He had the definite feeling he could not get away with showing up unshaven so soon after the episode of last week, even though he now had a genuinely reasonable excuse. When they were against you from the start, they would never grant you a single point.
So he went to the pay phone down the block and got through to his boss. “Jack, Howland. I’m calling in sick today.”
“No, you’re not,” Jack responded crisply. “You’re calling in to quit.”
“No, I’m really sick. I mean it.”
“Have it your way. I was just letting you save face. So you’re fired.”
“Fired? What the hell for?”
“You figure it out, Howland. You haven’t put in a decent day’s work here since you were hired, and you called in sick how many times in three weeks? If you’re in that bad a condition, you ought to retire. I’m making it convenient for you.”
Lloyd slammed the phone into its chromium hanger. Well, he had tried, and see where it had got him. He was on the downward route again, three weeks after beginning the latest effort to climb out of the hole. Nobody even knew he was back in town. His plan had been to collect a paycheck or two, stay off anything stronger than ice cream, buy some presentable clothes, and show up one Sunday soon over at 1143 Laurel with an armful of presents for everybody: flowers for Donna, a classy bottle of wine for his brother, and of course all kinds of toys for Mandy, dolls and whatever else little girls liked: he’d ask a female clerk in the toy store, but only after explaining that he legitimately had a niece, so he wouldn’t be accused of being a potential child molester. He had always to stay on guard, being the kind of guy many people instinctively thought the worst of.
And time did not diminish the effect of any injustice he had ever suffered. A dirty deal tended to get worse in memory. Jack Duncan, the produce-department manager, would not be forgotten, though Lloyd was aware, if precedent meant anything, that he was unlikely to have the opportunity to take revenge on the man, Duncan being the sort to call the law on the slightest pretext, and if ordinary people were inclined to detest Lloyd on sight, make that to the tenth power for cops.
He was in a foul mood as he arrived at the supermarket in late morning to collect what money was due him, but he was also under control until he went to the accounting department in the mezzanine office and found that not only was a check not waiting for him there, but Jack Duncan had thus far failed to notify Personnel of the dismissal.
Lloyd went down and found the man, with his bow tie and name-plate, out on the floor near the lavish array of tomatoes—regular, plum, aquacultured, cherry, yellow, organically grown, imported Israeli, sun-dried—that was his self-described “baby.”
“They don’t have my money ready. That mean I’m not fired?”
“You’re dreaming,” Duncan said. “They’ll send you a check when they get around to it.” He was drab against the background of brilliant red fruit.
“If you fire a person, you should pay him right away,” Lloyd said sullenly. He brought his hand out of his pants pocket.
“You must be an authority on the subject,” Duncan said wryly, but then looked at what Lloyd had brought from the pocket and blanched. He took a step backward, pressing himself against the display of tomatoes, and stared wildly around the store. As it happened, no customers or staff were nearby at the moment. “Oh no, please—!”
“What’s your problem?” Lloyd asked, feeling good for a change as he extended the closed utility knife. “I preferred this to the box cutters you got back there: opens cartons better. I took it from Hardware. It wasn’t pilfering: I only used it in the store. Here, I’m giving it back.”
“Get out,” said Duncan, recovering his courage.
“Here, take it,” Lloyd said. “Look, the blade isn’t even out. How could I have carried it in my pocket otherwise? It’s the store’s property. Take it.”
“I’m calling Security,” said Duncan.
“All right,” Lloyd said. “I tried.” He returned the closed knife to his pocket. “You dirty little yellow bastard.” He turned quickly and left the store. At that moment he did not care about his money, but neither did he feel the demands of his pride had been satisfactorily answered by simple name-calling. He needed the ear of a woman who had some affection for him, a characterization that could not be applied to any with whom he had ever been intimate. This was an unpropitious time to make his peace with Donna. He had to do some drinking first to work up his nerve, but not get so drunk that his sister-in-law would not let him in the house.
2
Yellow tape had been stretched around the entire property at 1143 Laurel, and the van of the crime-scene team was at the curb in front, along with many police cars, marked and unmarked. Vehicles sent by the local TV channels and the daily paper were kept at the end of the block. Uniformed officers were on hand to restrain the news-people and the gathering crowd that had begun as the immediate neighbors but had gradually attracted those from nearby streets and others in transit.
Dr. Pollack, an assistant medical examiner, had made a preliminary examination of the bodies, and they were taken to the morgue, to be thoroughly autopsied in the lab upstairs. Pollack’s estimate of the time of death was any time from six to two hours before he arrived on the scene of the crime. He would not know for sure until the body was on his steel table—and perhaps not even then, for forensic medicine was not mathematics, as he was wont to remind complainers. With her smaller body, the little girl’s death was even harder to time: so little flesh cooled quickly. The cuts had been made by a very thin and very keen blade, perhaps a straight razor or the like, or so it seemed.
Photographs had been taken before the bodies were touched by anyone in an official capacity. The detectives for whom the case was the primary assignment had looked at the bodies and walked through the house, again without touching any surface, and promptly left the premises to the Identification team, who would gather evidence and fingerprint the place.
One of the members of the Ident team was a blond and very fit-looking officer named Daisy O’Connor, whose policeman father, a year before his retirement a decade and a half before, had been given as partner a rookie by the name of Nick Moody. Moody was now, with his partner, Dennis LeBeau, the detective assigned to the Howland murders.
Moody, a detective first grade, was the senior man, but after putting a few questions to Mary Jane Jones on the subject of her discovery of the bodies, he turned the job over to LeBeau and joined the other detectives in interviewing the rest of the neighbors. It was Moody’s theory, and not LeBeau’s, that because of Dennis’ headful of curls and big brown eyes he was more successful with the female subjects. But it was Moody, not LeBeau, who was always on the prowl. LeBeau was very married, whereas Moody was twice divorced. The breakup of his second marriage, the year before, had impoverished him financially and emotionally.
Without the sum the store owed him, Lloyd’s funds were insufficient for the drinking he wanted to do. Not for the first time in his life, he thought about getting money in a criminal way. The problem was how. He had done some shoplifting as a kid and been picked up for it a few times, but was always put on probation or simply warned. All that he had been caught at as an adult was employee pilfering, for which the punishment was, at worst, being fired. Therefore he had no police record. He took that fact into consideration whenever he thought about raising funds by illegal means. He hated cops and did not wish to give them an advantage over him. Also, he feared losing control of himself under certain conditions. It had never yet happened, but he believed he had the capacity for it. Could he trust himself to keep within bounds if he tried to mug someone who resisted violently? There were fools who fought back with bare hands against an armed adversary. He should probably avoid crimes against the person. He could not stand being shamed. He did not consider what happened with the produce manager as being personally degrading, but it would have been had he not backed the man against the tomatoes.
Thinking of the supermar
ket gave him an idea for a quick source of funds. He had observed how careless women food shoppers were, especially those with small children. They often carried shoulder-strap purses, which with their movements, sometimes abrupt ones necessitated by what the kid was getting into, swung to a blind spot back of one hip. Often these big bags even yawned open to offer easy access. Sometimes they put their purses in the carts and left them to inspect the shelves.
It would be only justice to work the store from which he had just been fired, but he might be too conspicuous there to the other employees, some of whom, after three weeks, he knew slightly.
There was a big PriceRite on the same road as its nearest competitor, but a mile and a half distant, which meant a walk for Lloyd, who had no car. Three months earlier, he had come to town by bus for his father’s funeral.
“Well, okay, my car was repoed,” he had told Donna over the slice of her warm Dutch apple pie not long from the oven.
“Why couldn’t you just say that in the first place?” She cut a backup wedge so that it would be ready whenever he finished the first. Donna was like that.
He swallowed, then took a sip of the only fresh-brewed coffee he ever tasted. First time he watched her make it he hadn’t known what she was doing: where was the jar of powder? “I was embarrassed,” he said. “I couldn’t keep up the payments. Old story. I get tired of telling it.”
She showed him the most beautiful smile in the world. He knew he shouldn’t make too much of it, but it was always as if for him alone. “Old? You’re not even twenty-two.”
“Come on, Donna,” he whined for effect. “I’m almost twenty-three, and you know it.”
“Do you count leap years? I don’t when it comes to me!” She stuck the wedge-shaped silver gadget—leave it to her to have just the right tool for every job—under the already cut slice of pie. “I’m determined to fatten you up, so you don’t make your brother feel heavier than he already does.”
“Did Larry put on more since last time?” This was Lloyd’s first visit since early fall. He tried to limit himself and would not have made it for several months now, had it not been for their father’s death.
Donna immediately acquired a slight stiffness. She was supersensitive regarding any hint of negative reflection on her husband—even when it was she who had brought the subject up. “He’s still in great shape,” she said. “But you know how people are. They always think they could stand to lose a pound or two. You can’t be too thin or too young or too…”
“It’s ‘rich,’ isn’t it?” he offered after waiting politely. It was the only one of the three that mattered to Lloyd, who was slender without trying and this early in life cared little about age, but, significantly, it was the one Donna had difficulty remembering. With another kind of woman, he might have observed now that she certainly had no problem with her own figure, but of course he would have been mortified to have Donna know he had so much as thought anything of the sort, he who averted his eyes when passing the open doorway of the master bedroom on a trip through the hall. “It’s rich,” he repeated. “What I still hope to be if I can find the right thing.”
“‘Still’? At your age you shouldn’t use that word. You’ve got lots of time for anything you want to do, but if you don’t mind some advice from an old woman, you could use some focus. What are you doing at the moment?”
“Now who’s misusing words?” he asked. She was twenty-five. He then lost his smile and looked away. “I’ve been trying various lines of work.… Look,” he said hastily, “I’m trying to learn how businesses are run, you know, profit margins and taxes and all, how to get the best out of people who work for you, and…” He smirked at the expression she was showing him. “I shouldn’t have told you the truth. I should have lied.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Donna said, putting her hand lightly on the back of his, setting his afire. “I know you so well. I know you like I feel I would have known my own little brother by now, if he had lived.”
He disliked the comparison but could not hint that he did, for it was dear to her, and he cherished any kind of intimacy he could get. “You do know me like nobody else.”
“Now, don’t say that. It’s Larry who knows you best. You’re brothers.”
Lloyd finished the coffee that with the half-dissolved sugar made a pool in the bottom of the cup. “As you know, we never lived in the same house. My father ran off with my mother, leaving Larry’s mom and Larry behind, but he didn’t stay long with us. Larry may have forgiven him, especially when he got old and sick, but I never did. I’m here for the funeral because of Larry, not him.” This too was a lie, but he could hardly confess he was using his father’s death as an excuse to see her.
“Why,” Donna said, gasping, “that’s an awful thing to say about your father when he’s dead.”
“Dying doesn’t make him a better man.”
She shook her head. “I’m not saying you don’t have a grievance, but his last few years must have been pretty rotten, all alone in that Medicaid place. Larry had lost track of him. He never bothered us before. I guess it was by some kind of accident he found out where Larry was, from somebody at the nursing home.”
“So Larry is burying him. That must cost a pretty penny. But that’s good old Larry for you.”
Donna’s eyes flashed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lloyd was suddenly so inflated with conflicting emotions that he could hardly stay in the chair. “Who is he to be so forgiving?”
It took Donna a long moment to interpret this outburst, and she was never more lovely, with the profusion of amber curls, the incredible gradations of rose from cheek to lips, and, always, the jewellike eyes that could grow huge with tenderness, or contract in disapproval as they were doing now. “Let me get this straight,” she asked. “You are condemning him for his virtues?”
“I’m condemning myself,” Lloyd insisted. He had screwed this up, as usual. What he wanted least was to center the focus on his brother, who had too much already. “Forget it. I apologize. I didn’t mean it like it sounded.”
“All right, I will,” Donna said quickly, smiling gloriously. “You know I love you both.”
What he knew was that her love for him was as a brother. He was not demented. But he was aroused all the same. Not erotically: to desire someone you so adored was impossible. To have any hope of gratification was not to adore, which could admit no compromise and remain what it was supposed to be. And there was no serious desire that could rule out all hope of gratification. He was therefore safe, unless all existing categories were false. “Well, I love you…you both. I mean, all three.”
He immediately regretted the reference to Amanda, which caused Donna to rise from the table. “The nap should be over by now. I don’t know if something’s wrong with her, sleeping so much. Until now the problem always was she didn’t want to ever go to sleep at all. Is that just growing up?”
But she stayed awhile longer, smiling down at Lloyd. She wore a shapeless pale-blue sweatshirt. He had never seen his sister-in-law in as little as a modest bathing suit, and did not want to: call him a prude.
“Speaking of sleep,” she went on, her hands on the knobs that topped the corners of the chairback, “how’s your insomnia? Did you try my treatment?”
“I did,” said he, lying, “and it worked. I should have told you that before now.” Donna’s method, used by herself since childhood, was to trick sleep into coming by pretending to be someone else: that is, by acting a part in an impromptu play. You could be your favorite person, not the one you actually were, and could do anything you wanted, without hurting or taking anything away from anyone else. Usually you went to sleep before very long, because it was relaxing not to be yourself, but if you stayed awake at least you were having fun doing so.
Only Donna would have come up with such a technique, and probably only she could use it successfully. Lloyd certainly could not. He had no idea of how to be somebody else. It was hard enough to be himsel
f: that in fact was his problem.
“I was wondering,” he asked now, “if Larry uses your method. I don’t remember if he said, whenever it was you were telling about it.” In truth he never forgot where and when Donna told him anything. In the case of her insomnia cure it was as he dried the dishes she washed after dinner one night the previous fall. The dishwasher, eccentric all week, suddenly refused to operate except on the rinse cycle, and the job had to be undertaken by hand. Lloyd eagerly volunteered. It was a way of being Donna’s partner in an innocuous but nevertheless intimate association, of which the warm, steamy water in one compartment of the sink, winking with iridescent bubbles, was an element, as was the hot clear rinse she gave each plate with the flex-hosed spray before inserting it into the draining rack, from which Lloyd plucked it up and vigorously abraded off the remaining droplets with the thirsty-fibered towel. Larry was not in the room. He was putting Amanda to bed.
Donna now tossed her head merrily. “Larry? He’s never taken more than two minutes to go to sleep in his life. He’s out soon as his head hits the pillow.”
What Lloyd heard was no doubt mostly wish fulfillment and therefore suspect: if this was true, how often did his brother then—? But he rejected the ugly question, which was no business of his. And, happily, Donna could be counted on not to have gotten so up-to-date as to reflect publicly on her marriage bed, unlike some of the sluttish types with whom he had worked. At times this was obviously intended as sexual invitation to the male listeners, but even more often, to Lloyd’s mind, it was unconditioned exhibitionism and repelled him.
“He’s a lucky man,” he said now.
Donna’s eyes quickened but did not spark. “What might seem luck is mostly hard work. He’s running himself ragged these days. You know, he’s up for assistant sales manager. The present man is going to retire in the spring. Larry’s certainly qualified, with one of the best sales records in the whole Northeast, but there’s stiff competition. The boss’s second cousin is in the running.”