Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator (12 page)

“It is going fine,” he says. His voice is flat. If he’s surprised that I’m calling, he doesn’t show it. “I thought you were another prank phone call.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just saw some guy named Frank Boner in the phone book when I was looking up your number. It made me laugh.”

“Ha,” he says. Then, “Why were you looking me up in the phone book?”

“There was one sitting on the deck. I know I could have looked you up online or whatever …”

“No,” he says. “I mean, why were you looking for
my
number?”

“Well, Hair-Bear,” I say. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Okay,” he says. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sure. Well, is it true that you have mad computer skillz?”

“Mad skills?”

“With a ‘z.’ You have to say it like that. Mad skillzzzzzz.”

“Um, what?”

“Whatever. I mean, like you’re good at doing computer stuff.”

“I guess so. Let me guess: you got a virus downloading porn?”

“No, it’s just—” I start to explain, but he cuts me off.

“You want some codes to hack the pay-porn sites?”

“Nah, I’m—”

“You need more storage to save your porn?”

“Hairston,” I say loudly. “Everyone knows I prefer my porn analog. This is about something else.”

“Analog porn, huh?”

I sigh. “My dad left behind a treasure trove of old
Playboys
. I know those chicks are like sixty now, which is weird, but who cares, right? Way hotter than any girl out there today.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’ll give you one if you want. You strike me as a Lisa Baker kind of dude. She was 1967 Playmate of the Year and well deserving of the honor. It will pain me to part with her, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I need a favor. I need to find someone.”

“Okay, and you think I can help?” he asks, maybe just the tiniest bit of cheer creeping into his voice.

“Yeah, can’t you hack into some databases or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. What do you know?”

I tell Hairston what I know about Jacques Langman—his name, his approximate age. He seems a bit less interested now that we’re not talking about porn, but he grunts in assent when I’m done with my spiel.

“Do you want to hold?” he says.

“You’re going to do it right now?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “I have my laptop right here. It’s not like it’s hacking. It’s just rummaging around through some government records, cross-searching phone directories. It’s on the open Web. No big deal. I’ll figure it out.”

“It’s pretty creepy how good you are at that,” I say. “You’d make a good cop.”

“I guess,” he says.

“Or a criminal.”

“Thanks?” he laughs. I laugh. Laughing it up with Penis-Head. I hear the clacking of the keys on his laptop. He whistles a little tune. I go to the fridge and look for something good. There isn’t anything, so I just chug some milk out of the bottle. And a few moments later he has it. “Jacques Langman,” he says. “There’s only one in the country. He was arrested in Pennsylvania about twenty years ago.”

“For what?” I spit the milk out. It splashes a white puddle onto the black counter. It looks like the chalk outline of a corpse. I feel sick to my stomach.

“Murder,” he says.

“What?” I shriek.

“Just kidding, dude. Relax.”

“Oh man, why did you say that?” I yell. I feel my heart slowly crawl back to the approximate region of my chest where it belongs.

“It was actually just assault with a deadly weapon,” he says.

“Very funny,” I say.

“No, that part is serious. He really was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon for attacking a cop in Easton, Pennsylvania.”

“That’s a pretty freaking weird joke, Hairston.”

“Whatever. He got off.” I hear some more keys clacking.

“Whoa. Where is he now?”

“Hold on. Let me check this other thing and … It seems like he lives in New York. Last updated address is Manhattan. Not too far from here at all.” He reads the address and I scramble to find a pen to write it down. I scribble it into the margin of the
DANFORTH
page of the phone book, though I’m not quite sure why.

“Hello?” Hairston says.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” I say.

“You going to tell me why you need this particular piece of information?” he asks.

“Not really,” I say.

“You going to at least say ‘Thank you, Hairston, for being so awesome’ or something?” he says.

“Thank you, Hairston, for being so, so awesome,” I say, aware that my voice sounds insincere. I do mean it, though. I do appreciate it. It’s just hard to focus, staring at the address of Jacques Langman written in black ink in the margins of a phone book.

“I’ll take that
Playboy
at school. Lisa Baker. In a brown paper bag, please.”

“Sure, sure,” I say, totally distracted. Now that I have the means to do it, I’m not so sure I should try to find Jacques Langman anymore. Trouble is, what if he tries to find me?

I decide to do some more writing on the book, but it’s pretty much falling apart. I keep trying to pretend I’m an objective biographer, and I don’t think you’re supposed to say “I” in that kind of reporting, so I keep saying “the author.” It just sounds weird and eventually it’s just me writing about myself. But not because you told me to, Dr. Waters!

Every once in a while Mom gets the idea that she should cook. It’s usually a bad idea. It’s not that she’s a terrible cook, it’s just that if you’re a fan of
human
food, you might want to consider takeout. Ha-ha, that’s something Dad used to say. Anyway, Mom makes some sort of weird chicken dish tonight, and it’s chewy and quite unpleasant. I’m sort of glad it’s chewy, though, so I can act as though my mouth is just very busy and there’s no way I can possibly talk. Because she is in a talking mood. Maybe it’s the wine. I’m just not in the mood to care. I don’t want to care about how her day was. I don’t want to care about the property she’s selling. I don’t want to care about any of it. My mind is on Jacques Langman and I almost mention it a dozen times. But each time I just shove another piece of chewy chicken into my mouth and keep the Jacques-talk to myself. It doesn’t seem like anything good would come from sharing. At least not until I know a little more.

I spend a mind-numbing night watching TV. It’s some reality show about teen moms who live in a renovated house and learn to become chefs while kickboxing. Or something. I am not really paying attention. It’s okay having your mind numbed sometimes, right? Well, maybe it would be if it actually worked. I just feel restless. I head to bed on the early side, trying not to think about how big and empty the house feels. I push open the door to my bedroom, an act that becomes more difficult by the day due to the
growing mountain of dirty clothes on the floor. I flop into bed and fall asleep. Just as I reach a blissful state of snoozing, I’m gently woken up by a horrible scream.

“Fran!” The voice is coming from my mom’s room, of course, echoing down the hall. Is she dreaming? Seeing a ghost? I try to ignore it. Then I hear a thump. What the hell? Maybe there really is a ghost. This time Mom says my name.

“Guy!” She sounds panicked.

“What?” I say. Actually I half whisper, half scream it.

“Come here,” she says.

“You come
here
,” I hiss. Then I realize that’s not a very manly thing to say, so I get up and go down the hall to her room. I half open the door and stick my head in. The huge bed in the middle of the room is barely visible.

“Did you hear that?” she asks.

“I heard you talking to Dad,” I say. “I don’t think he’s going to answer.”

“No, not that,” she says. “That was just reflex. I heard a noise and yelled his name.”

“You heard a noise?

“Up in the attic, I think.”

“You’re crazy,” I say, even though I too heard a thump. Then it comes again. Louder. Not just a thump, but a voice. It seems to be saying “Crap.”

Mom jumps out of bed and grabs me. We stand there like that, frozen in the mostly dark room, paralyzed with fear.

“Intruder!” she says. “Where’s the phone?”

“I don’t know,” I say, annoyed. She turns a light on and we look for a phone. The cordless isn’t in the room. One of us has to
go back down the hall to my room to retrieve my cell. My instinct is to vote for Mom to do it. But I know that’s not right. So I volunteer myself, even though the words feel weird coming out of my mouth. “I’ll do it.” Who is that talking? My heart is racing, and I’m sweating, and for some reason I feel like I really have to go to the bathroom. I inch my way down the hall, taking tiny steps. I adopt a karate stance even though I don’t really know anything about karate. I mean, sure, I took lessons at the Berry Ridge Mall for about six weeks when I was nine, but I didn’t quite achieve the rank of black belt. Not even a white belt, which is the belt they start you with. I don’t think I got any belt at all. Not even a pair of suspenders. Watch out for my fists of fury.

I sneak back into my room and look for my phone. Why is this place such a mess? I sort of wish that it wasn’t filled with laundry and junk. I know my phone is in a pants pocket, but which pants? Why do I have so many pants? Why do we have to have so many pants in a world where intruders are in your attic? Finally I locate the phone and rush back down the hall, holding it like a lance. Mom has apparently been looking for household items to use as a weapon and has settled on the ever-lethal combo of a jewelry box and a curling iron. Yeah, that’ll work if we need to give him a makeover.

“I think he’s gone,” she says, hopeful. “But I’m going upstairs to check.”

“No you’re not!” I say. The force of my words seems to surprise her.

“At least let me call,” she says. I hand her the phone and she dials 911. She tells the dispatcher that we have an intruder, gives our address and some other information, and hangs up. The more
I hear the word “intruder,” the less it sounds like a real word. Intruder. Intruder. Intruder. There is an intruder in my life. Within minutes, two members of the Berry Ridge Police Department are at our door. They both have flashlights and guns and mustaches blazing. Mom shows them the door to the attic, and they creep up the steps. They motion that we should get out of the house, so we do. We’re standing there in the night, wearing pajamas. Then Mom starts to cry. That’s not very Mom-like. I put my arm around her. She cries harder.

After a few minutes the two police officers meet us outside. They tell us that the house is clear. “All clear,” they say in their jargon. “He must have left the way he came,” they say. Well, one of them says it. They don’t talk in unison. It’s mainly the older one talking. But he says it like maybe he doesn’t really believe us that anyone was there in the first place, which is highly annoying. We
heard
something—wind doesn’t mutter “Crap.” So the police take a bunch of information from us, as if filling out a stupid report is supposed to make us feel better. If a killer is standing over you with a knife, he’ll really check to see if you filled out some paperwork. Sorry, sir, I know you want to slit my throat, but if you check at police headquarters, you will notice that I have all the correct paperwork.

“Want to have a look?” the older of the two says. “See if you notice anything missing.”

The older one has holstered his flashlight, but he hasn’t turned it off, so it makes a bright spotlight on his left foot. Like his foot is onstage, about to launch into a song.

“Will you … come with us?” Mom asks. She’s so scared. It breaks my heart. They follow us up. Mom and I both notice at
once. The cigar box. Dad’s coins. Gone. Mom starts to cry. I try to explain to the police. They look perplexed.

“Anything else you’d like me to note?” the younger officer asks. My gaze returns to his eyes. His pencil is poised over his small notebook. He looks like a waiter asking what type of soup I want. I’m tempted to blurt out, “I’ll have the beef orzo.” Also, I’d like him to note that this whole thing would be a hell of a lot easier to handle if Dad were here. Please put that in your report, Officer. Note that life isn’t fair.

Of course I don’t say that. Instead, I mumble, “Nothing.” I think Mom is thinking the same thing—about Dad, that is, not about beef orzo. The corners of her mouth start to tremble and her hands are balled into tight fists.

“Let’s go downstairs, Guy,” she says. She’s giving up. I think, What would Fran do? And yeah, he’d probably make some dumb joke or two, but he’d probably also take charge.

“Are you guys in a rush?” I ask the now startled-looking cops. “Do some analysis. Let’s get some fingerprints, look for DNA, stuff like that.” The policemen look at each other and sort of smirk. It pisses me off. “Listen,” I say. “I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I don’t just watch forensics shows on TV. I learned all about this in school. And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say this was a nonviolent crime, and that the way this shit goes down is nothing like on TV.”