sacrifice to make for the good of our relationship.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

W
E WENT CAR
shopping. Cynthia drove, sitting erect, her hands in the ten and two positions, her gaze shifting regularly from the street ahead to the rearview mirror to the side mirror to the street. She was twenty-four when she had learned to drive. I was sixteen, riding with my dad. When Cynthia was sixteen, she was riding the pole in a Minneapolis strip joint.

We cruised the lots on Highway 61. The dealer at the first lot spoke with the voice of an overtrained radio announcer. He could have been from anywhere or nowhere. And he all but ignored Cynthia, which must have taken a great deal of concentration considering how attractive she is. The only time he spoke to her directly was when he pointed out the vanity mirror under the passenger-side visor.

“What do you think, dear?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t buy a car from this primping peacock of a sexist pig if he threw in the Hope diamond.”

As we drove away, I asked her, ‘“Primping peacock of a sexist pig’?”

“I’ll do better next time.”

I didn’t give her much of a chance. I hustled Cynthia back to her vehicle after only a brief tour of the next dealership on the highway.

“Didn’t you see anything you liked?” she asked.

It wasn’t the cars, I told her. It was the salesman. “I wouldn’t buy crap from a man wearing a toupee,” I announced. “A man who wears a toupee, you’ve got to question his judgment.”

“I take it you don’t approve of hair replacement systems.”

“System my ass. It’s a toup. If I lose my hair—and I probably will—I intend to take it like a man. You don’t see Sean Connery wearing a toupee.”

“Except in movies.”

“That’s different.”

“If you say so.”

The third dealership was the charm. Cynthia got it into her head that she had to buy me a Saturn. She liked Saturns. But we had never actually sat in one. As we crossed the lot, I spotted a vehicle in the used car section.

“What is that?” I asked.

The dealer steered me right to it, bypassing the shiny new Saturns all in a row without comment. The car was a 1991 four-door Dodge Colt, ninety-four thousand miles, terrific condition. It was a light tan and if you squinted, you could see a Honda or a Toyota or a couple of the Ford series. It was an automatic, but with my leg I wasn’t going to be using a clutch for a while, anyway. I took it for a test drive. I liked it. I said, “I’ll take it.”

“You’re kidding,” Cynthia said.

“It’s perfect.”

Cynthia stretched out her arms as if taking in the dealer’s entire inventory of new Saturns. “You can have any one of these,” she announced. “I’m buying.”

“I’ll take this one,” I said, tapping the hood of the Colt.

“But why?”

“Neutral color, small, unobtrusive …”

“Exactly.”

“Cynthia, you’ve forgotten what I do for a living.”

“What, you can’t follow people in a Saturn?” she wanted to know.

T
HE DEALER WAS
very efficient; he wrote us up in a hurry. No lowballing, no double dipping, no grounding or flipping—none of the tricks that make customers mistrust car dealers with such a passion. I told him, the next time my girl wants to buy me a car, he’s going to get my business. He liked that.

Cynthia walked me to my new Colt, kissed me goodbye, and said she’d call later that evening. I opened the car door, and the interior light flashed on. I took a moment to disconnect it. I sat behind the wheel, rolled down the window, took a deep breath of early spring. That’s when I heard Cynthia scream my name. I was out of the car and hobbling toward her as quickly as I could, cursing my slowness, putting more weight on my left leg than I was supposed to, ignoring the pain. She was standing several yards back from her car, her hand over her mouth like she was silencing herself.