Falls the Shadow (9 page)

I was caught in a trap. I couldn’t walk out. So instead I snatched down the rest of my Blue Hawaii, marched right to the stage, hopped on up, grabbed the mike, shielded my eyes from the spotlight. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but barrel forward with misplaced confidence.

“This is for the ladies out there,” I said, loosening my tie. “Just toss on up those hotel keys.”

That got a laugh, which was good, because then the music started.

A numb, dumb silence fell across the crowd at the first note. Jaws dropped and stayed dropped, eyes glazed, thumbs reached for ears. I don’t know if it was the beat, the tone, the key, maybe it was the lack of all three, but as I sang out on “Suspicious Minds,” I could feel the recoil of the audience. And there were grimaces of horror when I shook my hips, gut-wrenching, bladder-loosening horror. I was the Texas Chain Saw Massacre of karaoke night. At one point, during the chorus, I thought a cat was screeching somewhere in the corner of the room, and then I realized it was my voice coming out of the speakers.

Thank you, Franz, for that interesting rendition of a number one hit from 1969,
said the DJ as the music faded out.
It used to be one of our favorites.

I again shielded my eyes from the spotlight. “That seemed really short, didn’t it?”

Not to us it didn’t, Franz,
said the DJ as heads shook in agreement across the club.
Thank you so much for coming on down, and take care of that head cold
.

“But there are more words scrolling up on the screen,” I said. “And what about the slow part? I was really looking forward to that slow part.”

And so were we, Franz, but trust us, there’s only so much damage a song can take. Next, all the way from Mantua, singing one of the good old old ones, and good advice for Franz on his singing career, let’s hear it for Marvelous Marv, performing “Surrender.”

An old bald man with a bent back and gnarled hands climbed onto the stage. His ears came up to my hip. He grabbed the mike out of my hands, shooed me away. “Get off my stage, you butcher,” said Marv in his rasp of a voice. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

And he did, the little crapper.

When I got back to the booth, Gleason was collapsed on the table, his head resting on his arms. I thought for a moment he had passed out, drunk with sorrow over the sad fate of Seamus Dent, but then I noticed his shoulders shaking with laughter.

“I told you I didn’t come here to sing,” I said.

“Is that what you call it?” He lifted his head, his cheeks wet with his tears.

“Was it that bad?”

“Like the bleat of a goat in heat.”

“Cute. You ever bring Seamus here?”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiled at the memory.

“How’d he do?”

“Seamus could sing. He did a version of ‘American Trilogy’ that would send you right straight to the army recruitment office. And his ‘In My Father’s House’ would bring even an atheist to tears.”

“So what happened? What was he doing with Red Rover? What was the fight about?”

“I don’t know,” said Gleason. “I just don’t know. I traced that bastard Red Rover back to his mother. I went alone, that was my mistake. My partner was on something else, and I should have waited, but I wanted to know. I knocked on the door. The mother answered. I was just identifying myself. Next thing I know, the bastard runs over me on his way out. I charge after him. He stops, whirls, pulls something out of his waistband. I didn’t have any choice.”

“Was there an investigation of the shooting?”

“There always is.”

“What did they find?”

“I came up clean.”

“What did he pull out of his waistband?”

“A knife.”

“And you standing there with your revolver.”

“He whirled. He pulled something out of his belt. I wasn’t waiting to see if it was a cell phone. I came up clean.”

“But still you’re in the auto squad.”

“It made the papers, the shooting, and Internal said I was wrong to have gone there without backup. The brass transferred me to the auto squad to get the stink out of homicide. So now I chase cars. Like a dog.”

Just then Priscilla returned to the table. “Nice job, cowboy,” she said as she placed another Blue Hawaii in front of me.

“I’ll be here all week,” I said.

“Let’s hope not,” she said. “It would be hell on tips.”

I took a long draft of the blue drink, winced.

“What’s the matter?” said Gleason.

“I got this tooth….”

“You ought to get that looked at.”

“So I been told.”

“The guy who took care of Seamus did an amazing job.”

“I have someone in mind,” I said.

“Think about it. Seamus’s teeth were like Stonehenge before, and after they looked pretty damn good.”

“Was he grateful for what you did?”

“Oh, yeah. That was the thing. He was a good kid and appreciated everything. The more you did for him, the more you wanted to do.”

Thank you, Marv, that was beautiful and heartfelt. The ladies here would surrender to you in a minute.
A squeal went up.
Let’s give Marvelous Marv a hand. Next up, the always popular, always terrific, our own Officer Patrick Gleason, singing something from the King’s 1968 Comeback Special. Come on up, Patrick.

Gleason downed his bourbon, belched to clear his throat, gave me a wink before standing and walking with authority to the stage. On his way up, he motioned for the three sirens at the bar, with their rising hair and plunging necklines, to follow, and they did, climbing to the stage with him, forming a row behind.

“This is for a kid I used to know,” said Gleason.

He lowered his head, shook his knee, waited as the music started, a muted trumpet, the humming of his background singers swaying slowly in their row, a slip of strings floating over the bridge.

When Gleason raised his head, his eyes were now focused high and there was something different about him, something transported. He began to sing in a lovely and deep gospel voice about lights burning brighter and birds flying higher, about bluer skies and better lands and brothers walking hand in hand.

It was a sappy song, maudlin and obvious, without a hint of irony. And here was this Elvis wannabe, standing on a karaoke stage, in a pathetic tribute bar, singing to a sparse crowd already punched into submission by the likes of Harvey from Huntingdon Valley and Marvelous Marv, by the likes of me. Yet with the emotional music, the background singers, the way Gleason’s voice roughed with passion as it strived to reach the high notes and higher emotions, it also seemed, for a moment, as true as pain. And his apparent belief in every word shamed me.

See, Gleason was a cop, and sometimes cops become cops because they like the power, the guns, the adrenaline rush of being on the front lines of someone else’s tragedy. And then sometimes they become cops because it’s a tough job that doesn’t pay near enough but needs doing and allows the men and women who take it up to maybe make a real difference in the world. It’s not always so easy to tell one from the other.

“You’re pretty damn good,” I said when he sat back down at the table. “You ever sing professionally?”

“Remember there was this rockabilly trend a couple decades back. The Stray Cats. Robert Gordon. The whole ‘Gene Gene Vincent, we sure miss you’ thing. Some of us just out of the academy had a group. I fronted and played rhythm guitar.”

“What were you called?”

“The Police Dogs. Played some of the bars around here. We were pretty good. Had offers from clubs in New York. But it was just a hobby. I always wanted to do what I was doing.”

“Police work,” I said.

He shrugged.

“It was a good thing you tried to do for Seamus.”

“He was a good kid.”

“Not everyone steps out to help like you did.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

“But I’m troubled here. You knew about his testimony in the François Dubé case?”

“Yeah.”

“And you knew that the defense would be interested in knowing about his former drug use, his misspent youth, how he was found by a cop in a drug house during a raid? You knew all that would be relevant, didn’t you?”

“I know the way it works. You guys on the other side take any little thing and twist it into something else.”

“That might be true, Detective. We all have our jobs to do. But when you learned he was slated to testify, why didn’t you tell anyone what you knew?”

“No one asked.”

“And you didn’t volunteer. You didn’t think Torricelli would be interested? Or the D.A.? They were basing part of their case on the kid’s testimony. You didn’t think they would want to know about his past?”

“He was cleaning up,” he said. “His future was bright. No one needed to know everything he had gone through.”

“Or about your relationship with an ex–drug abuser.”

“I told you, there was nothing wrong in it.”

“Maybe there wasn’t.”

“I was just trying to protect him.”

“Or maybe you were just protecting yourself. Like you said, everyone thinks they understand when they think the worst.”

He didn’t answer, he didn’t have to, the truth of it was writ upon his face. But if he had spoken up, things might have been so different. The D.A. would have turned over the information to the defense, she would have had to, and it would have been rough for Seamus on the stand, sure. It might have made a difference in the François Dubé case, sure, but it would have made a difference to Detective Gleason, too. Because if his commanding officers had known of his relationship with Seamus Dent, he never would have been assigned Dent’s homicide, he never would have rushed off rashly to confront Seamus’s murderer, he never would have killed the man, never would have been booted down to the auto squad. And he never would have been in this situation now, right now, with his fate in my hands.

“You should have told them,” I said.

“I know it now.”

“If they find out, they’re going to look again at that shooting.”

“Most likely.”

“It’s going to appear less like self-defense and more like a dark vigilante form of revenge.”

“It was what it was,” he said.

“But still.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s going to be bad.”

He shrugged.

“You understand I don’t have a choice.”

“I was just trying to do something good.”

“But that’s the way of it, Detective,” I said as I pulled out the subpoena I had typed up in my office and placed it gently before him. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

He didn’t look at it, he didn’t have to.

I emptied my second Blue Hawaii. The alcohol puckered my throat, the pineapple juice jabbed like a steel pick into my tooth. For a moment my jaw trembled and the blood in my head drained and the world grew pale.

Gleason reached out a hand and grabbed my shoulder. “Sakes alive, boy. What’s going on? Are you drunk?”

I shook my head and immediately regretted the action, the pain burrowing deeper with each shake.

“It’s your tooth, isn’t it? Let me give you the name of the dentist I was telling you about.”

“I have a name,” I said, grabbing into my jacket for the card Whit had given me.

“But you should give this guy a chance. He’s supposed to be relatively painless.”

“It’s the relative part that has me worried.”

“You need help, son. Really. I could give him a call.”

I put the cool of the glass against my jaw. “Who is he?”

“Pfeffer,” he said.

My eyes snapped open at the name.

“Dr. Pfeffer,” said Detective Gleason. “He’s the one who helped Seamus, and believe me when I say, based on what he did for Seamus, he’s an absolute magician.”

“Oh, Mr. Carl,” said Dr. Pfeffer’s receptionist, “we’re so glad you’ve come in for a visit. You’re looking well, I must say. And such a nice tie. The doctor is seeing another patient right now, but he’s certainly expecting you. If you could just fill out this new-patient questionnaire, we’d be so very grateful.”

It was bright in Dr. Pfeffer’s flat beige waiting room, too bright. The colors of the magazines laid out in perfect rows on the side tables were washed by the relentless incandescence of the fluorescent lights overhead, the air itself was conditioned by the jaunty Muzak pumping loudly through speakers in the ceiling. And then there was the pretty young receptionist herself, with her daunting cheerfulness, her own wondrous smile, her lies about my tie. Her perk made my aching tooth ache all the more. Walking into Dr. Pfeffer’s waiting room was like walking into a timeless, context-free capsule of dental cheer. We could as easily have been soaring to the moon as in a building in Philly, but wherever we were, we would show off our pearly whites and be jolly.

As I took the clipboard with the questionnaire, I noticed something strange on the wall beside the reception desk. Hanging in their wooden frames were an array of smiles, photographs of gleaming, perfect sets of teeth one above the last, just the smiles, nothing else, a sort of hall of fame of happy dental hygiene. I looked at all those perfect mouths, rubbed my tongue along the rows of my ragged teeth, and then retreated to one of the generic beige chairs and started on the questionnaire.

NAME:
Sure.

DATE OF BIRTH:
Getting a bit far away.

EDUCATION:
Too much.

INCOME:
Not nearly enough.

FAMILY HISTORY:
Murky, at best.

HEALTH HISTORY:
Surprisingly good, except for a tooth.

NATURE OF PROBLEM:
Dental.

CURRENT MEDICATIONS:
Sea Breezes at dusk.

HEALTH INSURANCE:
Deficient.

DISABILITY INSURANCE:
Why does this question make me nervous?

LIFE INSURANCE:
Yikes.

GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT:
Huh?

GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT:
Excuse me?

DARKEST SECRET:
You’re kidding, right?

PERSON YOU’D MOST LIKE TO MEET:
A dentist. I have a toothache and I’d like to meet a dentist.

ARE YOU CURRENTLY IN A FULFILLING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?

That last question sent me back to the receptionist. “What is this all about?” I said.

“It’s the new-patient questionnaire, Mr. Carl. Every new patient fills it out.”

“But it’s getting a little personal. Like this question here about current relationships.”

“Well?”

“I don’t understand the relevance to my sore tooth.”

“Dr. Pfeffer takes a holistic approach to the practice of dentistry. You don’t just treat a tooth, he likes to say, you treat a person.”

“How about if the person only wants to treat the damn tooth?”

She sighed cheerily. “That’s fine, Mr. Carl. Only answer the questions you are comfortable with, so long as you put down all your insurance information.”

“I don’t have dental insurance.”

“Then we take Visa and MasterCard.”

“Of course you do.”

“Just give us your card number and the expiration date. But remember, Mr. Carl, as Dr. Pfeffer constantly reminds his patients, every tooth is connected to a nerve, and every nerve is ultimately connected to every other nerve in a series of switches we don’t yet fully understand.” Her bright, cheery smile was suddenly not so cheery. “You wouldn’t want to cure the tooth only to find something else stops working.”

I smiled politely back until it hurt, sat down, read again question sixteen.

Are you currently in a fulfilling sexual relationship?
How does one answer such a question? Do I talk about my past affairs, my hopes for the future? Do I discuss the dates I had been on in the last couple of months, the prospects I was prospecting for as we spoke. And what does fulfilling mean, anyway? Can a sexual relationship be equated to a brisket, where after your third portion you push away from the table and say,
No more, thank you, I’m fulfilled
? By and large, my fulfilling relationships had not been sexual and my sexual relationships had not been fulfilling and that seemed to me exactly the way the world worked. So I thought about it some more, all the twists and turns, the ambiguities inherent in the question, when a door opened.

A woman holding a file strode out, her smile blinding in its whiteness, its width, its perfection. She was tall, thin, her ginger hair straight and silky, her eyes blue. She was dressed like a high-fashion model on a runway and was every bit as lovely.

I watched as she handed the file to the receptionist.

“How did it go, Ms. Kingsly?”

“Fine, Deirdre, wonderful.” She rubbed her tongue, pink and glistening, across her upper teeth. “He has such gentle hands.”

She glanced my way. I tried to smile. She turned back to the receptionist as if my chair had been empty.

“The doctor wants to see me in four months. A Wednesday would be best. In the afternoon.”

They chatted a bit more as the receptionist went through the book and staked out an appointment. Ms. Kingsly leaned forward to reach for a pen. Her supple body formed a dancer’s line with her arched back, her raised leg, her pointed toe. When she stood straight again, her nose wrinkled and her pretty teeth bit down on her lower lip as she wrote out her address on an appointment-reminder postcard.

I looked down once more at question sixteen. “No,” I wrote.

“Victor Carl,” came a voice, strong and Germanic. It was a voice that brooked no possibility of dissent, the voice of a leader of men. I rose instinctively, stood at attention, looked around for the voice’s source. She was standing tall in the doorway, dressed in white, holding a file to her chest. Her shoulders, her breasts, her hands were all strangely outsized. She looked like she could wring me out like a damp rag and that, quite possibly, I’d like it.

“Y-yes,” I said.

“We are ready for you,
ja
,” she said without a breath of emotion flitting across her stony face. “I am Tilda, Dr. Pfeffer’s dental hygienist. We are very pleased that you have come to us. This way, and bring your questionnaire.”

I glanced nervously at Deirdre and Ms. Kingsly. They both looked back, widening their eyes encouragingly. Gentle hands.

“Sure,” I said. “Yes.”

Tilda, the hygienist, stepped aside as I walked past her into the hallway. Her scent was woody and strong. The brightness from the waiting room dimmed. The Muzak hushed when she closed the door behind us both.

“You will be in examination room B,
ja
,” she said.

Well, I thought, that sounds cheery. Examination room B. Transpose the letters and it spells Maximum Pain. Doesn’t it?

She led me to a clean, brightly lit room down the hall. Arrayed around a large orange examination chair were drills and lights, X-ray guns, sinks, flat trays full of barbarous instruments. She ordered me into the chair, and I complied, lying back as she jacked it up and down and up again. My vertebrae bounced against the orange leatherette.

“Comfortable?”

“Put on some Jimmy Buffett, give me a margarita, and I could be at the beach.”

“
Ja
, well,” she said, clearly not amused. “This is not the Costa del Sol. Wait here. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

“That’s exactly what I was afraid of.”

A few minutes later, he swept into the room, the doctor. I could tell he was the doctor because he wore a doctor’s mask over his mouth and a doctor’s scrub cap over his hair and the lettering on his white linen doctor’s jacket read
DR
.
PFEFFER
.

“What have we here?” He picked up my file, scanned quickly through the new-patient questionnaire. “Victor Carl, yes. And you are having some sort of problem?”

“My tooth.”

“That’s good,” he said. “If it was your foot, I’d have to say you’re in the wrong place.” He laughed. “Tell me about this tooth.”

“It hurts.”

“A lot?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Was there any precipitating event?”

“I’m not sure, but a short while ago I got socked on the side of my jaw with the barrel of a gun.”

“A gun? Oh, my. Was it an accident?”

“No, he meant it, all right.”

“How interesting. Someday you’ll have to tell me the story. Every detail. I’ll be fascinated. But I suppose now I should take a look.”

He went to the sink, scrubbed his hands, took two rubber gloves out of a box on the counter. “Where is this tooth of yours?”

“Lower side, Dr. Pfeffer, on the right.”

“Oh, we’re not so formal here,” he said as he fitted the gloves onto his hands. “Why don’t I call you Victor?” He tightened a glove with the snap of rubber. “And you can call me Bob.”