A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (20 page)

"Better than yesterday," I said. I didn't want to tell her that the tangy cheese smell coming off the pizza was making my stomach do a handstand. Maybe oatmeal would've been a better choice. I cleared my throat. "Kransky said he got under your skin today."

"He told two of my students to fuck off," she said.

"Ah," I said.

"What?"

"That's what he meant by undiplomatic."

She folded her arms over her chest. "What's his problem?"

"Trying to do his job. Maybe too serious about it. Then again, this is serious stuff. We don't get any do-overs on this. Kransky knows that."

"It doesn't mean he has to be a jerk about it," she said. "I appreciate what he's doing, but would it hurt to act a little more human? When he wasn't scaring the shit out of my students, he acted like a robot. He said two words on the way in and nothing on the way back to your place."

"I'll talk to him," I said. "He's good folk. I wouldn't want anyone else besides myself looking out for you."

The timer dinged on the stove and I turned the oven off and opened the door. A wave of smells hit me and I had to do some serious mind-over-matter stuff when I pulled the pizza out. I put it on the stove-top and backed off, feeling queasy.

"Marty? Are you okay?" Amanda asked.

"I'm good," I said, my voice tight. "Help yourself. I'm going to give it a sec."

I walked back out to the living room, but the smell had expanded to fill the entire first floor, so I went out on the front porch and stood there, hands in my pockets, breathing deeply until I decided I was more likely to freeze to death than throw up. I ventured back inside, where Amanda was picking at a piece of the pizza on a paper plate in front of the TV.

I headed for the kitchen, waved Amanda back to her chair when she moved as if to get up to help. She'd thoughtfully wrapped all the slices in foil to cut down the smell, which helped. I ignored the pizza and reached on top of the fridge for a loaf of bread. I pulled out three pieces and choked them down. It was the single most bland and unsatisfying meal I've ever had, but it stayed down, which was the point, and it ensured I wasn't going to die of starvation.

I went back out to the living room, and eased back into contours of the couch, watching TV and trying to act like this was another normal domestic evening for Marty Singer.

Standing in my living room at eight the next morning, with his head bent to take a sip of coffee, Kransky gave me a look that could've pinned a dart to the wall. "You want me to fuck around with her life on the line."

"No," I said. "Think about it from her point of view. No parents. Foster homes and social workers half her life. A stalker that, for all intents and purposes, has been after her for twelve years. She's got baggage a daytime talk show host can only dream about. Her future is something she's making up as she goes along and right now it revolves around teaching. Being independent. Living within her own rules."

"Living being the key word here."

"Understood. But there are ways and there are ways. Think about her for a second the next time you've got to insert yourself into her life. Ask her a couple questions on the way in. You've got a job to do, but you don't have to be an asshole while you do it."

He turned his head, a sour look on his face, which for Kransky was like throwing his cup across the room and kicking the TV over.

"We okay on that?" I asked.

He nodded, obviously unhappy, but I could tell he was thinking about it. I heard some banging from upstairs and Amanda came down the steps, toting her backpack. Pierre slunk down with her, but stopped to watch everyone from halfway down the steps.

I gave her a thumbs-up. "All set?"

She smiled. "Good to go."

"Same routine as yesterday. This will be my last day of chemo for the first round, so I'll be able to take you in after this. We'll give Jim a break so he can get back to his job."

"Sounds good," she said, then smiled. "By the way, don't call a cab for your appointment."

"What? Why not?"

The smile grew wider. "I made alternative arrangements."

I frowned. "Like what?"

"You'll see," she said, reached up and patted me on the cheek, then tossed her hair--along with my concerns--over a shoulder. "Don't worry, Marty. It'll save you a couple bucks. Just keep a lookout by the curb."

She turned to Kransky and said, her voice as cheerful and bright as a new penny, "Ready to go, Detective?"

He handed me his empty cup and they walked out. As he reached back to shut the door, I heard him say, "You know, I've got a daughter your age."

They left. I sat and glared at the wall. I hate surprises and people who knew me better than Amanda would hesitate to spring one on me. For a chemo appointment, no less. I slumped in the E-Z chair and went through the possible ideas a twenty-something would think would be neat-o. A limo? A clown car?

I got up every few minutes to peek out the curtain to see what she'd arranged and on the third trip to the window I saw a familiar brown Chevy Malibu pull up. Julie Atwater got out wearing a lime green poncho with the hood up and green Wellies. She came around the front of the car and walked up to the porch. I went out to meet her.

"Counselor," I said as she approached. "I hope you didn't make a trip over here for nothing. I have to take off in a minute for my chemo appointment."

She looked at me like I was an idiot. "I know. That's why I'm here."

"What?"

"I'm your ride, Singer. Amanda called me last night."

"You're kidding," I said.

"No, I'm not and"--she peered at her watch--"if we want to make it, we better get going. You know everybody in DC loses their mind when it rains."

. . .

I was at a loss for small talk so, aside from me mumbling the address to the oncologist's and both of us making the small noises and hyper-conscious hand movements of people trying to think of something to say, we rode the first few minutes in silence. Lucky for us, the light mist that had been falling all morning turned into a thrashing rain that sounded like a million rubber mallets hitting the car. We peered into the middle distance, trying to make out stoplights and bumpers. The windows steamed up and trapped the smell of her perfume in the car. Julie played with the climate control, trying to un-fog the windows.

We were stopped at a light on Wilson Boulevard, when she said--casually, almost out of the side of her mouth--"So, what's it like?"

"What's what like?"

She cleared her throat. "Cancer."

I blinked. Nobody had actually
asked
me about my cancer. Not a single person. Everyone, including me, had just assumed it was the worst fucking thing that could happen to you and left it at that. No one had asked me to define it until now. I thought for a long minute, trying to fit words to the single most-life changing event in my world.

"Never mind," she said, taking my silence for anger. "It's a stupid question."

"No, it's not. I just don't have a quick answer," I said. "It's lousy. I thought I'd have another ten, fifteen years before I'd even have to think about retirement. Then I'd find a hobby, take a few trips, read the books I hadn't gotten to yet. I was so busy being in the middle of things I hadn't thought about the possibility of it all ending. Can you believe I've never been to the White House? Lived here thirty-five years."

She smiled. It was a small, barely noticeable upward tug of the lips. "Me neither. Or the Lincoln Memorial."

I glanced over. "The Lincoln Memorial? How could you have never visited that? You practically have to drive through it to get out of DC."

"I don't know," she said. "You skip things. Like you said, you always think there's a later."

"And then maybe there isn't," I said, then shut up as I realized how self-pitying that sounded. She didn't answer and the silence became awkward again. We stared straight ahead. Cars were jammed in the intersection for no apparent reason and when the light turned green, we inched forward only to see it cycle to red again before we'd made it a single car length. Like she'd said, when it rains in the greater DC area, everyone takes their brain out and locks it in their glove compartment.

I cleared my throat. "Have you dug up anything about Wheeler in your files?"

She shook her head. Her earrings swung with the movement. "No, unfortunately not. I'm starting in on the transcripts of my interviews with him, though. If I've got anything at all in the records, that's where it'll be."

"Why's that?"

"That's when they let the personal stuff slip. They get caught up telling me their life story and ramble on about things that have nothing to do with their trial. It's an ego trip. I have to sit through it all in case they say something that might be important later."

"Is that legal? To share with me?"

She glanced over at me. "Who gives a shit? I'm not going to tell anyone. Are you?"

"I guess not."

"What's your plan if I don't find anything and you don't find anything?"

"Our best bet is still Kransky," I said. "He's got access to all of the networks that you and I don't."

"And what if that doesn't pan out?"

I gazed out my window, watching car rental offices and parking lots slip past. "Then we go into reactive mode, which is what we're in anyway. We shield Amanda, but he gets to make the next move."

"Then?"

"Then we hit him so hard and so fast there's no time for him to think."

"Is that possible with two guys?" she asked.

No
, I thought,
probably not
. Out loud I said, "We'll have to make it possible."

It took us another fifteen minutes to get to Old Town. We spent it complaining about the Redskins, which I found to my surprise was one of Julie's favorite topics. Several times she reached for her jacket pocket, where I saw the outline of her cigarettes, and pull her hand away. As we got nearer to the clinic, conversation tapered off and we were quiet except for my occasional directions, but it had more of a companionable silence to it and less of the awkwardness of the start of the drive. In a few minutes, we arrived at Demitri's office. She pulled up to the mossy sidewalk and I got out, then leaned my head back in.

"Thanks, Julie," I said. "You didn't have to do this."

"I don't mind. Well, not that much," she said, then smiled.

"I can get a cab back."

"That's stupid. What's it take two, three hours?"

"About three."

"I brought the transcripts with me," she said, pointing towards the back. Her tatty briefcase lay on the seat. "I'll find a Starbucks and come back at eleven."

"You really don't have to."

"Shut up and do your chemo, Marty," she said, then looked surprised, as though shocked she'd used my name.

"Well, when you put it that way."

"Look, the only nice things I get to do are for guys who hit other people with pipes. Would you let me do this thing, at least?"

I smiled. "Okay."

"Good," she said, then held her hand out. I reached across and grabbed it but it seemed stupid to shake, so I held it. She didn't pull back and we stayed that way for a minute. Her hand was cool and dry and felt small in mine. I imagined I could feel her pulse through the contact we'd made. We looked at each other and I got an odd sensation in my chest. Then she squeezed my hand and I shut the door. I stood on the sidewalk and watched her car roll away in the rain.

. . .

Three and a half hours later, the rain was still going strong and as we drove north on the George Washington Parkway, splitting gray puddles in half and throwing arcs of water into the other lane. We talked about neutral topics that kept us both safe, like the waiting times at airports and the price of houses. But I was swimming in the chemo funk and ended up paying more attention to the sound of her voice than the words. She had a low, late-night whiskey voice that I had thought contrived when she'd been behind the defender's table at Wheeler's trial, but now seemed perfectly natural. I sat and listened, grunting or throwing in single-syllable answers to keep her going. Traffic in the middle of the day was practically non-existent and we made it back to my place in half the time it had taken to drive down.

She parked at the curb, then turned to me. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll be fine," I said. "A nap, a shower, and it'll be like it never happened."

"I'm going to keep working on the transcripts. At this pace, I'm hoping to get through them in another day."

"Call me as soon as you find anything," I said. "Any time, day or night."

"I will."

I got out of the car and shut the door. She smiled and pulled away, leaving me on the curb. I watched her go, getting a curious knotted-gut sensation that had nothing to do with cancer or chemo or Michael Wheeler. Something fundamental had just changed, a corner in my life had been turned. But the rain can do that to you. The clean smell of water on pavement, the haze that tints everything in view; it makes everything seem dramatic. But I stood on the sidewalk anyway, the drops hitting me in the face, until long after her car's taillights winked and were gone.

. . .

Hours later, after a nap and a shower had brought me back to life, I peeked out the window in time to see Kransky and Amanda pulling up to the curb. We went through our street-watching routine and then the two of them came inside, talking all the way from the car to my house. I let them in and opened my mouth to add something to the conversation when my cell phone rang. I fished it out and walked out to the kitchen.

"Singer," I answered.

"It's Julie."

Already?
"I don't have chemo again for a while, Counselor."

"Shut up and listen. How much money do you have in your wallet?"

"Depends. For what?"

"Enough to pay for dinner at a nice restaurant?"

"If there's a good reason, sure," I said.