As Dog Is My Witness (20 page)

“
Y
ou want to take him with
you on a murder investigation?” Abby was speaking quietly because
her brother and Andrea were in the basement, and we were only one
floor away. Abigail believes that sound travels through plaster and
wood a heck of a lot more efficiently than it really does.

We were in our living room, ostensibly watching
Monk
on television. Tony Shalhoub is a genius. But we
weren’t really paying attention.

“I just want him to come along with me when I’m
talking to Justin Fowler. I think he and Ethan speak the same
language, give or take some gunpowder, and he can really help me
break through with him where I haven’t broken through before.” I
was trying to ignore the fact that, sitting on the couch next to
me, my wife was bundled up, sexier than most naked women.

She was making it easier than usual, staring at me as
if I’d suggested we sacrifice our son to appease a vengeful god,
and then go out for pizza. “You’re using your son as a lure,” she
said. “You just want the story, and you don’t care how you get
it.”

“Don’t be melodramatic. I’m not asking him to fly off
with Victor Laszlo to serve the cause. He might even make a friend.
Did you ever think of that?” I put my arm up over the back of the
couch, as if it were encircling Abby. Like you did in the movies
when you were sixteen.

“You want him to be friends with a boy ten years
older than him who shot a man in cold blood?”

“Oh, come on, Abigail.” Tony Shalhoub was explaining
how the murderer had clearly been a gymnast, and a left-handed one
at that. The guy who played the serial killer who
didn’t
eat
people in
Silence of the Lambs
, and who now plays Monk’s
police captain employer, looked sufficiently impressed. “I wouldn’t
bring Ethan there if I thought Justin had actually shot Michael
Huston. But he can talk to Justin in a language I don’t understand.
If Justin were French, and I brought Ethan to translate for me, you
wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

“Sure I would. He got a B-minus in French.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I told her, as the guy
from
Silence of the Lambs
(the actor’s name is Ted Levine)
had his assistant slap the cuffs on the murderer and lead him away.
“Besides, I don’t think it would be an awful thing to have Ethan
and Dylan in separate buildings as much as possible until
Wednesday.” Not like I was counting the days or anything, but there
were now five left.

While Tony visited his wife’s gravesite, and I
slipped my arm down and around my wife’s shoulders, Abby
momentarily paid closer attention to the screen. “Hey,” she said.
But she didn’t make me move my arm.

“C’mere,” I said, and kissed her, like I had wanted
to do since, roughly, the moment we met. Okay, so I’d kissed Abby
plenty of times since then, but that didn’t mean I stopped wanting
to kiss her more. Ever.

She wasn’t in the mood for sentiment, though. The
minute our lips were apart, her attention returned to her argument.
“Are you going to take Ethan the next time you go to the gangster’s
house, too?”

“I should have known your brother would rat me out,”
I said, disgusted.

“I can’t believe you were keeping it from me,” she
replied. “And besides, where was I supposed to think the dozen
Sonny Amster bagels came from?”

“You’re right,” I told her, turning the TV off. “The
only possible explanation for bagels in this house is that I was
kidnapped by a gangster who refused to give the kids an
autograph.”

She stared at me, puzzled and annoyed. “You didn’t
tell me you were being threatened.”

“I knew how you’d react. I was going to quit the
story, no questions asked, but I couldn’t leave Lori in it by
herself. It might have put her in danger.”

“You should have told me.” It was her strongest
argument, and she was going to get all she could out of it.

“Fine. I should have. You’re right. But it wasn’t
Howard’s place to do it for me.”

Abby closed her eyes and leaned back on the sofa
cushion. “Don’t keep doing this, Aaron,” she said. “It’s like an
early Oliver Stone movie, and I don’t want to be Charlie Sheen.
Don’t make this into a battle for my soul between you and
Howard.”

“Right now, I’d settle for your body,” I told
her.

Her eyes remained closed. “With a slick line like
that, how could you possibly miss?”

I kissed her again. What the hell! She wasn’t
looking. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But don’t think for one
moment that this isn’t a battle between your brother and me, and
I’m not the one making it that way. At some point, you’re going to
have to take sides.”

That opened her eyes. “You’re asking me to choose
between you and my brother?”

“No. I’m asking you to consider the idea that once in
a while, I’m not the one who’s wrong, and to back me up when that
happens. That’s what marriage is about, isn’t it? Watching each
other’s backs?”

“You spend too much time watching my front,” she
said.

“I can’t help it if you have a cute front.”

“You are a walking, breathing hormone.”

“And you love me for it,” I tried. She smiled, but
not happily.

“You want me to see this as an issue of loyalty to
you and to Ethan, but it’s not,” Abby said. “You know perfectly
well that I’d do anything for the two of you, and that’s never a
question, is it?”

I should have thought before I said, “It never has
been.”

Her eyebrows went up. “And now it is?”

Too late to back off now, I plunged ahead. “Maybe.
You’re so intent on getting your brother to approve of you—or maybe
to approve of me—that you’re losing sight of the people who approve
of you without question.”

“You’re making more of this than there is,” Abby
argued. “I’m tired. You love me too much. I’m going to bed.” I
looked at her. “To sleep.”

“I love you too much?”

“Too much for me to deal with right now.” She got up
and started for the stairs, then stopped and looked at me. “Are we
having trouble with our marriage?” she asked.

My lips curled into a sneer. “Yeah. Let’s get a
divorce. Don’t be an idiot.”

She smiled. “That’s what I thought. Good night,
honey.” And Abby walked upstairs.

The trouble with winter is that there’s no baseball
on television at night.

E
veryone slept in on
Saturday morning, except me, of course. Normally, I sleep like a
rock on the weekends (I believe that having to wake up before nine
is a violation of the Constitution, but I’m too tired to do
anything about it). But when my brain is working overtime, it wakes
me up at ungodly hours like seven-thirty.

I had resolved, somewhere around four-thirty (my
brain keeps time badly) that I’d have to make another try at being
civil, at least toward Howard. Abby had been right—I’d gone into
this situation with an awful attitude, and even if my
brother-in-law wasn’t helping, I wasn’t exactly working up a sweat
with my effort, either.

When I said “everyone slept in,” of course, I wasn’t
referring to Howard and Andrea, whom I found fully dressed and at
the breakfast table when I shuffled down in my sweatpants and
hooded Rutgers sweatshirt. They had actually prepared food for
themselves, which I decided to see as a conciliatory gesture, but
none for anyone else, which I chose to ignore.

“Good morning,” I said in a voice that sounded
remarkably like my father’s. Lately, I’ve been thinking of him
whenever I’m forced to be cheerful, or when I get up out of a
chair. Time was, I could do the latter without actually making an
audible grunt.

Over my copy of the
Times
, Howard nodded (he
had no interest in the Arts and Leisure section, but Andrea did).
Recalling the scene we’d had at yesterday’s breakfast, she looked
at me as if I were a suspicious looking suitcase and she a
package-sniffing German shepherd.

I’m not much for subtlety (you might have noticed),
so I jumped right in: “Howard, Andrea,” I said, sitting, “I know
we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot since you’ve been here, and I’d
like to start over again and see if we can do better. What do you
say?”

They looked at each other with a “married couple”
glance that indicated they had discussed this issue at length, and
possibly had agreed upon a response should this very situation
arise. Howard nodded at his wife, then looked at me.

“That’s not really much of an apology, Aaron,” he
said.

An apology? Was it
meant
as an apology? Biting
my lower lip, I maintained my tone of reconciliation. “Well, I just
think that maybe we’ve all done and said things we regret, and we
should just turn the page and start clean.” And there are people
who think I
wasn’t
cut out for a career in diplomacy.

“I don’t think
I’ve
said or done anything I
regret,” Andrea said sniffily. “I’ve done nothing but try to
support you and your family, Aaron, and I’ve been insulted and
rebuffed at every turn.”

Rebuffed
? Don’t you have to be buffed before
you can be rebuffed? “I’m sorry you feel that way, Andrea,” I said,
again sucking in my emotional gut, “but my point is that maybe we
should try to start fresh, now.”

“Well, since we don’t feel we’ve done anything to
merit a change in behavior, I guess the fresh start will have to be
mostly on your end,” Howard pronounced.

“I guess,” I said, and got a plastic bag out of the
drawer to walk Warren.

There
was
a reason for being nice to this man,
but I just couldn’t remember what it was.

I picked the leash up off the table near the door,
and Warren immediately leapt up and walked to me, tail wagging.
It’s the one thing he’s really learned under our watch: leash means
walk. And walk, in Warren’s world, is the closest thing to
perfection on the planet. If he could eat steak off the sidewalk
during a walk, his existence would be complete.

Bundled to the hilt and wearing sunglasses, I looked
something like the
South Park
kid in the parka if he didn’t
want to be recognized by his fans. Appropriately braced for the
cold, Warren (who was, after all, wearing fur) and I headed
outside.

It was something of a surprise to see Big, Bigger,
and Biggest at strategic positions outside the house, in identical
parkas and sunglasses. They looked like the Yukon Secret
Service.

“What’s up, boys?” I said. “Mensa meeting just break
up?”

“Mr. Shapiro wants us to watch you,” Big said.

“Watch me do what? I’m walking the dog.”

I walked down the front steps to the sidewalk as
Bigger said, “He wants us to protect you.”

“Protect me? Protect me from what? I thought the only
person I had to be worried about was
him.
”

Big shook his head slightly. “Need-to-know basis,” he
said.

That startled me. “Don’t
I
need to know?” I
said.

“No,” Bigger said. Apparently, they were trading off
the speaking parts today.

“Who needs to know more than me?”

“Mr. Shapiro,” Big said. “And us, so we can protect
you.”

I figured it was better to have guys like this on
your side than against you, so I shrugged. “Okay, then,” I said.
“Let’s go. Warren’s not going to wait all day.”

Warren was growling a little, watching the three
parka-ed wise-guys from the bagel capital of New Jersey. But he
eventually managed to remember why he was outside, and started in
on our usual route, happily wagging his tail and sniffing the
frozen ground for the horrible tidbits he considers tasty treats.
Don’t ask.

The Supersized Trio created a perimeter, with Biggest
in front, then Big and Bigger behind me and the dog. Biggest never
turned around to look, but always knew when to stop for Warren to
sniff vegetation or take care of his bladder.

“Are you guys always this surreptitious, or are you
actually going to hand out ‘I’m following Aaron Tucker’ t-shirts
later on?” I asked Big.

“Surreptitious?” Bigger asked.

Big smiled, this time in a less threatening manner.
“He means, are we always this easy to spot?”

Bigger nodded. “Surreptitious,” he said with an air
of satisfaction.

“My wife’s going to start asking if you’ll be outside
whenever I open the door,” I said. “She got through law school, you
know. She might be able to figure out you’re not three Christmas
trees.”

“You’ll never even know we’re there,” Big said.

“I don’t like to destroy your illusions,” I told him,
“but when I walked out the door and the three of you were standing
there with your hands in your pockets and your car in my driveway,
I knew you were there.”

“We wanted you to know we were there today,” Bigger
explained.

“From now on, you won’t know.”