The Last Good Day (22 page)

“So did Jeanine say if he ever found out she was getting it somewhere else?” he asked.

“That wasn’t my impression. But you’d probably have to ask her yourself. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

“You can say that again.”

“Excuse me?” She squinted.

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

The stain was expanding like a bullet wound.

“Michael, is this all really part of your investigation?”

“Why? What else would it be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to take her eyes off the blot. “I just keep getting the feeling that you came here to talk about something else.”

“Well, we still do have a lot of unfinished business, don’t we?”

“I thought we’d decided to let that lie.”

“Oh, did we?” His eyes locked on to hers.

“We were talking about Sandi.” She looked away, trying to get him back on track. “And Jeff.”

“I know what we were talking about. He stopped pulling down the Benjamins, and she started looking around. A man without his wallet on him isn’t worth a damn. Same thing as what happened with you and me.”

“Oh, boy.”

She had a sinking sense of déjà vu as she watched the blot change shape, like a nova exploding.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s not sugarcoat it. You dumped me because my mother kept books of Green Stamps in the cupboard. And my father drove a Rambler with the windows up in the summer so people would think he had air-conditioning.”

“I thought we were talking about
Sandi.
” She tried to frost him with a level glare.

“We would be, but you already called Harold and told him everything, didn’t you?”

He was less than three inches from her, closer than any man besides Barry and a few subway riders had gotten in eighteen years.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little unprofessional?”

She raised her eyes, calling his bluff. Who’s going to blink first? Usually, you were asking for something if you looked at a man that long and hard.

“Maybe,” he said.

“So why are we getting into all this?”

“I dunno.”

He stared back at her, letting the silence form. As it went on, it became heavy, then uncomfortable, and then dangerous. She thought of the long agonizing buildup in a pirate movie in which two ships slowly, slowly draw close enough to lower their cannons and fire a broadside at each other.

“I mean, this thing with Sandi, it got me thinking about all this other old crap I got up in the attic,” he said finally, tapping the side of his head.

“What are you talking about?” She stumbled back against a stool.

“I’m saying it didn’t have to turn out the way it did.” A muscle worked along the side of his face. “With you and me.”

“I’m sure both of us have regrets,” she said as calmly as she could. “But don’t you think we both have more important things to worry about right now?”

He looked down, lost in thought for a half-minute. Letting the silence fill the room again.

“It’s all right,” he said, just before it became unbearable. “I’ve decided to forgive you.”

“You’ve decided to what?”

“I’ve decided to let it go.”

“Excuse me?” She blinked. “
You’ve
decided to forgive
me?
”

“Why? You got a problem with that?”

The threat in his voice was unmistakable. She remembered the time he hit her. That rattlesnake-quick backhand outside Gary Livingstone’s party senior year. A flash of light and she was on her back, bleeding from the mouth, his silhouette smoldering against the backdrop of sycamores. What stayed with her wasn’t so much the numbness in her jaw, the looseness of her bicuspid, or even the trickle from her split lip. It was the way he shut his eyes and twisted his mouth after he’d done it, as if he’d always known that this would happen but couldn’t stop himself. And how he’d picked her up like a broken doll and gathered her in his arms, kissing her and begging to be forgiven.

“No, I don’t have a problem with it.” She noticed ink dribbling farther down his shirt like heart’s blood.

“Good.” He nodded. “Life’s too short to hold a grudge. You’ve just gotta let that shit go so it doesn’t poison you.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.” She cast a quick look toward the door.

“So gimme a hug,” he said, starting the staring contest all over again.

“Oh, Michael, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Just one little hug.”

“Really.” She returned his gaze, having reached the edge of her resistance. “I have to get back to work, and I’m sure you do too.”

“Come on, one hug. It’s not gonna kill you.”

Before she could answer, he took her in his arms, nearly lifting her off the floor. He was a couple of inches shorter than Barry, but broader across the chest, and something about the way he held her suggested that he still had some rights to her body, like a former house owner walking through old rooms. For a moment, she let her chin rest on his shoulder, remembering how good this used to feel.

“Michael, come on.” She tried to gently push him away.

His arms wrapped more tightly around her back, as if he were holding on to a mast. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s okay.”

“No, Michael.” She felt his breath on her scalp. “Really.”

But he wasn’t listening. “It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry.” His arms dropped down into a tightening loop around her waist, his ribs pushed against her breasts. She squirmed, trying to get away, bringing her knee up, and he took the turning of her hip as an invitation. One of his hands eased its way into the back of her waistband, searching for the plush dimpled spot right above the cleft. And as his musculature closed in around her, she caught a scent like red wine and glue and realized that she was about to end up with an indigo stain on her shirt as well.

20

JEFFREY LANIER SAT
on his front steps in a Mets jersey and gray sweatpants, cradling a black mobile phone against his neck and disconsolately studying the search warrant before him.

“So, what time
can
you get here?” he asked the defense lawyer his accountant had recommended. “I’m twisting in the wind.”

“I got an evidence hearing for Skeezy G. in Manhattan in five minutes,” said Ronald Deutsch, his voice cutting in and out on the staticky line.

“Skeezy what?”

“He’s a big rap guy. He does that ‘Slap My Ass, Bonita’ song my son loves. Just tell me what the warrant says.”

A half-dozen Riverside police officers moved through the big house behind Jeffrey, collecting carpet fibers and hair samples in plastic evidence bags and cardboard boxes full of clothes and papers.

“Oh, God, let me look at it.” Jeff adjusted his glasses and leaned to one side as a young sergeant with a unibrow and a premature double chin hurried past him carrying his wife’s Dell laptop. “It says, ‘In the name of the People of the State of New York,’ blah, blah, blah, ‘there is reasonable cause to believe that certain property, namely clothes, tools, tissue, hair, bloodstain on the living room wall, kitchen knives,’ blah, blah ‘will be found at twenty-two Love Lane.’ Jesus, what
a fucking nightmare.
”

He took off his glasses and put his wrist up to his eyes.

“Whoa, where’d they get that business about blood on the wall?” said Ronald Deutsch on the cell phone. “I thought they only went in the bathroom to get fingerprints when they were there yesterday.”

“I don’t know.” Jeff shook his head. “The only people who’ve been in the living room are me, the kids, the grandparents, the babysitter, and her friend Lynn …”

Putting his glasses back on, he watched a dull glint of sun on a squad car’s chrome fender narrow into a hard white gleam.

“Well, one of them must’ve said something to the police,” said the lawyer. “We’re gonna have to deal with that if we want to get the search thrown out later.”

“All right, so what time will you be done in court?”

Paco Ortiz came out of the house and stood beside him on the steps, waiting for him to take a break from the phone conversation.

“The earliest I can be out to your place is four-thirty, buddy,” said the lawyer. “Sorry about that.”

“Shit, that’s two and a half hours.” Jeff put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Sir, we don’t want to be taking your house apart unnecessarily.” Paco tugged on his earring. “So would you mind telling us if you have a workshop in your basement or some other place where you keep your tools?”

“What tools?”

“You don’t have saws, hammers, pliers?”

“My wife said we were married almost ten years, and she never even saw me pick up a screwdriver.” He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “Ronald, are you hearing this?”

“Only let them look in the areas specified by the warrant … ,” the lawyer said, electronic interference starting to scrub out his voice. “And … can you hear me? Don’t give them any … all right? And don’t answer any other questions until I get there.”

“Ronald, I’m losing you.”

The signal cut out as commotion rose in the house behind him. Couches were being moved, rugs rolled up. Tremendous banging echoed from the second floor. Jeff heard officers yelling at one another inside like a bunch of Bavarian tourists who’d just stumbled upon a beer garden. And then a long slow creak of wood timbers ending in a sudden painful crack brought him to his feet.

“My children lost their mother two days ago and now they have to see their home torn apart?”

“We’re being as careful as we can, but we need to be thorough.” Paco nodded sympathetically. “You can understand that. We all want the same thing here.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course, but …”

“In-laws got the kids?”

“Yeah, they took them to Rye Playland, but …” Jeff felt all the blood start to drain from his head.

He steadied himself against the railing. “You know, my little guy wants to have a party when Mommy finally comes back.”

Paco raised an eyebrow. “You lay it out for him?”

“He won’t believe me.”

He heard the garage door being pulled open and pictured the apparatus of his breastbone lifting, revealing his raw beating heart.

“I’m sorry to be putting you through this, Mr. Lanier,” Paco said. “We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

The sergeant with the unibrow and the double chin came around the corner from the garage, toting a white-and-brown paint can. “Hey, look what I found.”

He hoisted it high so they could all read the label for the gallon of Thompson’s Wood Protector.

“Well, how about that?” Paco pulled his mouth over to one side of his face. “Where’d you find it?”

“Sitting right there in the garage, when I first went in. I didn’t even have to look for it.”

The detective smoothed his goatee and looked down at Jeff. “You want to tell me about this?”

“What?” Jeff shrugged. “It belongs to one of your guys. Keeps the wood from rotting, I guess.”

“ ’Scuse me?”

Paco looked from Jeff to the can and then back again.

“One of your guys was doing our deer fence this summer. The guy who was here with you yesterday. Mike Fallon. Old friend of my wife’s. I thought you knew that.”

Paco’s head became a stubbly sphere of clefts and ridges. “So, what’s it still doing here?”

“Beats me. I don’t get that involved. He took two or three other cans with him when he came to pick up his tools last week.”

The sergeant’s mouth opened slightly.

“So Mike was by in the last week?” Paco asked, the skin wrapping tight over his skull again.

“Yeah, sure.” Jeff stared at him. “Don’t you guys talk to each other?”

21

“HE DID
WHAT?
”

Barry sat up quickly, as if he was about to choke. He’d started off doing one of those tender just-hold-me things with Lynn after the kids went to bed, but it somehow turned into a whole hot fleshy triple-X-rated adventure during which they were bouncing around the four-poster like pinballs, falling off the mattress, tonguing and humping wildly on the floor. Eighteen years and she could still intrigue and startle, still beguile and enthrall, still draw him in so deep and rock and roll him with such abandon that half his relatives, the School Board, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir could all walk in the room and he wouldn’t be able to tear himself off her. But then … a huff. A restless shifting of the hips, an upward tilting of the torso. A murmured “I’m sorry … I just …” Okay. He backed off: she needed time. Her best friend was dead. Come on, man. Call that dog back from the hunt.

And then she suddenly climbed off the floor and up into bed and laid this story on him about her ex-boyfriend showing up at the studio.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” he said, getting in beside her. “This guy’s supposed to be investigating a murder. What’s he doing coming by the house unannounced in the first place?”

“He said he had some more questions.”

“I’m sure he did.”

He propped up his pillow and punched it a few times as he pictured Fallon smiling down at him in the train station parking lot.
You trying to tell me she’s never mentioned me?

“You didn’t let him think it was okay to make a play for you, did you?”

“Of course not.” She pulled the linen sheet over her breasts. “I told him to go away.”

“I just couldn’t help noticing that you were a little cagey when I asked you about him before.”

She sighed and started to tug a blanket away from him. “It’s complicated.”

“So you keep telling me.”

He felt the shifting of her weight on the bedsprings. It had taken him years to truly understand that when you marry someone, you marry a whole history. Not just the bloodlines that give your son the big nose and your daughter high cholesterol. You marry close friends, old records, inside jokes, and long-standing Friday-night traditions. You marry into arguments you never made, deals you would’ve never agreed to in a million years, promises you could never hope to keep.

“Then are you going to fill me in on some of this deep background or am I just going to have to go blundering along, stumbling over my own dick?”