All the Dead Yale Men (27 page)

“I don't know,” I said.

“You're chicken,” she said. “Aren't you? You haven't listened to a word I said. You think I'm kidding, don't you?”

“No,” I said.

“I'm going to give you a week,” she said. “Then I'll take care of it.”

Her apartment in Cambridge had a porch at the back where we'd sit in the evening in the summertime, Pauline naked on a chair back in the shadows, her heels on the edge of the chair, her elbows on her knees, the light falling over her skin like a piece of silk: that was her all over, that she could wear light like a piece of lingerie. At the back of the house on the other side of the yard, a man, a postman, who was on vacation, washed out his underwear, fourteen pairs of jockeys, and hung them up on a line like a child's drawing of the domestic. He got up in the morning and drank his first beer and listened to his Louis Armstrong records (“Hello, Dolly, Hello, Dolly . . . ”), and then the next day there was one less pair of jockey shorts, as though he was measuring out his life this way. Pauline looked at him and said to me, glowing in the shadows, “You know, I think I should go over there some afternoon. But it might kill him.”

“Or break his heart,” I said.

“But Frank,” she said, “that's what hearts are for. What else are you going to do with it?”

“You could protect it,” I said.

“Oh, Frank, you're so old fashioned,” she said. “You've got to live as though someone is going to dynamite your heart. Any fool can see that.”

But in the middle of the night, she breathed into my ear and said, “Yes, darling, I want to be protected. I can't tell you how much I want that. Will you do that for me? Would you? That's why I want the diamonds. It's a sign. Will you just give me a sign? Tomorrow you'll have six days.”

At the beach we stood as the water made a susurrus, like wind in the trees, as the last part of a wave washed over our feet. For an instant it looked as if we were wearing liquid socks. We stretched out on the sand, the sun beating down, our skin salty, and sometimes we swam and floated out there, the rise and fall of the ocean at once soothing and ominous. She said, “Feel that. You can't stop it, Frank.” Then we went home and took off our bathing suits, which clung to us, and I tasted the salt on her skin. “Look. There's another pair of jockey shorts gone. It's like a calendar. You've got five pairs left.”

We went for a picnic in the evening in western Massachusetts, for which I had made a basket. We had a blanket, too, which we spread out near a beaver pond. The clouds drifted by, the shapes of which we tried to name, a knight, a horse, figures engaged in the most intimate embraces, she said, that's what that one looks like. See what she's doing to him? And when we were home, she said, “Tell me about love, Frank. Is it real? Can you die of it? Can you tremble just thinking about the man you love? Can you have an orgasm, just thinking about a man? Sit still. I'm going to try right now.”

“Who are you going to think of?”

“Richard Nixon, you ninny,” she said. “That's what you get for asking.”

The last pair of jockey shorts disappeared.

“Well,” she said. “Where are the diamonds?”

“You're kidding,” I said. “Aren't you?”

“I never kid,” she said. “You haven't got them?”

“No,” I said.

We sat on the porch of her apartment, and over the warm air of that space between the buildings, where gardens had been planted, Louis Armstrong's voice floated in our direction, a memory of the past itself, some perfume of another age. Pauline took off her clothes and then sat back where only I could see her, and the sunlight, or the glow of the last of the day, made her skin white.

The next night, or so the police report said, she went to the sake bar and talked to a man who had lost a finger. She asked if it hurt, and he said that it wasn't anything to speak of. There were other things that were more important, like loyalty. Did loyalty hurt? she asked. Yes, the man said. That was what hurt the most. Then she got up, perfectly steady on her feet, and stood in that bar's underworld light. A thin, tall woman in fishnet stockings, a short skirt, a tight-fitting black top, and spiky hair, her blue eyes absolutely piercing, even in the dim light, as though she could see, in the most profound way possible, just how things really were.

If someone was in her way on the avenue, she walked right through them, not apologizing, not even noticing that she had just pushed someone aside. Her entire aspect, some people told the police, was one of exquisite resolve.

She kneeled on the sidewalk and pried out a brick that lined the edge of the square of dirt around a tree. She spent a little time, picking up one brick, turning it one way and another, and
then picking up another. She chose one, in the end, that sparkled like broken glass. It was shown at the trial, and it was obvious that it had a lot of mica in it, which sparkled even under the fluorescent light of the courtroom.

The jewelry store was closed. Still, the lights were on and the diamonds were displayed on that black stand that so looked like a woman's neck. The gold letters on the window were sedate and elegant, as on the invitation for a polite wedding.

Pauline wound up, just like those pitchers we had seen when I took her to a baseball game at Fenway Park, and threw the brick. It made a perfect shape, and even though the window was safety grade, the brick smashed right through it, the shreds of glass, all in the shape of a million triangles, fell to the sidewalk. Pauline came up to the hole, reached in, and lifted a necklace, which she let hang from her hand like a dead snake.

The police had their guns drawn when they got out of their car. She held the diamonds, the spectral colors of them in the lights of the police car showing as a million points against her black clothes, as though she was part of the most clear and star-marked sky. The cops pointed their guns. She held the diamonds. A crowd appeared, as though they simply emerged from the stone of the buildings.

The police had a video camera in the car. She didn't run, didn't flinch, and she didn't even really look at the guns. Instead, she said, “See, Frank. That's the way you do it. No hesitation. Either you have it or you don't.”

Then she said to the cops.

“You tell Frank Mackinnon I want to see him,” she said.

“The assistant DA?” said one of the cops.

“That's right,” said Pauline. “That's the one. I can have an orgasm thinking about him.”

“No shit?” said one of the cops. “Can you do it now?”

“You want to see?” she said.

“Put down the diamonds,” said the other cop.

“You're going to have to take them from me,” she said.

“Come on,” said the cop. “Don't kid around.”

“I never kid around,” she said.

So, they took them from her. When they were done her nose was bleeding onto her clothes, and she turned toward the camera in the police car, her hands cuffed behind her as she said, “Frank, didn't you understand love? You're breaking my heart. Can't you see?”

The next day they showed the tape to Maxwell Jenkins, a tight-assed man if there ever was one, who had caught this case, and he was in my office in an instant. As fast as he could get there without running. I told him that Pauline and I had been involved, and that she thought I had made a promise.

“Did you?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Did you promise her diamonds in exchange for sexual favors?”

A film of sweat appeared on his forehead and on his upper lip, which showed he thought maybe he was really onto something.

In the hall, the sound of a woman's high-heeled shoes sunk into the first migraine headache I have ever had, a spike into a jellyfish. It was up to Jenkins how she was going to be charged. I sat down.

“Cat got your tongue, Frank?” said Jenkins.

“No,” I said. “Of course not. I didn't offer her diamonds for anything.” He polished his shoes on the back of his pant legs. It was a way of hiding his disappointment. “But,” I said. “I want to ask you something.”

“You mean like a favor?” he said.

“That's right,” I said.

“I bet I can guess. Oh, I bet I can. You want me to go easy. Isn't that right, Frank? What are you doing hanging around with these cheap sluts?”

“Max . . . ,” I said. I got out of the chair.

He stepped back, just like that.

“You don't have to get that way, Frank,” said Jenkins. “Take it easy. Take it easy.”

He went into the hall, his shoes squeaking where the woman's high heels had made that tapping, and even from my office, it was possible to hear Jenkins say, into each door he passed, “Get this. Mackinnon wants us to go easy on his squeeze.” Then he came into my office and showed me the previous charges that had been entered on Pauline's sheet. Resisting arrest, sale of marijuana, possession of stolen property, fraud, trafficking in stolen credit cards. Her father and mother had been arrested, too, many times, since they had a chop shop, a place that reduced stolen cars to auto parts, which they sold around New England. Pauline had grown up in the business and had been arrested for transporting just about everything: carburetors, alternators, computers, air bags, all packed up in boxes that looked brand new. She had moved up in the business, too, and had been involved as an organizer of the distribution of parts as far as Miami. The Cubans had been great customers. But then she had quit all of that, at least for a while.

“I'm asking you for a favor,” I said.

“Well, Frank,” said Jenkins. “I can only do that if she buys a plea.”

Of course, she insisted on a trial, and when at the end I went to see her in the courtroom, she faced me, her eyes at once as attractive as they had ever been, as though this trouble was the kind of thing that made her so desirable. “That man,” she said. She pointed at me. “Right there. He failed me. Don't you see?
Frank, I'm sorry for you. I could have made you so happy,” the judge hammering the gavel all along and then called to the bailiff to turn her around and to make her shut up. I went out of the room, hearing her call, “Frank, Frank, Frank. No one can love you the way I did. And you threw it away. Don't you remember? You were supposed to protect me.”

She was sentenced to a year and a half.

About ten years ago I was in court. The halls were marbled and appeared like a mausoleum. There is nothing like the hall of a courtroom: the indifferent formality of the floors and walls perfectly confront the troubled if not desperate nature of the people who wait there, their expression one of hoping for the best, but knowing the worst is probably going to come. Mixed in with that is the endless waiting for an attorney, for a new schedule, for a delay, as though you could get somewhere by putting something off, when in fact you were just making the anxious moment last forever.

Jeremiah Gordon, another district attorney, stood in the hall with his British suits, his shirts with the white collars and white cuffs and colored sleeves and fronts, the bow tie perfectly tied. He said, “Hey, Frank. You remember your squeeze from a while back?”

“Who?” I said.

“You know,” he said. “The one who broke the window and took those diamonds.”

High-heeled shoes and cops' brogans echoed in the hall, the sound at once chaotic and familiar.

“Step in here for a moment. You remember her name?”

Pauline stood with her same posture, perfectly straight, but coiled, still defiant. She was in her thirties now, hair with a little less sheen, but somehow her vitality, her kill-the-world-for-pleasure quality, was stronger than ever, as if she had had time to stand at more dangerous cliffs than I could imagine. She
turned her head and tossed her hair just the way she used to years before. She smiled and said, “Frank, why how nice to see you. I bet you don't feel bad yet, do you?” Then she faced the judge, who asked if she understood the charges against her, the details of trafficking in stolen car parts, which she had gone back to as though by gravity, and the fact that she had been arrested while she was carrying a specific amount of cocaine. The pickup truck she drove had been loaded with stolen air bags and a transmission for a Porsche. She nodded, but then she turned back to me.

“Frank,” she said. “You should be charged here, too. If you just had the courage to love, I wouldn't be here at all.”

He sentenced her to five years. She was led out by two bailiffs, one on each arm, and as she looked over her shoulder she said, “Frank, I'll bet you'll end up in trouble, you know that? It will sneak up you. And you know why it will happen? Because you try to be careful. Because you think feelings can be hidden.”

THE NEWSSTAND IN
Harvard Square is, by comparison with the people who surround it, a sort of temple of the serene. The sidewalk is filled with the jugglers, the three-card monte boys, one woman with a piercing in her nose who held a sign that said F
ORTUNES TOLD
. F
INANCE
: $6. L
OVE
: $9. Next to her were the tie-dye shirt sellers (the one product that seems as constant as toilet paper), competing guitarists, each with a battery-powered amplifier, one singing “I Want to Be Sedated,” one more retro, all hammering away for a dollar or two or to maintain some ever-receding dream. There, in the middle, stood the kiosk with the newspapers laid out on overturned milk crates. The
Globe
said, in large type, C
ITY COUNCILMAN INDICTED
. K
ICKBACK SCHEME WITH ORGANIZED CRIME FIGURE
, M
ANNY
V
ERRAZANO
,
FOR SUBSTANDARD CONCRETE
.