Read You Don't Love This Man Online
Authors: Dan Deweese
You Don't Love This Man (34 page)
“I didn't get along with my mom when I was a teenager, either,” Catherine said. “And I'm sure that was an especially hard time for all of you.”
“But she never said or did anything like that to me. Maybe she
was
on vacation. She never talked about arguing with her mom, never complained about any rules, never argued about the custody schedule. You hear about kids struggling when their parents divorce, acting out or being defiant or whatever they call anger these days. But I always thought Miranda was happy.”
“Maybe she was.”
The empty tables, the silent dance floor: I did not want to be in that huge, dark room. “So why would she hide from me today?”
Catherine was peering at me again. “When was the last time you ate anything?”
“Probably breakfast.”
“It's past four. You need to eat. You've seen videos of people fainting at weddings, right? You don't want that to be you. If you even make it that far.”
I'm sure that by that little addendum, Catherine meant if I didn't faint from hunger before the wedding even began. My first thought, though, was that she meant if I lived that long.
The ballroom door opened again, and this time it actually was Detective Buccholz who stepped into the room. He held a thick file folder under his arm, and took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for some new level of conflict. “I'm sorry for the delay, but I think we can take care of this fairly quickly now,” he said. “You must be the service manager, right?”
“Yes,” Catherine said.
“Wonderful. You may go.”
“You don't want to talk to me?”
“No.”
“But I'm the one who was actually there during the robbery.”
“I understand that. And now you may go.”
Catherine eyed him with unhidden suspicion. “Do I have to? Can't I stay to help answer questions?”
“You are free to go,” he repeated with the same precise courtesy as before. And opening the ballroom door as if to usher her out, he added: “Please.”
She looked at me. The beige pantsuit she had been wearing all day remained spotless and unwrinkled, but when I realized, meeting her eyes, that the freckles I had noted on her face that morning had disappeared, I thought: When did she stop to put on makeup? And why do I never notice? Or why, today, am I so aware of this? “Give me a call when you're finished here,” she said.
She walked out of the room at such a swift pace, and without even a nod in the detective's direction, that her compliance was clearly intended to insult. The detective, however, nodded politely as she passed, and then closed the door quietly behind her. When he returned to me, he even seemed amused. “She seems like an excellent employee,” he said.
“Often,” I said.
“So a few minutes ago, you were amazed at my age,” he said. “But I'm a bit amazed, too. Because at my age, and with my years of experience in the department, I don't work weekends anymore. I should be at home right now, napping in front of a baseball game. But one guy's on vacation, and another is pretending to be sick, so here I am. And I'm confused, so what I'm going to ask is this: What the hell is going on? Why is that kid out there ruining my afternoon?”
By that point, of course, I felt I had figured out the best way
to tell my side of the story. “He's playing junior policeman. And he seems to think it's his job to make everyone miserable. But the whole thing has nothing to do with me. I wasn't even there.”
“Where were you?”
“I was at my ex-wife's house, getting ready for our daughter's wedding. Her wedding today. In a couple hours.”
“And that's why you've been reluctant to spend time with John today.”
“I spoke to him. This morning. But he's convinced that because this guy robbed me a long time ago there's some kind of deep connection between us, and if I sit down and look at old photos with him, it will result in a big breakthrough. He just will not accept that it has nothing to do with me. So regardless of what else happens, could you write somewhere in my file that I had more important things to worry about today, so I didn't particularly care about the bank, or its money, or who took it? But that this kid just will not accept that a coincidence isn't necessarily meaningful?”
He smiled. “I would be happy to do that for you, but there's a problem: I don't have a file on you. I'm not sure why you think I would.”
“But you're holding something,” I said. “What are you holding?”
“This,” he said, raising the folder, “is a file we have on the guy who robbed your bank this morning. We have a file on
him
, because we keep track of crimes and the people who commit them. I'm not denying that you have better things to do today, or that you have a right to feel harassed. It's just that there's no place in the paperwork where we note whether an individual victim felt inconvenienced. Everyone feels inconvenienced.”
His use of the term
victim
grated, but I let it pass. “But you must
have notes on the first time this guy robbed me, right? You do write down the things people say?”
“Let's see,” he said, setting the file on the nearest table and opening it up. There was such a profusion of pages and forms, of typed information and material taken down in various handwritings, and of photos of objects and places, that as the detective flipped through the pages, I could discern almost nothing at all. It wasn't until he was toward the bottom of the file that he said, “Here. This is my handwriting.”
“Am I allowed to see this?”
“Probably not, so just tell people I looked at this in a very secure manner. But here it is.” He paused, apparently reading through something, and then said, “So he asks you to give him money, you don't respond, he pistol-whips you, takes a bunch of money, and leaves.”
“Right,” I said. “That's it. So what are all of the rest of the pages in there?”
He began paging back through the papers and photos again. “I'm a little reluctant to tell you, because you're obviously very sensitive about your belief that your relationship to this case is just a coincidence.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying he targeted me on purpose?”
He frowned, clearly trying to figure out how to explain something to me in simple terms. “You live in this guy's area,” he said. “Or he lives in yours, depending on how you want to think about it. He robbed you twenty-five years agoâwe got his prints that dayâand then he was quiet for a few years. Then he robbed a bank out in Greenville, then he's quiet for a couple years before he's back here, but across town, where he hits a place for two thou
sand dollars. It's always the same: he walks in, robs a single teller, and gets out. Seven years later, over in Weaver, we have him hitting a grocery store branch for three thousand. A few years after that, he's in Clarkston, and it's a really good day for him, because he actually gets all of five thousand dollars.” The detective flipped though several more pages, but too quickly to actually be reading them. “There are maybe half a dozen more in here, but they're just variations on the same theme. It looks like he only brought a gun a couple times, back in the beginning, and then after that he's had no visible weapon. And he left prints early on, but he hasn't left prints for a number of years now. So maybe he thinks he's getting away with this stuff.”
“He's gotten smarter about it, at least.”
“Only if you think committing federal offenses for no more than a few thousand dollars is smart. And only if he's naive enough to think this isn't going to catch up with him. We could get him
today
. It looks like your teller got a dye pack in with the money, so we know that two minutes after this guy left, there was an explosion of bright purple paint somewhere in the neighborhood.”
“I'm sure he knows about dye packs.”
“Of course he knows they
exist
. But the note he wrote today asked your teller to pretty please not give him one, and then she did anyway. So has he actually dealt with one of these things before? Did he have a plan for dealing with it? Two minutes is two minutes. And an exploding dye pack is often the first in a series of events that ends with someone in handcuffs.”
“I guess. Though if he's gone twenty-five years without getting caught, I don't see why he couldn't go twenty-five more.”
Buccholz looked at me as if I were a child. “You're thinking about this as if it's an on-off switchâas if succeeding once means
you'll be able to get away with something forever. But I've been involved in law enforcement my whole life, and I can assure you that the rule is that the longer you try to get away with something, the higher the odds are that you're going to get caught. I don't see how this guy has managed to pull this off for twenty-five years, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is his last job. We have prints, a dye pack, photos and video, and we know he lives in the area. I'm not allowed to bet on whether or not we're going to catch someone, but if I were, I'd give this guy an over/under of twenty-four hours.”
“He's gotten away with this for twenty-five years, but you think you'll catch him within the next twenty-four hours?”
“I don't think
I'll
catch him. I don't run very fast anymore, and I have no intention of chasing some guy and wrestling him to the ground. It's not personal. There are officers all over town keeping an eye out for him right now. His image has been forwarded to multiple jurisdictions and levels of law enforcement. I don't have to catch him personally. He will just, at some point, be caught.”
“I see.”
“That's why your belief that this is all a coincidence doesn't really hold. You've been a bank manager in this city for the last twenty-five years, and he's been robbing banks around here for the last twenty-five years, so it's not really a coincidence that he robbed you a second time. You two are in the same business. And that's pretty much the
opposite
of a coincidence.” He closed the folder. “But statistical likelihoods are just my personal interest. What was it that was on
your
mind?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Nothing is on my mind.”
“You said you were worried about far more important things today. That's why you don't want to play games with the kid out
there in the lobby, who, I will confidentially agree, seems like he's kind of an asshole.”
“Right,” I said. “My daughter is getting married today. And I wanted to talk to her.”
“And you're being held up here?”
“Yes. I know where she's supposed to be right now, but if I want to catch her, I need to leave.”
He shrugged. “You're aware that you're not under arrest, right? You're not being detained in any official way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we're just talking. And I think we both agree that the fact that we're even standing here in the same room is just the result of a misunderstanding. You're free to go.”
“You don't have any other questions? I don't have to talk to the other officers?”
“I don't find you to be what we call a person of interest.”
It was almost the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Either that, or my relief at finally finding someone who shared my opinion that there was no reason to question meâand who was simultaneously giving me permission to go collect my daughterâwas so great that the gratitude I felt for the detective was out of all proportion to the event. The disinterest with which he regarded me probably had much more to do with boredom than generosity. And yet it was with the sense of having won some kind of prize that I said, “So I can just walk out?”
“I'm telling you that you may do that.”
“Thank you,” I said, starting toward the doors.
“Though, Paul?” he said. “If you want to avoid your young friend out there, you'll probably want to find another way out.”
I looked around. Double doors to the kitchen were at the back
of the room. And I assumed the kitchen would, at some point, open onto a loading dock or delivery entrance at the back of the building. I had an impulse to sprint immediately in that direction, but managed to resist it. “What will you tell everyone in the lobby?” I asked.
“I'll tell them you were cooperative and forthcoming, and that I'm confident you didn't have anything to do with it. If I'm the one who has to suggest to you to leave by the back door, it pretty much indicates you're not savvy enough to pull off a bank robbery. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said.
“But listen,” he said as he turned to gather the contents of the Mooncalf file back into his folder: “May we never meet again.”
It seemed like he meant it. “Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”
L
ATE ON A
S
ATURDAY
afternoon in October of the year Miranda turned twenty-three, I decided to drive downtown and park across the street half a block from her apartment building. The breeze smelled of earth and apples, and autumn had begun to dab its brilliantine rust over the edges of things. Lawns lay damp and silver with the night's mist, leaves curled to yellow and orange, and the brick apartment buildings and old stone hotels that lined the streets downtown rose confidently into the clear afternoon sky. I tuned the radio to a ball game I mostly ignored, a sandwich and a magazine on the seat next to me. I felt faintly ridiculous, and yet also unable to stop myself. I wanted to know.
I'd thought I might be in for a long evening, but only a couple hours into the project the surveillance paid off, because here came Grant, walking toward Miranda's building from the other end of the block. I watched him make his way to the door of the building, press the intercom, and at the electronic buzz, pull the front door
open and disappear inside. It was like watching a film projected on a screen: I felt no compulsion to take any kind of action. When they emerged a few minutes later, I started to slide down in my seat until I saw they were headed in the opposite direction, on foot. I hesitated a moment before I got out of the car and took a few uncertain steps, but it quickly became apparent they were paying little attention to their surroundings, and none at all to anything behind them. They were talking. It was dusk. Twin jet contrails flared pink against the scoured basin of sky as Grant and Miranda paused at an intersection, waiting to cross. I stepped into a doorway until they crossed, and then continued following, surprised at how naturally I assumed the role of the follower. This is my place, I thought. Just walking.
Though they were nearly a block ahead of me, I heard Miranda laugh. She sounded happy.
It didn't last longâa few more blocks, maybe. I watched them step into a restaurant I had never been to, but which I recognized. Like many of the places in that neighborhood, it was new, much talked about, and looked nice. It made sense: they both lived downtown, and they were eating downtown. This was their little world.
I didn't know what to do. I walked the streets aimlessly for a bit, killing time. Couples were headed to drinks, to dinner, or to see movies or shows. A sullen middle-aged panhandler, his dirty baseball cap pulled low, asked if I had a dollar to spare, and when I told him I was sorry, he muttered something inaudible, though the tone was clear. I asked him to repeat himself.
“I said you're going out to dinner, but you don't have a dollar?”
“Do you take credit cards?” I said.
He sneered. “Whatever.”
“Because that's what I use. I don't have cash for you.”
“Right. Your wallet's empty.”
“I'm not going to give you a twenty-dollar bill.”
“So go break it.”
“How old are you?”
“Fuck off.”
“Because if you haven't figured it out by now, I don't think you're going to.”
“You're an asshole,” he said. “People like you are born ass-holes.”
“No,” I said, “that's what you don't get. It takes work.”
He flipped me off, and I laughed as I walked away. “I should kick your ass,” he yelled after me, but I just kept walking, feeling the adrenaline in my veins as I made my way back to the restaurant. I stood across from the entrance, trying my best to see inside. It was a big placeâpart of yet another of the neighborhood's old warehousesâand there was no sign of Grant or Miranda through the front window. They should be seated by now, I thought. So I crossed the street and opened the door.
There was a burst of noise: voices, music, the clatter of plates. Pale muslin curtains twenty feet tall divided the immense room into multiple chambers. Leather settees lined the wall up front, filled with thin, well-dressed, chatty young people. Glowing light fixtures suspended from the high ceiling dotted the room, the shades shaped in the crazed geometries of Escher explosions or cubist suns. I'd read in the paper that the suave coach of the city's big college basketball team dined there regularly, as did other local celebrities: stage actors and actresses, jazz musicians, and politicians.
“Are you here for dinner?” the young hostess asked brightly.
“No,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “Just a drink.”
“Of course,” she said. “Wherever you can find a place.”
The bar was made of frosted glass and lit from within, so that everyone seated at it glowed as if they had been admitted to the cheerful afterlife. I managed to grab a spot when a couple stood to move into the dining room, and as I cautiously turned to follow their trek, I saw that seated on the far side of the room, maybe thirty yards off, were Grant and Miranda. Miranda's back was to me, but I could see her red blouse. She must have been speaking, because Grant was leaning forward with an attentive smile on his face, as if Miranda were quietly sharing a joke at the expense of someone nearby. I turned to the bar and ordered a vodka tonic from the hustling bartender while in the long mirror behind the barâin the corner just above the pastis and ouzoâI found amid the confusion of faces and lights the small splash of scarlet that was Miranda's blouse. The little spot of color trembled as the room's din produced vibrations in the glass.
“Waiting for someone?” the bartender asked as he delivered my drink.
“No.”
“Did you want to look at a menu?”
“Why not?” I said, peering again into the mirror. Beyond Miranda's red blouse, though, I saw only indistinct shadows, a darkness that shifted and rippled behind the shining bottles of liquor. I wondered what I intended to do. Confront them? No. But then how long did the surveiller need to surveil? I had my confirmationânothing more was necessary. I had a fresh drink, though, and a menu in front of me. I watched the bartender shake a cocktail as if in a rage, though his face remained impassive. When he
finished pouring and delivering the drink, he moved back down the bar. “Did you see anything?” he asked.
“You have ostrich on here,” I said. “What does it taste like?”
“A lot of people like it. Have you ever had buffalo?”
“No.”
“It tastes a lot like buffalo.”
“How is that possible? One's a bird, the other's a what? A beast.”
He shrugged. “I don't make 'em, I just serve 'em.”
“I'll take the ostrich,” I said. “Medium.”
He took my menu and tossed it beneath the bar, as if it were just a cheap prop. For a few minutes, I actually enjoyed some anticipatory thoughts about ostrich, as well as some speculation on buffalo, instead of thinking about who was across the room. And then of course when I returned from my little mental flight and looked back into the mirror, the swatch of red was gone.
I turned. Their table was empty. So I turned even further, abandoning discretion as I wondered how they had slipped away. I had been distracted for no more than three or four minutes. Where could they have gone?
“She went home.”
I spun back in the other direction, and there was Grant, standing five feet from me.
“You have no peripheral vision,” he said.
Until that moment, I hadn't felt angry. Once he spoke, thoughâor maybe it was his toneâI felt the urge to spit. Instead, I concentrated on my drink. There were no open seats at the bar, though, so he ended up standing next to me, uncomfortably close. “This isn't a coincidence, is it?” he said.
We were surrounded by strangers, all of whom seemed to be
happily laughing and chatting. “That you're dating my daughter?” I said quietly.
“You followed us,” he said. “I'm flattered.”
“You shouldn't be.”
“This is a bad way for this to happen. I wanted to tell you.”
“So why didn't you?”
He shrugged. “Because when is the right time?”
Jesus. I could think of dozens of possible answers to that question. “There are thousands of women you could date in this city,” I said.
“Not like her.”
“Really? What about her is so unique?”
“You don't need me to answer that. You know how extraordinary she is.”
“She's a receptionist at an art gallery.”
“She's smart,” he said. “And confident. With a great sense of humor.”
“She's twenty-three.”
“But with a tremendous ability to size people up, to see what's really going on.”
“She's
my daughter
,” I said. It seemed a fact so transcendent that it rendered anything else irrelevant. Miranda always had been, and always would be, my daughter. Before she was bornâbefore
I
was bornâand after both of us were dead, it would still be true. What could he possibly think he was doing?
“I guess I hoped you might be happy for us,” he said.
“What a stupid thing to hope for,” I said.
“She's an adult,” he said. “And I didn't start it.”
“You always start it. Everything about you is an attempt to attract women.”
“You don't really know what you're talking about.”
“Did you want another?” the bartender said. His tone seemed deliberately flat, as if he were aware of what he was interrupting.
“Yes,” I said.
“Not for me,” Grant said.
“You're not staying?” I said, but Grant didn't respond. I waited for the bartender to deliver my drink before I said, “How long?”
“A few weeks,” he said.
I tried to process it, to place it into some version of reality, but I couldn't. “No.”
“She asked me to get a drink after work.”
“You could have said no.”
“I did,” he said. “I said it wasn't a good idea. But she asked me again two days later.”
“You should have said no again.”
“I did. She asked again.”
I slammed my palm against the bar. “You should have said no forever.”
He nodded. “I thought that, too. But then I couldn't figure out why.”
I shook my head, stunned by how much I hated him. He couldn't figure out why? What was unclear to him? “Just end it,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I'm asking you to.”
“What's between us is real,” he said.
“Nothing with you is real,” I said. “Everything is about appearances. You once told me everything is an interview. Remember?”
He seemed baffled. “No. I'm sorry. I don't remember every conversation we've ever had.”
“You want to be with her because it will make you look good,” I said. “That's the only reason you ever do anything. It's who you are.”
“I'm surprised to find out how little you think of me. Though the idea that you could tell me who I am is completely preposterous.”
“You're too complex for me?” I said. “Too incredibly subtle?”
“Subtle?” he said. “No. I'm too direct for you. When I want something, I pursue it.”
“And you think I don't?”
“What have you ever wanted?”
“How about safety and security for my daughter?”
“She's hardly in danger,” he said. “And I asked what
you
wanted, not what you've decided to demand of Miranda. When you say safety and security, I think what you mean is that you want an absence of conflictâfor
yourself
. And that's nothing. It's not life.”
“So I can't tell you who
you
are, but you can tell me about myself?”
“Sure, I'll tell you about yourself. What you're doing is right. You think I'll hurt your daughter, and you want to destroy anyone who might hurt her, because she's everything to you. But she's her own person now. And you have to be your own person, too.”
“You must think I'm incredibly stupid,” I said. “Do you really think you can feed me a line of conventional wisdom from some parenting guide and I'll be persuaded by it? You only ever have deep thoughts when you think they'll help you get what you want. You don't want me to let Miranda go because you think she needs to be her own person. You want me to let her go so she can belong to you.”
“She's free to walk away from me if she wants.”
“Like she was free to walk away from Ira?” I said.
He reacted as if mention of that name was some kind of disappointing but predictably underhanded move. “She was fifteen then.”
“You're only right about one thing,” I said. “Which is if you hurt my daughter, I will destroy you.”
“As well you should,” he said.
I had meant it as a real threat, but when I saw that Grant seemed not the slightest bit intimidated, I began to have the sinking feeling I have had so many times in my life: in the instant I am trying to be most forceful, I feel I am somehow losing my way. Because how was it that Grant was now agreeing with me? And how, by agreeing with me, did he seem to be strengthening his own position, rather than mine? I wanted to abandon words and thoughts and just grab him. But even in a blunt physical attackâeven though I was taller than him and outweighed himâI felt confident he would withstand me. Fighting him was like fighting a wall: he was right in front of me, but there was no way to engage him. “You have to prove this to me,” I said finally.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You take this slowly. And you prove to me that this is real. For a long while.”
“I understand.” Only then did his gaze seem to turn inwardâonly then did I catch a glimpse of what might have been uncertainty.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked.
“I'll see her again, if she wants.”
The idiot. Did he not see he had already won? “I mean right now. Tonight.”
“Oh,” he said. “I told her I would call her after you and I talked. She was pretty upset.”