Done for a Dime (24 page)

A long lore accompanied the Black male, white woman fascination—hiding from the harder truths, needing someone who embraces your self-delusions, saving each other. Hiding behind each other. You can drive yourself crazy, he realized, undermining your affections like that. Then again, returning to the feel of her body burrowing into his own, his former feelings—his admiration for her talent and mind, his attraction to her beauty, his affection, his curiosity—they all seemed shallow, equivocal. Inadequate. There was more going on here. For the first time, he felt a hint of that ineffable pulse echoing between them. And yet he realized, too, how suddenly, like his father’s life, it could be destroyed. And that returned to him his guilt. She was the one who tried to save him, he thought, at the very same moment you were turning your back on the old man for good. It shamed him. He found himself despising her a little—what good did she accomplish really, what help did she deliver, what did she see,
she’s weak
—even as he tightened his hold around her, despising himself more.

They took the last corner and, in an eerie replay of the night before, police cruisers sat waiting, lining the street. Like they’d never left, Toby thought. It caused an odd sort of vertigo—wanting to find out what was going on but wanting to flee. Feeling at the same time both lost and right back at the beginning.

The cabbie turned around in his seat and queried them with his eyes, as though to ask if they really wanted out. Toby slid his arm out from around Nadya’s shoulder—she’d clutched that hand in her own so tightly he’d lost sensation in three fingers—took out the last of his cash, handed it across the seat, and motioned to Nadya.

“It’s okay. Let’s go.”

An officer with a clipboard—not the same one as last night, Toby noticed, the one he’d wrestled with—stood guard at the gate, tipping one foot to the other in the wind. He was the youngest cop Toby’d seen so far, and he carried himself with an affected squaring of his shoulders, like a TV Texan. As the cab drove off, the baby-faced officer jotted down its license number on his clipboard.

A small display of flower garlands and paper-wrapped bouquets cluttered the sidewalk. The flowers were joined by condolence cards, candy boxes, stuffed animals—even a balloon in the shape of a heart, made of Mylar and filled with helium, bobbing at the end of a string. Left by well-wishers, Toby guessed, neighbors. Same neighbors who told the police I wasn’t my father’s son.

“My name is Toby Marchand,” he told the officer, walking up. “I live here.”

The officer held up the clipboard, gesturing for them to wait, then turned his body away, leaning his head to one side to speak into the walkie-talkie attached by Velcro to his epaulet. With the sound of the wind, Toby couldn’t hear much of what the officer said, but he did catch his own name and that of Detective Murchison, plus the word
girl
. The officer ended his call and turned back. “Detective be out in about five, ten minutes. Wait here.”

Toby led Nadya to the sidewalk, where she hunched down, her back against the trunk of the sycamore. With pained eyes she studied the mound of flowers and gifts, pulling the sweater hem down over her knees to the ground and tucking her feet inside, then stretching the neckline up above her nose. Once she stuffed each hand inside the opposite sleeve, only her eyes and the top of her head remained visible.

Why were the police still here, Toby wondered, or here again? He felt like asking, but the young cop might as well be wearing a sandwich board reading:
DON’T BOTHER ME
.

He returned his focus to Nadya, and she glanced up, meeting his gaze.
I am the ruin of everyone I love,
her eyes seemed to say.
And everyone who loves me.

“You know how much I care about you, right?”

It didn’t come out quite the way he’d wanted. She seemed shocked at first, but the agony in her eyes dissolved a little. As she worked to free her face from the collar of the sweater, the slightest smile appeared.

“Thank you.”

He dropped next to her, wrapped his arm around her again, pulling up his jacket collar with the other hand. The wind seemed gentler near the ground. Nadya tensed up beneath his arm, her head swinging left, then right.

“Can you smell that?”

Toby sniffed the air. “What?”

Her head stopped turning. She gazed at him with terror in her eyes. “Nothing.”

He took her chin in his hand, wouldn’t let her look away. “Tell me.”

She swallowed. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“It’s in your head.”

“I think so. Yes.”

He stroked her cheek, the darker skin of his fingers accentuating her pallor. “Does it help, knowing it’s not real?”

She looked away, trembling as she buried her fists deeper into the sleeves of the huge sweater. “Someday. I hope.”

“When the flashbacks come, are they visual, too? Can you see him?”

It seemed too personal, too needy a question. She took a long time to answer.

“It’s like what you see when you switch the lights on, then off, real quick. It’s there, just an instant. Then it’s gone.” She shivered. “And it’s awful. But the fear, it’s there the whole time. I can’t make it stop. My heart’s going a mile a minute, I’m sick to my stomach. My whole insides just—”

She closed her eyes and he held her again, tight, till Murchison appeared. He came wearing the same expression of buried rage smothered in despair that Toby had come to think of as the face of the law.

“Why didn’t you tell me there was someone living in the house next door?”

Toby glanced at Nadya, who stared back. They struggled to their feet.

“I didn’t know,” Toby said.

“There was?” Nadya asked.

The young cop stepped forward, into Murchison’s orbit. The detective ignored him.

“Big guy, bearish, on the chubby side, mixed-race.”

In the corner of his eye Toby caught Nadya staggering a little on her feet. Turning, he saw her eyes swell. “What?” he whispered.

“Could you describe him again?” Nadya asked.

Murchison did. Nadya went white.

“There was someone like that. At the club. When Mr. Carlisle got into the fight.”

“You didn’t mention that before,” Murchison said.

“He wasn’t one of the four who caused the real trouble.” Her voice barely rose above a whisper, but even so the words came out shrill, defensive. “He was just somebody in the crowd. He came up, put his arms around Mr. Carlisle, like he wanted to help break up the fight. When he loosened his hold, Mr. Carlisle turned right around and hit him. Hard.” She winced at the memory. “And kicked him, after he fell.” She looked up at Toby as though wanting to be forgiven for having to admit that.

Murchison asked, “He follow you out to the car?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Murchison toed a spot of grass cropping out of a crack in the sidewalk, then looked off at the Victorian from which he’d come. “From what we found inside, looks like he lived on cold canned soup, vanilla cake frosting, and peppermint schnapps. Cellar dweller. Except he liked to sit up at the window on the top floor, too.” He pointed up toward the widow’s walk. “Bit of a smoker. You never saw an ash glowing red up at that window? Or any other lights at night?”

Both Toby and Nadya looked, following the direction of his finger with their eyes.

“He also liked making little flamethrowers with hair spray. You never saw that?”

“No,” in unison. Nadya shook her head for emphasis, her eyes brimming with self-reproach. Toby said, “That house, it’s been empty months, maybe a year. You stop paying attention.”

“Too bad for your father.”

Toby couldn’t believe he’d heard right. “Are you saying that just because—”

“Your father, he mention seeing anybody in that house?”

“If he had, I’d have told you.”

Murchison, to Nadya: “You?”

She shook her head. Toby said, “I want to get her out of the cold.”

Murchison leaned away, murmured something to the young cop, who ducked his chin as he listened, then leaned back. “One, given what we know now, I’d have to say it’s unwise for you to stay here. Could be your father’s killer was holed up next door, and he may have an inkling you can identify him. Two, I haven’t released the scene yet. Given what we just found, I’m not going to, not anytime in the next few hours. Three, I’ve been thinking about what your lawyer told me. I want to look at your father’s financial records, his checkbook, tax work papers, anything he didn’t give his lawyer. Your lawyer. But I still want you here in town. You want, go down, stay with Ms. Navigato for now.”

Nadya edged forward, her paper slippers chafing the sidewalk. “Why are you being so hostile? What have we done?”

Murchison didn’t answer, just stared back at her with a kind of wounded bafflement.

“You think we’re guilty.”

Toby touched her shoulder, whispering, “Choose your battles.” He tried to turn her away. She refused to move.

“If you feel so much hate for us, who are you doing this for?”

“I don’t hate anybody.”

“Oh my God, you don’t see it in yourself?”

Nadya shook her head and broke out of Toby’s hold, spinning away. Toby clung to her hand, to keep her close. “We’ll need to get some things from inside the house, Detective. Clothes, my shaving kit, things like that. I assume you’ll want to come with us, or have one of your officers come along.”

Murchison tore the edges of the crime scene tape away from the gate as the younger cop jotted down everyone’s name on his entry/exit log. Once the tape was clear, Murchison turned to Nadya.

“You sure you’re up for this?”

He seemed more cautious than concerned. She stood there, staring at the gate. Toby said, “I can bring your clothes out to you, if you want.”

“No. I want to go in.”

Murchison pushed open the gate, and she looked through the opening into the yard. Standing perfectly still, she swayed a little on her feet, her skin blanching a ghostly white.

“Let’s get you inside,” Toby said, taking one arm.

Murchison tried for the other, but she tore her hand away, clasping it across her mouth. Hissing through her fingers, “The bathroom.”

Toby fumbled with his keys for what seemed an eternity, and as soon as he got the door open she fled past him, hurtling through the living room, then slamming the bathroom door.

“Still think it was a good idea to bring her back here?” Murchison eased past him in the doorway. “Where did your father keep his mail and financial records?”

Toby went to the china cabinet in the dining room, opened one of the lower panels, and withdrew the shoe box full of receipts and bill stubs, the checkbook. Placing them on the tabletop, he said, “My father was extremely private about all this. I won’t be able to make any better sense of it than you will. So if you’ll excuse me.”

He left Murchison at the dining room table and ventured back toward the bathroom. He leaned toward the door, listened, caught the sound of Nadya gasping in and out, the sound strung together with whimpers. He pictured her on her knees, the cold tile, the bile on her lips. He lacked the heart to make her face him like that, so he drew away, went to his father’s room.

It felt like a violation, being there. Raiding a tomb. He sat down on the unmade bed and stared at the open closet, the array of suits and sport jackets, lime-green polyester to worsted Italian wool. Weary, he put his hand out to brace himself on the mattress, and as he did, his hand brushed something hard beneath the pillow. He recoiled on impulse, even as his mind recognized what it was: his father’s portable CD player and headphones. Toby removed the unit from beneath the pillow and out of curiosity popped open the play port, to see what the last thing was his father had listened to.

It was a disc by the baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett and his sextet:
Old Warrior, Young Warrior
. Toby had given it to his father as a Christmas present; he’d meant it as an homage. His father, unwrapping it Christmas morning, sniffed the scent of free jazz and listened to no more than the first three tracks before turning it off. “Music to get lost by,” he’d said, then gone off to make tea. The crack had sparked one more round of insults between them. And now here it is, Toby thought, the thing he listened to at night before drifting off. Cherished in secret.

He removed the small, shiny disc, holding it in his hand like a mirror as the bathroom door opened. Looking up, he saw Nadya appear in the doorway. She’d washed her face, gargled; he could smell the soap and mouthwash. He gestured for her to sit beside him.

“You okay?”

She buried her hands in the sleeves of the sweater. “Better. Some. What’s that?”

“Present I gave Pops.” He turned the disc this way and that in his hand. “Reminded me of something.”

“Tell me.”

He shrugged, but she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Please. I’d like to hear it.”

Toby puffed his cheeks and thought about where to start. “I was nine. Pops took me to see Illinois Jacquet’s big band. We went backstage before the first set. Pops knew Rudy Rutherford, he played clarinet and baritone in the band, and they did a little howdy-doo, you know, two old guns cracking wise. Then Pops asked if he could introduce me to Illinois.”

He chuckled, remembering.

“It was like meeting the pope in a bar. He was sitting in this tall, wobbly wood chair, a barber’s bib around his neck, while his manager fussed at his hair, straightening it with a heating iron. So damn proud of that wavy gray hair. Rudy introduced Pops and me, and Illinois played the gracious big shot. Asked me how I liked ‘playing the bone.’”

Toby looked down at the CD player, reinserted the disc.

“The band, they did a lot of old stuff. ‘White Heat,’ ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy.’ You’d have thought nobody could blow the dust off those tunes, but they did. I watched Pops as he listened—eyes almost glassy at times. Real quiet afterward.” He glanced up, to be sure Nadya followed. “That was the first time I think I actually understood my father. The dream always just outside his reach. All it takes is one signature tune. Illinois had it with ‘Flying Home.’ Lee Morgan had ‘The Sidewinder,’ Ahmad Jamal, ‘Poinciana.’ One tune, so people have something to hang your name on.