Rubbed Out (6 page)

He had one of those professionally soothing voices. I wondered if there's a required class psychologists have to take to get that tone—Calming Voice 101.

I told him I was having anxiety attacks because I didn't think he'd talk to me if I told him the real reason I was coming to see him. As luck would have it, he happened to have a cancellation at five that afternoon. I told him I'd see him then and hung up.

I spent the next hour cleaning out the fish tanks and fending off my creditors, smoking cigarettes, and trying not to think about George.

I
was lighting my fourth cigarette of the hour when the kid from the house on Fayette Street walked through the door and started toward me.

“I thought you were in jail,” I said as I reached for the phone.

“I got bailed out.”

“Stay where you are,” I warned, “or I'm phoning the police.”

“You got no call to do that.” And he threw a crumpled-up piece of newspaper on the counter.

I smoothed it out with my right hand while I kept hold of the phone with my left. Down at the bottom of the page was a three-line item mentioning the incident. Although it didn't give his name because he was underage, it mentioned Robin Light, proprietor of Noah's Ark, as the complainant. Wonderful.

“You her?” the kid said.

“No. I'm the Queen of Sheba. I'm just filling in here. What do you want?”

I shoved the paper back toward him. Now that he was closer, I could see he was wearing a threadbare jacket and sneakers. Little hairs were starting to come in on his skull. I wondered if they itched.

“Why'd you have to fuck everything up?” he demanded.

“Why'd you have to steal my friend's dog?”

“I didn't. Myra found her. Maybe you should have asked her before calling Animal Control.”

“I would have called them anyway.”

He jabbed his finger at me. “You had no right to do that. They were Myra's babies. They was the only thing she had.”

“Then she should have taken better care of them. They could have died out there.”

“She was doin' the best she could.”

“She was doing a bad job.”

The kid hit the counter with the flat of his hand. The gecko that was on the ceiling skittered away in alarm.

“People like you are always big with advice, but you never help out,” he cried. “Now she's crazy, and it's your fault.”

“Look. What do you want?”

“I want to tell you what you did.”

“Well, you have. So how about leaving.”

His face scrunched up, and he whirled around and ran for the door.

I threw the article in the trash and started mopping the floors, but the kid's words, the ones about always being big with advice, lingered in my mind. Calli had said that to me too. So had Murphy for that matter. Oh, well. I went back to thinking about where Janet Wilcox could have gone. It was more productive.

When Manuel arrived, I cut out and headed for Woodchuck Hill Road. It was time to talk to the neighbors and see what they had to say about Janet Wilcox.

Woodchuck Hill Road has two ends. The cheap end and the expensive end. The Wilcoxes lived on the cheap end, which is still more expensive than my neighborhood. The houses there are closer together, as opposed to the doctors' end, where the houses are separated from each other by an acre or more of woods and the only things you see out your window are trees.

It had started snowing again, a slow, steady drift. I had a vision of the snow piling up and up, shrouding everything, until silence was all that was left. As I turned onto Woodchuck Hill Road, I went by two cars that had slid into a ditch.

Janet Wilcox's house, as well as the ones around it, all looked as if they'd been built by the same builder. Three- and four-bedroom wooden colonials with attached garages. Only the trims on the houses were different. And the outside plantings. Other than that they were all the same.

I started with the house on the left of the Wilcoxes. The young woman who opened the door looked to be about nineteen. She was blond and blue-eyed, and except for the ring through her right nostril, a ring that would have done Ferdinand the Bull proud, she could have been in a contest for All-American Girl.

“Put a plug in it, Sam,” she yelled before turning her head back to me and asking what I wanted.

I told her.

Her eyes widened. “Boy, and I thought nothing ever happened around here.”

“So you know Janet Wilcox?”

“I've seen her pulling in and out of her driveway.”

“You've never spoken?”

“Except to say hello. I'm the au pair.” She said it as if that explained everything.

“Pretty fancy.”

“I thought so too until I started working.” Her grin flickered off. She wrinkled her nose. “Too many romance novels. That's my problem. You probably want to speak to Mrs. Goldstein, but she isn't in right now. You'll have to come back later.”

Before I had a chance to ask her when Mrs. Goldstein would be returning, the sound of wailing hit the air. The girl turned and ran toward it. I followed. Two five-year-old twins were locked in combat over a ball.

The au pair put her hands on her hips and glared at them. “You're both going to your rooms if you don't stop that right now.”

They didn't.

“I mean it.”

The twins kept fighting. The au pair grabbed one of them and held him under her arm sideways like a football. The volume of screams increased. I gave the au pair my card, told her I'd be back to speak with Mrs. Goldstein, and left before I suffered permanent ear damage.

It was wonderfully quiet outside. The snow had stopped falling. The branches of the trees were etched in white against the steel-gray sky. One by one, I watched the streetlights come on. Darkness comes early this time of year. I slogged from one house to another, my feet leaving a trail of prints, but got about as far as I had with the first place I'd visited. Either no one was home, or if they were, they didn't know the Wilcoxes well. None of the women I spoke to even knew that Janet Wilcox was gone.

“Oh, my,” two of them said when they heard.

By the time I'd covered the area, it was almost five o'clock. I got back in my car and drove over to Janet Wilcox's psychologist on East Genesee.

Peter Simmone's office was a step up from Wilcox's. Better furniture in the waiting room. Beige carpet on the floor. Neutral darker beige sofa. White walls with a hint of tan. Innocuous pictures of generic landscapes on the walls. Soft track lighting. Warm temperature. A box of Kleenex on one of the end tables. For those sudden fits of emotions?

I hung my parka on the coatrack, sat down, and picked up the only reading matter. The book was entitled,
You Can Be Your Own Best Friend.
I put it down and tried to think about my strategy, but my eyes kept closing. The warmth was making me sleepy. I was on the way to dozing off when Peter Simmone opened the door to his office and beckoned me in.

His appearance went with the soothing voice I'd heard on the phone. He was about five-eleven, in his late forties, early fifties, with a slight paunch above the belt of his brown corduroy pants. His wedge-shaped nose dominated his face. His beard was salt-and-pepper. Ditto for his hair. He looked like an easygoing kind of guy, but his eyes weighed and measured me. I had the feeling they didn't miss much.

“So,” he said, indicating that I should take a seat on the leather sofa while he sat down in the chair across from me. “Tell me about these attacks you've been having.” I guess he didn't believe in wasting time.

I handed him my card. “Actually, I didn't come to see you about anxiety attacks.”

He read it slowly, his frown increasing, then reread it before handing it back to me. “Then what did you come to see me about?”

“Janet Wilcox.”

He waved his hand in the air. “I already told her husband that I can't—”

“Her husband is ready to sue,” I interrupted.

Simmone looked at me incredulously. “Sue?”

When in doubt, lie. That's my motto.

“For loss of marital services.”

“Excuse me?”

Now I had his full attention. “Loss of his wife's services. He claims his wife was fine before she started seeing you. He claims that you implanted the idea that she was abused as a child and that that idea has so unsettled her that she stopped being able to function. She no longer cooks, cleans, or fulfills her marital obligations. And now that she's run away. . .”

“Run away?”

“I guess you don't keep track of your clients very well.” I tapped my card on my front teeth. “He's hired me to find her.”

The frown turned into a scowl. “I still don't get what that has to do with me.”

“Well, if you could help me locate her, Wilcox might be willing to drop his lawsuit.”

Simmone glared at me. “Are you threatening me?”

“Hardly. I'm doing you a favor.”

“Even if I did know, which I don't, legally I'm not allowed to reveal anything.”

I leaned forward. The sofa was too deep to sit in comfortably. “You are if she's a danger to herself or others.”

“She's not.”

“Her husband says different. He says she's suicidal.”

“Her husband has his own set of issues to deal with.”

I wondered if therapists had to take another course in how to talk and not say anything. “So, you're telling me he's lying.”

“I'm telling you he's not a professional.”

Simmone half turned in his chair, picked up a pencil off his desk, and began fiddling with it. The air coming through the heat vents in the room made a whooshing noise. I tried a different tack.

“And the fact that she's run away doesn't concern you?”

Simmone put the pencil down. “I'd have to know more about why she left before I rendered an opinion.”

“I take it you're not going to help me?”

“No. I've already made that abundantly clear to her husband. It would be a breach of ethics.”

“Suit yourself. I hope you have good malpractice insurance because you're going to need it.”

“This is ridiculous.”

I stood up. Being in the room was like being in a womb. It was making me claustrophobic.

“Not to Walter Wilcox.” I placed my card on Simmone's desk.

From the expression on his face, I'd laid a dead mouse on his desk. He pushed it away with the tip of his finger. “People like you . . .” he began. But I didn't give him time to finish.

“Do yourself a favor,” I told him, “and call me if you remember anything. Or find anything out.”

“I can tell you right now, you're not going to be hearing from me.”

“Okay. But I wouldn't want to be you if this woman dies.”

“Out,” ordered Simmone pointing to the door. Very dramatic.

When I left, he was reaching for the phone.

Probably to call his lawyer.

I
was on my way back to Noah's Ark when I got a call on my cell. It was the au pair from the Goldstein house.

“Remember how you were asking me about Janet Wilcox?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Well, I lied when I told you I didn't know anything.”

“Okay.” The SUV in back of me honked as I maneuvered my way around an Explorer that was turning left. “You've got my attention.”

“Give me a hundred dollars, and I'll tell you something interesting.”

“That's a little steep, isn't it?”

“Not for this. If you don't like it, you don't have to pay me.”

“That seems fair.”

We arranged to meet at the entrance to Wegmans Supermarket in ten minutes. I got to the grocery store early. It was a little before dinnertime and the place was jammed with shoppers. I had to circle the lot three times before I found a parking place on the far end. I waited inside the doors, next to the grocery carts, and watched people streaming in and out.

The adults looked tired and drawn after their day at work, and the children looked cranky and fidgety. Everyone was in a hurry, anxious to get home. The carts going by me were full of frozen dinners and prepared foods, and then I saw a man walking out with a loaf of bread under one arm and a string bag containing artichokes, carrots, and circles of brie and I thought of George.

George and his food. He liked shopping for it. He liked cooking it. He liked feeding me, the only man I'd ever gone with who had. He made himself dinner every night. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons in the winter he baked bread. It had been nice coming into his house, smelling the flour and the yeast. I wondered if his wife and child would like it. God. Better not to think about him. At all. Better to pretend he'd died. I was reaching for a cigarette when I spotted the au pair coming through the door.

She was dressed in jeans, sweater, matching gloves and scarf, and a black microfiber jacket.

“I'm buying milk for Mrs. Goldstein,” she said, indicating that I should follow her inside.

I skirted a woman in a camel-hair coat and business suit balancing a screaming six-month-old on one hip and a bag of groceries on the other. Lines of exhaustion creased her face. Maybe my grandmother was right. Maybe you can't have it all.

“So what do you want to tell me?” I asked the au pair.

She looked away. “I wouldn't ordinarily do this, but there's this concert I want to go to, and Mrs. Goldstein doesn't. . . well, she doesn't give me any money. I mean, she gives me a little, but taking care of the twins all day . . . It's not that I don't like them. I do. They're adorable. But I feel as if I'm going crazy. I have to get out. And Don't Go There are playing in Buffalo and my friend has a car. . . .”

I put up my hand to stop the flow of rationalizations. “First off, tell me your name.”

“It's Kira. Kira Brown.”

“Okay, Kira Brown. What you're doing is a good thing.”

Kira fingered her nose ring. “I guess you're right” She brightened. “I mean, Mrs. Wilcox could be in trouble.”

“Yes, she could.”

“This is just. . . it feels dirty somehow. Like Judas and the twelve pieces of gold.”

“I think it was thirty pieces of silver.”

“Whatever.”

She dropped her hand and began fiddling with the zipper on her jacket.

We were standing in front of the produce stand while people eddied around us. Berries from Chile. Peaches from Argentina. Apples from Upstate. Twenty years ago you'd be lucky to get oranges in the winter.

“This isn't really about her,” Kira continued. “I mean, it is but it isn't.”

“Then what?”

“I think I know why she left.”

Kira paused again. I waited.

“Her husband. He has a girlfriend.”

“How do you know?” I will not think about George. I will not think about George, I repeated to myself.

“Because she's a friend of mine. She works down at Le Bijou.”

Le Bijou is an all-nude bar that opened up fairly recently.

“What's your friend's name?”

“Do I have to tell you?”

“If you want your money, you do.”

Kira bit her lip. “She's going to kill me.”

“She doesn't have to know how I found out.”

“You won't tell her?”

I put my hand up. “Swear. You'll be doing a good deed.”

Kira took a deep breath. “Alima. Her name is Alima.”

“Does she have a last name?”

“Matterson. Wilcox, he's really nuts about her. Last week he gave her a diamond ring. A big one.”

“How old is she?”

“My age. Nineteen. He's come on to me too. But that was before he hooked up with Alima.” She wrinkled her nose at the idea. “Don't tell her that, though.”

“I won't,” I assured her. Cute.

I thought of Wilcox's daughter. She was—what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight? I wondered what she would say. Then I wondered if she knew. Given her attitude toward her father, something told me that she might.

“How do you know Alima?”

“We went to high school together. Actually, she was the one that got me my job with the Goldsteins. She used to baby-sit for them when the twins were younger.”

“So what got her into her present line of work?”

“Her boyfriend suggested it. She's got a really good body, and she was short tuition for vet tech school.”

“Whatever happened to student loans?”

“She doesn't like to be in debt.” Kira leaned into the dairy case and reached for a gallon of milk. “It's not like it's a big deal,” she added.

“If you thought that, you wouldn't care if she knew that you told me.”

“It's not that. She's a private person.” Kira clasped the gallon of milk to her breasts as if it were a baby. She searched my face worriedly. “So, is what I told you worth a hundred dollars or not?”

“Enjoy the concert.” I counted out five twenties and put them in her hand. “Where can I get hold of Alima?”

Kira hesitated. I reached for the money.

“I can always take it back.”

“She'll be at Le Bijou tonight around ten.”

“Thanks.”

“I don't know why I feel so bad,” Kira fretted.

“I don't either.”

And I left her with her guilty conscience and went out the door. Flakes of snow drifted down under the lights. Two little children dressed in snowsuits stood with their faces turned up trying to catch snowflakes with their tongues, while their mother loaded groceries into the car. Zsa Zsa did that too. When I got home I'd take her for a walk.

As I got in my car, I decided it would be interesting to hear what Wilcox had to say about his nineteen-year-old sweetie. And whether there was anything else he'd “forgotten” to tell me. His house wasn't that far away from Wegman's. I looked at my watch. It was conceivable he was home by now. I backed out of my parking place and drove over there.

The lights were on. I parked in the driveway behind his Nissan. He hadn't shoveled a path to his front door, and his footsteps were clearly visible in the snow. I added mine to his, climbed the two front steps to his porch, and rang the bell. He answered the door with a glass in his hand. He looked surprised to see me.

“That was fast,” he said. He slurred the words together. I wondered how many drinks he'd already had.

“I have a few more questions. Can I come in?”

“Of course.
Mi casa es su casa.”
And he bowed.

The table in the hallway of his house was overflowing with unread mail and newspapers. The strains of opera filled the air. I didn't know which one because I've never liked the stuff myself. I sniffed and caught a faint scent of unemptied kitchen garbage cans.

“You found something?” he asked, taking another sip from his glass. His jacket was off. I could see he'd added another stain to his tie.

“In a matter of speaking.” I nodded toward the glass. “After-work cocktail?”

“A Manhattan without the cherry. It's the cherry that makes the drink, but I seem to have run out. I'll make you one if you want.”

I shook my head even though I wanted one. Once I started drinking, I had a tendency to keep going and I still had some things I had to do. It was at least seventy in the house. I took off my parka. Wilcox didn't offer to hang it up. I suspected his wife had taken care of the social amenities as I threw it on the banister and went into the living room. Wilcox trailed after me.

The place was a decorator's dream. Everything in the room had been color-coordinated. The needlepoint pillows on the sofa picked up the pattern in the drapes, which picked up the colors of the pictures on the walls. Even the colors of the picture frames on the fireplace mantel matched.

“Janet spent a long time putting this room together.” Wilcox drained his glass and gestured to the coffee table, which was covered with empty beer and soda bottles, Styrofoam containers, and empty pizza boxes. “We're not supposed to eat in here. She'd kill me if she saw this. I'm going to clean it up before she gets home.”

“I'm surprised she hasn't killed you already.”

He went over to the bar and mixed himself another Manhattan. I noticed his hands were shaking slightly as he put another ice cube in his glass.

“Aren't you going to ask me why?”

“Is something wrong?”

“Does the name Alima mean something to you?”

Wilcox took a big swallow of his drink.

“Should I know who that is?”

“I hope so, considering she's your little cutie on the side. Tell me, was your wife mad when she found out? I bet she was. Is that why she ran off?”

“I told you why she left.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Why would I lie?”

I ticked off the reasons. “Because you're embarrassed. Because you're ashamed. Because you don't want to admit to yourself that you've been stepping out with someone younger than your daughter.” Then I gave him my standard honesty spiel. “Believe me, I don't care what you've done. But if you want me to find your wife, you have to tell me the truth. If you don't, you're just wasting your money and my time.”

Wilcox closed his eyes for a second. His shoulders slumped. It was as if someone had pulled the plug.

“Okay.” He took another sip from his glass. “I didn't tell you because I was embarrassed. I made a mistake, a really bad one. But this was the first time . . . I ever . . . oh, hell.” He swallowed. “I didn't think it would make a difference. I didn't think it would matter.”

“What else haven't you told me?”

“Nothing.” He put his hand up. “I swear. Really. You have to find her for me. You just have to.” And he stared into his glass. “I need her back.”

I felt a trickle of pity for Wilcox, and then I thought about George and the trickle dried up.