The Last Good Day (39 page)

“Jeffrey, stop …”

“The thing is,” he said, spreading his nostrils again as he struggled for control. “The thing is, I
know
everybody does it; everybody cheats. Everybody has secrets. So that’s not the point anymore. Whatever problems there were between Sandi and me died with her. But this was the mother of my children. And somebody killed her. And they
should not get away with that.
”

“What makes you think they’re going to?”

“I’m just saying, things are starting to come together in my mind. There are questions that aren’t getting asked.”

“Are you saying there’s a cover-up?”

“I’m saying, people look after their own.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the patrol car waiting by the station entrance.

“It’s pretty damn obvious this cop was doing my wife. So who knows? Maybe she tried to break it off and he didn’t want her to. Maybe he got rough with her. All I know is that he’s the one they ought to be looking at. And if they aren’t prepared to do the right thing, then I will.”

She turned as if a firecracker had just gone off next to her ear.

“Jeffrey, don’t talk that way.” She touched his arm. “The children don’t need you to do anything crazy.”

“Everyone can’t keep looking the other way. Someone has to pay.”

“I understand, but I really don’t think this is all going to get swept under the rug. I’ve known Harold Baltimore most of my life. He’s a good, honest man.”

“He damn well better be.”

She realized that this was as far as she wanted to go in this conversation. There was something fetid and bacterial in the air.

“Jeffrey,” she said, “I promise you, I’ll call you the second I find out any more about what’s going on. But what you have to focus on is putting one foot in front of the other and letting the kids know that you’re still holding steady for them.”

“Of course. I know that.”

“So, what are you doing with your Web site in the meantime?” she asked, just to change the subject. “Are you going to shut it down and regroup?”

“What are you talking about? Things are going great.” Half-smiling disbelief broke across his face. “Why would we be shutting down?”

“I don’t know. I thought …”

“The business is growing so fast we can hardly keep up with it. Did somebody tell you otherwise?”

“No, of course not.”

You call it underwriting. I call it bloodletting.
She tried to put Saul’s exact words out of her mind so she could stay in this conversation.

“It’s just so weird that you would say that.” He pushed back the centerpiece of his glasses. “We got Honus Wagner’s mitt the other day. You know what that could be worth?”

“No idea.”

“We’re talking mid-five figures once it’s authenticated, minimum. And we’re supposed to be getting one of Rogers Hornsby’s bats next week …”

“Sounds great.”

She averted her eyes in pity, realizing how much he needed this at the moment, a woman’s look of encouragement, a sign that someone still believed in him, a little wink of light at the end of the tunnel.

“I guess you’re cruising then,” she said.

“Yeah, we’re rocking and rolling.”

He checked his watch and looked up the tracks, starting to lose momentum.

“Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be a nine-fifty-five?”

“That’s what my schedule said.”

“It’s nine-fifty-seven already. You know, I just realized I left my PalmPilot at the house, and it’s got all my appointments in it.”

“Uh-oh.” Lynn pulled a sympathetic face.

“Yeah, I guess my head is still in the wash. I better go back and get it.” He belted up his Burberry. “There’s a ten-thirty-five, isn’t there?”

“I think so. My schedule’s back in the car.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll get that.” He edged toward the stairs. “I’ll call the lawyer and tell him I’ll be late.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Okay. She got that this was an excuse. That this conversation had stripped him of so much of his dignity that he couldn’t bear to ride the train into the city with her for the next thirty-five minutes. A kind of squalid, grimy guilt backwashed over her as she realized that she hadn’t properly helped him sustain the illusion he needed.

“Hang in there, Jeff,” she called after him. “We’re all right behind you.”

“I know.” He waved. “And no offense, what I said before about Barry and lawyers. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

43

GRRRRIGGGGGGG. GRRRRRRRIGGGGGGGG.

The ground was starting to get hard from the lack of rain, Mike noticed, as he leaned over the power auger, digging a hole for a fence post on the de Groots’ property.

Grrrgg. Grrrrg.

Pieces of dirt and stone went flying as he gripped the handles and heard the buried industrial rut of blade hitting schist.
Grrrrrgggg.
He pulled the gas-powered engine closer, beginning to think that this was as deep as he could drill in this spot, that he was only trying to bore into solid stone.

He stopped for a moment to wipe his brow and swig lemon-lime POWERade. The sun was just beginning to seep through the brittle fried circuitry of trees, and the first real hint of winter’s saw-toothed bite was in the air. A part of him was still not quite wide awake, but he’d decided he had to get out here early today to finish the job and get some money coming in. He picked up the auger again and continued his digging, the vibrations going right up his arms and into his shoulders, tremoloing his spine and rib cage.
Grrrg.
He noticed the soil getting darker and wormier as he burrowed under the surface.

Would you like some ice tea?

That was how it began last spring. The chard in Sandi’s vegetable garden starting to pop up through the soil. New growth on the rose canes around the deck, the blackberry brambles putting out their leaves.

I’ll leave it in the refrigerator so it stays cold. Come in and help yourself anytime you feel like it. Just make sure you take your boots off.

For Chrissake, could she have been more explicit, short of asking, “Hey, Fallon, would you care to step in the house and lick my pussy?”
She wanted it.
It was obvious from the second she’d hired him. She was tired of that limp-dick husband of hers, who paid him in stock options from his crappy dot-com to put up the fence. She was wondering what it would be like to get a righteous drilling for once.

Grrg.
Gritty fragments flew back in his eyes, and he cursed himself for forgetting his plastic goggles this morning.

Grrrwwwwwwwww
. The grinding steel into soil slowly became the swoosh of the upstairs shower in his mind. For a few seconds, he was halfway up the stairs again, hesitating on the landing. Not wanting to cheat, knowing damn well that he was going to. A rigid digit has a mind of its own. Once again, he remembered looking down and having a melancholy moment, seeing her children’s galoshes in the front hall, their bright-yellow slickers hanging from hooks with the same black fireman’s stripe around the hems that Timmy had on his FDNY coat. You’d think that would slow a man down, wouldn’t you? The prospect of losing the things that were holding him together. But then he’d heard the shower cut off, the pipes giving a squeak of anticipation, and he knew it was too late.

Grrrrr,
the blade purred underground as he remembered how eagerly he’d bounded the rest of the way up the steps to meet his ruin, almost stepping on a yellow Pokémon figure with its arms raised and its tail in a lightning zigzag.

The shadow of sadness broadened. She’d been in the bedroom at the end of the hall, drying herself before the wall mirror with one foot up on the bed, naked, dewy, and vulnerable, as if he’d just come upon her in a wooded clearing at dawn.

He’d stood in the doorway, watching her, the moment threatening to crack open and swallow him. At first, it was that same gnawing in the pit of his stomach that he’d felt at Angelo’s Candy Store and in the Castlemans’ bathroom. But then it became something else. She became young for him right before his eyes. Her body seemed to slim and ripen. The laws of gravity reversed, wrinkles smoothed, her belly flattened, her breasts lifted, presenting themselves in all their splendor to the slant of sunlight streaming through the window.

And for a few seconds, he became young as well, no longer a man who’d disappointed his wife and been passed over for the chief’s job. He was seventeen once more, seeing Lynn Stockdale stand naked for the first time before him. He remembered how he’d felt at that moment, that a door was opening, that another kind of light was shining on him.

Standing in Sandi’s doorway, he’d felt that readiness again, that hunger. And Sandi had lowered her hands, her modesty fading, her hip jutting out like the bend in a question mark.

When they fucked, her eyes opened wide as if she was in awe of him. It had been months since Limp Dick Jeff had touched her, she said. Mike was rescuing her. Same as he was rescuing Lynn. And all the others. He lived for that vulnerable awestruck look. He was always trying to get it back again. As he was giving it to Sandi from behind, he kept seeing Lynn’s face looking back over her shoulder. Somewhere, somehow, she must’ve known what she was missing.

He put the auger aside and slammed the post into the ground. A yellow pine four-by-four. He was charging the de Groots the full price for cedar, but that was almost two dollars extra a foot and he was entitled to peck at the margins a little, wasn’t he? A man had to live. He started shoveling loose pieces of rock and gravel to hold the post in the hole so he could measure it against the other posts he’d put in. He remembered how Sandi had rolled over on the pillow next to him that one time. How she’d looked up and said,
You’ll watch over me, won’t you?
Shit, it all should’ve ended right then. He used the yellow plumb line with the leveler’s bubble attached to make sure this post was even with the last one. But then she had to go and get herself pregnant and put everything on the line. His marriage, her marriage, the job, the kids. She was a crazy bitch, no doubt about it.

He saw that the new post was an inch or two higher than the last one. He got the short-handled sledgehammer off his tool belt to try pounding in the difference.

Swwwkkk.
The thin pine sound echoed through the woods. He’d let himself get confused.
Swwkkk.
He had to try not to think about it anymore.
Swwk.
His problem was that he’d let things get mixed up in his mind: thinking Sandi could make him feel better about what happened with Lynn all those years ago, and then that Lynn could make him feel better about what happened with Sandi in the end.
Swwk.
It was only when they didn’t need to be rescued that his problems with women started.
Swwk.
The post started to lean, and he tried to hold it in place as he drove it in.
Swwk.
He smashed himself hard on the thumb, and for a few seconds everything went dim.

“Hey, man, you all right?”

Paco Ortiz was coming across the yard toward him with Mike’s customer, Dr. Richard de Groot, trailing in his blue bathrobe, a steaming Weather Channel coffee thermos in hand.

“What are you doing here?” Mike bit his lip, trying not to black out.

The thumb was just beginning to throb, only slowly waking up to the damage he’d done.

“Following up on a couple of calls we got at the station.” Paco glanced over at Dr. de Groot, waiting for him to walk back toward the house so they could begin this conversation in earnest. “Seems somebody’s been harassing Mrs. Schulman.”

“Is this about Home Depot again? Jesus, I already talked to Larry about this. What are we turning into, a police state? I can’t even go shopping anymore?”

The pain began to pulsate out in waves. He felt the thumbnail buckling from the amount of swelling underneath.

“If I were you, I’d keep my distance from that lady.” Paco half-smiled at Dr. de Groot, who’d gone back inside and was watching them through the kitchen window.

“Listen, I didn’t say anything out of line to her. I just ran into her in the middle of the aisle and made it clear that I wasn’t happy about what she’s putting me through. Next time I’ll go the other way. All right?”

“We got another call from her yesterday.” Paco’s newly shaved scalp furrowed as if some unseen hand was molding it.

“Yeah? And?”

“She said she got a message over the Internet. Some kind of half-assed threat.”

Mike took a quick look at his thumb and saw that the nail was, in fact, starting to turn the color of an eggplant.

“I don’t know a damn thing about it,” he said.

“I thought you’d say that.” Paco pressed his lips together, not in the least intimidated by Mike being five inches taller. “So here’s what I want to say to you,
muchacho.
Are you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m listening.” Mike seethed, gritting his teeth.

“I don’t know you, man.” The goatee circled Paco’s mouth like a noose. “I didn’t go to school with you. I never played football with you. I never dated your sister. When I look at you, I don’t think about whether you saved my life or whether your aunt knew my uncle. I just see what’s right in front of me.”

“What’s your point,
Paco?
”

The thumb was starting to throb so much that it felt as if it were drawing breath.

“My point is, is that there’s no credit line here. You start shit on my corner, I’m a do more than just write you a ticket.
Comprende?
I’m a come over your house, and this time we won’t worry about embarrassing you in front of the kids.”

“Now what am I supposed to do with that?” Mike squeezed the handle of the hammer, trying to restrain himself.

“You suppose to take that shit to the bank,
compañero. Estar sobre sí.
I got my eye on you.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Mike resting the hammer on his shoulder, the nail pressing down on the bone.
Yeah, I got my eye on you too,
compañero.