Kindle County: Reversible Errors Part 10

"Still and all," he said, "I just can't believe I done nothin like this. I'm not the kind to hurt even a fly. I never done nothin like this before." He put his head into his hands.

"We're going to discontinue taping now. The time is now 12:32 a.m. on October 9th." When Muriel nodded, the tech killed the light.

A copper from the watch desk came to put Rommy back in the holding area until 6 a.m., when they'd take him down to the House of Corrections. His hands cuffed behind him, Rommy remained dazed and subdued.

"See you, Rommy," Larry said.

Rommy briefly looked back and nodded.

"What'd you do to him?" Muriel asked, when he was gone.

"Nothing. I did my job."

"You're pretty amazing," she said.

Larry smiled like a kid.

Greer had arrived outside during the taping. At one in the morning, Harold was clean-shaven with nary a wrinkle in his starched s.h.i.+rt. Greer was an acquaintance of Talmadge's, and Muriel had sat beside him only a week ago at the City of Hope Dinner, where he'd struck her as one of those black men who'd always accepted that he had to be better, the type never to let down his guard, especially if somebody white was around. He'd done it so long he didn't even know it. Hands on his hips as he addressed Larry, the Commander did not seem completely pleased with his Detective. He asked first how Larry had found Gandolph.

"I got a tip. Doper in the jail said he saw him with this cameo."

"And Gandolph had it on him when you grabbed him?"

"Yep." Larry nodded several times. "I'll make sure Lenahan and Woznicki are on paper on that, too."

"What about the s.e.x?" Greer asked. "He won't wear it?"

"Not yet."

"So what's our theory?" Greer asked both of them.

"My theory," said Larry, "is he had the hots for Luisa, he a.s.saulted her at gunpoint and did it again after she was dead. But I say don't push it in court. We're missing something and we'll just stumble around."

When Greer turned to Muriel, she explained why Larry was wrong, trying to be nonchalant in order to not show him up. But the a.s.sault had to be charged.

"You won't get the evidence in, unless you do," she said. "And with a capital case, you want to make sure the jury hears that stuff. The evidence is light on that count, but my guess is you'll get a conviction. It wasn't the bogeyman who did that to her. Rommy's either the doer or an accomplice. He's legally responsible either way."

Greer's eyes didn't move as he listened, clearly impressed. When Muriel rolled out of bed in the morning, there was an endless list of things she did not know for sure about herself, whether she wanted to be single or married, what her favorite color was, whether she could ever stand to vote for a Republican, or even if she'd made a mistake by never having a fling with a girl. But when you put a case file in her hand, her judgment was as perfect as the sun. Problems were like buds, which in her mental hothouse blossomed into solutions. In the law-enforcement community, her legend was already growing"she was leaving a vapor trail, they said.

"Is there an accomplice?" Greer asked.

"He says no," said Larry. "When he realizes we're talking about the needle, you're gonna find out. He's not taking the long walk, if he's got another name."

Greer contemplated, then finally offered Larry his hand. While he was at it, he shook with Muriel, too.

"Very good work," he said. There were reporters outside. He asked Larry and Muriel to stand with him while he faced the cameras to make a brief statement. The lights flared on as soon as they entered the old brick lobby in Six, which was as far as the reporters were allowed to go. Even at this hour, each of the stations had a crew on hand, and there were two print journalists as well. The media crowded around while Greer announced the arrest, providing Gandolph's name and age and criminal record. They already knew about Luisa's cameo; there weren't many secrets in a police station. Greer confirmed that Squirrel had the piece in his pocket last night. With that, Harold called it quits. The cameras had plenty for the newscasts all day.

Greer pointed at Muriel when they separated. "Regards to Talmadge," he said. Neutral enough, but she could feel Larry react. She walked toward the parking lot with him. Larry seemed on the verge of saying something dumb again, but Stew Dubinsky from the Trib, round as a cherub, came das.h.i.+ng up. He wanted to do a feature on Larry"intrepid investigator scores again. Larry declined, but was uncharacteristically polite to a reporter. He seemed to know that Stew, who covered the courthouse, was important to Muriel.

Once Dubinsky gave up, Larry and she stood between their cars. The parking lot was as bright as a night game. n.o.body cared to read about muggings behind the police station.

"Your jury do the right thing?" Larry asked.

"They came back this afternoon. Guilty, all counts."

He smiled for her sake. Larry clearly was tired and, in his weariness, starting to look old. His thinning hair stood up when the wind blew, and he had that fragile northern European skin, the same as Scandinavian blonds, already growing ruddy and dry. She still thought of Larry as a fixed piece of her youth, and it was almost incomprehensible that time was starting to work him over.

When they'd met, she was supposed to be helping him with Torts, and she ended up sleeping with him instead, the first time while her husband was in the hospital with the heart troubles that killed him two years later. It was stupid, of course, but it was stupid in an adolescent way"she had merely been seeking the borders, engaging in a little bit of outrage as she sank into the bland world of law and adult responsibility. But the relations.h.i.+p had gone on. In a strange, fitful way. After Larry remarried. After Rod died. They would say it was done, and then she'd see Larry in the courthouse and one thing would lead to another. The quest, such as it was, continued, full of the yearning and willingness that belonged to the time when you knew nothing for sure about who you wanted. For her, that time was finally pa.s.sing. She felt strangely sorry for them both.

"I'm starving to death," Larry said. "You wanna eat something?"

She was reluctant to abandon him again. He'd looked like she'd stabbed him the other night, outside the jail. Then she thought of something perfect.

"What about Paradise?"

"Great." Larry hadn't been able to share much with John on the phone and had promised to connect when he could. John was supposed to be at the restaurant all night.

When they got there, John was nowhere to be seen. It turned out he was working the kitchen. Through the narrow stainless steel opening where the waitresses hung their orders and the cooks pa.s.sed the food, John noticed them and emerged holding a spatula, an ap.r.o.n wound twice around him. Its sheer size made it obvious it had belonged to Gus.

"It's true?" He pointed to a radio which was next to the register. When they said yes, he took a seat on one of the stools. He fixed for a moment on a darkened patch in the paneling, then dropped his face into his hands and broke down completely. Glossy with tears, John began thanking both of them obsessively.

"It's our job, John," Muriel kept saying as she patted him on the shoulder, but she nearly wept herself. The nerves lit up across her body in a starburst of feeling, a sense of living connection to what was right.

"You don't know how hard it is," John said, "thinking the person who did it is still walking around. I felt every minute like I had to do something, that I was letting my old man down if I didn't."

Muriel had spoken often with John since July, and over the months it had become clear that in death Gus had grown far dearer to John than he had ever been alive. Muriel had seen this happen before, but she did not fully understand the transformation. Necessity had forced John to take over the restaurant, and a few months of standing in Gus's shoes had undoubtedly enhanced a son's appreciation for his father's viewpoint, not to mention the rigors of Gus's life. But she was often startled when she received John's calls to hear the ferocity with which he talked about his father's murderer. At moments, she suspected he hated the killer for inspiring that shameful instant in which John had welcomed his father's death. However it had happened, she sensed that the pain and shock of the killing"and the fact that it had ended any chance of healing between father and son"had wrapped themselves around the prior misery between the Leonidis men, so that John could no longer tell one from the other.

John launched himself into more abject thank-yous, and Larry finally saved them all by cuffing John's neck and saying he'd really come around for a free meal. Eager with grat.i.tude, John rushed back to the kitchen.

They moved toward the tables. Being Muriel and Larry Together, a sort of Outward Bound experience in which taboo was the wilderness, they lingered near the booth where Luisa Remardi had been murdered. Muriel found them sharing another telegraphic glance and they sat simultaneously on either side. She had to look down for a minute to be sure she didn't laugh. She smoked when she was on trial, and had a pack in her purse. Larry held out his fingers and took one puff before pa.s.sing it back.

"I hope you noticed I haven't mentioned Talmadge."

"Until now."

Larry tipped his chin down so he took on an inquisitorial look.

"You're going to marry this guy, aren't you?"

It was two o'clock in the morning. And Larry, whatever he was, deserved nothing less than the truth. Functionally, she had been dating for nineteen years, trying on men as if they were dresses, hoping all the while that she would look in the mirror one day and recognize herself. She was sick of it. She wanted the other side of life now"kids, stability, the sense that she was good enough to matter to somebody worthwhile. Talmadge excited her. He had a life she craved to be a part of. She shared his need to act eventfully, to have consequence. He was funny. He was rich. He was nice-looking. And he counted in the world"enormously.

She peered across the table. It was always a shock to her to find she cared so much about Larry, that there was not only a sensual buzz but sympathy and connection. And knowledge. More than anything else, they shared the same intuitions, as if they had both been wired the same way in the factory. Years from now, she realized, she'd identify this as the moment she'd made up her mind.

"That's my best guess."

Larry sat straight back against the blackish planks of the booth. He'd just told her what she was going to do, but he looked astonished.

"Yeah, well," said Larry at last, "the rich guys always get the girls."

"You think that's the attraction, Larry?"

"I think it's the whole scene"rich, famous, powerful. Talmadge can do a lot for you."

This conversation was a wrong turn from the beginning. Muriel looked away rather than answer.

"Don't tell me no."

"No," she replied.

Larry's wide face ground through a series of self-containing expressions. Despite his efforts, he was about to say something else, but John arrived with a plate of steak and eggs for each of them. After asking if anybody minded, John stole one of Muriel's cigarettes from the pack on the table and smoked while they ate. He remained unsettled, pulled at his earring, bit at his fingernails, and couldn't stop asking questions or adjust to the idea that the killer was finally caught. What seemed to bother him most was that it wasn't some ghoul who crawled out of a sewer, but a guy John had frequently seen in here.

"I mean, what's blowing my mind is, I mean, Gus thought the guy was funny. He was a pain. But for my dad, chasing this screwball away was kind of entertaining. If I'm remembering, there was one time my old man went after him with a butcher knife and a sandwich. He gave him a hamburger and then told him he'd kill him if he ever came back. It was a contest. For both of them. This guy"Gandolph?"he'd look through the window to see if my dad was around, and come sauntering in like he owned the place, then run like h.e.l.l if Gus came out of the back. That went on in here once a week."

John kept going over it, and Muriel and Larry slowly tried to explain the pure accidental nature of these calamities.

"Look, it doesn't make it any better," Larry said, "but you know, your dad probably did like this guy. And if Squirrel hadn't taken a big dose of wack and didn't see this lady he had a yen for sitting right here, it would have been the usual dance steps. But it wasn't. Not that night. That night there was all this s.h.i.+t Squirrel wanted that he couldn't have, a lifetime of it, and he went off. It's the same thing as if the gas main blew up under this restaurant. I mean, this is dumb, but it's true, John: it's life. It doesn't always work out right." She noticed that Larry stole a glance her way when he said that.

It was nearly four when they left Paradise. Larry was so d.a.m.n beat that he felt he was unraveling from the edges, the slouching demons and unseen locales of dreams already sneaking at him from the periphery. Across the street the great highway roared. Urgency put you on the road at four in the a.m."truckers who wanted to make a quick pa.s.s through the city, futures traders with an eye on the overseas markets, lovers who'd left somebody's bed in the middle of the night in order to stop home before morning. That universe of special needs went zipping by overhead.

Inside the restaurant, Larry had tried hard to console Gus's kid in order to comfort himself. It hadn't worked. John was still talking about all the tough guys his old man had faced down"mobsters who wanted to force him to take kitchen linens, and g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers who tried to stick him up"and standing here with Muriel, Larry still felt like his heart had exploded.

"Muriel," he said in the same plaintive tone he'd heard from himself outside the jail, "I need to talk to you."

"About?"

"About Talmadge"" He threw a hand through the air in frustration. "About everything."

"I don't want to talk about Talmadge."

"No, listen to me."

He was weary enough to feel dizzy and a little sick to his stomach"but he was ill mostly with himself. For several days, he'd known why he'd been pouring energy into this case like a medic trying to revive a dead body, until he finally had. For Muriel, for Chrissake. Yet even seeing that much, he hadn't seen it all. He didn't just want to hang with her and trade snappy lines. Or get another shot at her in the rack. No, in his mushy, teen-aged brain, until a little while ago some horse opera had been playing. He'd la.s.so the bad guy, and with that, Muriel would come to her senses and recognize he was the best fella around. She'd shuck Talmadge and her march to glory. Recognizing his own devices, too late and so clearly, he was crushed. Some great detective, he thought.

"I want you to listen," he said again.

Their cars were in the parking lot, near the spot where Gus's Cadillac and Luisa's and Paul's vehicles had grilled in the July sun for a day while their bodies had frozen. Muriel's Honda Civic was closer and they ended up sitting together on the front seat. Muriel wasn't neat. She used the floor in back like a trash bag"food wrappers, plastic packaging from things she'd opened, and personal mail from the office were slopped all over.

"You know how people always tell you when you're young to grow up?" Larry asked. "And you hear them, and it even seems like a pretty good idea, but it's like, what the f.u.c.k? What the f.u.c.k am I supposed to do? People tell you to get serious and you can't even figure out what you want."

As he spoke, Larry looked toward the unfaced brick wall in front of him. Years ago, an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a soft drink had been painted there and the spectral remains of some bountiful young woman with a gla.s.s in her hand were still apparent under the sh.e.l.l lights.

"I always wondered how in the h.e.l.l I was going to figure it out. I mean, some people, like you, I think you've always known what you want and have been going for it since I met you. You know, to see your name in the sky. But I'm the other kind. I mean, I don't even know it's what I want until maybe I don't have it. Like when Nancy says, 'How about if I take the boys?' I mean, Jesus Christ, get real."

He found himself caught in a great swell of emotion as an image of his sons overcame him. He saw them following him around like puppies while he was cutting drywall, laying tile, working away at these houses. They loved to be with him. Darrell had a saw that he dragged across the dusty floors and Michael, with two hands on a hammer, was always driving nails at all angles into a two-by-four. Larry had to keep one eye on them every second, and even so, afterwards, in the middle of the night he'd wake, split by fear like a tree by lightning, sure he had not been careful enough and that one of them could somehow come to serious harm.

He pinched his nose, dwelling with the pain in the hope he would not break down. He had great suspicion of a certain type you often found on the Force these days, men"and some women"who gave in to every lame sentiment because they were so hard on the street, who'd weep buckets when their parakeet bought the farm, but, hours before, couldn't so much as shake their heads over a seven-year-old killed in a hit-and-run. The idea he had of himself was to have some handle on all of it, to be able to say, as he'd tried to tell John, it hurts like h.e.l.l, that's life.

"So that's how I am, dumb enough to not know what something is till it's gone. There are people like that," Larry said. "I'm not the only one."

In the dark, he could not really see Muriel's face, just the keenest light on her eyes and her profile in silhouette. She was leaning against the driver's door, with her head of short, stiff curls held erect in a posture clearly suggesting alarm.

"Where is this going?" She couldn't stop being Muriel. She had to be at the end of the curve when everybody else was still at the beginning. As near as he could tell, Muriel had come from a normal white-bread family. But she must have been calculating in the womb. Like cows who always knew the shortest path to their destination, Muriel had a positioning system of her own that never failed to highlight the route to her best interests. Even when she was kind, as she often was, it felt a trifle remote, as if she'd also taken a second to figure out whether it was the right thing for her.

Summoning himself to answer, he glanced down and was surprised to see soil ground under his nails. Yesterday he'd been at another small house in the Point, his current project, getting some evergreens in while it was still time for fall planting. His mom had always hammered on clean hands, and it amazed him that he hadn't noticed the dirt until now, a sign of how focused he'd been on Squirrel since he woke nearly twenty-four hours ago.

"What if I told you I was sick of my own s.h.i.+t," he said to her. "Sick of looking for the life better than life. What if I told you I've actually started figuring stuff out." He showed her his fingernails. "I garden."

"Garden?"

"I mean, liking it. Growing things. Would that matter to you?"

"Larry," she said.

"I think I know what I need in my life. And what we have going"neither one of us has ever been very honest about it. There's a lot there""

"There is," she said. She reached for his arm. "But, Larry." She was the one having difficulty now. She'd moved into the light and he could see her eyes close and flutter with the strain. "I don't think we can take this any further. I can't. I'm not there now."

He was. .h.i.t hard again, worse perhaps than in the restaurant, and felt his breath burn in his lungs. Jesus, he thought. What a f.u.c.ked-up creature I am. Making a play when the woman just told you she was marrying somebody else.

"I'm gonna feel like such a dip," he said, "if I actually cry."

She leaned across and touched the back of his neck.

"Come on, Larry. Jesus. This has never been for keeps. Come on."

"That's what I mean," he said. "It should have been."

"It's been good, Larry. It's been good in a zillion ways. But it's been a thrill ride, Lar. That's how we wanted it. Sneaking around. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g our brains out. You can't try to pretend it's a regular life. I mean, I love it for what it was. That was great." She laughed, an unconstrained sound in the dim car, full of earnest amus.e.m.e.nt in memory. She squeezed him around the shoulders and brought her face close to his. "We had great times," she said and laid her other hand on his thigh as a reminder. He batted it away, and she returned it. They went that round a few times, laughing all the while, both of them enjoying the moment of physical combat, and the relief it provided. He finally grabbed her hand and she took the other one from his shoulder and used it to lower his zipper before he pushed her away.

"I don't need one last trip on the roller coaster, Muriel."

"I do," she answered, in her usual fearless way and placed her hand where it had been. He thought he was beyond being stimulated, but he was wrong. She lowered her face to him right there, and he enjoyed it for one second before easing her away.

"We're in a parking lot for Chrissake," he said.

She threw her keys in the ignition and pulled around the corner, her free hand on his hard-on, pumping it now and then while she drove. When she stopped again, she went at him full time. Larry looked down the alley, realizing they were in the correct neighborhood for this kind of thing"behind these buildings, under these phone lines, amid the spilled garbage and rusted dumpsters pleasure had often been purchased on the cheap and practiced on the run. Muriel was making a feast of it, taking her time, nuzzling the k.n.o.b of him, running her tongue under the ridge and then bringing her lips over the top, again and again, watching attentively and understanding exactly the reaction each move inspired. That was Muriel, too. Bold. Looking at the thing and savoring the power a woman derived from being willing. He kept thinking, G.o.d, this is f.u.c.ked up, I'm f.u.c.ked up. When he came, it felt as if he cried out forever.

Chapter 13.

May 22, 2001 Normal "SO YOU JUST COULDN'T STAY AWAY FROM ME," said Ruthie, the correctional officer who'd escorted Gillian initially. With her stout form, she kept the heavy door into the guardhouse half open and beckoned to Gillian like an old friend, nodding to Arthur as Well. "Thought you said you and Erno were done talking," Ruthie said as they followed her into the dim corridor of stone and brick.

Arthur explained that the Lieutenant had demanded Gillian's presence and Ruthie laughed.