One-Way Ticket (9 page)

“I have to make a report,” she said. “Just let me write down your name and address.”

I told her my name and gave her my office address.

She wrote in her notebook, then closed it and put it in her pants pocket. “You sure you’re going to be all right?” she said.

I nodded.

“You start peeing blood, get to a hospital.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Or another attack like this.”

“Right,” I said.

She patted my arm. “All right, sir. You take care of yourself.”

“I appreciate your help,” I said.

She cocked her head and looked at me, and I guessed she thought I was lying about something. Then she shrugged and smiled and wandered away.

I was lying, of course. I didn’t want to tell her that Paulie Russo’s thug had kidney-punched me, his way of making sure I didn’t forget him. Not that it was likely.

I guessed I’d be hurting for a few days, at least, even if I got lucky and didn’t start pissing blood.

I started to walk home, but I didn’t get very far before I realized that my back hurt way too much. So I took a cab.

T
HE TAXI DROPPED ME
off at my front door on Mt. Vernon Street at quarter of seven. “When I went into the house, Henry did not come bounding out to greet me, which meant he was in the backyard, and that meant that Evie was already home.

I walked through the house and out onto the back deck. Evie was sprawled in one of our wooden chairs. She was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. A cardboard pack of Marlboro reds, a green plastic lighter, and a glass ashtray sat on the arm of the chair. She was balancing a beer bottle on her bare belly, and her face was tilted up to the sky. Her eyes were closed. I guessed she was napping.

Henry was lying beside her with his chin on his paws. He was looking at me, trying to decide whether it was worth the effort to get to his feet and come over just for a kind word and a scratch behind the ears.

He decided to wait for me to go to him.

I stood there for a minute. I didn’t want to wake up Evie. She’d been sleeping badly lately, and I figured a little nap would be good for her.

But then she turned her head and looked at me.

“Hi, babe,” I said.

She gave me a strained smile. “Hi, Brady.”

When Evie called me Brady instead of honey or big guy or Studman, it meant something was bothering her.

I went down to her. She tilted up her cheek—not her mouth—for a kiss, which I gave her. Then I sat in the chair beside her.

“Somebody drive you home?” she said.

“Huh? Why?”

“I heard a car door slam. Then you were here.”

“I thought you were sleeping.”

“Not really,” she said.

“I took a taxi.”

“How come?”

“I did something to my back. It kinda hurts to walk.”

It was a lie, and lying to Evie reminded me of how I’d lied—or at least withheld the truth, which amounted to the same thing—to Dalt Lancaster and to his mother the judge, and how Robert had been lying to everybody.

Telling the truth was overrated. Sometimes the lie was better.

“Sorry about your back,” Evie said.

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “You okay?”

She held up her beer bottle. “Empty.”

I took it from her, went into the house, and snagged two bottles of Samuel Adams lager from the refrigerator. I popped their caps, took them out back, gave one to Evie, and sat in the chair beside her. I had to wiggle around to find a position that didn’t make my kidneys scream.

Evie lit a Marlboro. “I don’t want you to argue with me,” she said. “I don’t want your advice. I don’t want any philosophy or psychology or wisdom. Okay?”

I looked at her. “What is it, honey?”

“I told my father I was going out there to be with him. I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow afternoon. A one-way ticket. I don’t know when I’ll be coming home.” She blinked. “He didn’t even argue with me.”

“He’s getting worse, then?” I said.

She turned to look at me. “It’s sweet,” she said, “that you want to know about him, that you’re not focusing on me going out there. It makes me feel better. It makes me think maybe I’m not totally crazy after all. That’s why I love you.”

I reached for her hand. She gave it to me. I held on to it. “Tell me about Ed.”

She gave my hand a squeeze, then let go. “They want to take some blood and do ultrasound and CT scans and MRIs and a bunch of other tests he doesn’t explain very clearly. They might want to do exploratory surgery.”

“Do they have a suspicion of what’s wrong?”

She shrugged. “They probably do. But they’re not telling him. Or else he’s not telling me. I can’t tell which. He says they just give him double-talk he can’t understand. I don’t know. Maybe he just doesn’t want to tell me what they’re saying. Either way, it’s not good. His symptoms are scary and ominous. So I’m going. To get some answers. And to… to be with him.”

“Sure,” I said. “You should.”

“I don’t know how long it will be.”

I figured she meant that she’d stay with him until he died. “What can I do?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “That would be best. Just let me do what I need to do. Don’t expect anything out of me, okay? Please. Make it easy for me.”

“I could go with you.”

She snapped her head around. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. Saying that makes it hard for me. That makes me have to say, ‘No, I don’t want you to come with me.’ You see what I mean?”

“Sure,” I said. “Okay. I understand.”

“Do you?”

I shrugged. “I love you. Whatever you want, whether I understand or not.”

She lit another cigarette. “I did ask him.”

“What?”

“To come here. To our hospitals and doctors. He said no.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I told him we could have the best in the world. He could stay right here with us. The old poop, he just wants to be close to his stupid houseboat.”

“They have great doctors in San Francisco, too,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “I know.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said. “It’s good that you’re going to be with him.”

“You can drive me to the airport,” she said. “Would you do that?”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” I said. “And I won’t do whatever you tell me not to do.”

“I know,” she said.

She puffed on her cigarette. I watched her, the comfortable, delicate way she held it down near the tips of her fingers, the way she blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth. It made me remember smoking.

After a few minutes, she said, “You can’t expect me to call you every night.”

“I’ll try not to expect anything,” I said. “I would like to know how Ed is doing, though. And how you’re doing.”

“I’ll call when I can,” she said. “I just don’t want you to expect it and count on it and be disappointed when I don’t. I don’t need that kind of responsibility.”

“I understand. I don’t want you to feel obliged to me.”

“And I don’t want you to call me.”

“I’ll want to,” I said. “It will be hard.”

“I know. Do you understand?”

“It doesn’t matter. I understand what you’re asking me. So that’s what I’ll do.”

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she said. “I just need to be with him. I don’t want to have thoughts about not being with him. I don’t want to resent him. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to miss you, or our house, or Henry, or my friends, or my job, or the people at work. I don’t want to be conflicted any more than I already am. I just want to try to focus on my daddy.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

When our beer bottles were empty, I took them inside. I made supper for Henry and some tuna fish sandwiches for me and Evie. I brought them out back with a bag of Cape Cod potato chips and fresh bottles of beer, and we ate while the sky darkened and shadows seeped into our garden.

Sometime after we’d finished eating, Evie said, “I will miss you.”

“It’s better if you don’t,” I said.

“I’ll try not to. But I know I will.”

A few minutes later, she said, “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I lived alone for a long time, and I did fine, and I didn’t even have Henry back then.”

After Evie went upstairs to get ready for bed, I called my office and left a message for Julie, just telling her I’d hurt my back and “wouldn’t be in the office on Wednesday. I was glad I’d gotten all of our paperwork cleaned up. Julie could always reschedule meetings, but paperwork waited for no man.

When I went upstairs and crawled into our bed, Evie said, “I don’t want to make love tonight. I’m sorry. I just want you to hold me. Will you hold me?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to hold you.”

She rolled onto her side with her back to me. Then she reached around and touched the back of my leg, urging me to snuggle up to her.

I kissed her shoulder and held her.

A minute later, she said, “Is your back all right?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“I am so selfish.”

“Stop it,” I said.

“I wasn’t even thinking about your back.”

“Neither was I,” I said.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. When I woke up, the morning sun was angling in around the edges of the bedroom curtains. Evie was not beside me, and Henry was not curled up on his bed in the corner.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. My lower back was tender to the touch, but when I started down the stairs I found that my kidney punch was little more than an old ache.

I poured myself a mug of coffee, went to the back door, and looked out through the screen into the backyard.

Evie was sitting at the picnic table. She was wearing gray sweatpants and a blue tank top. Her long auburn hair was stuffed under a Red Sox cap. She wore it backwards. It made her look like a high school kid. Innocent and sexy.

Roger Horowitz, wearing his usual Columbo-style rumpled brown suit and looking like a homicide detective, which was what he happened to be, was sitting across from her. His elbows were on the table, and he was holding a coffee mug in both hands. He sat motionless, watching Evie over the rim of his mug.

She was looking down at her hands,, talking to him in a soft murmuring voice. She kept rotating her coffee mug on the tabletop.

I didn’t want to interrupt them, so I stood there inside the screen door. After a minute, Horowitz put down his mug, reached across the table, and knuckled a tear from Evie’s cheek.

She looked up at him and smiled. I saw that her eyes were glittery.

I banged on the screen door as if I’d just gotten there, then shouldered it open and went outside. Evie and Horowitz looked up. Henry, who’d been lying under the table, lifted his head, yawned, got to his feet, and walked stiff-legged to me.

I reached down and scratched his forehead, then went over to the table. I kissed the back of Evie’s neck and held out my hand to Horowitz.

He shook it. “How’s the back?”

I looked at Evie. She shrugged.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Better. Thanks.”

“Pulled a muscle or something, huh?” he said.

I nodded, sat beside Evie, and took a sip of coffee. “Am I interrupting something?”

Horowitz gave me a crooked smile and a small shake of his head.

“We were just talking,” said Evie.

“She told you,” I said to Horowitz. “About Ed.”

“It’s a bitch,” he said.

Evie stood up, “I bet you boys have important things to talk about,” she said. “I’ve got to get packed.” She went around the table, leaned down, and gave Horowitz a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Give my love to Alyse.”

He looked up at her. “You take care, kiddo.”

Evie smiled and nodded and went into the house.

When the screen door snapped shut behind her, I turned to Horowitz. “I don’t know what she sees in you.”

“That makes us even,” he said. “I don’t know what she sees in you, either.”

“You shouldn’t’ve come here,” I said. “It always upsets her.”

“She talks, I listen,” he said. “I think it helps to talk. Poor kid. I feel bad for her.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I know she likes to talk to you. Unlike everybody else, Evie harbors the delusion that you’re a sensitive and caring person. It’s just that whenever you come here, it’s because you need me for something, and she knows it, and it makes her nervous, you being a homicide detective and all.”

“For the record,” he said, “I never need you. I get by just swell without you. Anyway, as far as I know, we don’t have any homicide to talk about.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Do we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So who’s punching you in the kidneys, then?”

I looked at him. “How the hell did you hear about that?”

He smiled. “So it
was
a kidney punch.”

I nodded. “Is that how that cop reported it?”

“She surmised it. Her point was, you refused medical treatment, and she was covering her ass for not calling the EMTs anyway, in case you subsequently keeled over and died.”

“Do you read all the police reports?”

“The magic of computers, Coyne,” he said. “I scan ’em. Part of the job. You never know when something, apparently random, might connect the dots with some other random thing. Your name jumped out at me. Not that I give a shit about you, but I do happen to care about Evie. So I just thought I’d find out what the hell’s going on with you.”

“That’s good detective work,” I said, “and I appreciate your interest, even if it’s on Evie’s behalf, not mine. But a kidney punch is hardly a homicide.”

“I like to solve homicide cases,” he said, “but I like to prevent them even better.”

“I’m in no danger, Roger.”

“So this was just some random kidney punch, then? Delivered with a smile by some stranger? No message behind it?”

I shrugged. “Don’t push me, please.”

“Ah,” he said. “More of your client-privilege bullshit, right?”

I waved the subject away with the back of my hand.

Horowitz narrowed his eyes at me. “Evie said something was going on with you, she didn’t know what, so I promised her I’d keep an eye on you while she’s gone, whether you like it or not.”