Freaky Deaky (13 page)

“What’re you looking for?”

“A drugstore,” Robin said. “Did you forget?”

Skip said, “Would you believe I’ve never purchased any of those things in my life?”

Once they found a drugstore open and Robin was angle-parked in front, he asked her what he was supposed to do for money. Robin gave him a ten and he went inside.

Skip was wearing his black satiny athletic jacket
that had
Speedball
written across the back in red. He unzipped it and put his hands in his pockets as he looked at displays along the cigar counter. When he didn’t see what he wanted he moved toward the back of the store, taking time to look at the shelves, more things to beautify you than make you feel better. There were two people at the counter in the pharmacy area: a woman in a peach-colored smock who looked like she sold cosmetics and had most of them on her, and a young skinny guy with a store name tag that said
Kenny
and a half-dozen pens in his shirt pocket. The young clerk asked Skip if he could help him. Skip said yeah, like he was trying to think of what it was he’d come in for, glanced at the cosmetics lady and told the young clerk he wanted a pack of rubbers.

The young clerk said, “What is it you want?”

“I want some rubbers,” Skip said.

The young clerk said, “Oh, condoms.” The cosmetics lady, about ten feet away writing in a notebook, didn’t look up. “They’re right here,” the young clerk said, raising his hand to a display on the wall behind him. “What kind you want?”

“I don’t care, any kind.”

“You like the regular or the ribbed?”

Skip hesitated. “The regular.”

“Natural finish or lubricated?”

“Just plain’ll be fine.”

“Any particular color?”

Skip was about to ask the guy if he was putting him on, but the cosmetics lady was coming over saying, “The new golden shade is very popular. Kenny, why don’t you show him those?”

The young clerk turned from the display holding a box that had a picture on it of a guy and a girl walking along a beach at sunset, holding hands. Skip wondered if you were supposed to think the guy had a rubber in his wallet and they were looking for a place to do it on the beach. They were crazy if they did. Even a car was better than the beach. Anybody’s car that was open.

Skip said, “That’s fine,” getting the ten-dollar bill out of his jacket. “How much is it?”

“This one’s the economy pack,” the young clerk said, looking at the price tag. “Three dozen for sixteen ninety-five.”

Skip had the ten-dollar bill in his hand. He put it back in his pocket, took off his black satiny athletic jacket and said to the young clerk, “I’ll tell you what,” as he laid the jacket open on the counter. “Gimme about a dozen of those economy packs. Put ’em right here.”

The young clerk and the cosmetics lady seemed to be trying to smile. Was he being funny or what?

No, he wasn’t being funny. Skip reached behind him for the .38 stuck in his belt to show them he wasn’t. He said to the cosmetics lady, “While he’s doing that, you empty the cash drawer. Then you
both lay down on the floor.” He said to the young clerk, “Hey, Kenny? But none of those ribbed ones. Gimme all regular.”

Robin pushed in the cigarette lighter, looked up and saw Skip coming out of the drugstore. He had his jacket off, bunched under his arm like he was carrying something in it. As soon as he was in the car he said, “Let’s go.” Robin held her hand on the lighter, waiting for it to pop.

“How many did you get?”

“Four hundred and something.”

Robin said, “Well, we can always get more.” She lit her cigarette. “You must’ve used a credit card.”

“Let’s go, okay?”

“My, but we’re anxious.”

“I can hardly wait,” Skip said.

Greta lay in
Chris’s dad’s king-size bed wondering, If somebody handed you twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, what would it be in? Would it be in like a briefcase all lined up in neat rows? Would you have to take the money out and put it in something and give them back the briefcase? Probably. She turned her head to look at the digital clock on the bedside table, green figures in the morning gloom: 7:49. She looked back at the ceiling and thought, Wait a minute. If ten one-hundred-dollar bills made a thousand, it wouldn’t be much of a pile. Especially new ones. She held her thumb and one finger about an inch apart, closed one eye as she looked up and narrowed the space between them. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills wouldn’t be any more than an eighth of an inch. Times twenty-five . . . the whole amount’d be only three or four inches high. You wouldn’t need a briefcase for that, you could stick it in an envelope. Twenty-five
thousand didn’t seem so much looking
at it that way. She had to buy a car . . .

She had to get up and brush her teeth and take a couple of Extra-Strength Excedrin. She’d had four drinks last night at Brownie’s. Bourbon over crushed ice with a touch of sugar sprinkled on top. Chris had never had one. She told him it was her dad’s Sunday afternoon drink he called a God’s Own—in the summertime with fresh mint her mom grew in the backyard. Two at the bar shaped like a boat, Chris smacking his lips with that first one, two more at the table, the God’s Owns going down easy, and then a bottle of wine with the pickerel. Starting out quietly to discuss a serious matter and before she knew it they were having fun.

It was the way Chris told it, calling the guy Mr. Woody, describing this weird scene, Mr. Woody naked on a rubber raft, a mound of lard floating in the pool. Mr. Woody’s colored chauffeur doing everything but kiss the man’s hind end while he thought up ways to hustle him, hoping to skim twenty grand off the top of Mr. Woody’s offer and give Ginger five. Chris calling her Ginger at first because they did.

She told him it was “Ginjah” if he was going to say it the way she heard it all her life from her family, and not “Ginjurr” with his Detroit accent. Her
dad gave her the name when she was little. Her sister Camille they called Lily, but they called her brother, Robert Taylor, always Robert Taylor. That was strange, wasn’t it? Then she became Ginger Jones when she married Gary. She told Chris she’d planned to stay Greta Wyatt, but her mother had said, “You’re not going to take your husband’s name?” Like it was unheard of. (She didn’t tell Chris Gary said it “Ginjurr” too and after a while it grated on her nerves—along with everything else about Gary, who had a wonderful singing voice but would never leave Dearborn, Michigan, because he was a mama’s boy and she kept a tight hold on him. Mothers could mess up lives without even trying.) So to please
her
mother she became Greta Jones till the divorce and she had it changed back.
Except she got more audition calls as Ginger Jones, so she was stuck with it professionally. What she should have done before marrying Gary was make up a stage name that ended with a smile when you say it, like Sweeney. Say it, Sweeney. Your mouth forms a smile. And Chris said, “So does Mankowski. Say it: Ginger Mankowski.” She did, exaggerating the smile for him, but it didn’t sound right. Ginger Mankowski. (Without telling him, she tried Greta Mankowski in her mind, heard the sound of it and saw herself fifty pounds heavier, a night cleaning woman at Ford World Headquarters.)

Chris said to her, “If you’re good, it doesn’t matter what name you go by. Are you any good?”

She felt herself sag a little. “I’m good. But do you know how many Ginger Joneses there are just in Detroit? Before you even begin to count New York or Los Angeles?”

He said to her, “There’s only one Greta Wyatt that I know of.”

He called her Greta after that, saying he had never known a Greta and liked the name a lot, coming on to her in sort of a little-boy way, which some guys pulled in order to sneak up on you. Chris did it pretty well, with a nice grin, like he didn’t know he was a hunk and women looked at him coming back from the men’s room.

He said Mr. Woody, “that poor, pathetic asshole,” reminded him of Bingo Bear, a toy he’d given one of his nieces for her birthday. You squeezed Bingo’s nose and he spoke, he’d say things like “Give me a hug. . . . Scratch my ear. . . . Play with me.” Bingo knew four hundred words. Mr. Woody might know a few more than that, but you didn’t squeeze his nose to get him to talk, you fed him peanuts.

Chris said to her, “Have you ever looked at a dog or some animal and wondered what it thought and what it would be like to look out through its eyes?” Greta said, “All the time.” And Chris said, “Mr. Woody’s a person, and yet looking out
through his eyes is unimaginable. Between the booze and all the smoke Donnell blows at him the man is just . . . there. I look at him, a guy with all his money, and think, What good is he? Do you know what I mean? He doesn’t serve any purpose.” Greta said, “How many people do?” but knew what he meant.

It was strange, when she thought of Woody Ricks now as Mr. Woody, this pathetic creature, it changed the way she remembered being sexually assaulted by him: being thrown on the bed and flipped over with her heinie in the air. Was that funny? Maybe it was from certain angles, or how you might look at it a long time from now. She could still act indignant, easy, and say he wasn’t just sort of there, he was
there
, because she was there too, underneath the fat slob. What she couldn’t say was that he had actually done it to her. When Sergeant Maureen Downey visited her in the hospital, Maureen asked if there had been penetration and she told Maureen, Sort of. Maureen said he’d either put his penis in her or he hadn’t. And she told Maureen, truthfully, because of the state she was in at the time she wasn’t sure. Maureen said it didn’t matter, it was still criminal sexual conduct of one degree or another. “If we can prove it.”

Greta said to Chris last night, “He must know what he did.” Chris said, Well, the man had been
told, if he didn’t remember. She said, “Then maybe he’s making the offer because his conscience bothers him.” When Chris said the man didn’t have one, Mr. Woody ceased being pathetic and turned cold and mean and Greta got mad. She said, “Then he’s adding insult to injury, treating me like I’m some kind of dinky legal matter he can settle out of court.”

This morning, lying in Chris’s dad’s bed, looking at Woody’s offer through a dull, semi-hangover headache, she began to think, Hell, even the amount was an insult. A stack of bills no more than three or four inches high.

Chris was on the phone when Greta came in the kitchen and walked past the table without looking at him, going to the range. She heard him say, “Just a second, Maureen.” And then, “Oh, my goodness,” before saying, “The coffee’s right there.”

Greta said, “I see it,” standing with her back to him in a blue T-shirt that covered her rear end and stopped.

“There’s coffee cake in the oven. There’s juice. I’ll fix you an egg, if you want.”

“I’m fine,” Greta said, pouring herself a mug of coffee.

“You sure are.” Then heard him say, “Okay, Maureen, what’s that address again?”

Greta bent from the waist to open the oven and gave Chris a shot of her plain white panties.

“Five-fifty? . . . I’m sorry. Yeah, I got it. Five-fif
teen
Canfield.”

Greta came over to the table with her coffee and coffee cake.

“Maureen, I’m sorry. Hold it again, will you?”

They smiled at each other. Greta could feel hers and knew his was real. Look at his eyes.

“Will you sit down?”

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“You already have.”

She said, “Okay,” and sat down across from him and began listening to his conversation as she glanced at the front page of the morning
Free Press
on the table. They were talking about Robin. Her name was Robin Abbott.

Chris said, “Maybe she’s at work.” He said, “Well, you have to find out. Go there and talk to somebody.” He said, “I’d be glad to. You’re kidding, but I’m not. I’d go in a minute.” He said, “Call Huron Valley, see if she had a job lined up.” He said, “Oh, I thought she just got out. . . . Yeah, if somebody had been killed she could still be in. I remember Mark, but I don’t remember a Robin Abbott. What was the guy’s name, Emerson?” Greta watched him write
Emerson Gibbs
on the newspaper. “Give me the mother’s name. . . . She’s got dough, huh? Live out there.” He underlined the
names and then drew boxes around them. Greta watched him look up and smile and then look down at the names again as he said, “I’d sure like to go with you.” He said, “I know, but you’re gonna find that out. Have you talked to Wendell yet?” Greta watched
him glance at the wall clock. It was eight thirty-five. He said, “You want to talk to Robin you’re gonna have to hurry. Once Wendell gets on her . . .” He listened and said, “Yeah, but she’s not gonna be in a very cooperative frame of mind if she’s a suspect. Hey, you know what you could do? Wendell goes with you like he’s with Sex Crimes and then sneaks up on her with Mark. What a tragedy, Jesus Christ, the guy steps out for a can of peanuts. . . . You know what I’m thinking? Since Wendell’s gonna talk to her anyway. Take me with you . . . I mean it.” He said, “That’s beside the point. They’re not gonna send a guy from the Bomb Squad, but that’s who you need. I could look around there while you’re talking to her. . . .” He said, “Yeah, I’ll wait.”

Greta smiled, watching him. He was performing, aware of her and maybe a little self-conscious. It reminded her of last night: still talking, high, walking back from Brownie’s, but quiet riding up in the elevator, quiet coming into the apartment, neither of them saying a word as they turned out the lights in the living room. Then in the hall Chris telling her there were towels laid out for her in the bathroom.
Greta asking if he was sure he didn’t want his dad’s room. No, all his stuff was in the other bedroom—where she’d looked at family photographs earlier and picked him out at different ages, recognizing Chris as the young boy with the blond crew cut squinting at the sun, trying to smile; the teenager with darker hair to his shoulders, not smiling. He stopped at the door to the room with the pictures. They were both so well-mannered in the hall saying good night after all the God’s Owns and the bottle of Piesporter, after looking at each other in that warm boozy glow and knowing
something was going to happen. So carefully polite closing their separate doors. Greta undressed, listening. In the bathroom she washed her face and hands, stared at herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, turned the water off and stood listening. She got in the king-size bed and lay there in the glow of the lamp, listening. Until that was enough of that and she shouted, “Mankowski!” Paused and yelled, “Are you coming or not?”

He came.

And now he was saying to Maureen, “Okay, will you let me know?” Listening and then saying, “Because I know more than any of you and if I can help, why not?” Saying, “Good. I’ll see you. Maureen? Call me. . . . Right.” He reached over to hang the phone on the wall and came back to Greta smiling. “Where were we?”

“They found Robin,” Greta said.

“We know where she lives. It’s a start. You know what else we know? She did time, thirty-three months, for destruction of government property. With a bomb.”

Greta said, “Robin?” and saw the older woman with the braid at Woody’s, perfectly at ease with her shirt off that night; saw Robin and was aware of Chris saying, “
We
know,” still a working cop in his mind. Greta said, “You only found out what her last name is yesterday.”

Chris said, “Yeah, but also the kind of life she was into, going back to the seventies. If she associated with guys like Donnell, a Black Panther, that’s a pretty good lead. Maureen didn’t find Robin in the computer, so she checked with the Bureau, the FBI office here, and the agent Maureen happened to talk to knew all about her. Also this guy.” Chris’s gaze dropped to the newspaper. “Emerson Gibbs.”

Greta looked at the two names he’d written on the front page. “Who’s Marilyn Abbott?”

“Her mother. Maureen’s gonna call her, see if she knows where Robin is. This guy, Emerson Gibbs, was convicted with Robin on the same bomb charge and did three and a half years. Both, it turns out, were heavy-duty political activists back at that time.” Chris paused. “You know what I mean, back during the hippie days?”

“I was in grade school,” Greta said. “But I was
in
Hair
when I was going to Oakland University. I went two years.” She sang then, in a soft murmur, “ ‘This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius . . . ‘ “ stopped and said, “Were you a hippie?”

“I’m not sure what I was,” Chris said. “I was sort of on the edge of it. I took part in a couple of peace marches, a big one in Washington, and I went to Woodstock . . .”

“Really?”

“And then I went to Vietnam.”

“You did?”

“For a while. I came back they were still marching, but”—Chris shook his head—“I didn’t.”

Greta reached across the table for his hand, looking at his serious expression. She said, “Here we are playing house and I find out I barely know you.” That got a little smile. “You have a lot to tell me about.”

“I’ll tell you where we are right now,” Chris said. “Maureen looks for Robin as a possible witness in a sexual assault case. But all of a sudden Robin becomes a suspect in a homicide investigation. Which wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t seen her there Saturday night. But now, you understand, Homicide will have a priority, first dibs.”

“It’s okay,” Greta said.

“If Maureen talks to her at all, it could be in the Wayne County jail.”

“Really, it doesn’t matter,” Greta said. “I don’t see any reason to go to court if I’m gonna lose.”

“Yeah, but at least you get to accuse him in public.”

“I thought it over while I was taking a shower. I’m considering Mr. Woody’s offer.”

There was a silence. Chris stared at her across the table. Then shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

“You think I’m wrong?”

He took his time. “If you look at it as an out-of-court settlement for mental anguish, or for injuries received, something along those lines—”