The Disposable Man Read online

  He crossed the room and opened his briefcase, replacing his pad and pen. “I wouldn’t worry right now in any case. They haven’t even begun the investigation, which could take them a while. I’ll call Fred and let him know I’ve been retained, and then we’ll just wait for the other shoe to drop. Best case scenario: they actually find the anonymous caller, who turns out to be a retired pickpocket.”

  He snapped the case shut and headed for the door. “Don’t get too glum early on, keep your mouth shut, and only talk to Gail about the weather and what’s for dinner. Give her my best, by the way, and tell her not to worry.”

  He paused before leaving. “About what Bartlett said—playing dirty? You’ll leave that to me, right?”

  “You got it, Richard.”

  · · ·

  Gail came home late that night, her shoulders slumped and her eyes vacant. She entered the kitchen, where I was sitting in front of a stack of six cookies, and barely cast them a glance, much less gave me a lecture.

  “You look bushed,” I said, taking her portable computer and briefcase and laying them on the breakfast table. “You had anything to eat? I could pull out a can of soup.”

  Without saying a word, she draped her arms around my neck and gave me a long, quiet hug. We stood there, I rubbing her back, for several minutes before she finally broke away, sat in one of the Windsor chairs by the bay window facing the driveway, and kicked off her shoes. “I’m not hungry.”

  I settled on a stool nearby and extended a cookie to her, which she took automatically. “I take it this was not a good day.”

  She chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds before admitting, “I kept trying to figure out what it felt like. I just spent the day doing what I do, nothing more. Everyone was polite, nobody avoided me—although your name never came up—but I was feeling victimized. I finally figured out it was like standing on a scaffold with a blindfold, with a bunch of people working under the trapdoor, trying to figure out why it wasn’t opening. ‘Let’s make a little small talk while we sort this damn thing out… ’ I felt like I was betraying you by not grabbing them by the collars and telling them this was all such shit.”

  I handed her a second cookie. “You can’t do that, Gail. You’ve got to just lock it in a corner of your mind. It’ll drive you nuts otherwise. Sammie thinks it’ll all blow over soon anyway.”

  She glanced at the cookie in her hand as if it had appeared from out of the blue and stuffed it into her mouth, ignoring my lame attempt to cheer her up. “I don’t know if I can pull that off,” she said in a muffled voice. “If Fred Coffin’s people put together a case, I’ll be up the creek in two ways. Not only will Derby have to park me where I can only work cases you’ve never come close to, but I’ll be dragged into this anyhow once Coffin asks me if you and I have discussed what happened to you.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. “Yeah. Richard Levay was here this afternoon. Told me the same thing. I am sorry. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

  This time, she half rose out of her chair and stole three cookies off my stack. “I’m the goddamn lawyer, for Christ’s sake.” She took a bite. “Sure wasn’t thinking like one then. What did he say?”

  I hesitated. She glanced at me, winced, and very gently thumped her forehead with the heel of her free hand. “Okay, okay. Never mind. Christ—what a day. I should’ve stuck to selling houses.”

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Bullshit.”

  · · ·

  By late morning the following day, I’d gone to pacing through the house like a frustrated ghost, searching for something to do, too restless to finish it once I’d begun. Books were left open next to three different chairs, two TVs were muttering to themselves in empty rooms, tools had been spread out before several untouched repair jobs, and the car had been hosed but not soaped. By the time the phone finally rang, I damn near pulled it out of the wall.

  “What?”

  “Little antsy?” Sammie asked.

  “What do you think? Hold it… We shouldn’t be talking.”

  She laughed. “Man. You’re a basket case. We won’t be talking. I’ll talk and you listen. Not that it matters. This is just an update anyhow. Fred Coffin’s boys came down yesterday afternoon—Danny Freer and Bill Nathan. They haven’t done much yet. Mostly poke through our notes and learn the cast of characters. They did talk to the owner—Alonzo. Remember Mickey Mitchell, a juvie shoplifter about ten years ago?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to pull out that name. “No.”

  “He left town long since. Not a bad kid—a little screwed up. He stole a small item from Alonzo’s shop back then. You ran the case, returned the item, had Mickey apologize, and got Alonzo to drop the charges. I was hoping that would mean something to you.”

  “I wish it did. I’ve done that kind of thing a lot. We all have.”

  She sounded disappointed. “Yeah. Well, anyhow, they were digging into it, for some reason. They’re real tight-lipped. Not a fun-lovin’ couple.”

  “I know Freer,” I said distractedly. “He always seemed decent enough. How’s the squad doing?”

  “A little worse than before. Willy’s p.o.’d he’s been dragged into it. Tyler’s keeping it to himself, and Ron’s looking like his dog was run over. The rest of them are walking on eggs. The chief’s become a total pain in the butt—prickly as hell. Things’ve gotten real spit-and-polish around here. CYA’s the standing order. Everybody’s waiting for you to get a clean bill of health, but they can’t understand the delay.”

  She’d delivered all this in hyperdrive, making it sound like some demented rap song. I didn’t bother asking how she was holding up. “Any movement on the Boris case?” I asked instead.

  There was a brief silence at the other end. “No. Not really,” she finally said. “Kind of slipped off the front burner.”

  “Slip it back on,” I told her. “You’re in charge now. Is that a problem?”

  “Hell, no. Might get our brains going again. How d’you want to work it?”

  “Officially? Not at all—remember that. But if I were in your shoes, I’d be very curious about John Rarig. I was supposed to put his background under a microscope while you and Willy got to Marty Sopper through Marianne Baker. Maybe Ron can act for me—he’s a natural. Tell him to get as many live accounts of Rarig’s past as he can—not to trust the paper trail.”

  “I’ll handle Marianne alone,” she said, her enthusiasm plain. “I don’t see Willy loosening her up one bit—too much like Sopper himself. He could work at it from the other end, though. Chat it up with Sopper’s scuzzy friends. He’d be good with them.”

  “Fine,” I encouraged her. “How ’bout the rest of your workload? If Tony’s on the warpath, he’s going to come checking. And you’re one man short now.”

  “Don’t remind me. I think we’re all right for the moment. I heard several people in the Officers’ Room writing the Boris thing off as a mob dumping, though. More talk like that, and Tony’ll tell us to shut down the investigation.”

  I knew she was right. “Well, do what you can as fast as you can. It’s the best we can hope for.”

  We hung up, she presumably feeling better, and I definitely deeper in the dumps. The more I stalked around the house, as if circling my problem in search of the slightest hope, the more convinced I became that my only salvation lay in keeping the Boris investigation alive. The fact that I had no say in that decision, however, made me feel like a drowning man within sight of a passing boat. It was a galling, belittling sensation, which threatened the calm I knew I had to maintain.

  The phone rang again. This time it was Ted MacDonald, the news director of the town’s radio station, WBRT. A lifelong resident, unlike Stanley Katz, and a far kinder man, Ted used an approach that was appropriately less self-serving than Katz’s had been.

  “Joe,” he began, “I didn’t want to crowd you when I first heard about this. How’re you holding up?”

  “In what context are you asking?”


  He didn’t take offense. “As a friend, off the record.”

  This was one of Ted’s true talents and explained why he was the best reporter in town. He bided his time, made the effort to nurture his sources, and often waited until they came to him. He could only afford to do this, of course, because by now he had tabs on half the town’s residents. Still, it was a pleasant contrast to the Katzes of the world and made me less inclined to hang up the phone on him.

  “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I said.

  “Doesn’t sound like Fred Coffin shares your sense of fair play. He’s gone after you pretty hard in a press release we just got.”

  “Well, it’s his investigation.”

  “Meaning there’s something to find?” MacDonald sounded surprised.

  “Meaning he’ll come up with it if it’s there or not. He’s climbing the ladder, Ted. People like that see everything as an advantage. If he finds me dirty, then he’s exposed a bad cop. He finds me clean, then he’s a saint who shows no favorites. The man’s in hog heaven.”

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “Still off the record?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’d never been known to break his word, but Richard Levay’s caution came back to mind. “I’m waiting to see what the charges are.”

  Ted’s silence spoke of his disappointment.

  “It’s not like I’m used to this role,” I explained. “I’ve always talked to you and Stan from the other side of the fence. I’m sorry.”

  I hung up the phone, feeling even worse than before. There were no conversations left that weren’t shadowed by the cloud hanging over me. Regardless of the topic, it seemed, the sticking point remained the same—was I lying or not?

  And I hadn’t even been formally charged yet.

  · · ·

  Gail looked no better that night, coming home late as usual. This time, however, I noticed a skittishness that had been missing before. The sense of relief upon entering our home was absent. She didn’t take off her shoes at the door, or use me as a sounding board for the day’s frustrations. Instead of loitering in the kitchen where we spent much of our time together, she greeted me and continued upstairs, her coat still on, complaining of a headache and saying she was going to take a bath.

  I left her on her own, listening from the darkened living room as she moved about upstairs. Later, after she’d been soaking for about ten minutes, I quietly went to join her, conscious of the house’s somber quiet. She’d lit only one light in the bedroom, and when I opened the bathroom door to the misty sweetness of soapy hot water, I found only a candle lit.

  “What?” she asked, a streak of pallor in the dark tub at the far end of the room. “Just checking to see how you were.”

  “I want to be alone.”

  I closed the door and retreated to a rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom. I’d half expected the rejection—perhaps I’d even sought it out, to prove it was there, waiting to happen.

  But with it, I felt an acute loneliness, which I now had to admit I’d also been anticipating. There comes a time in life, I’d discovered years ago, when emotional surprises all but peter out. It’s not that they stop happening, but when they do, they carry the dull resonance of familiarity. Now that the wedge between me and my life had reached the two of us, I saw that its progress had been as swift, sure, and predictable as when the Titanic had borne down on that iceberg.

  I sat in that chair, as I was sure Gail was lying in the tub, awaiting the inevitable.

  She came out eventually, silent and brittle, wrapped in a robe she held gathered at the throat. I wasn’t surprised when she slipped under the covers still encased in the robe.

  “I take it today makes yesterday look good,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  She was staring at the twin peaks her feet made under the bedspread, her face tight and her brow furrowed. I said nothing more, but made no move to leave her in peace. Finally, she yielded. “Remember what I said about wondering when they’d fix the scaffold? Well, they have. Derby didn’t just strip me of all the cases you might’ve been involved in. He’s dumped me back into Juvenile, where I started. And I got the feeling that if any big cases come up there, someone else will handle those, too.”

  “Seems a little harsh,” I commented.

  Her face turned bitter. “He said it was for my own protection. The media and the public aren’t allowed in family court, so I’ll be able to keep functioning with only minimal distractions. What crap. The only thing he’s protecting is his own butt. He figures if he can bury me from the start, he won’t have to catch any more flak.”

  “What’s there been so far?”

  “The press has been leaning on him, questioning the integrity of the office. A couple of the low-rent lawyers around town went on record this morning about the same thing. You haven’t even been arraigned yet, and I’m off to Siberia. I didn’t think Derby would be such a politician.”

  I remained silent, thinking of her change of tone from twenty-four hours earlier. The pendulum would swing back into balance, as always, but that realization did little to lessen the sting of what I was hearing.

  “You should’ve seen the new guy. Wolf? You haven’t even met him. One week in juvie, and now he’s handling some of my cases. Preppie bastard—couldn’t keep the smirk off his face.”

  She pressed her hand against her cheek and closed her eyes. I could hear the stifled tears in her voice. “I know you’re the victim here, Joe. I know all you’ve worked for is being threatened, and that I should be supportive and loving and all that shit. But to me, it’s like it’s all happening again—some big goddamn elephant coming out of the sky and landing on me like I was a bug, squashing you, me, everything we’ve got. It’s just too close for comfort. Not enough time’s gone by.”

  She turned to face me, and in the dim light I could see the wetness on her cheeks. “It’s all coming back. The fears, the anger, the jitters. A photographer caught me in the street when I was leaving the courthouse this afternoon. I wasn’t expecting it. He jumped out, holding that damn camera, and it all came back—that sense of not being in control, of being a victim.”

  She wiped away her tears, her eyes blazing. “It made me angry at you, Joe. Angry that you’re a victim, angry that you’ve made me one again, angry that you somehow pulled me into this world of dopers and child abusers and careless, stupid people who kill because they don’t have the brains to do otherwise. I used to sell houses to rich people, for God’s sake. The hypocrite ex-hippie who kidded herself by joining all the right tree-hugger boards. It was working so well I could’ve faked it forever.”

  She pounded the bed several times with her fist, punctuating the next sentence one word at a time. “I’m tired of being raped.”

  She rolled over, turning her back to me. I sat motionless for a long time, sorting through what she’d said, pretending to be calm when all my insides were in turmoil. My trust in the pendulum had been reduced by the simple fact that, sooner or later, people ended up saying things they couldn’t take back.

  I knew what she was going through. The rape was fresh enough in both our memories. All her friends had been amazed at her ability to turn a catastrophe into a watershed, to use a trauma that destroyed many as a stimulus to return to law school, take the bar, and become a prosecutor. As friends, they’d taken comfort—even satisfaction—from her strength, using it for their own convenience to leave an unpleasant episode in their wakes. But I still shared her bed, and woke up to her nightmares, and lived in a house with as many locks and lights as a prison. I saw the subtle changes in how she walked down a street, how she stood in a crowded room, how she greeted previously unknown men with an inner wariness.

  I knew the recovery for which she’d been justly applauded was still a fragile work in progress. What was destroying me now was that, while I’d been of help to her in the first ev
ent, I’d now become the cause of the worst setback I’d seen her suffer.

  I stayed all night in the rocker, watching Gail toss and turn in fitful sleep, hoping against all odds that the few chips I had left in the game would turn our future around.

  Chapter 11

  DANNY FREER AND BILL NATHAN CAME FOR ME the next day. With very short haircuts, broad shoulders, and stiff manners, they were models of the law enforcement stereotype—from the military-style mustache on Freer’s upper lip to the superfluous sunglasses Nathan removed as I let them in.

  “You two dig a hole deep enough to bury me yet?” I asked with a smile, extending my hand in greeting.

  But gallows humor was obviously not on the agenda. Danny—older, more experienced, and visibly embarrassed—cleared his throat. “Joseph Gunther, you’re under arrest for grand larceny and possession of stolen property. You’re going to have to come with us.” He began to recite the all-too-familiar Miranda warning.

  I hesitated, watching his eyes, trying not to show the effect of his words. While I’d been braced for an encounter with these two, I’d always assumed I’d be dealt the same courtesies we usually offered our low-threat customers—either arranging a meeting at a lawyer’s office, or simply issuing a citation to appear in court.

  I was baffled and irritated by what I saw as theatrical nonsense.

  Freer concluded by asking me if I understood my rights. I ignored him. “Why all the razzle-dazzle, Dan? You don’t have a warrant, do you?”

  Nathan, his frustration boiling over into a young man’s need for action, roughly spun me around. “Hands against the wall. Spread your feet.”

  Danny growled, “Cut it out, Bill.”

  A surge of noise outside made me look over my shoulder, out through the open door into the driveway. Climbing out of a series of cars and vans were reporters, cameramen, and technicians from several newspapers and radio and TV stations.

  I dropped my hands from the wall, ignoring Nathan, and turned to face them both, all explanations suddenly clear. “Very impressive. Coffin’s dog-and-pony show. No wonder you look like you want to be somewhere else. Where’re we headed with this?”