Return to Dust (9 page)

“I used to come here years ago,” Hank told me.

“When?” I asked.

“College.”

“You weren't twenty-one.”

“Like that stops anyone these days.”

It was a quiet weeknight. Just the usual town drunks, some late-night college kids with bogus IDs—Hank's casual observation—and unhappy husbands and wives. The bar had an awkward mix of town and gown, with the locals hating the college kids who in turn mocked the locals. It had vintage mahogany high-back booths, with original tables with scratched-in graffiti dating back to 1900. But as the elegant mahogany stools at the bar wore out, they were replaced with shoddy plastic-covered ones, stools that clashed with the old-world feel of the place. Sometimes the owners introduced plants—real ones—but within the month they died of inattention. Every so often a local got drunk and was thrown out—then the college kids applauded. When a college kid got ousted, the locals raised their beer steins in salute. It was that kind of a place. Tonight there were a couple of barflies, that's all, the kind with no flesh left on their frames, too much fear in their eyes.

“By the way,” Hank began, “my mother says for you to stop over. You haven't dropped in for some time. Maybe Sunday morning?”

I smiled. “She making
mi ga
?”

Hank laughed. “You got it. Your favorite.” The Vietnamese chicken soup. His mother's version was about as savory as possible, a far cry from the bland versions I'd discovered in Vietnamese restaurants largely catering to white palates.

“I'll be there.”

There was a time when I wouldn't have agreed so quickly to such an invitation. His mother is a sweet woman who accepted me immediately—but she tends to like everyone she meets. The grandmother dotes on me—a highly spiritual woman with her Buddhist prayers and ceremonies. But the men—well, his father fought for the American-Vietnamese forces, a topic he will discuss with me for hours at a time. When he gets drunk, which is often, he attacks the white in me. But the grandfather is the problem—he hates my mongrel guts. He doesn't want me in the house.

“I got to warn you, though,” he confided, “my father's on a kick about the United States opening trade relations with Communist Vietnam.”

“I won't mention it.”

“He's gonna demand your opinion. Be careful.”

“I'm always diplomatic.”

“Yeah, right.”

Hank's fingers circled the neck of the beer bottle. He started to peel off the moist label, flecking it into little balls of paper that dropped like sloppy hail around the base of the amber bottle. With his thumb and index finger he flicked the rolled-up balls of paper at me, like pellets from a gun. They shot across the table and careened off my chest.

“Are we back in grade school?” I asked him.

I had a second beer and munched on stale beer nuts. The Tavern, I swear, kept all munchies in back until suitably stale, then served them. Hank refused another beer. That oddly pleased me. Big brother Rick, all over again. Hank leaned over, speaking confidentially. “You want to know the name of your murderer?” A dramatic pause. “He's here.”

Startled, I twisted my head, surveyed the bar as though I knew the culprit by sight.

“Behind the jukebox,” Hank whispered. “He just walked in.”

I peered through the dim light. I noticed a tall man nearly in shadows. Ken Rodman. I frowned as I turned back to Hank. He was grinning. Ken was the newest tenant on the third floor of my house, a decent-looking man in his early forties. He'd moved in three or four months back. In fact, Hank and I had helped him maneuver an ungainly sofa up the back stairs. Visiting that morning, Hank announced that he always had the bad luck of visiting places when sofas were being lifted up multiple flights of stairs. Though he seemed anxious that we leave, Ken had offered us diet Cokes as a reward. That was my last real contact with him. An insurance exec in Hartford, freshly divorced—Gracie's gossip. I'd since said only three or four words to him as we crossed on the stairwell or in the back parking lot. He drove a sleek black Audi that's always impeccably clean, inside and out. I knew that for a fact because I peered inside one time. I couldn't imagine he'd allow mismatched furniture in his apartment. No, unlike my eclectic lot of dubious origin, his came, I suspected, from some store where born-again bachelors shopped. Pier One, perhaps. Or the Pottery Barn. Everything Scandinavian and Euro teakwood and big off-white linen throw pillows. I shivered at the clinical thought.

Hank was smirking. “Your murderer.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

Hank gave me a Huckleberry grin. “You know how you spend all that time typing Marta's cleaning clients into your laptop—your tidy list of possible suspects? Which, of course, includes you, probably the real murderer. I wouldn't be surprised.”

I was impatient. “Yeah. What's your point? What are you trying to say?”

“Well, Rick, I know for a fact that Marta cleaned Ken's apartment at least once. I stopped by to see you and you weren't home, but Gracie told me Marta would be cleaning your apartment after she finished with Ken's. So he's your murderer.”

I laughed at him. “I already know that.” But I cringed—just how many people
did
Marta know? Karen had given me the short list of permanent weekly clients, the old professors Marta knew for years and had become friendly with. Everyone kept saying she didn't do it for the money, that she was loaded, but she certainly kept her dance card full. Have feather duster, will travel. The woman who returned to dust.

My list struck me as a little foolish. How many other cleaning jobs were there? How many possible connections did she make? Was there somebody out there whose apartment she had cleaned only once? Some maniac? Some—what? Motive, motive! Marta kept no orderly accounting of work done. Much of her pay was under the table anyway. She kept no appointment book at all.

Hank was stretching, scratching his head.

“But then again,” he yawned, “maybe not.”

I got ready to leave, fishing for my wallet.

I wasn't happy. Hank's jesting—he still kept nodding toward Ken Rodman—rankled. There just seemed too many paths now. I liked things orderly, logical. One of my professors at John Jay once lectured our class—a good detective likes things plain and simple, that's natural, but never expects to find things that way. That's because life is illogical—so annoyingly unnatural. Detectives have to sift through messy, random lives so that things become clear. Somewhere in the wet swamp of a murder scene there lies the dry island. A good detective swims to that land. I remember getting confused with all those metaphors and swimming directions, but the message was obvious. If you think you're going to find the murderer behind the first locked, obvious door, you should pursue a less predictable career. You'd have better luck on a TV game show. Door number one? Two?

Hank shoved me as we walked out the door. “Aren't you gonna cuff Ken?” His lips spread into a thin, cynical line. “He's already planning his next murder.”

I looked back over my shoulder. In the dim shadows of the bar, Ken had spotted us. Taking a sip from his bottle, he turned away.

Chapter Ten

After midnight, lazy at my desk, my laptop humming, I stared numbly at my feeble list of suspects. Even the word
suspect
now seemed pretentious. Interviewees—that was better. How many more? Idly, I added Ken Rodman's name to the end of the list, most likely a throwaway gesture. Someone whose rooms she cleaned killed her—possibly. If murder it was…My fingers typed: “I understand a pesky Marta Kowalski cleaned your apartment one time. Did you murder her? Did she leave a particularly egregious dust ball that sent you into a fevered rage?” I highlighted the line and pressed
delete
.

It was late. I was punchy, humming with a slight buzz from the beer, a little annoyed at Hank and not certain exactly why, hazy with the uncertainties of the case. Standing up, I slipped off my shirt and rubbed my chest. I yawned. It was time for bed.

The phone rang. I glanced at the clock—nearly one in the morning. I debated letting the machine pick up because the caller ID indicated UNKNOWN, but at that hour the temptation was immediate and welcome.

At first the phone voice was faraway and small, almost indistinguishable, like a small child sputtering into the phone.

“Who is it?”

The rambling went on. A thick voice, a man's voice I could tell now, but a foggy one, as if something were stuck in his throat.

Nothing.

I was ready to hang up when I heard my name. My whole name. “Rick Van Lam.” Said sarcastically in a singsong tone.

“Who's this?”

“Like you don't know.”

Well, I didn't. So I waited. Someone knew my name, so the call was deliberate. My eyes half-shut with fatigue. I rubbed my chest as I settled into a chair. We waited, both of us, in silence, the sound of tinny laughter in the background. I guessed the caller was at a bar. I heard the twang of a country song playing on a jukebox, the clinking of glass against glass. Someone yelled, an indistinguishable slurring of words.

“It's Davey Corcoran.” The voice spoke directly into the receiver, the words now clear and sharp, but spiked with sloppy anger. Davey Corcoran, calling from a last-call tavern, drunk out of his mind. Great, I thought. A good-night bedtime call, so much better than a lullaby.

“What's up?”

He laughed that phony laugh of bitter drunks, a rumble hearty yet cold and deadpan. A laugh with no soul. “You know what's up, man. I just want to tell you one thing.” His words slurred into each other so that the effect was breathy and difficult to understand:
Ijuswannatellyaonethinnng
. Like that.

I waited. Silence. “Well…”

“Well, my sister got a fucking nerve hiring you to do this shit about my aunt. She leaves a note on my door, telling me you're gonna talk to me. I don't think you realize that this is a crock of bullshit.”

“Davey, it's her money.”

That laugh again. “It's my aunt's money.”

“Davey…”

“Save the shit, Lam. Little sister sucked her way into that cash, and that's a fact. Not that I cared. Or even had a chance. Good old Marta had no use for me and…” He babbled on, again incoherent.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did she leave you out of the will?”

“That's not why I'm calling.”

“Well, why are you calling?”

“I want this stopped. I don't want you bothering me—or anyone.”

“If your aunt was murdered…”

He gasped. “Shit. It wasn't murder. Who'd wanna kill that old bitch?”

“Karen thinks…”

He cut in, furious. “Let me tell you something about little sister. Karen's not the pretty little thing that gets you all itchy between your legs, Lam boy. I know how she works around guys. She always got her way. She hated my aunt—Christ, how could she
not
hate that witch?—but she put up with her shit because she knew I wouldn't. I don't know what this game of hers is, but I want you to think about one thing.” A long pause. “You listening?”

“Yeah.”

I heard the jukebox music stop. I heard glasses tinkling, someone yelling a man's name.

“She's crazy. I don't mean she's, you know, like, just funny crazy. Oh, that Karen—how wacky. I mean she's certifiable. I don't mean she hears voices and stuff”—he started to laugh again—“but she gets real depressed, and—well, she's nuts. Psychiatrists run away from her, you know. We both belong in a ward. She's cut from the same crazy quilt as dear old Marta.” His voice got mean now, gravelly, rich with venom.

“What's that gotta do with your aunt's death?”

“I never said it did.”

“Then…”

“Then nothing. I'm just warning you that she and I are not close, and I don't give a fuck about my aunt's money. I don't want you pointing a finger at me, hear? All this talk about duty and respect for Aunt Marta. I don't know what her game is—if there is a game—but she's living in her own little world sometimes…”

“Why didn't your aunt like you?”

He laughed a long time. “Because I once wished the old bitch would die a mean and horrible death.”

“Davey, tomorrow morning—if it's okay—I'd like to come to see you before work, and…”

“And I got my wish,” he ran on. “A mean and horrible death. Who said there isn't a God?” He hung up.

Chapter Eleven

I had a fitful sleep, nearly toppling out of bed more than once, waking in a sweat, so in the morning I jogged a solid mile or so in the fierce chill before I headed to Davey's apartment. I knew he clerked in an upscale garden shop on the outskirts of the town—a glossy-brochure nursery with pampered potted plants and color-coded Italian patio tile and biodegradable fertilizer for the weekend farmers of town. I wanted to catch him before he left for work, though I didn't know whether he'd let me in—or, in fact, even remember his drunken phone call. His conversation had been unsettling, and I'd dreamed of falling into a jukebox all night, or having it fall onto me, one of those noisy, multi-colored affairs with circus bells and clanging, carnival hoopla—a combination jukebox and pinball machine that kept attacking me. Somewhere on the boundaries of that quirky nightmare was Davey—nasty, sloe-eyed, puffed up and bloated, and I swear I dreamed the smell of alcohol.

I ran and ran, nodded to strangers on my street, enjoying the crisp, clear morning. My breath hung in the air before me like a cloud I ran through, while the sun shone brightly through the skeletal trees, stringy shafts of light, a sky of shimmering birthday party favors. And then I showered, long and hard. My head was clear.

When he answered the door around nine, he was still unshaven, dressed in his underwear—large boxer shorts that had tropical palm trees on them. His T-shirt announced the superiority of left-handed people.

“I told you I was coming before you left for work.”

“I should've baked a cake?”

But he was smiling, not some joyous grin, more a cynical slit of humor, the look of someone pleased with himself.

“Funny guy.”

“That's why I'm so loved in this little Puritan village.”

“Can I come in?”

He half-bowed, mockingly, and I walked past him. “I suppose the only way I'll end my sister's curious obsession is to entertain the questions of her newest boyfriend.”

That remark stopped me. “Boyfriend?”

“Not yet? My, my, she's slow. I guess grief has a way of slowing or tempering the body's fires. Or is it money?”

While he talked, he left the room, and I could hear him muttering from another room, drawers opening and closing. He hadn't closed the door, and at one point he glared out at me, the look on his face suggesting he didn't know he had a visitor. He emerged dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and creased jeans, the urban gardener ready for labor, and I realized he'd be going to work unshaven. I supposed it fit his image. The better to sell plaster-of-Paris lawn cherubs to suburban homesteaders, though perhaps, given the season, he'd be selling more—what?—more designer rakes and tulip bulbs from Holland? Half-priced Halloween pumpkins and fresh Christmas grave blankets? The mysteries of outdoor pastoral life.

Davey was different from the image I'd created last night. Of course, he was sober now, but with his seedy, craggy look, he resembled someone who liked the bars too much.

While he was dressing, I surveyed the small, cramped living room. Stacks of paperback books and magazines and newspapers cluttered the room. The
New York Times
, tied in bundles with clothesline rope, rested on the floor. There was accumulation everywhere, stacks of magazines lying under piles of clothing, unwashed heaps of T-shirts and trousers and socks, everything intermingled. He lived a slovenly life, to be sure. Even the few chairs were heaped with unopened mail, junk mail, flyers, brochures hawking sales at retail outlets. Seed catalogs from Burpee's. Sears catalogs. The Home Depot. Lowe's. Barnes and Noble. Did the man throw anything out?

He pushed some papers off a chair and motioned toward it, a grin on his face.

“I live like a packrat, but not always. Things got ahead of me. I spend my days clerking for the rich and at night I read.”

“What do you read?”

I removed a stack of catalogues from a fifties-style kitchen chair, all cherry-red vinyl and chrome—and sat down.

“I read everything. It's a bad habit school gave me. Give a kid
Treasure Island
, and he's yours for life.” He folded his arms over his chest. “But you're not here to survey the reading tastes of the American loner.” A quicksilver smile. “Or, if I read your mind correctly, the American loser. Some article you'll someday write about the predilections—literary or otherwise—of the incipient serial killer.”

Abruptly, he swept books off a chair, pushing them onto a littered floor, sat down, and stared straight into my face. Four feet away from me, he made eye contact. Not pleasant. I knew he was attempting to be amusing, his voice was high and animated, his sentences ending with a slight laugh. But he was jittery and unhappy. A thin line of sweat appeared above his thick eyebrows, and the corners of his full mouth were moist. Occasionally he flicked his tongue nervously to taste the escaping saliva, swallowing, and I thought of animals I'd seen doing the same thing on the Discovery Channel.

“Why'd you call last night?”

He sighed, closed his eyes, then smiled. “I have some trouble with demon rum, I have to admit. I was sitting on a bar stool and thought of Karen—we don't talk, you know, a few words now and then—and how she left me that note about you and her lamebrain theories of murder—well, I was thinking about that as I downed one more shot, and I got mad. I get awful mad when I'm drunk.” A sly grin. “You really should have an unlisted number.”

He couldn't sit still, so he disappeared into the kitchen, muttering about coffee. He emerged with two cups of ready-made coffee, put one in front of me. I don't drink coffee without plenty of milk, so I left it there, untouched. I didn't want it anyway. A grimy cup in a disorderly place.

As he walked back into the room, I noticed how big he was—a huge shock of a man—and the word that came to mind immediately was fleshy. Fleshy—just that. It wasn't solely the puffiness around the eyes, or the bloated lips, or the creased brow—clearly the remnants of last night's drinking spree. Instead, it was the ungainliness, a sort of
lumpen
physique, that of a roly-poly TV buffoon who liked wine and whiskey and Necco wafers. The pinkish baby-face glow of his skin suggested softness, but his languid moves across the room made me think that he had a layer of water moving beneath the surface of his skin. He was blond and blue-eyed, with a wide peculiarly handsome face—but what I noticed was the sheer bulk of him. A package seeping at the corners. He was worlds apart from his slender, wispy sister.

“I gotta leave in a few minutes.” He put down his cup. I noticed he'd drained it in one long gulp.

“Tell me what you think.”

“Actually I summed it up fairly well while plastered on the phone.” He grinned, but I detected a flash of fire in the eyes, anger in the tight corners of his mouth.

“And?”

“And—well, I was mad when I didn't get any money from my beloved aunt, but I wasn't surprised. We didn't talk for a long, long time. She hated me—my life.” He waved his hand around the cluttered room. “I didn't see her for months. I mean, I saw her around town, but she snubbed me in that wonderful Victorian way people in Farmington sometimes affect. Like they think they're characters in a Henry James novel or something. Anyway, we didn't talk…”

“Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and I knew he wouldn't answer.

“There has to be a reason.”

“Maybe only in her goddamned mind. She said I was a failure, you know. Working as a clerk. Dropping out of Trinity in my junior year. Living in this less-than-desirable part of town.” He kept going, but he wasn't looking at me. He was lying, repeating some fashioned fabrication he'd used before. He took a deep breath. “I didn't even attend the funeral.”

“Yeah?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Am I a suspect in her suicide—I mean—murder?”

“You had motive.”

“A motive?”

“She left you no money.”

He burst out laughing, but it was humorless. His mouth went slack. “That's not motive enough for me. If I wanted money, would I be living like this?”

“But you're still angry.”

A long silence. Then he spat out words. “Well, of course, but it's not about the money. Although, as Karen probably told you, I did consider contesting. I was—and am—mad about the very existence of that wretched woman. You see, I didn't
like
her. At all. I know she took us in when our parents died. I give her
that
bit of familial duty. But Christ, she never let us forget it either. ‘You'd be out on the streets if I didn't take you in. Foster care—starved, beaten.' How about loved? The missing equation. Tell you the truth, there must have been insurance money from dear old Mom and Dad. She got that. We never heard about that. The woman had very little love in her.”

“I'm sorry. Children should be loved.”

He eyed me. “Did you hear that on Dr. Phil's infomercial?”

“All I'm saying…”

He yelled out, “I'm angry that she is still in my life, even though she's dead and buried. That's why I called last night. I'm mad because Karen won't let her stay dead. The fact that you're sitting here right now proves it. I can't escape the bitch.”

“So you don't think it's murder?” Without thinking I sipped the coffee. My fingers had been around the handle and stupidly I raised the cup. I swallowed stale black coffee, lukewarm and filmy. Davey was watching me as I dribbled it back into the cup. I was not the gracious guest. The good nuns of my childhood would have frowned.

“That good, huh?” He grinned. “Well, to answer your question, frankly no. I have to tell you I was surprised at the suicide. Marta was too greedy to take her own life. I mean, she sucked in other people's energy—she hungered for sensation and life in the most obvious way. Especially after her husband died, that poor bastard, happily free of her, though his early death I think was his escape clause in a bad marriage. No, Marta wanted to live forever.”

“But do you think she killed herself?”

“Yes.”

“Even though she was a Catholic?”

“She was depressed. Karen said so. Being Catholic got pushed to the back burner maybe.”

“Meaning?”

“Catholics kill themselves, Lam boy. I repeat. She was depressed.”

“Or so Karen said.”

He nodded, smiled. “Depression with a capital D.”

“Why?”

“She must have wanted something that she couldn't have. I suspect it was genteel respectability on the arm of Joshua Jennings. The poor Catholic girl hungry for the patrician Yankee. Whatever it was, it was enough to allow her to kill herself. She always got what she wanted.”

“But Karen said you were close to her for a long time. She told me you were her golden boy. You and she—religious, going to Mass.”

He shook his head. “That was a while ago.”

“What happened?”

“She was—unforgiving.”

“Of what?”

A long pause. “I told you—failure.”

Davey was sailing through his words, singing them out in a practiced voice, but suddenly the head stopped moving as his eyes focused on something behind me. I turned my head but he rustled in the chair, standing up.

“I have to leave now.” He dismissed me. “It's getting late.”

“One last question. You said Karen is unbalanced….”

Nervous, he waved his hand. “Ask her about the pills she takes for depression. Her own suicide attempt in high school. We Corcorans are not the most stable people. Marta fashioned her into a pesky prig, a little Miss Puritan of Farmington High. Then she let loose, all systems go. She learned about medication. You know, after Mommy and Daddy bought lunch in the interstate pileup, little Davey and Karen lost their way on the path to Auntie's house.”

“You enjoy mentioning Karen and her pills.”

“I'm giving you clues, Lam boy.”

“To what?”

“To why you're wasting everyone's time and money.”

“It's Karen's time and money.”

He motioned me up from the chair.

“Karen does seem ambivalent about your aunt, Davey. I grant you that.”

He laughed. “How perceptive of you. Most of Karen's conversations with me started out—‘I had lunch with Aunt Marta today, and she said my lipstick was too bright.' Or, ‘I had lunch with Aunt Marta today, and she said I'm drifting.' Ambivalent, huh? No flies on you, Lam boy.”

“You can love…”

“Let me sum up my sister for you. Karen runs from everything while she actually believes she is running toward it.” He pointed to the door.

I wasn't ready to leave so I resorted to a pathetic ruse. “Can I use the john?”

He looked ready to say no, but hesitated, pointing behind him. But when I went into the tight room, I saw an unflushed toilet, clumps of hair circling the sink drain, the smell of cigarettes and whiskey pervasive. I turned back in time to see Davey hovering in that spot behind where I'd been sitting, tucking something under a pile of magazines. He caught me looking at him, his hands still holding something, and he grinned sheepishly.

He rushed to open the door for me, silent now and frowning. I walked by him and started to say something—to thank him?—but he leaned into me. I smelled whiskey and stale vomit, curiously mixed with some cheap drugstore cologne.

“Please don't come back. Next time I won't be the happy host. You won't even get a cup of bad coffee.”