“It sure isn’t a dream,” Chad said.
“Some friends you’ve got. He hit me.”
She surveyed the living and kitchen areas.
“God, you guys broke stuff. That’s what woke me up.” Then, “You okay, McCain?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I see.” Chad pouted. “You ask about him but you don’t ask about me. I just happen to be your husband.”
And a writer, too, Chad. Don’t forget you’re a deeply tormented writer.
This time when Tess went to the door, it was the inside one. I expected I knew who it was.
I opened it and there she stood, the best-looking landlady in the universe. Tall, graceful, gray subtly streaking her long, dark hair, mid-fifties. Mrs. Goldman. One beautiful babe. “Are you all right, Sam? I heard all this commotion and-” She looked behind me to where Kylie and Chad stood. “Oh, hello.
I’m Kate Goldman.”
Chad said, “He attacked me.”
Mrs. Goldman smiled. “You’re an awful lot bigger than he is.”
“And for what it’s worth, McCain,” Chad said, “I’m not so sure I believe you about you and Kylie.” Then, to Kylie: “Will you get your damned shoes on so we can get out of here?” Then, to me: “And if I find out you weren’t telling me the truth, McCain, you’re going to be damned sorry, believe me.”
Kylie went on her groggy, uncertain way.
Got her tennis shoes on untied and came back to the living room. “I’m sorry, McCain.” Then she gave me a peck on the cheek.
“You kiss him right in front of me?” Chad said. He looked at Mrs. Goldman. “Did you see that? Right in front of her own husband, she kisses him!”
“Yes,” Mrs. Goldman said. “I was shocked.”
He frowned. He had quite a frown. “I should’ve known you’d be just like him.”
“Chad’s folks bought him a new car,”
Kylie said brightly. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and puke all over it.”
As they left, Tess bit him on the ankle again. He tried to kick her but she was too quick for him.
The air was unsettled, like a battleground in the aftermath.
“Gosh, I sure hope to see a lot more of him, McCain.”
“You no doubt will. He’s going to be famous.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a writer. Just ask him.”
“That poor girl. I see her at temple every once in a while in Iowa City. But I’ve never really gotten to know her. How could she have married a jerk like that?”
Kate Goldman’s husband, who was by all accounts a very nice guy, died several years ago. Mrs. Goldman now dated men from the synagogue in Iowa City. I was personally pulling for this history teacher at City High.
One night on the porch downstairs he’d told me about his time in Italy during the war and then we ended up talking about paperback writers. His two favorites were David Goodis and Day Keene. I was hoping he’d run for president some day.
“Gosh,” Mrs. Goldman said, “I really like your new friend here, Sam.” She fanned herself with a slender hand. She wore a crisp pink blouse and black walking shorts and black flats. If Lauren Bacall had any luck, she’d end up looking just like Kate Goldman when she got older. “This place is a mess.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”
I got the broom and dustpan and we got busy.
Afterward, I poured us each a beer and we sat around and talked about Dick Nixon coming to town and how Jack Kennedy was holding up, and then we talked local news, her wanting to know all about my visit to Muldaur’s church. “Boy, I sure wouldn’t handle any of those snakes.”
A summer storm started right after Mrs.
Goldman left, August heat lightning stalking the sky like huge electric spiders. It got hotter and even more humid for a time and then it got much cooler suddenly. I lay on my bed with a beer and a cigarette reading a collection of Irwin Shaw short stories. The rain came around ten o’clock, a Biblical rain. In the valley where the city park was the sewers would flood and some of the park benches and picnic tables would float a few yards away, and at the next city council meeting somebody would stand up and suggest that we chain the benches and the tables to nearby trees so this catastrophe would never be visited upon us again.
Whenever the call came-in that state that is neither sleep nor waking-I was standing at the altar and a guy in a funny religious hat and a lot of funny religious capes and vestments was reading from one of Kenny Thibodeau’s racy novels-I think the title was Lesbo Lawyers-and saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wives.” And there I stood with the beautiful Pamela Forrest and the fetching Mary Travers and-“Hullo.”
“McCain?”
“I think so.”
“Very funny.”
“What time is it?”
“Four thirty-seven. You should be up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have any idea why I’m calling?”
“Do I win a prize if I guess right?”
“I’m calling because I figured that you hadn’t heard the news yet.”
“What news?”
And then she told me and I abruptly came awake.
“I want you to get over there before
Cliffie mucks everything up.”
“I’m on my way, Judge.”
“When you get done over there, call me.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I keep a police radio on very low next to my bed. If anything important happens, the dispatcher begins to screech. That wakes me up.”
There was something very lonely about that but then the lady’d had four-or was it five?-husbands so I guessed she was lonely by choice.
I jerked on some clothes and ran downstairs to my ragtop.
Part II
Nine
The way I got all this-mostly from an auxiliary cop named Coggins who had a thermos full of wonderful-smelling coffee-was that around midnight Iris Courtney started worrying about her husband. She told Cliffie (coggins apparently being present) that shortly after that time she got a strange call from her husband. He said that she was not to worry but that he was involved in something and would explain when he got home. She said he’d sounded anxious but not afraid. At three a.m., frightened now, she walked out to the garage to see if something might have happened to him.
She recalled hearing a story on the radio about a man who pulled his car into the garage, had a heart attack, slumped over on the seat, and was not discovered until morning when it was too late.
She didn’t want this to happen to her husband.
She went out and checked the garage. She saw that his car was there and immediately began to panic. She began to frantically search the alley. And that’s when she looked between her garage and the one belonging to their neighbors. He was lying on his back, staring up at the quarter-moon that looked so fresh after the rain. She saw that he’d been stabbed many times in the chest. His yellow shirt was soaked dark with blood. A neighbor’s dog was crouched nearby -a rather stupid-looking beagle, she noted-staring at the corpse as if it could not understand what was going on here. Usually, the minister was so friendly and playful with the dog. She immediately went in and called the police station.
She was inside the rectory with Cliffie now.
Dawn was still an hour away but neighbors were beginning to drift into the alley where Doc Novotony was looking over the corpse.
Everybody looked well turned-out given the time of day. Most of them had put on street clothes.
Few wore robes.
Coggins kept them away from the strip of grass between the garages by waving the beam of his red-capped flashlight to the right. “Nothing to see, folks.
Don’t get in the doc’s way now.”
Dick Coggins was the best of the auxiliary cops. In fact, he was smarter than any of the cops on the regular force. But because he wasn’t a member of the Sykes clan, and despite scoring high on all the state tests for peace officers, he was kept on reserve status. In the meantime, he drove a panel truck for an office-supply company and played a lot of softball. He could throw a softball about as fast as anybody I’d ever seen. He was tall, trim, wore his dark hair in a crew-cut and spoke with a faint Virginia drawl. He’d spent his first eleven years there.