Company Man (27 page)

After driving Cassie home, Nick returned to find Lucas in his room, lying back on his bed, earbuds in. Nick signaled to him to take them off. To his surprise, Lucas did without complaint, and he spoke first: “So, she's cool.”

“Good. I'm glad you like her.” Nick sat in the only chair in the room that wasn't piled with books and papers and discarded clothes. He took a breath, plunged in. The normal force field of hostility seemed to be down, or maybe just diminished. That was good; that would make it easier.

“Luke, buddy, you and I have to talk.”

Lucas watched him, blinking, said nothing.

“I told you Mr. Sundquist called me in for a conference today.”

“So?”

“You understand how serious this is, this suspension.”

“It's a three-day vacation.”

“That's what I was afraid I'd hear. No, Luke. It goes on your record. When you apply to colleges, they see that.”

“Like you care?”

“Oh, now, come on. Of course I care.”

“You don't even know what I'm studying in school, do you?”

“I didn't know you were studying anything,” Nick cracked without thinking.

“That's a
big
help, Dad. You basically spend all your time at work, and now you're trying to pretend like you're interested in how I do in school?” It was amazing how Lucas could take those pure, innocent eyes and focus them like a laser beam into one cold, hard blue ray of hatred.

“Yeah, well, I'm worried about what's happening to you.”

“What's happening to me,” Lucas repeated mockingly.

“This is all about Mom, isn't it?” He regretted saying it as soon as it came out. That was way too blunt. But how else to say it?

“Excuse me?” Lucas said, incredulous.

“Look, ever since Mom's death, you've totally changed. I know it, and you know it.”

“That's deep, Nick. Really deep. Coming from you, that's really great.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, look at you. You went right back to work, no problem.”

“I have a job, Luke.”

“Moving right on, huh, Nick?”

“Don't
ever
talk to me that way,” Nick said.

“Get the hell out of my room. I don't need this shit from you.”

“I'm not leaving until you hear me out,” Nick said.

“Fine,” Lucas said, getting up from the bed and walking out of his room. “Sit there and blab all you want.”

Nick followed his son into the hall. “You come back here,” he said.

“I don't need this shit.”

“I said, get
back
here. We're not done talking.”

“Hey, you've made your point, okay? I'm
sorry
I'm such a
disappointment
to you.” Lucas raced down the stairs, taking them two steps at a time.

Nick ran after him. “You don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you,” he shouted. He caught up with him just as Lucas reached the front door, put his hand on his son's shoulder.

Luke swiveled, swatted Nick's hand off. “Get your fuck
ing hands off me!” he screamed, turning the big brass knob and shoving the door open.

“You get back here,” Nick shouted after him, standing in the doorway. “This cannot go on!”

But Lucas was running down the stone path into the darkness. “I'm sick of this fucking house, and I'm sick of you!” came his son's voice, echoing.

“Where do you think you're going?” Nick yelled back. “You get back here right now!”

He thought about taking off after his son, but what would be the point, really? He was overcome with a sense of futility and desperation. He stood there on the threshold until the sound of Lucas's footsteps faded to silence.

Julia was there at the bottom of the stairs when he turned around. She was weeping.

He went up to her, gave her a tight squeeze, and said, “He'll be okay, baby.
We'll
be okay. Now you go to bed.”

 

In the shower a little later, Nick cursed himself for how badly he'd handled the whole thing, how ham-handed he'd been, how emotionally obtuse. There had to be ways of reaching Lucas, even if he didn't know them. It was like a foreign country where the language sounds nothing like your own, the street signs are unreadable, you're alone and lost. As the needles of water stung his neck and back, he looked at the row of shampoos and conditioners in the tiled inset: Laura's stuff, all of it. He hadn't bothered to remove it. Couldn't
bring
himself to remove it, really.

He soaped himself up, got soap in his eyes, which made them smart so that when they started stinging and watering, he couldn't tell if it was the soap or the tears.

He put on a T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and got into bed just as he heard the front door open, the alert tone go off. Luke had returned.

He switched off the bedside lamp. As always, he slept on the side of the bed that had always been his, wondered when, if ever, he'd start sleeping in the middle of the bed.

His bedroom door opened, and he thought for a split
second that it might be Lucas, here to apologize. But it wasn't, of course.

Julia stood there, her lanky shape and curly hair silhouetted by the nightlight in the hall.

“I can't sleep,” she said.

“Come here.”

She ran to Nick, scrambled into the bed. “Daddy,” she said very softly. “Can I sleep in your bed? Just for tonight.”

He brushed back the curls, saw the tear-streaked face. “Sure, baby. But just for tonight.”

Leon slept late, of course, so it was no problem for Audrey to be up long before him Saturday morning. She enjoyed the quiet of the morning, the solitude, being in her own head. She made herself a pot of hazelnut coffee—the kind Leon hated, but she'd make regular coffee when he got up—and read the morning papers.

The weekends used to be their little island of intimacy, before—before he lost his job, before she started working overtime hours in order to be gone as much as possible. They'd sleep late on Saturday, snuggle, make love. They'd make brunch together, read the papers together, sometimes even make love again. Take a nap together. Then go out and enjoy the weekend, shopping or going for walks. Sundays he'd sleep until she returned from church, and then they'd maybe go out for brunch or make something at home, and they'd make love too.

Those days were like ancient Mesopotamia. She'd almost forgotten what they felt like, they'd receded so into the distant shrouded past.

This Saturday morning, after she'd had her coffee, she considered getting out her case files and working. But a glimmering of ancient Mesopotamia arose in her mind.

Someone had to break the gridlock, she told herself. They
were both frozen. Neither wanted to make the first move to try to change things.

She debated internally, the way she debated most things large or small.
How many times are you going to keep trying?
she asked herself.
How often are you going to butt your head against a brick wall before you realize it feels better to stop?
The other voice—the wiser, more generous voice—said:
But he's the damaged one. He's the hurt one. You need to take the lead
.

This morning—maybe it was the still beauty of the morning, maybe it was the deliciousness of the coffee, maybe it was the time alone—she decided to take the lead.

She walked quietly through the dark bedroom, careful not to wake him. She slid open her bottom dresser drawer and pulled out the pale apricot silk teddy she'd bought from the Victoria's Secret catalog, never worn.

She closed the bedroom door and went down the hall to the bathroom, where she took a nice hot shower, using the loofah. She applied lotion all over—her skin tended to get ashy if she didn't—and then put on makeup, something she never did unless she was going out. She daubed perfume on in all the right secret places—Opium, the only perfume that Leon had ever complimented her on.

Wearing just her teddy, and feeling a bit silly at first, she went into the kitchen and made brunch. French toast, bacon, even some cantaloupe balls. His favorite breakfast: he liked French toast even more than eggs Benedict. A fresh pot of coffee, the kind he liked. A white porcelain creamer, in the shape of a cow, filled with half-and-half.

Then she arranged everything carefully on a bed tray—it took her a while to find it in the overhead storage in the little pantry, and then she'd had to wash off the accumulated dust—and went in to wake up Leon.

Since he'd been in a sour mood for most of the last year, she was pleasantly surprised at his sweet smile upon seeing her and the breakfast she'd placed on the bed.

“Hey, Shorty,” he rasped. “What's all this?”

“Brunch, baby.”

“French toast. It's not my birthday, is it?”

She climbed into the bed and kissed him. “I just felt like it, that's all.”

He took a sip of coffee, made a contented noise. “I got to go take a whiz.” The breakfast tray tottered dangerously as he tried to extricate himself from the bed.

She could hear the sound of his urine splashing noisily in the toilet bowl, the toilet flushing, then she could hear him brushing his teeth, something he didn't normally do before breakfast. A good sign. Even though he was getting as big as his sister, he remained a very sexy man.

He came back into the bed; she moved the tray to allow him to get in without upsetting it. He kissed her again, to her surprise. She shifted her body, angled it toward him, a hand on his upper arm, ready—but then he pulled away and took another sip of coffee.

“You forgot the syrup,” he said.

She touched the white porcelain gravy boat.

He tipped it over the stack of French toast, dousing it liberally, then took the knife and fork and cut a tall wedge. She'd even dusted it with powdered sugar, which he liked.

“Mmm-mmm. You warmed it.”

Audrey smiled, pleased. Didn't they always say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach? Maybe this was all it took to break through the ice floes that had accumulated in their marriage.

After he'd wolfed down half the stack of French toast and all but two of the bacon strips, he turned to her. “How come you're not eating?”

“I ate some in the kitchen.”

He nodded, devoured another piece of bacon, took another swig of coffee. “I thought you were working today.”

“I'm taking the day off.”

“How come?”

“Well, I thought we could spend some time together.”

He turned his attention back to the French toast. “Hmph.”

“You feel like going for a walk later, maybe?” she asked.

After a moment, he said, “I thought we needed the money.”

“One day's not going to send us to the poorhouse. We could go for a drive out in the country.”

Another silence, and then he spoke through a mouthful of cantaloupe. “Just don't be telling me about getting a job as a night watchman.”

She was annoyed but didn't let on. “We don't have to talk about that stuff now, honey.”

“All right.”

Her cell phone rang. She hesitated. Not just that it was a flow-breaker, but it was an unwelcome reminder of the job she had and he didn't. She knew it couldn't be a personal call. It rang again.

“I'll make it quick,” she said, reaching for the cell phone on her nightstand.

Leon cast her a warning look.

It was Roy Bugbee. This was unusual, a call from Bugbee on a Saturday morning. He wasn't friendly, but neither was he as rude as usual. “The phone records,” he said.

“One second.” She walked out of the bedroom so as not to subject Leon to her conversation. “Rinaldi's cell phone records?”

“One of the numbers kept coming up a lot, no ID, so I looked it up in Bresser's.” He was referring to one of the reverse phone directories. She was impressed at Bugbee's initiative, relieved that he'd finally agreed to take this job on. Maybe he wasn't completely beyond redemption.

Bugbee had paused, waiting for her to say something, or maybe for dramatic effect, so she said, “Great idea.”

“Right. And three guesses who called Rinaldi at 2:07 in the morning, the day Stadler got plugged.”

“Stadler,” she ventured.

“No,” Bugbee said. “Nicholas Conover.”

“Two in the morning? The same morning when Stadler's body was found, you mean.”

“Uh huh.”

“But…but Conover told me he slept through the night.”

“Hmph. Guess not, huh?”

“No,” Audrey said, feeling a little tingle of excitement. “I guess not.” Another awkward pause. “Is that it?”

“Is that
it
?” Bugbee scoffed. “You got something better on a Saturday morning?”

“No, I mean—nice job,” she said. “Well done.”

She ended the call and returned to the bedroom, but Leon was no longer in bed. He was sitting in the chair, dressed, tying his sneakers.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Leon stood up, and as he walked out of the bedroom, he passed the bed and flung out a hand at the breakfast tray, flipping it onto the floor. The cantaloupe balls went skittering across the carpet, the French toast flopping down in a neat pile, the maple syrup puddle sitting atop the gray wool. The coffee spill soaked right in, as did the half-and-half. Audrey couldn't keep from letting out a squawk of surprise.

She followed him out, crying, “Leon, baby, I'm sorry—I didn't…” But didn't
what
? The call was important, wasn't it?

“You'll make it quick, huh?” Leon said bitterly as he clomped down the hall. “Sure you will. You got business to do, you're gonna do it no matter what we're doing. You got your priorities straight, don't you?”

She felt sad and almost despondent. “No, Leon, that's not fair,” she said. “I couldn't have been on the phone for more than a minute. I'm sorry—”

But the screen door slammed, and he was gone.

 

Audrey was alone in the house now, feeling lonely and a tad anxious. She had no idea where Leon had stormed off to, just that he'd taken his car.

She called Bugbee back, reaching him on his cell.

He didn't sound happy to hear from her, but then, he never did. “You said Conover called Rinaldi at 2:07 on Wednesday morning. Was that the only call that night?”

“That morning,” Bugbee corrected her. She could hear
traffic noise in the background. He was probably in his car now.

“Were there any other calls that night or that morning between Conover and Rinaldi?”

“No.”

“That means Rinaldi didn't call Conover first, wake him up or something. Conover wasn't calling Rinaldi back, in other words.”

“Right. Put it this way: Rinaldi didn't call Conover from either his home phone or his cell phone. It's conceivable he called Conover from a payphone, but you'd have to get Conover's phone records for that.”

“Yes. I think we should talk to both of these gentlemen again.”

“I'd say so. Hold on, I'm losing you.” A few seconds went by, a half a minute, and he was back on. “Yeah, put the squeeze on 'em both. I'd say we got 'em there with an inconsistency.”

“I'd like to talk to them tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Sunday—don't you have church or something?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“I'm golfing.”

“Well, I'm going to see if I can't talk to Nicholas Conover tomorrow afternoon.”

“On Sunday?”

“I figure he can't be too busy at work if it's a Sunday.”

“But that's family time.”

“Stadler had a family too. Now the thing is, Roy, I think we should talk to these gentlemen simultaneously. And we ought to call them at the last minute before we go over. I really don't want one calling the other to get their stories straight.”

“Right, but like I said, I'm golfing tomorrow.”

“I'm flexible as to the time tomorrow,” she said. “You tell me what works best for you. I'm usually out of church by eleven.”

“Christ. Well, I'd rather do Conover. I want to take down the fucker. You can talk to Rinaldi.”

“My sense, talking to Rinaldi, is that he might respond better to a male detective.”

“I don't really give a shit what makes him comfortable.”

“It's not a matter of comfort,” Audrey said. “It's a matter of what's going to work best, what will help us extract the information we want most effectively.”

Bugbee raised his voice a few decibels. “You want to get information out of Nicholas Conover, you gotta play him hard. And that calls for me. My style. Not yours. You're a pushover, and he can tell.”

“Oh, I'm less of a pushover than you might think, Roy,” she said.