"Donna, what's going on?"
"My uncle Frannie's been shot! Somebody shot him in his car."
I pushed through the crowd and up to the scene. McCabe was lying on his back on the pavement, a big pool of glistening blood off to his right side. Paramedics were working on him. Two policemen talked to people who'd apparently seen what had happened.
Frannie's eyes were closed. When he opened them they were glazed and empty. Fish eyes. At that moment I thought he was going to die. The medics did what they could and then ran for a stretcher. Once he was secured, they snapped it open and had him inside the ambulance in seconds. The doors slammed and they were gone. I ran back to my car and followed them to the town hospital.
The waiting room was empty. I sat and prayed for him. After I explained to a nurse who I was, she said they had to operate at once. McCabe was unconscious. The wound was grave. They had no idea who'd done it.
Half an hour later Magda Ostrova came in looking bewildered. She'd been at the market. She'd just heard. Without another word she came over and we embraced. Sitting next to each other in that hospital silence, she squeezed my hand until it hurt.
Hours went by. People came and went. Other cops, many friends. The surgery continued. Magda began to talk about Frannie. What a good man he was. How he'd been like a father to her daughter, who'd been named after Pauline. How he'd been the man in the Ostrova family after Magda divorced and her father died. She snarled about Frannie's ex-wife and how her career in television had been made when he thought up Man Overboard. That's right. That ridiculous and successful half hour a week was McCabe's idea! His wife took all the credit for it, but his snappy suits and other expensive goodies had come from a percentage of the show. No wonder he had spent so much time in Los Angeles.
As tactfully as I could, I asked Magda if she and Frannie were together. She laughed and said, "For a month, years ago. It wasn't good to be involved with him in that way.
"What's strange about Frannie is when you're lovers with him, he treats you like dirt. When you're not, he's the greatest guy in the world."
The surgery was successful but we were not allowed to see him for two days. When I entered his room, his eyes rolled over to me, then back up to the ceiling. I asked how he was and he nodded. I knew they were going to have to operate again. He gestured for me to come over and sit on the side of his bed. He took my hand and held it but didn't speak. We sat there and looked out the window. A couple of times he sighed but nothing else.
"Do you know who did it?"
He shook his head.
"Maybe it was Mr. Litchfield getting back at you after all these years for burning his car."
He didn't smile. I asked if he wanted me to go. In a very quiet, un-McCabe voice, he said yes.
It turned out to be the week of the hospital. There was a message on my answering machine to call Edward Durant at the hospital in New York. When we spoke, he sounded as quiet and stricken as McCabe. He asked if it would be possible for me to come and see him soon.
He looked much worse than Frannie. I didn't ask what they were doing to him, but there were IVs and electrodes and whatever else they stick into a body when things aren't going well inside. Strangely, he also gestured for me to come and sit next to him on the bed. His lion's voice had disappeared. His sentences frequently stopped midway whenever he ran out of energy.
He had thought he had more time left, but after this examination they weren't hopeful. His once-strong body had been overthrown by a mob of lunatic cells. The situation reminded him of looters in a riot. Running into a store, they take anything they can grab. Anything, so long as it isn't theirs.
There was no self-pity in Durant's voice, only a kind of disgusted wonder. Most of the time he spoke about his son. What was most wrenching to hear was his referring to him in the present tense.
At first I thought he was only reminiscing, but then he got to the point. Out of nowhere, he said he guessed I didn't make that much for a book. I told him it was sufficient. He said he had a great deal of money left. Originally he had planned to leave it all to Swarthmore College with the stipulation they create a scholarship program in his son's name, preferably in the English department.
He wanted to know if I would consider expanding my book so that it included the life of Edward Jr. I said that was no problem – Pauline's husband had to play a very large role in the story.
That wasn't what he meant. "Don't you see, Sam, the only possible thing I can still do for Edward is vindicate him. I know it sounds crass, but I'd willingly give you any amount of money to do that so people could know what he was really like. Whatever you need that I have – money, connections . . . anything. I offer to you. My greatest wish is that a real writer tell not only the true story of Pauline's death, but Edward's as well. I know it would mean a longer book, but in the end wouldn't it be a better one? You'd have not only the story of a murder, but the love story of two extraordinary people."
I knew with his help I would have access to materials normally impossible to obtain. Yet I didn't want to commit myself. I told him to let me think about it and get back to him. He started to speak but stopped.
"What were you going to say?"
His lips trembled and he turned quickly away. He said something I couldn't hear.
"I'm sorry, Edward, I didn't hear you."
He turned back. "Who will remember him when I'm dead? Who will remember the little boy spelling d-o-g? Or how he tried to hypnotize his shoelaces into tying themselves? Sam, someone has to tell his story. Not just clear his name." He grabbed the bedsheet. "Life is not fair, but it can be just. That's all I want. Help it to be just for my son."
It was raining when I left the hospital. One of those cold unpleasant rains that knows how to sneak down the back of your shirt and give you a chill before you've gone ten blocks. Hospitals invariably give me the feeling of being coated in an invisible sheen of bloodthirsty germs and lost hope that doesn't disappear until I've walked hard awhile and breathed in the healthy world outside, so I kept walking.
I wanted a hamburger. A cheeseburger dripping with grease and a mound of fried onion rings that would clog my arteries and fuck the rest. I knew a nice gross luncheonette nearby that had what I needed. I headed in that direction.
Standing on a corner waiting for the light to change, I looked across the street and saw Veronica. My guts did a double salto. I didn't know whether to run away or straight at her.
"Hey, you wanna buy a gold chain?"
A tall black man standing next to me held open a case full of glittering junk.
"No thanks."
When I looked back across the street, Veronica had metamorphosed into just another lovely New York blond. The light changed and we moved toward each other. Without realizing it, I continued to stare at false Veronica. Seeing me gawk, her face turned to stone.
Later over my cheeseburger, I thought about what it was like to be haunted by a person. What was it like for Edward Durant to think about his son, falsely accused, imprisoned for murder, sexually assaulted, a suicide.
What was it like to be lying in a hospital bed knowing time was up? Your soul full of regrets and memories driving the guilt deeper every day.
I put the burger down and asked the counterman for a glass of water. I drank it in one go and asked for another, which went down the same way.
Holding the empty glass in my hand, I felt the world around me increase. Sounds, smells, the closeness of the people in the room. Some godly hand had turned up the volume. I knew if I went back outside I would be crushed by the weight. Is that what Durant was feeling? Because for him it could only get worse. Even frozen solid in this jacked-up moment, I knew it would pass and I would come through. Drink a glass of water, take a deep breath, rearrange the furniture . . . There were a million ways to fix things and go on. But what if all the furniture was gone and the only company you had in that final room were ghosts you'd spawned and fed on a lifetime of mistakes?