Everywhere That Mary Went Read online

  “Forget it. Somebody’s got to take care of you, don’t they?”

  “I got a better idea. Let me buy you dinner tonight.”

  “Deal. Just don’t try to get fresh later.” He ruffles the top of my head and is gone.

  I lock the door and work through the afternoon, rewriting the brief and adding the new cases. By the time I rush the disk up to Brent to correct my typing, the papers are perfect for the second time. I remember to telephone Starankovic when I get back to my desk. 4:45. He sounds as if he’s still sore at the wounds inflicted by Bitter Man and is fighting like Matlock for the one plaintiff he still represents.

  “I’m gonna depose the two supervisors in the Northeast store next week, Mr. Grayboyes and Mrs. Breslin,” he says. “Then I’m gonna interview each and every one of your staff employees.”

  “Bernie—”

  “If you don’t consent to the interviews, I’m gonna file a motion.”

  “Wait a minute, Bernie.” Starankovic knows he has to send a notice to schedule a deposition. He’s trying to fuck me, so I fuck back. “No notices, no deps.”

  “I sent the notices!”

  “When? I didn’t get them.”

  “I sent ’em to Martin. I had ’em hand-delivered. I paid extra.”

  It takes me aback. Martin. “I didn’t know about the notices, Bernie. I haven’t scheduled the deps. I haven’t even called the witnesses.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “Christ! Cooperate, would you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’ll recommend to Harbison’s that they let you do the interviews. Then you won’t have to file a motion.”

  “So?”

  “Saves you money.”

  “Saves you money,” he retorts.

  “You want to go see Bitterman again? Really, Bernie? You need that acido in your life?”

  There’s a short pause. “Okay, Mary. You talk to your client. You schedule the deps. But it’s gotta be soon. I want the interviews.”

  I hang up, with the feeling I’ve dodged a bullet. But I don’t know when the next one is coming, or who’s doing the shooting. Why didn’t Martin tell me about the notices? What if the note writer is Martin?

  Brent brings in the finished copy of the Noone brief. After a quick review, I walk it over to Jameson, who has stepped away again. The Amazing Stella says, “That freak spends half his time in the little boy’s room.”

  “That’s because he’s full of shit,” I whisper.

  She smirks and beckons me closer with a coral-colored fingernail. “You know what he’s doin’ in there?”

  “What?”

  “Whackin’ off.”

  “Stella! Jeez!” I look around to see if anyone is in earshot. The secretaries have gone home, it’s after five.

  “Mary, you always think everybody’s an angel. I’m tellin’ youse, he’s got a whole drawer full of dirty magazines in his desk. He keeps it locked, but I seen it once. There’s sex toys in there, too. Really weird toys.”

  “Sex toys?”

  “Weird toys,” she repeats, with a shudder. Suddenly, she snaps to attention. “Mr. Jameson! Miss DiNunzio was just bringin’ this brief to youse.”

  “You, Stella.” Jameson all but adds, You ignorant dago.

  I try to look at him normally, but the thought of the sex toys almost makes me gag. I have to say something, so I say, “I did manage to find some cases after all. On Lexis.”

  “Knew you would. I’ll look it over later.” He scampers past me into his office. He’s telling me he didn’t really need the brief by the end of the day, he just wanted to make me do tricks. Weird tricks, I think, and almost shudder myself.

  Brent howls at this later, over dinner. We eat at Il Gallo Nero, a restaurant that Brent adores because Riccardo Muti used to eat here. Brent had a heavy crush on Muti. He wore a black armband on his black shirt the day the Maestro left for Milan.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” Brent shouts, laughing. “Jameson’s in the closet, Mare! He’s a closet queen!”

  “She didn’t say that, Brent.” I’ve had too much chianti and so has he. I don’t care, I’m having fun. And Brent has forgotten to nag me about the cops, for which I’m grateful, because I know I’ll pay for it in June.

  “Yes, she did! She said weird toys. What do you think she meant?”

  “I don’t know. I’m a good girl.”

  “Dildos! Nipple pincers! Choke chains! He pretends he’s a dog! He fucks rhinos! Oh, no!” We both laugh until the tears flow.

  When we leave, Brent puts an arm around my shoulders and we walk up Walnut Street. The asphalt is being repaved to eliminate the potholes, which cover the city streets like minefields. Philadelphia being the well-oiled machine that it is, nobody’s working on the street even though much of it is blocked to traffic. Cars lurch to avoid the police sawhorses, although there isn’t much traffic tonight. The new mayor hasn’t been real successful in attracting suburbanites to the city on weekends. I can’t imagine why. It’s a great theater town if you haven’t seen Fiddler, and there’s always that friendly pat-down before you take in a first-run movie.

  “Look at this street. What a mess,” Brent says. “Here, let me walk on the outside.” He do-si-dos around me so he’s closer to the curb, then puts his arm back on my shoulder.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It’s traditional. The man walks on the street side, protecting the woman from the carriages, in case they splash mud.”

  “That’s sexist, Brent. And besides, you’re gay.” I switch places with him, skipping around him so that I’m curbside.

  Honk-honk! A truck blares right behind my shoulder.

  I jump, startled at the loudness of it. The truck’s headlights go by in a double blur. The cars, confused by the roadblocks, are moving in all directions. Suddenly, I feel afraid. I haven’t been watching out for the dark car. I start to tell Brent, but he plows into me, laughing, and replaces me at the curb.

  “So what if I’m gay?” he says. “I still count!”

  At that moment, just as Brent is dancing toward the street, a car jumps the curb in back of him. It bounds up onto the sidewalk and hurtles directly toward him, ramming into his back with a sickening thud.

  I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  It’s the car, the one that’s been following me.

  “No! Brent!” I shout, but it’s too late.

  Brent’s face freezes in agony and shock as the car lifts him bodily on its grill, like a charging bull gores a matador. His body snaps back against the car and his mouth is a silent scream.

  “Stop! No!!” I watch in horror as the car flings Brent’s lithe frame up off the sidewalk. He shrieks as his body literally flies through the air and slams into the plate glass window of a bank. The glass shatters with a hideous tinkling sound and rains down on Brent in a deadly sheet. Then the only sound is the clamor of the bank alarm.

  And the screech of the murderous car as it digs out onto a chopped-up Walnut Street and busts up a police sawhorse with a splintering craaaack.

  I whirl around, squinting frantically for a license plate.

  There is none.

  The car careens crazily up the street and out of sight.

  16

  The coarse wooden toothpick in Detective Lombardo’s mouth wiggles indignantly. “Cheese and crackers! Why do you have to talk that way? I work with cops that have a fifty times better mouth than you.” We’re sitting in the hospital corridor, waiting for Brent’s operation to be over.

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “It’s not nice, for a lady.”

  “You know, if you’d get as worked up about whoever hit Brent as you do about my language, we’d be in good shape.”

  “I don’t have to get worked up to do my job. I know my job. I’m doin it.” He points at me with his spiral note pad.

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” We’ve been arguing
like this for hours. Lombardo arrived on the scene after the ambulance got there because I reported the incident as intentional. He asked a lot of questions and wrote the answers down slowly with a stubby pencil, which he seemed to think constituted the sum total of his job. Lombardo played football for Penn State, but I’m beginning to wonder if they gave him a helmet.

  Suddenly, his heavy-lidded brown eyes light up. It looks like Fred Flintstone getting an idea. “Hey, Mary, how about gay-bashing?” Hey, Barn, how about we go bowling?

  “You couldn’t tell that Brent was gay.”

  “You can always tell.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  I feel my eyes well up; I didn’t know there were any tears left. “I don’t want to hear that, Lombardo. Keep it to yourself, because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Brent is a great person and so are his friends. Anything else is bigotry.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say I don’t like gay people.” He glances up and down the glistening hallway. “I got a brother, you know, who’s a little light in the loafers.”

  “Christ.”

  Lombardo leans closer, and I catch a whiff of Brut. “All I’m saying is that you can tell. I knew, with my brother. I knew, right off.”

  “You knew.”

  “I knew. It was his eyebrows. Something about his eyebrows.” He arches an eyebrow, with effort. “See?”

  I look away. I’m glad Jack isn’t here for this conversation. I called him the first thing and he arrived in tears. He poured quarters into the pay phone, calling all his friends. They came in a flash and were as loving and supportive a group as I’ve ever seen. I tried to explain to him about the car, but he was too upset to listen. It doesn’t matter how Brent got here, Jack said, only that he gets out. They all went outside a while ago to smoke a cigarette, waiting to hear if they would be going to another funeral this weekend.

  “Tom, I’m telling you, the car was meant for me. It’s the same car. I’m sure of it.”

  He frowns at the notes on his pad. “You don’t know the color.”

  “I said it was dark. Navy, black. One of those.”

  “We don’t have the make.”

  “It’s a sedan. An old one. Huge, probably American.”

  “We don’t know if the driver’s male or female. You said there was no plate.”

  “What about the notes? And the calls?”

  “I told you, I’ll take the notes from you and I’ll take your statement about the calls.” Lombardo flips the notebook closed and slips it into his back pocket. “Look, Mary, we’ll go to the scene, we’ll investigate. Christ, the uniforms are already there. They’ll talk to the witnesses.”

  “There weren’t any. There were hardly any cars. Nobody stopped.”

  “So maybe there’s a cab still workin’. We’ll hear somethin’ in a day or two from one of the cars. Meantime the uniforms will scrape some paint off the sawhorse — that might tell us somethin’. Don’t look at me like that, Mary. AID’s pretty good.”

  “AID?” The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

  “Accident Investigation Division. They do all the workup at the scene.”

  I lean my head against the wall, fighting a wave of nausea. AID. Of course. They investigated Mike’s accident. Witness surveys. Scene examination. Analysis of his bicycle shorts for car paint. Even a flyer sent to local auto body shops. Then came the final call, from the Fatal Coordinator Sergeant. Sorry, Mrs. Lassiter, there’s nothing else we can do, he said. Oh, yeah? I thought to myself. How about changing your title?

  “Where are the notes anyway?” Lombardo asks.

  “Brent had them. I’m not sure where they are, probably in his desk.”

  “You wanna take me there?”

  “No. I want to stay here and see what happens to Brent.”

  Lombardo sucks on his toothpick. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  I don’t reply. My mouth tastes acrid and angry. Of course it’s my fault; the driver was trying to kill me. And I didn’t listen to Brent and file a report, because I was more concerned about my brilliant career. I feel sick and guilty, and most of all, in the dark and twisted pit of my stomach, I feel a powerful fear. I don’t want to lose Brent like I lost Mike.

  I close my eyes to the picture forming in my head, the one of the car slamming into Brent’s body. It’s like a nightmare, a waking nightmare, and one that I had on so many sleepless nights after Mike’s death, as I pictured the car slamming into him on his bike. I close my eyes to the horrific visions, trying to squeeze them out. But they bring me to see something, something I hadn’t seen before. I sit up in the plastic chair.

  “You gotta go to the ladies?” Lombardo asks.

  I’m amazed at what I’m thinking. I face Lombardo, but I can’t say anything. What if? What if there’s a connection between what happened to Mike and what happened to Brent?

  “My husband was killed last year by a hit-and-run driver.”

  “Jesus, Mary, I’m sorry. Jeez, Mary, if I hadda known. Jeez.” His beefy face flushes with embarrassment.

  “What I’m saying is maybe it’s connected to what happened to Brent. Brent was hit by a hit-and-run driver too.”

  Lombardo takes the toothpick out of his mouth.

  I struggle to make my argument, to find the right words. My brain is tired, so tired, and I can’t think fast enough. “Tom, couldn’t it be the same driver? Let’s say someone is very angry at me, hates me for some reason. They even kill my husband, hit him with a car. They write me hate notes, they call me, they stalk me. They break into my apartment, they break my husband’s picture—”

  “Yo, wait a minute—”

  “Let me finish. Then, almost a year later, about the same time they killed my husband, they try to kill me. The same way, even. But they hit Brent by accident. Right before it happened we were dancing around on the curb.”

  “What did they rule your husband’s death?”

  “An accident. He was riding his bike by the river. It was an accident, that’s what we all thought at the time.”

  “Why do you think it wasn’t?”

  “Because of what happened to Brent, Tom! The same thing!”

  Lombardo blinks, dully. “He wasn’t on a bike, was he?” He pops his toothpick back into his mouth and reaches for his notebook.

  I grab his hand. “No, Brent wasn’t on a bike. He was walking.”

  “You said it’s the same thing. It’s not the same thing.”

  “But it is. They were both hit by a car. A hit-and-run.”

  “It’s not the same thing. One is on a bike and the other is walking.”

  “All right, it’s not the exact same thing.”

  “You can say the exact same, you can say the same. It’s not the same thing.” Flustered, Lombardo smooths down his nylon windbreaker.

  I feel like screaming. “But they’re both hit—”

  “There are other differences.”

  “What?”

  “Different time of day. Different place. With the construction on Walnut, it was probably an accident.”

  “But it makes sense!”

  Lombardo looks at me gravely, like I’m crazed from my recent widowhood. “Mary, you’re upset. Let me take care of—”

  “For Christ’s sake, will you fucking think!”

  “That’s it! Stop talkin’ like that!” He jabs the air between us with his toothpick. A nurse, walking by, looks back with concern.

  Suddenly, the double doors to the operating room swing open and the surgeon, an older man, walks out. I stand up, and Lombardo surprises me by taking my arm. I search the doctor’s eyes for a sign about Brent, but there is none. He tugs down his green half-mask and walks over to us, heaving a sigh.

  The sigh, I recognize. The sigh, I know. It happened just this way the last time. Oh, no.

  “I’m sorry. We did everything. The injuries were extensive. There were massive
chest and skull fractures. The carotid artery was severed. There was just too much bleeding.”

  Oh, no. Just what they said with Mike. Chest injury. Skull fracture. Brain lacerations. The medical mumbo-jumbo that provides the background noise for the worst news of your life.

  “We fought very hard. So did your husband,” he says.

  My husband. Not my husband. Oh, no.

  “It wasn’t her husband,” says Lombardo. “It was her secretary. A male secretary.”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor says awkwardly. “Well, your secretary fought very hard. I’m very sorry.”

  I nod and feel Lombardo’s solid grip on my arm. He leads me to the elevator, and we leave the hospital. Jack and his friends, smoking nervously at the hospital entrance, take one look at us and know Brent is dead. I go over to Jack, but he breaks down and his friends close around him. They sob openly, this pale group of too-thin gay men. The two security guards exchange glances, but there’s no compassion there.

  Lombardo leads me to his squad car and drives to my apartment. Neither of us says anything on the ride home. I leave Brent at the hospital, just like I left Mike at the hospital. My husband, not my husband. I hear the voice, faint and far away, from within:

  I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. I tried, it says, and then deserts me.

  “Mary?”

  It’s Lombardo, opening the car door for me. He helps me out of the car and walks me up to my apartment. “You’re gonna be okay, you’ll see. Just get some rest.”

  “Would you look inside my apartment? Just to make sure?”

  “Sure. Sure.” I hand Lombardo the key and he walks in. He finds the light switch and I hear the floors of my apartment groan, unaccustomed to such a heavy tread. In a minute he’s back at the door. “Everything’s okay. There’s nobody here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll do some checkin’ about your husband. When AID investigates, they make a report. Those guys are real thorough.”

  I nod. Lombardo gives my shoulder a squeeze and climbs down the stairs. Cautiously, I go into the apartment. Alice sits on the windowsill, her hidden body making a hump in the tangled blinds. I walk over to the window and peek through the blinds.