Babylon and Other Stories (24 page)

“Is this your store?” I say again, pointing the microphone in his face. “What's your name?”

In the glare of the lights his eyes are tiny and black, set back in his face like raisins in a cinnamon roll. He looks bewildered and angry. I'm not sure he speaks English.

“What's your name?” I say again.

“Everything … everything's burning,” he finally says.

“In your store? Do you own the store, sir?”

“I never thought it could burn. All the inventory—how could a store like that burn?”

“What kind of store is it, sir?”

He looks at the fire, then back at me. Some unidentifiable specks of ash float over us, sparks showering around them. “Water beds,” he says. “How could they burn?”

I didn't know people still slept on waterbeds. The fire's burning ferociously, and distant shouts among the firemen sound frantic. Popping and exploding noises are flying along with bits of debris, and I realize these are from waterbeds bursting in the air like pricked balloons. The water from the hoses steams in the frigid air and all the snow around the lot is melting. I tell Mario to film some more of the fire and get back to me in five minutes, then I focus on the water-bed guy, putting a hand on his arm. When I offer my condolences, he opens up.

His name is Luther Hodges. He's been in the water-bed business since the sixties, and has seen his fortunes rise and fall, but he's convinced they're about to rise again. The water bed is making a comeback, he tells me, his little black eyes flashing. His store is called Sleeping With the Fishes, or was.

“Who would do this?” he asks after I've elicited this much information.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” I say. “Do you have any enemies? Any really dissatisfied customers?”

This offends him. “People love their beds,” he says. “I sell a quality product under warranty.”

The cop who was embracing him earlier comes over and says he's ready to ask Luther some questions now.

“Officer, do you have any theories as to how the fire started?” I ask.

“No comment at this time, Joanne.”

“Police authorities,” I say into the microphone, “have no comment at this time on the cause of the fire.”

I crawl into bed after midnight, my clothes reeking of smoke in the hamper, and barely wake up in time to answer the phone at four in the morning. I'm still in the mindset of assuming it's going to be Jeff. But it's Luther Hodges.

“You've got to help me,” he says.

“I'm in bed,” I say, wondering, not for the first time, about the wisdom of a person who works in television having a listed number.

“They think I did it,” he says. “They're gathering evidence, they said. I need someone on my side.”

“Did you do it?”

“Are you crazy? It's my own friggin' store.”

I yawn and sit up. “What kind of insurance policy do you have, Mr. Hodges?”

There's a pause after this in which I almost fall asleep again. “That's what the cops wanted to know, too,” he says. “You know, just because a person has an insurance policy that covers fire doesn't mean he
wants
his entire life to go up in smoke.”

“I'm hanging up, Mr. Hodges,” I tell him. “I'm a television reporter, and I need my beauty sleep.”

“Just hold on a minute,” he says, but I don't.

I sleep late, wake up, read three papers, watch CNN. My free time's mostly in the morning, and until recently I'd spend it with Jeff. He liked to cook, preferably old-school breakfasts with eggs and sausage and hash browns. After eating we'd go right back to bed. Half an hour later I'd get restless and want to leave the house, but he'd hold me down, his big hands on my shoulders, telling me not to be in such a rush all the time. It was a friendly argument, but an argument nonetheless. With him gone, I find there's all this space in my life, phantom and new, like when you put on your clothes after successfully dieting off five pounds. Except with the pounds you know you're more than likely to fill up the space again.

The phone rings every hour on the hour, and the caller ID says it's Luther Hodges. He leaves these messages that sound offputtingly breathy and excited—less distressed than pornographic. He wants to meet me for a drink and protest his innocence.

“This case will be tried in the court of public opinion,” he says when I finally pick up the phone. “You have a responsibility to garner all the facts.”

“Like what facts?”

“I'm being set up,” he says.

“By whom?”

“I can't tell you over the phone.”

I roll my eyes and agree to meet for a drink that afternoon, letting him pick the place; you can tell a lot about a person from the kind of bar they deem a suitable rendezvous point. He chooses a
chain restaurant on 195, a neon-lit catastrophe with a sports-bar theme. When I get there I find him hunkered down in a booth with two hands around a pint of beer. In front of him is an order of fries served in a plastic football helmet.

I sit down opposite him and pull out my notepad. “So, Mr. Hodges. Who do you think set the fire?”

He leans forward over the table, then looks to his left and his right. It's three in the afternoon and the only person around is our waitress, a bored nineteen-year-old in a Patriots jersey. I wonder who he thinks could be listening. Luther Hodges, I decide, watches a lot of thrillers on late-night TV.

“My ex-wife,” he says, “has some very shady acquaintances.”

“I see. And what's your ex-wife's name?”

“Shannon Hodges. She lives in Pawtucket. All her friends are no-good characters.”

I write on the pad, so that he can see,
Shannon Hodges. No-good characters.
I underline the
no-good.
People like to feel that their words are being taken seriously. When I was in school, before I had much practice interviewing people, I used to worry about how to get them talking to me. Now that I've been working for a while, I know the real problem is how to shut them up.

“And what would she stand to gain by burning down your store?” I ask. “Is she a beneficiary on the insurance policy?”

“Ha!” Luther Hodges says, his little black eyes sparkling with malice. “The fire's incidental. She doesn't care about the store one way or the other. She never did. All she wants is to set me up. To see me suffering gives her great happiness, and it always has.”

I hear this kind of thing from married couples all the time, and it's another reason I don't like to put all my eggs into a basket labeled
Life with Jeff.

“She's very, very clever.” Luther taps on my notepad with his
index finger, for emphasis. “You'll have a hard time catching her. She's great at covering her tracks. This case could make your career.”

“There's no need for you to worry about my career, Mr. Hodges.”

“Call me Luther,” he says, “and I'm not worried. I seen you on the news. Lipstick on. Hair blowing. You look like a million bucks even when it's twenty below. I know you're going places.”

“I'll be in touch,” I tell him, and leave enough money to cover my drink.

I check in at the station—nothing pressing there, just another story about plummeting temperatures and rising oil costs—to pick up Mario and then drive out to Pawtucket. The sun's shining and the roads are dry. Shannon Hodges lives in a rundown duplex behind a chain video store. When she comes to the door, though, she doesn't look shady at all. She's wearing office clothes and looks tired but respectable. I can smell something cooking, and the news is on in the background, which always reassures me. She recognizes me right away.

“You're on TV,” she says. “Boy, you're young.”

“Can we come in?”

“Shorter than I thought, too.”

“Can we please come in?”

“Is this about Luther?”

“It's about the fire at his store.”

“I saw it on TV,” she says, and opens the door.

Mario goes into the living room and starts setting up. I ask her if she'll sit on the couch and answer a few questions. The place is dumpy but clean: flowered couch, wicker tables, doilies on everything.

She sits at the corner of the couch and smoothes her skirt. “I
only have a few minutes,” she says. “I'm expecting company for dinner.”

“Someone special?” I say.

She narrows her eyes. “Luther and me are divorced.”

“Where were you last night?”

“At work. I'm a manager at a clothes store at the mall. We stay open till ten, it takes till ten-thirty for everybody to cash out, I'm home by eleven. You can check the time cards if you doubt it. Did Luther tell you I set the fire in his stupid store? That son of a bitch.”

I look at her.

“Please don't put me swearing on TV,” she adds.

“Does your ex-husband have a lot of enemies? Who would benefit from this?”

“He doesn't have any enemies I know about,” she says. “But on the other hand, he doesn't have a lot of friends, either.”

“How's his business doing, do you think?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Do you know anybody who sleeps on a water bed?”

“Not personally.”

“My point exactly. For years I told him, Luther, you gotta go high end, and get into ergonomics, those fancy mattresses from Sweden you see advertised in the back of magazines. Did he listen to me? Never.”

After we're done, she walks me and Mario to the door. “I'll definitely be on tonight, right?” she says. “I wanna tell my mom to watch.”

As we leave, a man gets out of a car across the street and starts for Shannon Hodges's door. He's younger than Luther, and taller, so I can figure why Luther would try to pin the fire on his ex-wife. There are simple explanations for most things.

Heading back to the station, I consider calling Jeff to see how he's doing, just to hear his voice. But when I get there, Luther Hodges is waiting for me.

“Mr. Hodges.”

“I told you to call me Luther.”

“What do you want, Mr. Hodges?”

“I got something to show you.”

I check my messages. I thought there might be one from Jeff, but there isn't. Instead there's one from a contact of mine, confirming that Luther Hodges does indeed carry massive amounts of fire insurance. I'm not following any other major story at the moment, and don't have to tape anything for tonight, so I agree to go with him. I'm curious about what he might want to show me. We take my car—I feel trapped if someone else is driving—and he directs me back to the scene of the crime. The water used to fight the fire has frozen into massive, sturdy, ghost-white icicles. Folds of ice droop thickly over the building, and beneath them you can just make out the bones of the charred wreck itself, the contours dark and shadowed. The whole thing is kind of gorgeous, as fragile and decorative and pale as an enormous wedding cake. It could all break apart at any second, is what I'm thinking, looking at it. There's police tape everywhere, but we ignore it. Luther leads me around back, to a cracked window that isn't fully iced over. We peek inside, and I can see the husks of the water beds laid out in the dark like crypts. The icicles creak in the wind, an anxious, spooky sound.

“See that?” Luther says, but I have no idea what he's pointing at. “That's the Queen Elizabeth,” he says, “the cruise ship of water beds. The ultimate deluxe model. I bought two for display purposes. They cost thousands of dollars. If I sold just one I'd be back on track. It was an investment, don't you see? So why would I burn it down?”

Suddenly he's sobbing, this fat little man. Not tearing up, but serious sobs that steal his breath. I take his arm and lead him back to the car. Sitting in the passenger seat, slumped and soft-fleshed, his doughy cheeks aflame with cold, he makes me feel a little teary myself. I pat him awkwardly on the shoulder. Without saying anything, I pull out of the parking lot and drive to the nearest bar I can find. Luther follows me inside, as obedient as a child. We drink one shot and then another. It's a neighborhood place, and the locals eye us in an unfriendly manner. We do our best to ignore them. I can't tell whether I'm being recognized and I don't care. Several drinks later I announce to Luther that I'm driving him home. He starts to cry again, and I sigh.

“You do believe I'm innocent, don't you? It's important to me.”

“Of course I do,” I tell him, although I don't. I think he's sobbing out of regret for his own dumb behavior, not over being wrongfully accused. I think it's only a matter of time before he gets arrested. Which makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing here, exactly, in this bar, with this man, investigating this half-interesting story. What if this is going to be my life from now on? What if, because I haven't chosen marriage and kids with Jeff, this is what I get? It doesn't seem fair.

Just because a person has an insurance policy that covers fire, it doesn't mean she wants her entire life to go up in smoke.

I drive Luther to an apartment building that hasn't seen better days and probably never will. When I pull up in front, he asks if I want to come in. With three or four drinks in me, I decide it might not be a bad idea to wait a while before driving home. But once we get inside he offers me another drink, and I say yes. He pours me a Scotch, neat, in a small glass.

His apartment looks like a motel room, with a bed and a TV in the living room and not much else. There are some dog-eared
Reader's Digest
books stacked in the corner, which look like
church-basement giveaways. In the kitchenette is a small counter with two stools in front of it, and I sit down on one and sip. The Scotch is gone almost before I know it. Luther keeps puttering around the apartment, picking socks up off the floor, putting dishes in the sink, pulling lint off the sleeve of his sweater. And talking the whole time about how the fire's ruined him, how his wife left him once the water bed business started to go downhill, how he kept telling her that water beds would come back in style but how she didn't believe him, how she had no faith and wouldn't take the leap, how she wanted security, for everything to be
pinned down.

“Let me ask you a question,” he says while pouring me more Scotch. “Do you think we're living in a classical or a romantic age? I think it's classical. I think there's no big emotions left, no passion. Everyone's concerned with self-preservation. It's about money, it's about safety. You know what I mean?”