SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (6 page)

He looked at his wristwatch: 6:45, Mrs. Lawrence, his housekeeper-babysitter, would be arriving in another few minutes. She would raise holy hell if Willie was still in bed.

“Willie!”

“Yessir, I’m getting up,” came the muffled voice.

“Five minutes or I drag you up.”

“Okay, Dad, okay,” Willie burrowed farther into the pillow and prayed for sleep to return. No kid he knew had to get up at seven o’clock in the morning during the summer.

#

Mrs. Lawrence was a punctual woman. When her employer expected her at seven in the morning, she arrived at seven on the dot.

She knocked smartly on the DeShanes’ door before entering. As she closed the door behind her, she announced in a loud voice, “Mrs. Lawrence is here and on time. Jack, ready yourself for breakfast. Willie, outta that bed, boy. It’s a brand-new day!”

Jack grinned into the bathroom mirror when he heard his housekeeper’s voice. When was she not on time?

And when had she failed to announce it?

Willie grumbled and slid from his bed. “Oh, geez,” he muttered, blinking away sleep. “Dad?”

The call brought Jack to his son’s bedroom. “What, son?”

“Never mind.”

“Yeah, I know. You don’t want to get up. You don’t want to be cheerful and polite. You think it’s unfair.”

Willie smiled. “Yessir, how’d you know?”

“The eggs are breaking and the coffee’s perking. Come on now,” Mrs. Lawrence called from the kitchen.

“Since when was life fair? Let’s go, jock.” Jack turned and headed for the kitchen.

“Yeah, since when,” Willie repeated, and drew himself up to his four-feet-one-inch height and stretched long lanky arms above his tousled head. There was no fighting the combined forces of his father
and
Mrs. Lawrence. She was the most determined woman he had ever known. It was seven o’clock on Monday morning, June fifteenth. At least this way he had the whole day to enjoy so maybe they were right about that early-to-bed-early-to-rise garbage. Maybe.

It was the smell of bacon frying that finally pulled him, against all good sense, to the kitchen and into the company of the two people who made up his family.

The small wooden table in the dining alcove off the country-sized kitchen was covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth. Dishes of food made a rough circle in the center of the table. When Jack entered the sunny room, he always found perfect order. Betty Lawrence presided over this order. Her dark skin gleamed like polished mahogany. The silver in her black wiry hair gave her the air of a matriarch.

“It’s getting cold and don’t blame me,” she said peevishly. “I work and slave, slave and work, and what do I get?” She never waited for an answer. “I get late-bodies, lazy bones, and grumbling children. And what will the department think of a young cop coming in to work with egg on his face because he lazed around when I
told
him it time to be gone?"

"Now, now, Mrs. Lawrence. I'm not going to be late."

“Well, where’s the boy?” She poured two glasses of orange juice and set them squarely above the silverware.

“I’m right here, Mrs. Lawrence.” Willie sauntered to the table and took his place without looking at the black woman.

“Did you wash your face? Did you comb your hair? I can see for myself you didn’t bother to tuck in your shirttail.” She moved to the counter to pour Jack’s coffee. “I don’t know what’s gonna come of the boy,” she said to the canister set.

“I did too wash my face.” Willie did not want to get into anything complicated. One out of three was not so bad. And what could he do about that cowlick that stuck up from the back of his head, bop it with a baseball bat?

Mrs. Lawrence ladled out heaping spoonfuls of grits into Jack’s plate. He raised a palm to stop her, but she ignored the gesture. Feeding the troops was her business.

“I seen where that Mexican boy got shot,” she commented. She began to ladle smaller portions of the grits onto Willie’s plate. “It seems a crying shame to me, but who am I? I ain’t no policeman. I’m only a working woman, and what I say don’t count.”

Jack’s appetite vanished. “I was there, Mrs. Lawrence. It couldn’t be helped, believe me.”

Willie’s head shot up in excitement. “You were there, Dad? Honest? You never been in a shooting before, huh? Did you shoot him? Did he try to hurt you?”

Jack wearily rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand. He wished he had not mentioned his part in the mess. “Willie, you’re going to have to get it out of your head that all police are trigger-happy cowboys. No, I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“Well, who did? Did you see ‘em, Dad?” Willie's interest was bright and that bothered Jack.

“Willie, listen to me,” Jack glanced at his housekeeper and she turned her back to busy herself at the sink. “I’m not playing cops and robbers. It’s not the way you see it on television. When people die, sometimes it’s a terrible thing, and in this case it couldn’t be helped. The boy was on drugs.” Jack carefully emphasized the last word. “He didn’t know what he was doing. We tried to talk to him, calm him down, but he tried to stab my partner and…and…it just happened. It couldn’t be helped, but we aren’t proud of it.

"You understand, Willie? None of us wants to hurt anyone. That young boy’s life is lost now, and the men who had to kill him have to live with that fact. It's not easy. It's hard, real hard.”

The excitement went out of Willie’s eyes and his face changed into a sad, serious expression. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“It’s okay, Willie. I just don’t want you to think a policeman is some kind of god. We make mistakes and we suffer. We try to do our best to protect society and ourselves at the same time. Sometimes it’s not just or fair, it’s dirty and sad.”

“Well, then.” Mrs. Lawrence bustled around the table and began to remove the margarine tub and empty orange juice glasses. “I’m telling you they’re going to razz cop DeShane if he don’t get himself moving. Time’s wasting and the morning’s waning. And ain’t that the truth,” she added as she went into the kitchen.

Jack and Willie finished their eggs, grits, bacon, and toast in silence. Mrs. Lawrence would never admit it, but she was battling her own demons on injustice, prejudice, teenage death, and world chaos as she scrubbed the skillets and pans until they sparkled.
These people need me
, she told herself.
They need my schedules and my strength, yes they do. They’re nothing but babies, both of them, and the big one don’t even know it, no sir.

Jack rose from the table and adjusted his holster. He gave Willie a warm smile and pressed down the obstinate cowlick as he rubbed his son’s head. “Do what you’re told,” he said, donning the visored cap that all policemen despised.

“Don’t worry, he’ll do what’s told him,” Mrs. Lawrence called after him. Impulsively she winked at the boy.

“Bye, Dad.”

“See you later, jock.”

As the front door closed, Willie tried to make a quiet exit from the table.

“Whoa, boy. Pick up the mess first. You know the rules. You can’t fool Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Aw, geez. I feel like a girl when I gotta clean the table.”

“Didn’t your daddy tell you about what is and what ain’t fair?” She stood over him, her hands on her hips.

“Well, what ain’t fair is leaving me to the messes when you’re perfectly capable of helping. And what is fair is doing some work, picking up after your ownself.”

Willie knew there was no way out of it, so he started stacking the plates and forks.

“Now ain’t that better? That’s a whole sight better than lazing around. He’s a good boy,” she told the saltshakers.

SAMUEL BARTHOLOMEW watched Jack DeShane’s departure for work more out of habit than anything else. His life had narrowed to such inconsequential pastimes. It was depressing, but not likely to change anytime soon.

At seven-forty while Sam stood patiently in front of a second-floor lace-curtained window, Jack DeShane opened his front door and crossed the old-fashioned porch. On the bottom step he eyed the street from one end to the other before going down the brick walk to his 1974 lemon-cream Monte Carlo.

Sam liked the way Jack walked. It was the satisfied walk of a man in tune with his world. The young cop had not yet been muddled and confused by his police work. He still saw the world broken up into two categories; good and evil. Sam saw in Jack the reflection of his own past.

Th Monte Carlo roared off down the street toward the precinct station. Sam stared after it for a long time, then went to the bed stand where a fresh pot of coffee brewed in a percolator. Coffee in his room was Maggie’s idea. She had supplied him with all the utensils and a can of Maxwell House. She had even found her late husband’s favorite mug, the one with the lifelike tits sticking out on one side, and presented it to Sam with a peculiar smile. Sam was not fond of the mug--who needed chunky pink tits on a coffee cup in the morning? But he would never hurt Maggie’s feelings. Besides, she was exciting in bed and what sixty-year-old retired, disillusioned, lonely cop could argue with that?

The coffee was strong and its smell filled the room. After pouring a cup he slid open a drawer of the bed stand and pulled out a quart of Old Kentucky bourbon. He added a splash to the cup and returned the bottle to the drawer. He sat on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts and rubbed his knotted graying chest hair as he sipped.

Maggie would kill him if she knew he had taken to drinking in the morning. But the dull ache of despair knew nothing of time. Bourbon dulled despair’s pangs for a while and brought heavy sleep. Then it crawled into the hours between lunch and dinner, chains rattling, sneering at him with contempt, and Sam drank more bourbon until despair retreated once again. But lately even the bourbon did not work. Despair woke when he woke and stretched when he stretched and pissed when he pissed.

Before Sam knew Jack DeShane despair had certain limits. It did not own Sam’s soul. But destiny moved the young cop into the house across the street and pushed him into Sam’s life. Despair began to tell tales of old age and weakening desire, sodden drunkenness, and a replay of his own gradual, forty-year decay in the guise of the rookie cop.

Of course Sam knew he could always run. There were alternatives. He had a small savings and an early retirement pension. He could move out of Maggie’s pleasant house and go home to the Georgia hills. He could go to Atlantic City and doze on park benches with other old rummies and play the slot machines with his laundry money. He could move to Key West and luxuriate in aqua waters, catch tarpon, drink in the same bars Hemingway frequented.

The truth, however, could not be circumvented; no one needed Sam Bartholomew in Georgia, in Atlantic City, in Key West. He would only be another shipwrecked piece of debris. At least in Houston where he had worked for forty years to clean up the scum from the streets he had Maggie Richler with her blue-tinted hair and voluptuous, amazingly preserved body. She needed him. It was a startling revelation. Sam did not know why exactly, but Maggie needed him. And now the rookie needed him too. If he turned his back on either of those needs, it would not matter where he ran. Despair would tag along. It was only when he was with either one of those people that despair backed off and hid in the corners.

He heard Maggie’s tread on the stairs. In three painful gulps he downed the doctored coffee before she reached his door. She always knocked before entering, which struck Sam as funny since most nights he slept in her bed, but he paid for room and board by the month and Maggie never let him forget it. Not until he was willing to join his life with hers under the law and a marriage certificate hung on the wall.

“Sam? Can I come in, honey?”

Maggie Richler claimed to be fifty-one, but Sam figured she lied. She was probably his age: sixty, the magic, tragic six-oh. It did not matter. Sam would have loved her if she were a hundred and two, but how do you convince a woman of that?

She stood in the doorway looking at him in his shabby shorts, potbelly stretching out his waistband, fly half open and revealing thick pubic hair, his bald pate showing delicate skull bones. She smiled and Sam thought someone had switched on a light in the room.

“I have to be going,” she announced.

“A court reporter’s job is never ending,” he said, patting the bed beside him for her to sit.

“What are you going to do today?” She asked the same question every day. She sat beside him and caressed his thigh. Within seconds she had a thatch of wiry curls in her palm and pulled at them gently, teasingly.

“I don’t know what I’ll do today,” Sam answered honestly. Enforced idleness was harder to manage than a full working day, and he had not yet found the trick. The old black despair covered his shoulders, and for a minute he thought of the three revolvers in his closet.

“I’ll come home and fix you lunch. How’s that?” She let go of his thigh and tickled his neck before kissing him on the earlobe.

“You bet,” he whispered, taking her right breast into one of his hands.

Maggie pretended to swoon and slapped at his clutching hand before rising from the bed.

“Drink your coffee,” she admonished, her heels already tapping across the bare floor. “There’s food in the fridge, remember.”

“You know I don’t eat breakfast.” Sam picked up his empty cup and touched the tits with his fingertip. The only thing on his mind was a shot of bourbon.

“I know you don’t take care of yourself, Sam Bartholomew. I’ll be back at noon to do it myself.” The door closed softly. Sam stood at the window and watched her leave. An ardent observer, he chronicled the departures and arrivals in his neighborhood. As he watched Maggie’s green Plymouth leave the curb, his eyes caught some movement at the DeShane place. Willie flew across the porch, as if freed from a dungeon, and sailed down the walk to the street. He peered up and down the block. It was too early for play. Other children were still asleep. Willie shrugged and swaggered off toward the corner, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Sam sighed as his hand reached for the drawer. What wouldn’t he give to be young again. To be ten years old and free and happy, the world wide open with endless opportunities.