Nantucket Sawbuck (18 page)

Before I could answer, the office door opened and Lonnie Fraker stuck his head in.

“Got something, Chief.”

“What?”

I stood as Lonnie slipped inside and shut the door behind him, closing off the little wedge of noise from the hall. He grinned as the clatter subsided. “Neighbor driving by around midnight. They saw a big van and a gray Ford Escape in the driveway. The guy had never seen those cars before. He thought they were renters, until we talked to him.”

“What type of van?”

“He had no idea. Big. What the hell does a guy like that know about vans?”

“Okay, good—run the plates of everybody we're talking to, see who drives an Escape. As to the van …”

“I know, I know. Every tradesman on the island has one. I'm all over it, Chief. I don't know what your guys are doing today, aside from the coffee runs. But we've got this one all sewn up.”

“The Escape?”

He grinned. Parrish sat forward, listening. I had forgotten all about him.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Okay, four gray Escapes. Two off-island, one in the shop.”

“Who's left?”

“Your friend David Trezize. Does he have an alibi?”

“He says he was ‘driving around'.”

Lonnie snorted humorlessly; you couldn't really call it a laugh. “Among other things. You can throw some meat to the dogs out there. We'll get this little prick into custody. And then we can check out his shoes—see if they match the footprint casts we made in the driveway.”

“He's coming in with his lawyer tomorrow. Let's hold off until then.”

“What if he runs?”

“He won't.”

“What is that? A feeling?”

I nodded.

“Is that what you used in L.A.? Feelings?”

“As a matter of fact, yes it was.”

“Right. Well, you play it any way you want. But there's a guy from the BBC out there now. There's even some chick from Al Jazeera English. This story is going global, Chief. So don't choke.”

“I know that David Trezize person,” Parrish said, jumping to his feet. “He's been hounding Preston for weeks! He threatened the man's life two nights ago. The man's a lunatic.”

“I don't know, Mr. Parrish. He sounded upset at the party. He'd been drinking. But I know the guy and he's not dangerous. Anyway, most killers don't advertise their intentions beforehand.”

“Well, this one did. You said you don't want to go press with the story? If you don't have Trezize in jail this time tomorrow, I'm going to the press myself. Then
you'll
be the story, Chief. The cop who let his cronies get away with murder. You'll never live that one down, believe me. You'll wish you'd never left Los Angeles.”

Then he bulled past me and out the door. Lonnie shrugged and followed him. I kicked the door closed and just stood there for a long moment, in the dense comfortable privacy of my oversized office. After a while, I tipped forward until my head touched the cool hard surface of the door.

It was only nine o'clock. In the morning. I was already exhausted.

Chapter Twenty-three

The Best Thing Ever

At that moment, Mike Henderson was sitting in the coffee shop at Eighty-second Street and Madison Avenue, staring out into the final assault of Winter Storm Iago. The snow was blowing horizontal and the wind whined like a tablesaw. He had driven into the city through the storm yesterday, found a parking space down the street from the Levine's house and gotten a good night's sleep in their guestroom. But he had woken up anxious at six in the morning.

Mike sat at the table nursing his coffee, staring out at snow-frosted street. “Clean it up with paint,” his first boss had always said: no scrubbing or sanding, just a heavy layer of latex. “Don't make it right—make it white.” That's what the upper East side looked like this morning: dirt and garbage covered over with pristine crystal. The snow itself would be filthy enough soon.

Mike waved the waiter away. He needed to think about what he was going to say this morning. Everything depended on that. And his mind was a blank.

How had things gotten this bad? They had wanted a baby for years. Cindy had gotten pregnant two years before, but she had miscarried. That tragedy had revealed every weakness in their marriage. Cindy had been inconsolable and Mike had been shut out completely. It was her tragedy, it had happened inside of her. Mike had nothing to do with it. He could only intrude. When he tried to understand, he was presumptuous. When he tried to cheer her up, he was shallow. When he ignored her, as she seemed to want, he was heartless.

But it was even worse than that. Over time, she blamed the way they lived. She hated the seasonal panic of housepainting on Nantucket, as everyone scurried around looking for interior work like woodland creatures trying to get inside for the winter, and waited for final payments and groveled to imperious general contractors. The constant stress had killed the baby, that was Cindy's theory. It infuriated Mike. The doctors had no idea what might have happened, the best minds in modern medicine were baffled, but Cindy knew it was his fault. It was her body. That made her the final authority.

Mike didn't know; maybe she was right. The stress never let up. Even now he could feel it, like pressure on a bruise. Things had been the same two years ago, they'd been going through some other crisis: a lawsuit, a lost job, a late check. They always pulled through, Billy Delavane helped them make it through until the phone call came, and it always did, and he went from no work to hiring extra people overnight. But the constant uncertainty was corrosive. Painters got hypertension and ulcers and colitis from it. They had nervous breakdowns. They became alcoholics. Why not their wives?

Cindy had held her grudge, clutched it tightly, a little kid holding her bus fare, hurrying through a bad neighborhood. It had helped for a while, but she couldn't keep it up forever. Something like normal life resumed eventually. The wall stayed up, though. Mike couldn't reach her. They still talked, but the talk was more and more superficial; they made love, but less and less often. Still, somehow she had gotten pregnant again. It was a small miracle, really. Maybe it was fate.

Mike had been in her doctor's office once, when Cindy had come down with stomach flu on a visit to her parents. He remembered sitting for more than an hour in the dark wood paneled waiting room. P.S. 6 got out for the day sometime during the wait. He had listened to the shouts and laughter of the newly liberated kids across the street, loving the sound, wanting kids of his own.

Well, that's why he was here today.

He should order breakfast. But he couldn't eat. He ordered more coffee instead, checked his watch: ten after eight. Office hours didn't start until nine.

The waiter returned with a visible sigh. But the place was still uncrowded, so at least Mike wasn't taking up a table where real eaters and big tippers might be sitting, not yet. It was warm. He pulled off his coat and took a sip of coffee. It was strong and hot and it went down all right.

A cab pulled up across the street: the office nurse. The rest of the staff arrived over the next half hour. Mike drank two more coffees. He was getting wired. He asked for the check. He didn't want any delays when Cindy finally arrived. He watched the traffic, yellow taxis and buses half obscured by the gusting snow. The windows were steaming over; he'd be lucky to see her at all.

Finally, he couldn't sit still anymore. He paid the check, left an extra five dollar tip, and walked out into the blizzard, zipping up his coat.

Her cab pulled up ten minutes later, just as he was considering going back inside. The light was green but it was about to go red. He sprinted across Madison Avenue. Cindy sensed the bulky figure moving toward her and looked up blankly. He hit a patch of ice on the sidewalk and skidded into her. They grabbed each other to keep from falling, an awkward little dance that ended with him sitting in the snow.

She helped him up. “Graceful as always.” Her smile softened the words.

“Thanks.”

They stood holding each others' arms lightly, snow blowing between them, traffic coursing through the slush behind them.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“I have an appointment—”

“With Doctor Mathias. I know. 47 East 82nd Street.”

“I don't understand. How did you—?”

“I know what's going on, Cindy. I figured it out. I'm not an idiot. And I know you.”

“Mike—”

“Can we go somewhere? Get out of the cold?”

“Let's just walk.”

She stuck her hands in her coat pockets and started across Madison toward Fifth Avenue. Mike followed, looking around him at the heavy green copper-roofed old buildings, the snow gathering on their ornamental stonework. These were think tanks now, embassies, foundation headquarters. But they had been residences once. They had been built when the details of craftsmanship mattered and no expense was spared. The wealth they represented made the Nantucket trophy houses look cheap and suburban by comparison. There were co-op buildings of the same pre-war vintage lining the avenues behind them that would never have let Preston Lomax into their lobbies, much less their owners' associations. It was a different world, and Mike couldn't help feeling it was a better one. It was solid at least, rooted in generations of privilege and civic responsibility. But it made him feel like he was trespassing. These old buildings dwarfed him and his proletarian difficulties. But he rebelled against the feeling. He was lucky in a way: he could enjoy the formal elegance of the neighborhood with a comfortable detachment. He let it buoy him up for a moment. It was actually the perfect location for this dispute. It embodied tradition and history. It had its own persuasions.

He took Cindy's arm and began. “I was thinking about the last time we were in the neighborhood. You were sick, we thought they were going to take you to Lenox Hill. But Dr. Mathias took care of you. I remember sitting in the office, waiting, thinking how much I wanted to have kids.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“No it wasn't. It feels that way but it wasn't.”

“Mike, I'm going to be late if I don't—”

He wanted to say, “Forget it, you're not seeing the doctor today,” but he knew that would backfire. Besides, he was on to something now and he wanted to finish it. “Just listen to me for a second. This is important. Sex felt different after that, it felt pure, like there was nothing between us and the consequences of what we were doing. Like, the consequences were what we were doing. The orgasm almost didn't matter. It was just the starter's gun. You know? It was scary. But it was good. It was like skydiving without a parachute, except when we hit the ground we weren't going to die. Someone else was going to be born.”

Cindy looked down. “Well, it didn't work out that way.”

“No. I know that.”

“I wish you'd said some of this stuff then.”

“I tried to. But it was just a jumble. I needed time to think about it.”

“Things were different then, Mike. We were different.”

He stopped walking, took her hands, faced her down.

“I want this baby, Cindy.”

She looked away, watching a Great Dane pulling a slim man on a taut leash. A woman was coming around the corner with a pair of King Charles spaniels. The dogs sniffed each other, the leashes tangled.

“That's not your decision to make,” Cindy said.

“Yes it is. This is happening to both of us. Just like it happened to both of us before. I lost a baby, too, Cindy.”

“Mike—”

“I lost a baby, too.”

Impulsively, she hugged him. She flung herself at him and knocked him back a step, into a big car, its make and model anonymous under a great loaf of snow. They held each other tight through their heavy coats. She was crying. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“Hey, it's okay. I love you. Cindy—it's okay.”

She pulled away and looked up at him, tears glittering in her eyes, snow glittering in her hair.

“What a pair of ridiculous fuck-ups we are.”

He kissed her. “I know. But we'll stop. We'll be better. We'll have to be better. We're going to be setting an example now.”

“Oh God.”

“We can do it. Our parents did.”

She smiled. “Don't set the bar too low, Mike.”

They pushed off the car and walked on, across Fifth Avenue, past the museum and along the park wall.

“It doesn't matter about Mark Toland,” he said after a while.
“
I
deserved that. And so did you.”

“Well, I needed it, anyway.”

“As long as it's over.”

“It barely began.”

“Good. It balances things. It settles the score.”

“Not really. I didn't sleep with a co-worker, or make you the subject of choice for every malicious gossip on the island. You never had to stand making small talk with Mark Toland at a party.”

“No. But it still hurt.”

“Did it really?”

“Thinking of you with that guy? Jesus.”

“You were jealous?”

“Come on.”

“Unbearably jealous?”

“Actually, I found the whole thing strangely erotic.”

She punched his arm. “You're sick.”

They walked along quietly for another block. The snow was coming down more heavily now, muffling their footsteps and cutting them off from the gauzy buildings across the street and the Christmas card shadows of the park.

“There are just two things you have to do for me,” Cindy said as they crossed the transverse entrance at Seventy-ninth Street.

“Tell me.”

“First, just keep talking to me.” She grabbed a handful of his hair, shook it. “I want to know what's going on in there. I know I can be a jerk. But tell me so from now on. Don't just nod and go off to work another seventeen-hour day. Whenever some painter's wife tells me her husband is on the job until nine every night, all I can think is, your marriage is in trouble, Honey. If it wasn't, he'd be home. No one has to work until nine o'clock every night, unless they're on some corporate fast track. And you're not.”

“No.”

“So come home early and talk to me. If I take your head off, I'll make it up with sexual favors. I promise. At least until the baby arrives.”

“Fair enough,” Mike said. “What's the other thing?”

“It's about Tanya Kriel.”

“What about her?”

Cindy gave him her sweetest smile. “Fire the bitch.”

“Done,” Mike said. “As soon as we get home. But right now, since this is the first time we've been off-island together in six months, I'd like to take you to a fabulous breakfast and a tour of the new Museum of Modern Art and maybe even an early movie before we drive back.”

“Lunch at Papaya King?”

“Absolutely. Five star all the way.”

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Thanks, Mike,” she said. “I mean it. Thanks for coming. It's the best thing anyone's done for me since…I don't know. Since my dad drove all the way up to Maine to take me out of that horrible Outward Bound summer camp. God, I was so happy to see that old Dodge Caravan coming up the camp road. I started crying right on the spot. No, this was better than that. This may be the best thing ever.”

“Throw in a plate of pesto scrambled eggs, some great art, and a drastically maudlin chick flick with all the popcorn you can eat, and we may never top this.”

“Just wait six months.”

Then she took his hand and they started east through the curtain of snow, toward breakfast and the rest of their day.