The Railroad (26 page)

He sounded drunk which I started to consider true to form. “You’re like a gnat, Mikey. You just keep buzzing around and annoying me. It’s like you’re asking me to come swat you. I will. I don’t care who knows. I can send my boys back to your house or wait for you on some road as you drive by. I can make you pay and you’ll never see it coming.”

“I guess you heard about Sam. I guess there are other people who feel the way about you that I do. Why is that?”

“That fuck Sam isn’t any safer than you are. I’ll make that clear to him.”

“You’ve left a big nasty trail behind you, Benoit. And if you don’t stop...”

“I’ve said all I’m going to. You’ll wish you never heard my name.”

I started to speak, but I heard a click and he was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

The next day at around 9:30, Ted Denello called. “I thought you’d like to know that we’re going over to Bob Benoit’s house right now to arrest him for telephone harassment.”

“What?”

“Uh…I thought you’d be happy. He did call you again last night and make threatening statements, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but…oh god. When are you going?”

“We’re in the car now, Mr. Dobbs. We’re almost there.”

“Oh boy. Okay. Let me know what happens.”

“I will.”

I had to admit that having Bob Benoit endure the embarrassment of being arrested for making threatening phone calls really tickled me; he’d be treated like a naughty teenager and be really embarrassed.

I fell back to sleep, feeling a little apprehensive. But there was a smile on my face.

*

It took me a few hours to get the nerve to call Penny Jenz. Somehow I felt responsible for what had happened to Samuel, though I knew it was his own brand of stupidity that had gotten him into it.

Penny didn’t seem all that happy to hear from me. “I’m really sorry,” I told her.

“I guess you are.”

“Uh...yeah. So what’s happening to Samuel?”

“Well he was carrying a gun, but our lawyer seems to think he can get him off with no jail time. Just parole and they want him to go to one of those anger management courses.”

I almost laughed. “Well that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“No.”

She didn’t seem disposed to want to be friendly. I started to feel awkward. “Look, if you need any help. I do know some lawyers who might help.”

“Well…I don’t know what to say. I know Samuel gets excited pretty easily. I told him to stay away from Carl, but I wish you hadn’t found us in the first place!”

The last few words had come out like an accusation and I found myself getting pissed off.

“Sorry. I didn’t know I was going to find that anyone knew Bob Benoit and I had no way of knowing that Samuel was so excitable. I feel bad about the whole thing,” I let it trail off, feeling suddenly stupid.

She sighed. “But you didn’t know I have an asshole for a husband. And I do. Let’s just let it go at that.”

*

The next morning Moskowitz called me to tell me two other stations had picked up the story and that it was on page eight of
The
Times
. He seemed less hostile; maybe he’d decided I was in the right.

“I heard about the phone company thing,” he said quietly.

“Aren’t you going to give me a hard time?”

“I’ll say this. When you start a fire, you really start one.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Well expect an even bigger blaze. I hear that the police are being forced to consider Benoit and Carl Bruler as suspects in the
Chapter and Verse
murders.”

“What? Benoit told me that I was the one who was in trouble.”

“You spoke to Benoit?”

“He called
me.
That’s the phone call that got him in trouble with Verizon.”

“Oh. Well, that’s the story I heard. So maybe Benoit will have to be careful with you for a while. He can’t afford any more trouble if he’s being investigated.”

“I doubt that will keep him quiet. He’s not long on logic.”

“I don’t know if you have more luck or brains, but you’ve managed to tie him up.”

“I won’t take any credit. I didn’t know what would happen when I went to see Penny Archer. And the phone thing, well I just called them. They did the work.”

“Still in all. Look, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?”

“If you’ll let me be seen entering your house. I am a pariah.”

“Don’t be a dick. Just come over at seven.

*

Andrew answered the door this time, a big smile on his face. I looked around for the cause but didn’t see anything.

“Dad and Mom are waiting inside,” he told me, a knowing look on his face.

I considered the possibilities as I followed him into the living room. As it turned out I didn’t have a clue.

Sitting next to Moskowitz’s wife was a woman I’d have to describe as very attractive but not beautiful. Oddly, this made here seem all the more attractive to me than if she’d turned out to be downright gorgeous, if that makes any sense. Male logic is not always impeccable.

Moskowitz had the same knowing smile on his face that Andrew had worn only seconds before. Moskowitz’s wife seemed to be the only one handling the whole thing with any maturity. “Mike,” Moskowitz announced. “ This is Melinda, my wife’s sister.”

“Actually, my half-sister,” his wife said.

Melinda smirked at her sister. “You’re so anal, Kate.” Andrew thought that was hysterical. Kate threw up her hands as if she’d been through this conflict before.

Moskowitz smiled his best smug smile. “I guess we’d like you to meet Melinda.”

I gave him a withering look. “That occurred to me.” Then I turned to Melinda, realizing that my being pissed off might insult her or, at the very least, make her uncomfortable. “I’m glad to meet you, Melinda.” I made a show of sitting down as if I was very happy to be where I was.

Melinda smiled disarmingly and shook her head. “We were just talking about it,” she said. “I told them that the situation called for a bit more subtlety than this. Steve has a tendency to shoot himself in the foot.”

Moskowitz snorted. “Hey, if you don’t like each other, it won’t make any difference what I do. It’s a shot.”

Melinda gave me a smile. “Do you agree with that?”

“I’m not really much on feeling like a lab rat.”

“Me neither.”

There was a moment of strained silence and then Kate stood up. “Another triumph for you, Steve. Why don’t I go and get some chips so at least everyone has something to do with their hands.”

Moskowitz had picked up a magazine. Andrew plunked himself down into a chair and sat watching Melinda and me. Without raising his eyes from the magazine, Moskowitz ordered his son from the room. Andrew seemed disappointed, but left.

“So Steve tells me you’ve sort of dropped out of the world,” Melinda offered.

“That’s accurate. I’m not on Wall Street anymore and I really don’t have any plans for the first time in my adult life.”

“That would be scary. I’ve thought of doing it, but money and security. That’s what drives me, it seems. It doesn’t seem like much when you look at it.”

“It’s not that bad to be that way. Sometimes I wish I could still be in the game. I just couldn’t after a while.” Then I saw her exchange a glance with Moskowitz.

“So you know,” I said.

“Steve loves to talk. He thinks you have a lot of potential and he doesn’t want to see you fall into a pit of your own making. At least that’s the way he put it.”

“It’s nice to know you have such faith in me, Moskowitz.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen people turn away from things and they don’t always come back without a push. To me it’s worth the effort to push.”

“My ex-girlfriend didn’t seem to think so. She told me I was being a baby.”

“I never thought that, Mike. Not everyone goes through what you went through.”

I saw myself telling Melinda the whole story and I suddenly felt oppressed, there in Moskowitz’s homey, quiet living room. It was his

home, not mine and I felt like I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t sure where I belonged.

I smiled at Melinda. “Do you want to go for a drink?”

She burst out laughing. Then she saw the shocked look on Moskowitz’s face and burst out laughing again. “I don’t want to be rude to Kate. But we can go for an hour while she’s cooking?”

In the car I realized that I must have taken to Melinda immediately or I wouldn’t have asked her to leave with me. I saw her trying to suppress a smile.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just that Steve always thinks he’s in control of everything. That he knows how to read people. I’ve always wanted to knock him down a peg. You just did it. He’s going to be really pissed.”

“Maybe. But if we get along he’ll say he told us so.”

“I don’t know. I know he wasn’t comfortable for a few minutes.”

“He means well. I guess.”

We ended up at small bar in a hotel near the thruway. I picked a booth.

The waitress came quickly; it wasn’t late enough for the bar to be crowded. To my surprise, Melinda ordered a martini.

“What’s so strange about that?” she asked when she saw my eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know. I guess I took you for a wine kind of girl.”

“I’ve been drinking martinis since I was seventeen.”

“Well, I guess it’s just my experience. My friends used to drink them only when they’d had a day from hell. They hit you hard.”

“Harder than the single malt you ordered?”

“Actually yes. Gin is the devil’s drink. It changes people.”

“What a wuss!”

“I know my limits.”

Our drinks came and Melinda surprised me even more by pulling the plastic straw out of her drink and pulling off all three olives into her mouth. She was chewing when she noticed me laughing. “Oh god. What now?” she said.

“You’re an earthy type of girl.”

“I’ve heard that before. Shit, I must have seemed like a really pretentious snot to you when you walked in before.”

“Cultured, maybe is a better word.”

As an answer, she dug her hand into the bowl of pretzels and nuts that the waitress had set before us and poured the whole handful into her mouth. She smiled at me and chewed.

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t underestimate you again.”

She laughed hard enough to dislodge a few bits of pretzel from her mouth. Then she tried to control herself as she chewed. “So tell me about the girlfriend who thought you were a baby.”

“Well. She was very aware of her status; or the lack of it. She was very aware of what other people would think of her. I guess I was kind of a catch. Part bohemian, but mostly successful. She could fool herself into thinking she was living an interesting life.”

“And she wasn’t.”

“Well, if she was basing it all on me, she definitely wasn’t.”

“What was missing?”

“In me? I don’t know. I guess I just did the same things day after day. Looking back now it seems silly. Notice I’m not in New York and not with her.”

“I have. So was it all your fault?”

“Maybe, really she wasn’t a very nice person.”

“Okay.” She took a big sip of her martini. I realized she was feeling awkward.

“I don’t have any expectations of you, Melinda,” I told her.

She started and then smiled. “Okay. I’ll tell my story. I was married when I was 24. I think that the guy I married must have been the brother of your ex-girlfriend. After a while he did have expectations of me and that’s about all he had. I wasn’t going to be the right girl just by being myself.”

“So you left?”

“Yeah. I did. No kids, so it was relatively easy. My mother still hasn’t forgiven me. He seemed like the dream husband.”

“And she has to deal with her other daughter marrying Moskowitz. It must be hard.”

“Steve is really a great husband.”

“I figured that.”

“I know he’s not always good at helping people out in the way they need to be helped but at least he tries.”

“You’re right. At least he seems to believe in me.”

“That’s a lot.”

*

I took her back to Steve’s house around 11:40. We’d missed dinner by a mile and I felt like a guilty teenager as I stole a kiss and let her go. I’d decided a while back that I wouldn’t try to take advantage of the situation. I guess I wasn’t looking for “any port in a storm”; not after losing Eileen and Megan.

Steve called me about ten minutes after I’d gotten home. “Melinda’s above average, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you think you’ll ask her out again?”

“That’s Steve Moskowitz. Going with the flow.”

“So I’m not a Buddhist. She’s
The Lathe of Heaven
you know.”

I was tired and a little drunk; his profundity seemed lost on me. Then it hit me. “You asked her the same…of course you asked her that question. She’s at your house often enough so how could you resist?”

“It’s an important question. The next time you meet someone and you’re talking, ask them the question. Then spend the next few months seeing how well it fits. Or doesn’t fit.”

“You mean some people pick certain books just to impress people?”

“Exactly. So what’s wrong with Melinda?”

“I never said there was anything wrong with her! I don’t want to put someone else out on a limb when I don’t know what I’m doing. And while we’re on that subject has it occurred to you that getting me involved with Melinda when I’ve got the Benoit posse chasing me isn’t very fair to her?”