Freaky Deaky (5 page)

Skip felt himself getting into it, wanting to move around. “I’d have to line up some
explosives. Keep it at Mommy’s. Man, I love dynamite, and I never get to use it. Dynamite and acid, man, that’ll Star Trek you back to good times. The way it was.”

Robin was smiling at him, raising her arms, and her arms reached him way before she did. Her hands came to rest on his shoulders. He had to tilt his head back to look up at her face, at her pale skin stretched over bone, her cheeks hollow, sunken in. He could see what her skull looked like in there. He could see hands holding her bare skull and a teacher voice in his mind saying this was a woman thirty-five to forty, a hunter. The voice saying, Look at the fucking teeth on her, this was a man-eater.

The jaw in the skull moved. Robin said:

“From that time we first met—oh, but we freaked them out, didn’t we?”

Skip blinked, feeling his eyes wet. “You know it. Couple of the baddest motherfuckers ever to set foot inside of history.”

Now the skull was grinning at him.

“You stole that line.”

“Yeah, but I forgot from where.”

Man, look at this fine girl.

Skip said, “You’re working me over like you used to and I love it. Getting me to play your dirty tricks on those boys. . . . But just suppose for a
minute, what if it wasn’t Woody and Mark that got us busted?”

Robin’s face came down close. He could feel her breath. In the moment before she put her mouth on his, Skip heard her say, “What difference does it make?”

Saturday noon in the kitchen
of his dad’s apartment in St. Clair Shores, Chris said, “This doctor, he not only won’t look you in the eye, he doesn’t listen to a thing you say. I tell him why I’m leaving the Bomb Squad. I don’t see where it’s any of his business, but it doesn’t make any difference anyway, he’s already made up his mind. I’m leaving ’cause I’m scared, I can’t handle it.” Chris was getting a couple of beers out of the refrigerator.

Chris’s dad, Art Mankowski, was frying hamburgers in an iron skillet, working at arm’s length so the grease wouldn’t pop on him. His dad said, “Get an onion while you’re in there, in the crisper. Listen, you’d be crazy if you weren’t scared.”

“Yeah, but this guy wants to read a hidden meaning into everything, like with the spiders.”

“You want your onion fried or raw?”

“I’d rather have a slice of green pepper, if you have any, and the cheese melted over it.”

“I think there’s one in there, take a look. Get the
cheese, too, the Muenster. Where’d you have it like that?”

“It’s the way Phyllis makes ’em,” Chris said. “You put A-1 on it instead of ketchup. See, if you don’t like spiders there’s something wrong with you, you’re queer. So I
know,
after we get through the spiders and have I ever been impotent, if he brings up why am I going to Sex Crimes, there isn’t a thing I can say the guy’s gonna believe. I must be a pervert, some kind of sexual deviant.”

Chris’s dad said, “Well, I can understand him asking. Why not Homicide, Robbery, one of those? They seem more like what you’d want to get into.”

“I
asked
for Homicide, I told the shrink that. There aren’t any openings.”

“Sex Crimes,” Chris’s dad said. “You know the kind of people you’d be dealing with?”

“Yeah, women that got raped and the guys that did it. Also different kinds of sex offenders. You sound like Phyllis. She can’t understand why I’d want it. I told her I
didn’t
. You go where there’s an opening and they think you’ll do a job.”

Chris’s dad said, “I can’t imagine, with all the different departments you have in the Detroit Police . . .” He said, “You want to put your things away before we sit down?”

“I’ll only be here a few days, a week at the most. I have to find a place in the city.”

His dad said, “So you’re gonna leave your things out in the middle of the floor?”

In the front hall three sportcoats, pants, a dark-blue suit, poplin jacket and a lined raincoat lay folded over a mismatched pair of canvas suitcases and several cardboard boxes. Chris carried his possessions through the hall to a room with a hospital bed, where his mother had spent her last three years staring at framed photographs of her children and grandchildren. The pictures were taken at different ages so that Chris, his sister Michele and her three girls became a roomful of kids. Faces that gradually lost identity as they stared back at his mother from the walls, the dresser. . . . Chris had stood at the foot of the bed watching Michele comb their mother’s hair, Michele saying, “Look who’s here, Mom, it’s Christopher.” His mom said, “I know my boy.” Then looked up at Michele and said, “Now which one are you?” He was hanging his clothes in the empty closet when he heard his dad’s raised voice and answered, “What?”

“I said why don’t you go back to Arson?”

Chris walked through the hall to the foyer. His dad was across the formal living room in the dining-L, the glass doors to the balcony behind him, filled with pale light. His dad was placing the cheeseburgers and a bag of potato chips on the table, ducking under the crystal chandelier, his dad in a plaid wool shirt, sweat socks, no shoes. Art
Mankowski was sixty-eight, retired from the asphalt paving business. (Chris had grown up thinking of that black tarry substance as “ash-phalt” because that was the way his dad had pronounced it, and still did.) His dad went up north deer hunting in the fall, spent the winter in the Florida Keys bonefishing, and would stop off in Delray Beach to visit Michele and her family on the way back. After being with the three grandchildren Art would call his son the cop and ask him if he was married yet. In the spring he’d look out the window at Lake St. Clair, wanting it to hurry up and thaw so he could get out in his 41-foot Roamer.

They sat down to lunch. Chris said, “You remember the Huckleberry Hound cartoon where Huckleberry smells smoke, he goes looking for it and sees all this heavy smoke coming out of the birdhouse?”

His dad held his cheeseburger poised, picturing the scene. “Yeah?”

“Huckleberry Hound climbs up the pole and looks in. There’s a crow sitting in there smoking a cigar, watching TV.”

His dad, starting to smile, said, “Yeah, I remember.”

“Huckleberry Hound says, ‘Hey, are you burning garbage?’ And the crow looks at him and says, ‘No, I like garbage.’ ”

His dad said, “Yeah, you know what I
remember? The way the crow was sitting there with his legs crossed. Talked out of the side of his mouth. ‘No, I like garbage.’ Your mother would look at us and shake her head, like we’re a couple of nuts.”

“The point I want to make,” Chris said, “that crow would love the Arson Squad; you live with that smell, it clings to you. I can smell a burnt-out building just thinking about it.” He took a bite of his cheeseburger with green pepper; it was good. “But what you said, Mom not understanding how we could sit there watching cartoons, that was exactly the way Phyllis looked at me.”

“When you told her.”

“Yeah, we’re at Galligan’s, it’s Friday, so all the secretaries and young executives from the RenCen are in there looking for action. I get us a drink and tell her, Well, I’m no longer with the Bomb Squad. She just looks at me for a minute, sort of surprised. Maybe even a little disappointed, and I’m thinking, What
is
this?”

“Yeah?”

“I tell her I’m now with Sex Crimes and she gets a funny look on her face and says, ‘
Sex
Crimes?’ Real loud, everybody turns around and looks. She says, ‘You’re gonna associate with perverts, rapists, filth like that and then come home and tell me about your
day?
’ I said, ‘When’d I ever tell you about my day? When’d you ever want to hear about it?’ She says, ‘You don’t tell me anything, you
never talk to me at all.’ She’s crazy, we talk all the time.”

His dad said, “You seem to have a lot of trouble with women. They keep throwing you out.”

“I do what she wants, she comes up with something else, I don’t talk to her.”

“I don’t know what it is,” his dad said, “you’re not a bad-looking guy. You could give a little more thought to your grooming. Get your hair trimmed, wear a white shirt now and then, see if that works. What kind of aftershave you use?”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are and I’m glad you came to me. When’d she throw you out, last night?”

“She didn’t throw me out, I left. I phoned, you weren’t home, so I stayed at Jerry’s.”

“When you needed me most,” his dad said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“Actually,” Chris said, “you get right down to it, Phyllis’s the one does all the talking. She gives me banking facts about different kinds of annuities, fiduciary trusts, institutional liquid asset funds . . . I’m sitting there trying to stay awake, she’s telling me about the exciting world of trust funds.”

“I had a feeling,” his dad said, “you’ve given it some thought. You realize life goes on.”

“I’m not even sure what attracted me to her in the first place.”

His dad said, “You want me to tell you?”

“She looks like a bed doll—you know what I mean?”

“A big healthy one. I know exactly what you mean.”

“But she’s so serious all the time. She doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“I’ll say this for Phyllis,” his dad said, “I like her idea, the green pepper with the cheese and the A-1. It’s not bad.”

“You can get tired of it,” Chris said. He took a sip of beer. “I called you first thing this morning, you still weren’t home.”

“You were worried about me.” His dad would study his sandwich before taking a bite. “I wasn’t far, if it’ll make you feel better. Two floors up. I was at Esther’s.”

“You spent the night with her?”

“Why, you think it’s a mortal sin or what?”

“I’m surprised, that’s all.”

His dad said, “Esther’s sixty-four, she weighs one eighteen on the nose. She’s attractive, knows how to dress, was married forty years to a doctor and now she’s having fun. I take her places—she never been to Hamtramck, if you can imagine that. Never listened to WMZK, the polka hour. You know what her favorite song is now? ‘Who Stole the Kishka?’ ”

“No, I think it’s nice you spend the night together now and then,” Chris said. “Why not?”

“Couple times a week,” his dad said. “Plus Saturday night if we’re out late, which is usually the case. Esther likes to party.”

“You mean you stay with her three nights a week?”

His dad looked up from his sandwich. “What’s the matter, you surprised or what?”

“I never thought about it before, that’s all.”

“You remember when I told you the facts of life?”

“You took me to Little Harry’s for lunch and after we went to the show,
Our Man in Havana
with Alec Guinness. But I already knew all that. Ernie Kovacs was in it too.”

“Maybe you thought you knew it. I told you the facts of life and your eyes open and you said, ‘You do that to Mom?’ And I said, ‘That’s it, there isn’t any other way to do it.’ I was just about the same age when I told you you are now. You see what I’m getting at? Your mother and I were married thirty-seven years. Counting before that when I was in the service, and then add on the five years since she passed away and I been seeing different ones, I’d say I’ve done it, conservatively, about five thousand times.” Chris’s dad raised his can of beer. “And not all of them done that conservatively, now that I think about it. You see my point?”

“I’m not sure,” Chris said.

“What I’m saying is, going to bed with the
opposite sex is part of life, it can even become routine. But at the same time, unlike the cheeseburger with the green pepper and the A-1, it isn’t something you ever get tired of.”

“I’m glad to know that,” Chris said. “I was wondering about it.”

“You know who Esther thinks you look like? Robert Redford.”

“Come on.”

“I’m not kidding you. She says that, it means she wants you to like her.”

“I like her,” Chris said, “and I’m glad you and Esther have fun together.”

“We do, that’s for sure.”

“And I appreciate your taking the time to help me with my problem.”

His dad said, “What problem?”

Saturday afternoon,
when Skip called during his lunch break, Robin said, “I’m going after them tonight.”

“All of a sudden?”

“Mark’s picture was in the paper this morning, honorary chairman of a benefit to raise money for inner-city ballet programs. It’s a buffet cruise on a yacht, from Lake St. Clair down the river and back, hundred bucks a head. Woody’s going too, his name was mentioned.”

“See beautiful downtown Detroit from a safe distance,” Skip said. “I bet nobody gets off the boat.”

“You sound like a tourist. Here’s my plan. By the time the boat gets back to the marina I’ll be waiting at Brownie’s, sitting at the bar. They come in. . . . ‘Well, hi, you guys! Gosh, I can’t believe it, after all these years.’ ”

“What if they get off the boat and go home?”

“Brownie’s is right
there
and Woody’s never walked past a bar in his life. Listen, I’ve been
getting ready for this, following Woody’s limo around town. You know what he does? He eats and drinks, that’s about it. He has lunch at one of his clubs, like the DAC, stops off at the theater some time in the afternoon and then goes down the street to Galligan’s for the cocktail hour.”

“I’ve been there, it’s near my hotel.”

“Or he goes around the corner to Pegasus. Remember Greektown? That one block on Monroe is the most popular street in Detroit, but I haven’t been able to figure out why.”

“ ’Cause it’s lit up,” Skip said. “I know where it is. You go anywhere else downtown you’re on a dark, lonely street. So who you gonna work on, Mark or Woody?”

“Woody,” Robin said, “since he’s got the checkbook. I’m not sure where Mark stands exactly. He isn’t dumb. . . . I take that back, he wasn’t too bright, either, now that I think of it. He’s more of an actor, wants you to believe he’s got it together. But Woody’s our guy.”

“Say you connect. Then what?”

“We’re in business. You go to work.”

“We’re gonna be on the Belle Isle bridge later today, do the kush shot. Then tomorrow we ought to finish up.”

Robin said, “You still like the idea?”

Skip said, “You’re taking me back to the good old days. I’ll call you tomorrow night if I can.
Otherwise Monday, after I get to Yale and look over the dynamite situation. I hope the place’s still there.”

“I forgot to mention,” Robin said. “Guess who Woody’s driver is. Donnell Lewis.”

There was a silence on the line. After a moment Skip said, “You didn’t forget. You been saving him, haven’t you? What’s his name, Donald?”

“Nothing so common, it’s Don
nell
. Remember the party to raise bail money for the Black Panthers? It was at Mark and Woody’s.”

“I remember you coming out of the toilet with a spade had a beard, wore a leather jacket—”

“And a beret, the Panther uniform.”

“That was Donnell, huh?”

“It might’ve been, I’m not sure.”

“It might’ve—you were in there fucking him, weren’t you?”

“I don’t remember. We could’ve been doing lines.”

Skip said, “Hey, Robin? I got an ear for bullshit, having worked in the movie business. Don’t give me this ‘Oh, by the way, Woody’s driver used to be a Black Panther’ shit. If I’m gonna take part in this I don’t want any surprises.”

“That’s why I told you.”

“It’s the
way
you told me I don’t especially care for. Donnell wore black leather and had a house full of guns. I know, ’cause I tried to buy one off him. He gave me his big-time nigger look and told me to beat it.”

“He wears a suit and tie now,” Robin said, “and shines his shoes. He might even shine Woody’s.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said. “You’re the one told me everyone’s sold out, joined the establishment.”

Skip said, “Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking of Don
nell
.”

That night she was tense for the first time in years, driving into the Jefferson Beach Marina past boat storage buildings and Brownies, the boat people’s hangout, past light poles along the docks that showed rows of masts and cabin cruisers, and on down to the lakefront in darkness.

Robin nosed her five-year-old VW into a row of parked cars to wait and within moments felt relief.

Woody’s limo stood off by itself, the light-gray stretch with bar, television and Donnell Lewis, tonight inside behind dark-tinted glass. Other times he’d wait outside the car, still sinister in a neat black suit, the shades, the mustache and little be-bop tuft curling around his mouth. He never said much to other drivers standing around, he kept apart. She had studied him for days, watching the way he moved, smoked cigarettes, one hand in his pocket, until finally she checked him out with the doorman at the Detroit Club, who told her, “Yeah, that’s him, that’s Donnell. You know him?” Good
question. You can make it with a tall spade in the powder room during a Black Panther fundraising cocktail party and still not be able to say you know him. Or count on being remembered by him.

Robin smoked a cigarette watching the limo, the gray shape beneath a light pole, the windows black. She finished the cigarette, walked over to the car and tapped on the driver-side window with her key. Then stepped back as the window began to slide down and she saw his face in the dark interior, his eyes looking up at her.

“Are you waiting for that benefit cruise?”

“Tranquility,”
Donnell said. “That’s the name of it, the boat.”

“This’s the place then,” Robin said.

“Went out from here, it has to come back. Pretty soon now.”

Robin thanked him, watching his eyes. Not as close as she had watched them the afternoon in the powder room sixteen years ago, her jeans on the floor, hips raised against the rim of the washbasin, Donnell staring at himself past her in the mirror, eyelids heavy, a man watching himself making love, no strain, until he did look at her for a moment before his eyes squeezed closed. But didn’t look at her again after that, as he collected the checks and left with his Panthers.

She turned with the hum of his window rising, went back to her car and sat there, not sure what
she was feeling—if she wanted to believe he remembered her, if it mattered one way or the other—until she saw the lights of the yacht,
Tranquility
, a white shape, coming out of the night with the sound of dance music, society swing. A scene from an old movie. Robin circled back to Brownie’s, went inside and took a place at the bar to wait.

She ordered a cognac and sat quietly in her raincoat in the nearly empty marina bar-restaurant, hearing faint voices, a woman’s laughter, thinking, making judgments. Deciding that boat lovers were essentially smug, boring people. They came in here off their boats into another boat world with all the polished wood, the bar section that
was
part of a boat, and all the nautical shit, life preservers on the wall. Thinking, What is it about boats? Deciding boats were okay, it was the boat people who overdid the boat thing with their boat words, their boat outfits, the Topsiders and Sou’westers, and made a fucking ritual out of boats. That was the thing, they weren’t real boats. They were phony boats for phony people who had to have a phony bar to come to after drinking on their boats and pissing in Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River all day.

She was tired of waiting for a time to come.

The cognac helped ease the knot in her tummy.

She was tired of remembering. . . .

Voices were coming from the front entrance hall,
a mix of benefit cruisers arriving: traditional Grosse Pointe ladies with their scrubbed look, their out-of-style hairdos, their pearls and camel’s-hair coats, followed by husbands out of Brooks Brothers; trendies now, younger women in real furs and fun furs, a couple of guys in form-fitting topcoats, styled dark hair glistening; more young ladies in layers of sweaters, scarves and coats, and a full-length coyote entering in a noise of voices. It was Woody, Woody’s bulk filling the coat, Woody’s hair down in his eyes. Robin watched, half turned from the bar. Woody didn’t see her. Smiling faces at a table were raising their glasses to him. Woody lifted one arm with some effort, acknowledging.

Voices brought Robin’s gaze back to the entrance hallway, to another group coming in, and now she saw Mark, a tan cashmere topcoat draped over his shoulders. Mark Ricks holding the arm of a girl who smiled at something he was saying. It wasn’t much of a smile, there and gone. A girl with short red hair. She seemed tired, or tired of smiling. She came in and turned to Mark, as tall as Mark, then looked this way because Mark was, staring. Now he was walking away from the girl, coming this way.

Robin touched her braid, stroked it, waiting, and felt her plan begin to change.

Mark the producer, coat over his shoulders, said, “Come here,” with no expression. He reached with
both hands to bring Robin off the bar stool. He stared and said, “The last time we saw each other, was it yesterday or the day before?” Still solemn, deadpan. “I mean it’s incredible. I see you, I get like a rush of instant recall, all the incredible things we did together. And yet I know it’s been—what, eight years?”

Robin said, “Cut the shit, Mark. How are you?”

“Not bad. How about yourself? You haven’t changed at all, you know it?” His eyes raised and he hesitated. “Outside of your hair’s different.”

Robin’s hand stroked the braid and tossed it over her shoulder. The girl with short red hair was watching them. She wore a black double-breasted winter coat. She looked away and back again as Mark was saying, “I want to know what you’ve been doing and why you haven’t called me.”

Robin said, “Well, let’s see. I did time, for one thing.” Staring at his solemn brown eyes. “Thirty-three months and ten days in Huron Valley.”

Mark said, “I was there, I was in court when they sentenced you. I couldn’t believe it. Then I heard you went to New York after you got out.”

“I wanted to start writing again, so I got next to some people in the publishing business, to find out what they’re buying. Came back and went to work.”

“ ‘Tales from the Underground,’ uh?” He started to grin and touched his hair carefully, thinning hair combed forward now.

“I’ve written four historical romance novels.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“With a lot of rape and adverbs.”

“You know what I’m doing?”

“You kidding? I read about you all the time.”

“You see the story
People
did?”

“I loved it. ‘Yippie turns Yuppie.’ ”

“How come you haven’t called me?”

“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know. . . .”

Mark was getting a nice wistful look in his eyes, the cool deadpan expression gone. Beyond him, the girl with short red hair stood waiting, hands in the pockets of her black coat. Mark said, “This is totally amazing, we run into each other like this, eight years later.”

Robin hesitated, looking down at her hands. “I didn’t just happen to be here.” She paused, raising her eyes very slowly. “I was hoping I’d see you.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Really.”

“You read I was gonna be at this boat thing?”

“I took a chance.”

“This is amazing.”

“I couldn’t phone you—I don’t know why. I thought if we just happened to meet . . .”

“You sound different, you know it?”

Robin cocked her head to one side. “I do?”

“You’re quieter. You used to be so ballsy. You know the first time I ever saw you on campus? You
were breaking windows in North Hall, the ROTC building.”

“The summer of ‘seventy,” Robin said. “We went to the Doors concert. . . . We went to the rock festival at Goose Lake. You remember that?”

Mark said, “Do I re
mem
ber? I think about it all the time, constantly. I mean, after Goose Lake what is there? What’s left you haven’t done?”

Robin said, “You had a pretty good time, uh?”

“Not bad,” Mark said, straight-faced, but couldn’t hold it. He was grinning now. “You remember I got Woody to rent the limo?”

“If I’m not mistaken I put you up to it.”

“You’re right. It was an outstanding concept—we drove right in, no problem.”

“I told you, like we were part of the show,” Robin said.

“Two hundred thousand people,” Mark said. “I think it was at that moment, driving in past everybody in that fucking stretch, I knew I would someday be in the entertainment business, produce shows of my own. I’ll never forget it.” The memory gave Mark a dreamy look.

Robin’s gaze moved. She saw Woody coming away from the people at the table, several trendy girls following behind.

Mark was saying, “Listen, why don’t you join us? We’re going to my brother’s for a little impromptu. Huh, what do you say?” There was an
abrupt change in his tone, almost a plea, as he said, “Give us a chance to talk. Okay? Will you?”

She glanced at him and saw it in his eyes, Mark wanting to confide, tell her something. Then looked away again to see the full-length coyote coming toward them, weaving, veering off to one side a few steps, but not off balance. Robin watched Woody wrap a furry arm around the girl with short red hair and bring her along.