"Why did Brendan have this? Why did he give this to you?"
"I don"t know, Janice. Like I said, he came to me to find something else. Not a person. An it."
She nods, even though I"m only answering her rhetorical questions, questions about her husband that will haunt her for the rest of her life because there might be no answers forthcoming. I don"t know if she realizes that yet. Or maybe she does, and she"s tolerating my presence with a staggering amount of dignity. Maybe she can share some dignity with me.
I say, "I"m sorry, but I have to ask this, Janice. Did Brendan act strangely, do anything out of character, say anything odd in the days before he died?"
"You mean besides going to South Boston and hiring a private investigator?"
I don"t say anything or do anything. I know that much, at least.
Janice loses herself again in the photo, the piece of her husband"s past that has no place here, even though I"m trying to find it.
Finally, Janice says, "That girl on American Star. What"s her name?"
"Jennifer Times."
"Right. Jennifer Times." Another pause, drinking in more of the photo; then she gives it back. "Brendan and I both watched the show together when this season started, but he stopped watching once they started picking the finalists. I feel like I remember him leaving the room when that local girl, Jennifer, was performing." Janice isn"t looking at me but off into some corner of the porch, seeing those final days she shared with her husband. She"s not talking to me now, either. She"s talking to herself, trying to find her own answers.
"There was a night when Brendan came into the room with two gla.s.ses of wine, sat down next to me on the couch, but stood up and left as soon as he saw the show was on. He said something about how dumb it was, and that was strange because up until a week or two before, he was watching with me. We liked to make fun of the really bad singers.
"But I remember when he left the room it was Jennifer on the TV; she was singing. Brendan went into the kitchen, still talking to himself. He talked to himself quite a bit. He was a truck driver, and he said truck drivers talked to themselves a lot, even when they were talking to other people. I never told him, but I loved that about him and eavesdropped on him whenever I could. I"d feel guilty after, like I was reading a diary, but I still did it.
"He was in the kitchen, talking away." Janice pauses. "Sorry, but this is hard. I"ve been thinking about nothing but him for days now, and it"s not getting any easier."
"Perfectly understandable."
Janice nods. Her eyes are wide and she"s still not here. She"s back at that night with Brendan, listening to him in the kitchen. Maybe this is what it was like for Brendan that day in the office, when he was talking to me and I wasn"t there.
I say, "Did you hear what Brendan was saying in the kitchen?" I keep still, don"t move in my seat, not even a wiggled pinky.
Janice says, "He was muttering and wasn"t very loud. I didn"t hear much. I got up and tiptoed to the doorway, like I usually did when I caught him talking to himself." She stops and smiles, but it falls apart, and I think she might start crying and never stop but she doesn"t. She goes on. "I didn"t hear much, just snippets, nothing that made a whole lot of sense, so I walked into the kitchen. He was leaning on the kitchen island, talking and sipping his wine. When he saw me he smiled. I don"t think he expected me to be there, but he smiled anyway. I walked over to him, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and thanked him for the wine. He said, "Anytime," squeezed my shoulder real quick, and I left him there, in the kitchen."
Janice sinks into the swing seat, slouching into the large green cushion. She"s probably done, but I"m not moving. I won"t move until I get what I need. I say, "When he was talking to himself, do you remember any phrases or words? Anything?"
Janice looks at me and covers her face with her hands. I know the feeling. She is done. She"s going to tell me she doesn"t remember anything else and that"s it. She"ll ask me, politely, to leave.
Then she sits upright again, her hands drop, and she says, "Yes. I think he said something about film, or more film."
My leg shakes, bobs up and down, tries to walk out of the room on its own. Is it more photos, then? An undeveloped roll, or more negatives, the rest of Tim"s bedroom shoot? Maybe the rest of the pictorial includes more nudes, maybe the same girl, maybe a different girl, and I bet this missing portfolio includes some juicy eight-by-tens of Brendan and Billy Times, juicy enough to make the DA dangerously cranky. I say, "More film."
Janice nods. She wraps her arms around her chest, looks out the window, sits back in the swing seat, and sways. She says, "I have your card, Mark. I"ll call you in a few days or a week. I need to know how this ends up."
I don"t have to say anything, but I do. "Call me anytime. Thank you, Janice, you"ve been very helpful. And again, I"m so incredibly sorry about Brendan." I"m not going to tell her about the DA and his goons. I can"t tell her it might be my fault that Brendan is dead. Not now, anyway. I need to finish this case first. There"ll be time for the recriminations later.
Janice says, "Thanks. So am I."
It"s past time to go. I get up and walk out of the porch, and I walk out fast, or as fast as I can handle. The twin aunts sit in the kitchen, huddled in two chairs they positioned near the breezeway entrance into the porch. They"re whispering and they don"t stop whispering as I walk by. Margaret has the phone in her hand, fingers hovering over b.u.t.tons that spell 9-1-1. I"m sure they heard everything.
I say, "The pleasure was all mine. Don"t get up, I can find the front door." I touch the brim of my hat for a faux tip, but the lid doesn"t move, not for anyone.
Patty says, "Good luck." At least, I think it"s Patty. I"m already out of the kitchen and through the dining room, where it"s dark, so dark I can"t really see, and I walk into the table shins first. Ow. The hutch and its china shakes. Nothing broken.
I right the ship, feel my way past the table, and find the front hallway and door. There are small curtained windows in the doorframe. My bull"s charge through the dining room notwithstanding, I"m going to be as careful and cautious as I can the rest of the way. I know I"m close. I pull back the curtains for a little peek-a-boo.
The red car is outside. Can"t say I"m surprised.
TWENTY-SIX.
The red car idles in front of the gravel driveway. No, it"s not idling, it"s crawling, and it crawls by the house and down the road. They know I"m here. Maybe they planted some sort of homing device on me. I"m the endangered animal that needs to be tagged and tracked.
Or it"s possible they don"t know I"m here and they"re just checking to see who"s hanging at chez Sullivan. I didn"t see the red car when I was in Brill"s cab. Of course Brill could"ve spilled my beans for their twenty bucks. He strikes me as an equal opportunity kind of guy.
I take out my cell phone and dial. One ring and Brill answers. "Town Taxi, how can I help you?"
"Brill, it"s me, Genevich. Can you pick me up on Rambler Road?"
He sighs. It doesn"t sound nervous or guilty, just that he"s p.i.s.sed off to have to do his job. "Christ, where do you want to go now?"
The red car drives by again, in the opposite direction. It"s moving faster, almost but not quite a normal, leisurely, obey-the-suburban-speed-limit pace. Then it"s gone. I say with a mock British accent, "Home, James. Where else? Home."
Brill hangs up. I choose to believe that means he"s coming to get me.
Voices from the kitchen: "Everything okay, Mark? Who are you talking to?"
I say, "I"m fine. Just calling a cab. He"ll be here any minute. "Bye and thanks." The weather is tolerable, it"d be hard to explain me standing inside, nose buried in the curtains by the front door, so I go outside, close the door gently behind me. Thinking better of sitting on the steps, in plain view of Rambler Road, I walk down the gravel driveway and conceal myself behind the blue SUV. Hopefully no one in the house is watching.
I go fishing for a cigarette and find one. It lights like it has been waiting for this moment all its life. I think about the red car and the goons. Are they planning another drive-by? Maybe they"re getting the jump on my next destination. They"ll be sitting in Ellen"s kitchen when I get there, keeping the light on for me. They trashed my office and apartment, what"s to say they won"t do the same to the bungalow or to me? Nothing, far as I can tell.
Maybe I"m asking the wrong questions. I should be asking why haven"t they ransacked the bungalow already? Would it look too fishy for break-ins and house-trashings to be following me around? Maybe they"re not on such comfortable footing down here, away from the DA"s stomping grounds. Didn"t seem to bother them in Brendan"s case, though. Maybe they"re tired of looking for it, whether it is an undeveloped roll or a set of incriminating pictures, and they"ll be happy just to deal with me after I do the grunt work for them.
Either or any way, doesn"t matter to me anymore. What matters is that I have to find the goods before they find me again.
A car horn blasts two reports. That, or someone is trying to ride a goose sidesaddle. Brill"s here. He beeps again. I step out from behind the SUV. He rolls down the pa.s.senger-side window and yells, "Come on, get in the G.o.dd.a.m.n car. We ain"t got all day."
I say, "Ain"t it the truth."
He says, "Did you get what you needed?"
"I was only offering my condolences and my flowers to the widow." I shouldn"t be smug, but I am.
"Right. You didn"t find s.h.i.t."
I sit in Brill"s backseat, and my a.s.s picks up a strip of duct tape, which is just what my a.s.s needs. I say, "The Genevich bungalow, Brill. You know where that is, right?"
He does. He drives down Rambler Road. According to my cell phone it"s only 12:30. My cell phone doesn"t tell lies. Ellen won"t be home for another four hours, at least.
Brill pulls out onto the main drag. The library is just ahead. I try to turn around to see if anyone is tailing. I shift my weight in the seat and there"s a loud and long ripping sound.
Brill says, "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you"re tearing my seat apart!"
"Don"t get your Depends in a bunch. It"s your duct tape sticking to my a.s.s like it"s in love." I keep turning around, looking for the red car, and the duct tape keeps stripping off and clamping onto me.
He says, "Jesus Christ, stop moving around! What do you think you"re doing back there anyway? It"s going to take me the rest of the afternoon to fix that up right."
"Nothing. Just admiring the scenery." I stop moving, mostly because my legs are practically taped together. "Hey, did you see a red car today, earlier, when you were driving around?"
Brill"s eyes get big. The wrinkles animate and release the hounds of his eyes. He says, "Yeah. It followed me to Rambler Road."
"No kidding." This isn"t good. This- Brill blows air through his lips, spitting laughter. Then it"s out full. It"s a belly laugh, a thigh-slapper. I"m not so amused. He says, "You are one sad sack, Genevich. Oooh, a red car, watch out for the red car! Ha! That"s quite a gift for description you got there. You must solve all kinds of cases with those detailed detective powers of yours."
"All right, all right. Forget it."
"No, no, it"s a good question. Except for holidays and a week off here and there, I"ve been driving around town ten hours a day, seven days a week for forty years, but I have never, ever, seen a red car on the road, not a one, until today. Man, I"m so glad you"re on the case."
Brill laughs it up some more. I just might introduce my knuckles to the back of his head. He wheezes and chuckles until he drops me off at the bungalow. I don"t tip. Let"s see if he finds that funny.
He drives away. I"m here. I"m at the bungalow. And I know it"s here. The rest of the film has to be here, if it"s anywhere.
The sky has gone gray, the color of old newspapers. There"s no red car in the driveway or anywhere on the block, but that doesn"t mean the goons aren"t inside. I have no weapon, no protection. I could grab something out of the shed, I suppose, but I don"t know the finer points of Zen combat with pruning shears, and in the tale of the tape, trowels and shovels don"t measure favorably when going against guns.
Play it straight, then. The front door is locked and intact. All the windows are closed. I peek inside a few, cupping my hands around my face. It"s dark inside, but nothing seems out of place. I walk around to the backyard. It doesn"t take me long. The house could fit inside my jacket. I hear the rain landing on my hat before I feel it.
I backdoor it into the kitchen. Everything is how we left it this morning: newspapers on the table, coffee mugs and toast crumbs on the counter. It"s quiet, and I hope it stays that way. I won"t turn on any lights, pretend I"m not here. It"ll be easy.
Start at the beginning, the kitchen. I"ll be thorough and check everything and everywhere: under the sink, between and behind pipes, the utensil and utility drawers. Maybe the film is hiding in plain view, just like Tim"s photos on the walls, I don"t know. There"s a finite amount of s.p.a.ce here in the old homestead; those family secrets can"t stay hidden forever.
I look in the cabinets below the sink, past the pots and pans, the small pair of cabinets above the refrigerator that Ellen can"t reach without a stool and neither can I. There"s nothing but old phone books, a dusty bottle of whiskey, and books of matches, but I still push on the panels and wooden backings, seeing if anything will pop out or away, secret pa.s.sages and hiding spots. I don"t find any. The kitchen is clear.
The dining room and living room are next. Closets full of winter coats and dresses in plastic bags. No film. I move furniture and throw rugs, test for loose slats by rapping my foot on the floor. I go to my hands and knees and feel along the perimeters of the baseboards. Nothing and nothing. It"s getting warm in here. My coat comes off, and the picture of Tim, Sullivan, and the DA goes back in its spot on the windowsill. It wasn"t missed.
The guest room is next. There"s only one closet and all it holds are two wooden tennis racquets, my old baseball glove-the one I pretend-signed with Carney Lansford"s signature-four misshapen wire hangers, outdated board games that I open and rifle through, and empty luggage. The white suitcase and bag are as old as I am. I move the bed and bureau out, repeat my floor-and-baseboard checks, and find nothing.
It"s all right. The nothing, that is. The first three rooms are only preludes, dry runs, practice searches for the real test. Ellen"s room and the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Ellen"s room was their room. There are black-and-white photos on the walls, and they look to be half-and-half Tim pictures and antique finds. The Tim pictures are all of me, ranging in age from newborn to five years old. I"m in the pictures, but they"re all someone else"s memories, not mine. There"s only one picture where Ellen shares the scene with me. It"s a close-up and our faces are pressed together with Ellen in profile, hiding her smile behind one of my perfect chubby cheeks. My cheeks are still chubby.
No time for that. I do the bed and rug/floor check first, then the baseboard. I have a system, and I am systematically finding nothing. Then comes the nightstand, and I find her address book and flip through it. Nothing sinister, everything organized, all the numbers have a name. None of the names are Sullivan. Take that, Brill.
Next up, her antique wooden trunk that holds sweaters and sweatshirts, then her dresser, and, yes, I"m going through her dresser, and I have to admit that I fear finding personal items that I don"t want to find, but I can"t and won"t stop now. Underwear drawer, shirt drawer, pants and slacks, bras, and all clear.
Her closet is a big one, the biggest one in the house. It must be in the closet somewhere. I remove all the hanging clothes and place them on the bed. Then I pull out all the shoes from the floor and the shelves, along with hatboxes and s...o...b..xes, most of them empty, some of them trapping belts and scarves, tacky lapel pins and brooches, general s.h.i.t Ellen never wears. No clown pants in here.
The back of the closet is paneled and some of the panels hang loose. I pull up a few but find only plaster. To the left, the closet goes deeper, until the ceiling tapers down, into the floor. There are stacks of cardboard boxes and I pull those out. One box holds tax and financial information, the other boxes are a.s.sorted memorabilia: high school yearbook, plaques, track-meet ribbons, unframed pictures, postcards. No rolls of film, no pictures.
I put everything back. It"s 2:25. My back hurts and my legs are stiffening up, revolting against further bending against their will.
On the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt, I do a quick run through the bathroom. I look inside the toilet tank, leaving no porcelain cover unturned. Then back to the kitchen, and it"s grab a flashlight and pound the stairs down into the bas.e.m.e.nt.
The bas.e.m.e.nt, like the house, is small, seemingly smaller than the bungalow"s footprint, though I don"t know how that"s possible. The furnace, washer, and dryer fill up an alcove. There"s less clutter than I expected down here. There"s a pair of rusty bed frames leaning against the foundation walls, a set of metal shelves that hold a mishmash of forgotten tokens of home ownership, and an old hutch with empty drawers. It looks like Ellen was down here recently, organizing or cleaning. I check the exposed ceiling beams and struts; the take-home prizes are spiderwebs and dead bugs, but no film.
A tip, an edge, of panic is starting to poke me in the back of the head, now that I haven"t found it yet. The bungalow doesn"t want to let go of its secrets.
Back to the alcove. Behind and above the washer and dryer is a crawl s.p.a.ce with a dirt floor. I climb up and inside I have to duck-walk. Not wild about this. Dark, dirt floor, enclosed s.p.a.ce: there"s a large creepiness factor, and it"s very easy to imagine there are more than metaphorical skeletons stuffed or buried here.
I find a Christmas-tree stand, boxes of ornaments and tablecloths, and one of my old kiddie Halloween costumes, a pirate. Christ. Everywhere I turn in the d.a.m.n house is stuff that doesn"t need to be saved, but it"s there, like a collection of regrets, jettisoned and almost but not quite forgotten.
I use the flashlight to trace the length of the dirt floor into the corners and then, above me, on the beams and pipes. The film is not here. Is it buried? I could check, get a shovel and move some dirt around, like some penny-ante archaeologist or grave robber. Indiana Jones, I"m not. G.o.dd.a.m.n, that would take too long. Time is my enemy and always will be.
Maybe the missing film isn"t here. Maybe the DA and his goons already found it in my apartment or the office with their quaint search-and-seizure operation; it would explain why they haven"t torn this place apart. But that doesn"t work. Ellen"s parents were still alive and living in the building when Tim died. He wouldn"t have hidden film at their place. Even if he did hide it there, too much work and change has happened to the interior of the building in the intervening years. The years always intervene. It would"ve been found.
It could be anywhere. It could"ve been destroyed long ago, purposefully or accidentally. It could be nowhere. Or it"s here but it"s lost, like me. Being lost isn"t the same as being nowhere. Being lost is worse because there"s the false hope that you might be found.
I crawl out onto the washing machine a.s.s first. I"m a large load, wash in warm water. Brush myself off and back upstairs to the kitchen. I sit heavily at the table with the newspapers. I want a cigarette but the pack is in my coat and my coat is way over in the other room. My legs are too heavy. My arms and hands are too heavy. If I could only get around without them, conserve energy, throw the extra weight overboard so I could stay afloat. Can"t get myself out of the chair. You never get used to the total fatigue that rules your narcoleptic life, and it only gets more difficult to overcome. Practice doesn"t make perfect.
TWENTY-SEVEN.
The sun shines bright, just like the ones in cartoons. Cartoon suns sing and wink and have toothy smiles. Do we really need to make an impossibly ma.s.sive ball of fire and radiation into our cute little friend?
Tim and I are in our backyard. Everything is green. It"s the weekend again. Tools go back in the shed, but he keeps the hand trowel, the special one. We"ve all done this before.
Tim is still in the shed putting things away. I take a peek inside. Along with the sharp and toothy tools are bottles of cleaners and chemical fertilizers, their labels have cartoon figures on them, and they wink at me, ask me to come play. I remember their commercials, the smiley-faced chemical suds that scrub and sing their way down a drain and into our groundwater. Oh, happy days.
Tim closes the shed doors and locks them, even though he"ll just have to unlock them again later. A loop of inefficiency. The doors are newly white, like my baby teeth. I can"t go inside. He tells me I"m too young, but maybe I just don"t know the secret pa.s.sword. There are so many secrets we can"t keep track of them. We forget them and shed them like dead skin.
I stand next to the doors. The doors are too white. Brown paper bag. Pat on my head. Good boy. It"s time to clean up the yard, again and again and again.
The sky is such a light shade of blue, it looks like water, and it shimmers. I don"t much feel like singing for Tim today, but I will. He"d be devastated if I didn"t.
I sing the old standard, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Tim switches the lyrics around and I put them back where they belong. It makes me tired. It"s hot and the p.o.o.p bag gets full. Tim never runs out of names for the dogs, the sources of the p.o.o.p. We never see the dogs, so he might as well be naming the dog s.h.i.t, but that wouldn"t be a fun or appropriate game.
We dump the p.o.o.p in its designated and delineated area, over the cyclone fence and into the woods behind the shed. It smells back here. As he dumps the bag, Tim says, "Shoo, fly, shoo."
We walk around to the front of the shed and Tim opens the doors. It"s dark inside and my eyes need time to adjust. Tim says, "So, kid, whaddaya think?"
My hands ball up into tiny fists, no bigger than hummingbirds" nests. The five-year-old me is p.i.s.sed off and more than a little depressed that Tim was the photographer for those pictures, and for more pictures I can"t find, some film that is a terrible secret and resulted in the death of his friend Brendan. Say it ain"t so, Tim.