The Barker Street Regulars (21 page)

“Was he?”

“No. But if he had been, it’d be a coincidence. Like I said, it all depends on the lens you look through.”

“There it is again!”

This time, Kevin had the grace to smile. A few minutes later he had the even greater grace to insist on treating me to dinner. As we were leaving the restaurant, I offered polite protests. “And I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” I added.

“Hey, I was the one who spoiled half your dinner,” Kevin said.

“That wasn’t your fault.” Kevin held the door for me. He does that. I don’t mind. Stepping onto Mass. Ave., I said, “You couldn’t control where—” I broke off. Passing directly in front of me on the sidewalk, clearly visible in the light of a streetlamp, was a tall, thin man with brown hair cut in a peculiar but fashionable-looking style. His most prominent feature was a bulbous forehead. Tonight, he wasn’t wearing the green suit. Rather, he had on an expensive-looking brown trench coat. As he’d done the first time I’d seen him, though, he carried a white bundle. Actually, he carried two. Neither was a pillowcase. This time, he was clearly
returning from an innocent errand. In each hand, he held a plain white plastic shopping bag.

“Kevin!” I whispered. “Kevin! Get that man!” I lowered my voice another notch and pointed. “Kevin,
that’s
the man who tried to drown my cat! Get him!”

Instead of bolting after the villain as he’d normally have done, Kevin opened his mouth to ask what I assume would have been a question. I now understand that just having recovered from the humiliation I’d inflicted on him in the restaurant, he was eager to avoid tackling the stranger only to have me announce that, gee, sorry, but this wasn’t the same guy after all.

I’ll let Kevin hold doors for me, but if he doesn’t, I somehow miraculously manage to open them myself. Abandoning Kevin to his second bout of mortification, I sprinted after the man, who had apparently overheard my whispered accusation. As if to confirm his guilt, he was fleeing up Mass. Ave., his progress impeded by the two heavy-looking shopping bags. “You!” I hollered at him. “You! Stop!”

What did I intend to do with the cat-drowner when I caught him? I had no plan in mind. As I hurtled past parked cars, shop windows, and window-shoppers, it occurred to me that collectively, Rowdy and Kimi outweighed this scrawny cat-murdering bastard. And they were all muscle. If I could handle two Alaskan malamutes in prime condition, I should be able to manage one skinny bit of human scum. “You!” I yelled in a breathless-sounding version of my best bossing-dogs-around voice. “Stop! Or I’m going to get you, and I’m going to rip you to shreds!”

Without the plastic bags that bumped at his sides, the man might have outdistanced me almost immediately. Running the dogs around Fresh Pond keeps me in decent shape, but in addition to a head start, he had the
advantage of long legs. Neither he nor I, however, was a match for Kevin, whose burliness is deceptive: He’s been a long-distance runner since high school. A short sprint barely gives him time to warm up, but once he gets moving, his mass and muscle kick in, and he can keep going forever. When he barged past me, I’d covered a block. My quarry was a good half block ahead. I knew Kevin would lose me. I might as well have stopped to catch my breath. Pride kept me going. Ahead, the thin man made the mistake of looking back. Catching sight of Kevin, he must have felt like a retreating soldier who turns to see whether he’s shaken a lone pursuer and discovers a rapidly approaching tank. Or maybe he felt like a snowball in the direct path of a plow. Panic must have impaired his judgment. On the sidewalk ahead of him, eight or ten people had congregated to wait for tables at a tiny, brightly illuminated storefront bistro. Instead of sensibly detouring, the thin man tried to cut straight through the little crowd and ended up tripping on a woman and knocking her to the concrete. The group that immediately gathered around the fallen woman blocked the sidewalk and brought Kevin to a momentary halt. Just beyond the human blockade, the man paused, gasping, to regain his balance. As I started to catch up with Kevin, I heard him holler, “Police!”

Instead of bringing the chase to an end, Kevin’s bellow of authority acted like a bullet that missed its mark. With sudden energy, the man veered around and launched the only weapons he had. Raising his right arm, he swung one plastic shopping bag backward and sent it flying over the fallen woman and a companion who knelt next to her. Kevin caught the bag before it hit his face, but as he did so, the man flung the second bag at him, turned, and raced away.

Kevin and I again took up the chase. This time, we didn’t stand a chance. Working our way around the crowd, we had to squeeze between a parked car and a bicycle chained to a meter. By the time we did, our quarry was whipping around the corner of a distant side street. When I reached it, Kevin was dimly visible far ahead of me, and the man was nowhere in sight. Sucking in air, wrapping my arms around my aching ribs, I finally gave up. Along both sides of the street were typical Cambridge three-deckers, with here and there a brick apartment building or a big single-family house. Our prey could have vanished into any of the yards or down any of the driveways. He could have been hiding between or even under any of dozens of parked cars.

I waited for Kevin, who’d been ahead of me and might have seen where the man had gone. After ten minutes, Kevin still hadn’t shown up, and I began to retrace my steps to the sidewalk in front of the tiny bistro. When the cat murderer had flung the white plastic bags, I’d noticed that he was wearing gloves. Even so, fingerprints might be all over the contents of the shopping bags. It now seemed to me that I should have left pursuit to Kevin and made myself useful, as even Hugh and Robert would have done, by protecting the evidence. And, indeed, I returned to the spot to find that well-meaning members of the group waiting for tables at the bistro had gathered the spilled contents of the two white bags. The crowd was animated. The woman who’d been knocked to the sidewalk hadn’t been seriously hurt, someone told me. In fact, having waited for a table, she was now inside seated at one. Had I eaten here? someone asked. The food was wonderful, well worth the wait. Of course, you didn’t always get entertainment like tonight’s.

“Entertainment?” I asked.

Everyone laughed.

The cause of merriment, I learned, was the contents of the white plastic bags. On close inspection, the bags turned out to be imprinted with the interlocking red circles that were the logo of a chain of discount drugstores. Now repacked with the man’s purchases, the bags were propped up against the front of the bistro. When I was first told what they contained, I didn’t believe it. I’d assumed that the man had been toting the usual variety of odds and ends that people buy when they run ordinary errands: milk, coffee, toothpaste, a can of tomato sauce, microwave dinners. Those who’d picked up after the man, however, wondered aloud whether he was the sort of kleptomaniac who makes the newspapers by succumbing to a bizarre compulsion to shoplift large numbers of items that could serve only to meet some deranged and evidently symbolic need—the pitiful man caught filching a hundred pairs of ladies’ underpants, the wealthy woman who wears her diamonds and pearls while stealing cheap costume jewelry from cut-rate establishments where she’d never stoop to shop.

But the white plastic bags did not contain lingerie or costume jewelry. And the man hadn’t stolen anything. In one of the bags was his receipt for the bags’ contents—two dozen packages of women’s hair coloring. All in the same shade: jet-black.

G
IRL SCOUT COOKIES?
I was far too old. Vacuum cleaners? Because of the dog hair, I burn them out all the time. There were two broken ones in the cellar, but neither those nor the one that was still working would pass as a demonstration model. Besides, did anyone still sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door? Magazine subscriptions? I could legitimately present myself as a representative of
Dog’s Life,
and we’re always eager for new subscribers, of course, but for once, I preferred to avoid the subject of dogs. So much for collecting donations to Alaskan Malamute Rescue. But what about another charity? Or better yet, Cambridge being Cambridge, a political organization? I owned a clipboard, and could easily fake a petition of some sort and forge the signatures of imaginary people ardently in favor of such-and-such or adamantly opposed to this-and-that. But no matter how Cantabrigian the cause I selected, around here, I’d be doomed to encounter a devil’s advocate or possibly a Cambridge misfit who’d keep me stuck for hours listening to the case for global nuclear armament or the imminent destruction
of the rain forests. But solicitors for charities and lobby groups needed licenses. I didn’t have one. And solicitors always handed out literature.

The availability of props thus determined my role. I already owned a Bible. My possession of the collection of leaflets and tracts was mainly the dogs’ fault. I’d opened the door without knowing who’d rung the bell. To prevent the dogs from getting out, I didn’t open the door all the way, but held it a little ajar. Standing there was a sweet-faced, dowdy woman accompanied by a guy in his twenties with hair so oily and skin so red and clean that he looked as if he’d been submerged in hot fat, like a fried clam, but not for long enough to turn brown. As I was about to say politely that I wasn’t interested and then swiftly shut the door on my callers, Rowdy and Kimi poked their noses out, thus making it entirely unnecessary for my callers to get a foot in the door; I couldn’t shut out the Jehovah’s Witnesses without simultaneously squashing the dogs’ muzzles. The woman caressed the Bible she carried and, instead of telling the blunt truth (“I’m a Jehovah’s Witness here to plague you”), said brightly, “We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we’re sharing some Good News from the Bible.”

The woman and her underfried clam wasted forty-five minutes of their time and mine sitting in my living room trying to convert me, of all people, to a sect that would’ve required me to do an awful lot of walking without being able to take a dog. I’m serious. I asked whether dogs could go along. Why I bothered, I don’t know. I mean, have you ever opened the door to find a Jehovah’s Witness standing there with a dog? It’s obviously a good idea. With gorgeous dogs along, these poor people would have a lot fewer doors slammed in their faces than they do now. Greenpeace should also
consider the possibility. As to vacuum-cleaner salespeople? Yes, imagine! With long-coated dogs trained to shake hair all over the houses of likely prospects, who’d then have no choice but to agree to have the mess cleaned up? Indeed, a foot in the door no more. From now on, it’s a paw. A nose. Or an awful lot of fur.

Anyway, I retrieved the sheaf of religious tracts that I’d put with the newspapers and other recyclables. Then I worked on my disguise. After taking a hot shower, I put nothing on my face except moisturizer, and with the aid of a blow dryer, I did my best to convince my hair to curl conservatively under. As a costume, I selected a white blouse, a gray wool skirt, black flats, and my navy blue wool coat. The finishing touch was a white rayon scarf fashioned into a wide headband that held my hair back from my face the way mothers always like. The only missing element was a second Jehovah’s Witness. It seemed to me that like the legs of panty hose, they always traveled in pairs. A man and a woman? I couldn’t remember for certain. It didn’t matter. The only person I could think of who’d join me in the charade was my cousin Leah, whose red-gold curls would create an undesirably pagan appearance and who, in any case, had classes to attend. Men? Steve and Kevin would’ve been equally opposed to the project. I toyed with the idea of enlisting Hugh or Robert, who’d have enjoyed emulating the Master by traipsing around in disguise, but I was afraid that either of the Holmesians would overcomplicate what I meant as a simple piece of research. Besides, I didn’t really need an accomplice.

Dressed in my costume, armed with my Bible and tracts, I paused briefly in the hallway to brush dog hair off my coat. Then I got into the car, cut down Walden Street, turned onto Mass. Ave., passed the bistro where
the cat-drowner had abandoned his many packages of hair dye, covered a few more blocks, and parked at a meter. Making my way on foot toward the street where Irene Wheeler had her apartment, I naturally hoped that I wouldn’t run into her. If I did? Well, maybe for all she knew, I
was
a religious fanatic, as in a sense, of course, I am. The thought proved useful. Ascending the wooden steps of the house opposite Irene Wheeler’s, I allowed the sincerity of my devotion to dogs to flood my face with an expression of fervor and holiness.

From the outside, the building looked like a mirror image of Irene Wheeler’s, except that hers had fresh paint, new windows, and other signs of renovation. The outside door to this one was battered. More to the point, it was unlocked. The entryway was dirt brown and stank of cats. In the light of what must have been a twenty-watt bulb, I examined three ancient mailboxes set in the wall by three paint-encrusted doorbells. Lying on the cracked linoleum was a ton of junk mail: ads for supermarkets and discount hardware stores, and sad blue-and-white postcards with blurry photographs of children who asked, “Have you seen me?” The mail on the floor was addressed to “Resident.” The first-floor mailbox bore a strip of masking tape on which someone had printed “Schultz.” The other two mailboxes were unlabeled.

I decided to practice my performance. My goal was the third-floor apartment, the one with the window where I’d seen the binoculars. I chose Schultz as the audience for my dress rehearsal. On a door opposite the mailboxes and bells was a pink plastic numeral
1.
After adjusting my holy smile, I rapped on the door. Inside, feet shuffled. Then the door eased open an inch. A wizened yellow face peered at me through the crack. I’d
intended to address whoever answered as Mr., Mrs., or possibly Ms. Schultz, but found myself unable to guess whether the creature was male or female.

“Good morning!” I announced sweetly. Prominently displaying my Bible and my tracts, I said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, and I’m sharing some Good News from the Bible.”