Sergeant Balducci approaches almost to the bottom of the porch steps without having looked at either Betty McLeod or me. He hitches up on the heavyweight black belt containing all his police gear — Mace canister, radio, cuffs, a ring of keys, blackjack, his big service automatic. He is wearing his iron-creased blue and black HPD uniform with its various quasi-military markings, stripes and insignia, and either he has gained weight around his thick midsection or he’s wearing a flak vest under his shirt.
He looks up at me as if he’d never laid eyes on me before. He is five-ten with a heavy-browed, large-pored face as vacant as the moon, his hair cut in a regimental flattop.
“We got a problem out here, folks?” Sergeant Balducci says, setting one polished police boot on the bottom step.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, and for some reason am breathless, as if more’s wrong here than could ever meet the eye. I mean, of course, to look guilt-free. “Mrs. Beavers just got the wrong idea in her head.” I know she’s watching everything like an eagle, her mind apparently departed for elsewhere.
“Is that right?” Sergeant Balducci says and looks at Betty McLeod.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she says inertly, behind her screen.
“We have a reported break-in in progress at this address.” Sergeant Balducci’s voice is his official voice. “Do you live here, ma’am?” He says this to Betty.
Betty nods but adds nothing helpful.
“And did anybody break into your house or attempt to?”
“Not that I know of,” she says.
“What’s your business here?” Officer Balducci says to me, gazing around at the yard to see if he can notice anything out of the everyday — a broken pane of glass, a bloody ball-peen hammer, a gun with a silencer.
“I’m the owner,” I say. “I was just stopping by on some business.” I don’t want to say I’m here hawking the rent, as if collecting rent were a crime.
“You’re the owner of this house?” Officer Balducci’s still glancing casually around but finally settles his gaze back on me.
“Yes, and that one too.” I motion toward the Harrises’ empty ex-home.
“What’s your name again?” he says, producing a little yellow spiral notebook and a ballpoint from his back pocket.
“Bascombe,” I say. “Frank Bascombe.”
“Frank …,” he says as he writes, “Bascombe. Owner.”
“Right,” I say.
“I think I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” He looks slowly down, then up at me.
“Yes,” I say, and immediately picture myself in a lineup with a lot of unshaven sex-crime suspects, being given the once-over by Betty McLeod behind a two-way mirror. He has known a great deal about my life, once, but has simply let it recede.
“Did I arrest you one time for D and D?”
“I don’t know what D and D is, but you didn’t arrest me for it. You gave me a ticket twice”—three times, actually—“for turning right on red on Hoving Road after not making a full stop. Once when I didn’t do it and once when I did.”
“That’s a pretty good average.” Sergeant Balducci smiles, mocking me as he’s writing in his notebook. He asks Betty McLeod her name, too, and enters that in his little book.
Myrlene Beavers comes scraping out onto her porch, a yellow cordless phone to her ear. A few neighbors have appeared on their porches to see what’s what. One of them also has a cordless. She and Myrlene are doubtless connected up.
“Well,” Sergeant Balducci says, dotting a few i’s and shoving his notebook back in his pocket. He is still smiling mockingly. “We’ll check this out.”
“Fine,” I say, “but I didn’t try to break into this house.” And I’m breathless again. “That old lady’s nuts across the street.” I glare over at the traitorous Myrlene, gabbling away like a goose to her neighbor two houses down.
“People all watch out for each other in this neighborhood, Mr. Bascombe,” Sergeant Balducci says, and looks up at me pseudo-seriously, then looks at Betty McLeod. “They have to. If you have any more trouble, Mrs. McLeod, just give us a call.”
“All right,” is all Betty McLeod says.
“She didn’t have any trouble this time!” I say, and give Betty a betrayed look.
Sergeant Balducci takes a semi-interested glance up at me from the concrete walk of my house. “I could give you some time to cool off,” he says in an uninflected way.
“I am cooled off,” I say angrily. “I’m not mad at anything.”
“That’s good,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to get your bowels in an uproar.”
On the tip of my tongue are these words: “Gee thanks. And how would you like to bite my ass?” Only the look of his short, stout arms stuffed like fat salamis into his short blue shirtsleeves makes me suspect Sergeant Balducci is probably a specialist in broken collarbones and deadly chokeholds of the type practiced on my son. And I literally bite the tip of my tongue and look bleakly across Clio Street at Myrlene Beavers, blabbing on her cheap Christmas phone and watching me — or some blurry image of a white devil she’s identified me to be — as if she expected me to suddenly catch flame and explode in a sulfurous flash. It’s too bad her husband’s gone, is what I know. The good Mr. Beavers would’ve made this all square.
Sergeant Balducci begins ambling back toward his cruiser Plymouth, his waist radio making fuzzy, meaningless crackles. When he opens the door, he leans in and says something to his partner and they both laugh as the Sarge squeezes in and notes something on a clipboard stuck to the dash. I hear the word “owner,” and another laugh. Then the door shuts and they ease away, their big duals murmuring importantly.
Betty McLeod has not moved behind her screen, her two little mulatto kids now peeping around each side of her housecoat. Her face reveals no sympathy, no puzzlement, no bitterness, not even a memory of these.
“I’ll just come back when Larry’s home,” I say hopelessly.
“All right then.”
I fasten a firm, accusing look on her. “Who else is here?” I say. “I heard the toilet running.”
“My sister,” Betty says. “Is that any of your business?”
I look hard at her, trying to read truth in her beaky little features. A sibling from Red Cloud? A willowy, big-handed Sigrid, taking a holiday from her own Nordic woes to commiserate with her ethical sis. Conceivable, but not likely. “No,” I say, and shake my head.
And then Betty McLeod, on no particular cue, simply shuts her front door, leaving me on the porch empty-handed with the equatorial sun beating on my head. Inside, she goes through the relocking-the-locks ritual, and for a long moment I stand listening and feeling forlorn; then I just start off toward my car with nothing left of good to do. I will now be after the 4th getting my rent, if I get it then.
Myrlene Beavers is still on the porch of her tiny white abode with sweet peas twirling up the posts, her hair frazzled and damp, her big fingers clenching the rubber walker like handholds on a roller coaster. Other neighbors have now gone back inside.
“Hey!” she calls out at me. “Did they catch that guy?” Her little yellow phone is hooked to her walker with a plastic coat-hanger rig-up. No doubt her kids have bought it so they can all keep in touch. “They was tryin’ to break in over at Larry’s. You musta scared him off.”
“They caught him,” I say. “He’s not a threat anymore.”
“That’s good!” she says, a big falsey-toothy smile opening onto her face. “You do a wonderful job for us. We’re all grateful to you.”