Twisted: The Collected Stories (42 page)

If they could ever be forgiven.

There were voices from the doorway. The Nassau County coroner’s men were wheeling Anthony Dalton’s body out of the house.

“Honey,” Susan began. “I’m sorry. I—”

But the girl held up a hand to silence her mother. They watched as the body was loaded into the coroner’s van.

Susan wiped the tears from her face. She said, “Honey, I know this is too much for you. . . . I know you’re mad. I don’t have any right to ask . . . but can you just do one thing to help me? I have to tell everybody coming to the party tomorrow that we’re canceling. It’ll get too late if I have to call them all myself.”

The girl stared as the van disappeared down the snowy street.

“Carly,” her mother whispered.

“No,” she answered her mother.

Her face flooding with resignation and pain, Susan nodded knowingly. “Sure, sweetheart, I understand. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve asked. You go see Jake. You don’t have to—”

“That’s not what I mean,” the girl said bluntly. “I mean, we’re not canceling the party.”

“We can’t, not after—”

“Why not?” the girl asked. There was flint in her voice.

“But—”

“We’re going to have our party,” Carly said firmly. “We’ll find a room in a restaurant or hotel somewhere. It’s late but let’s start making some calls.”

“You think we could?” Susan asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, “we can.”

Susan too invited the three of them to the party.

“I may have other commitments,” Rhyme said quickly. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

“We’ll see,” Sachs told her coyly.

Eyes wet with tears, mouth unsmiling, Carly thanked Rhyme, Sachs and Thom.

The two women returned to the house, daughter helping mother up the steep path. They moved in silence. The girl was angry, Rhyme could see. And numb. But she hadn’t walked away from her mother. A lot of people would have.

The door to the house closed with a loud snap, carried through the compact, cold air.

“Hey, anybody want to drive around and look at the decorations on the houses?” Thom asked.

Sachs and Rhyme looked at each other. The criminalist said, “I think we’ll pass. How ’bout we get
back to the city? Look at the hour. It’s late. Forty-five minutes till Christmas. Doesn’t the time fly when you’re doing good deeds?”

Thom repeated, “Humbug.” But he said it cheerfully.

Sachs kissed Rhyme. “I’ll see you back home,” she said and walked toward the Camaro as Thom swung the door of the van shut. In tandem, the two vehicles started down the snowy street.

“A
few people, a very few people’re lucky enough to find a special kind of love. A love that’s . . . more. That goes beyond anything that ever was.”

“I suppose so.”

“I
know
so. Allison and me, we’re in that category.” Manko’s voice then dropped to a discreet whisper as he looked at me with his barracks-buddy’s grin. “I’ve had a barrelful of women. You know me, Frankie boy. You know I’ve been around.”

Manko was in the mood to perform and all I could do was play both straight man and audience. “So you’ve said, Mr. M.”

“Those other girls, looking back, some of ’em were lovers. And some were just, you know, for the night. Wham, bam. That sort of thing. But till I met Allison, I didn’t understand what love was all about.”

“It’s a transcendent love.”

“Transcendent.” He tasted the word, nodding slowly. “What’s that mean?”

Just after I’d met Manko I’d learned that while he was poorly read and generally uninformed, he never hesitated to own up to his ignorance, which a lot of smart people never do. That had been my first clue as to the kind of man he was.

“It’s exactly what you’re describing,” I explained. “A love that rises above what you normally see and experience.”

“Yeah. I like that, Frankie boy. Transcendent. That says it. That’s what we’ve got. You ever love anyone that way?”

“Sort of. A long time ago.” This was partially true. But I said nothing more. Although I considered Manko a friend in some ways, our souls were worlds apart and I wasn’t going to share my deepest personal life with him. Not that it mattered, for at the moment he was more interested in speaking about the woman who was the center of his own solar system.

“Allison Morgan. Allison
Kimberly
Morgan. Her father gave her a nickname. Kimmie. But that’s crap. It’s a kid’s name. And one thing she isn’t is a kid.”

“Has a Southern sound to it.” I’m a native of North Carolina and went to school with a bevy of Sally Mays and Cheryl Annes.

“It does, yeah. But she’s not. She’s from Ohio. Born and bred.” Manko glanced at his watch and stretched. “It’s late. Almost time to meet her.”

“Allison?”

He nodded and smiled the trademarked, toothy Manko smile. “I mean, you’re cute in your own way, Frank, but if I gotta choose between the two of you . . .”

I laughed and repressed a yawn. It
was
late—eleven-twenty
P.M.
An unusual hour for me to be finishing dinner but not to be engaged in conversation over coffee. Not having an Allison of my own to hurry home to, or anyone other than a cat, I often watched the clock slip past midnight or one
A.M
. in the company of friends.

Manko pushed aside the dinner dishes and poured more coffee.

“I’ll be awake all night,” I protested mildly.

He laughed this aside and asked if I wanted more pie.

When I declined he raised his coffee cup. “My Allison. Let’s drink to her.”

We touched the rims of the cups with a ringing clink.

I said, “Hey, Mr. M, you were going to tell me all ’bout the trouble. You know, with her father.”

He scoffed. “That son of a bitch? You know what happened.”

“Not the whole thing.”

“Don’tcha?” He dramatically reared his head back and gave a wail of mock horror. “Manko’s falling down on the job.” He leaned forward, the smile gone, and gripped my arm hard. “It’s not a pretty story, Frankie boy. It’s not outta
Family Ties
or
Roseanne.
Can you stomach it?”

I leaned forward too, just as dramatically, and growled. “Try me.”

Manko laughed and settled into his chair. As he lifted his cup the table rocked. It had done so throughout dinner but he only now seemed to notice it. He took a moment to fold and slip a piece of
newspaper under the short leg to steady it. He was meticulous in this task. I watched his concentration, his strong hands. Manko was someone who actually enjoyed working out—lifting weights, in his case—and I was astonished at his musculature. He was about five-six, and, though it’s hard for men—for me at least—to appraise male looks, I’d call him handsome.

The only aspect of his appearance I thought offkilter was his haircut. When his stint with the Marines was over he kept the unstylish crew cut. From this, I deduced his experience in the service was a high point in his life—he’d worked factory and mediocre sales jobs since—and the shorn hair was a reminder of a better, if not an easier, time.

Of course, that was my pop-magazine-therapy take on the situation. Maybe he just liked short hair.

He now finished with the table and eased his strong, compact legs out in front of him. Manko the storyteller was on duty. This was another clue to the nature of Manko’s spirit: Though I don’t think he’d ever been on a stage in his life he was a born actor.

“So. You know Hillborne? The town?”

I said I didn’t.

“Southern part of Ohio. Piss-water river town. Champion used to have a mill there. Still a couple factories making, I don’t know, radiators and things. And a big printing plant, does work for Cleveland and Chicago. Kroeger Brothers. When I was in Seattle I learned printing. Miehle offsets. The four- and five-color jobs, you know. Big as a house. I learned ’em cold. Could print a whole saddle-stitched magazine myself, inserts included, yessir, perfect register
and not one goddamn staple in the centerfold’s boobs . . . Yessir, Manko’s a hell of a printer. So there I was, thumbing ’cross country. I ended up in Hillborne and got a job at Kroeger’s. I had to start as a feeder, which was crap, but it paid thirteen an hour and I figured I could work my way up.

“One day I had an accident. Frankie boy, you ever seen coated stock whipping through a press? Zip, zip, zip. Like a razor. Sliced my arm. Here.” He pointed out the scar, a wicked-looking one. “Bad enough they took me to the hospital. Gave me a tetanus shot and stitched me up. No big deal. No whining from Manko. Then the doctor left and a nurse’s aide came in to tell me how to wash it and gave me some bandages.” His voice dwindled.

“It was Allison?”

“Yessir.” He paused and gazed out the window at the overcast sky. “You believe in fate?”

“In a way I do.”

“Does that mean yes or no?” He frowned. Manko always spoke plainly and expected the same from others.

“Yes, with qualifiers.”

Love tamed his irascibility and he grinned, chiding good-naturedly, “Well, you better. Because there
is
such a thing. Allison and me, we were fated to be together. See, if I hadn’t been running that sixty-pound stock, if I hadn’t slipped just when I did, if she hadn’t been working an extra shift to cover for a sick friend, if, if, if . . . See what I’m saying? Am I right?”

He sat back in the creaky chair. “Oh, Frankie, she was fantastic. I mean, here I am, this, like, four-inch slash in my arm, twenty stitches, I could’ve bled to
death, and all I’m thinking is she’s the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

“I’ve seen her picture.” But that didn’t stop him from continuing to describe her. The words alone gave him pleasure.

“Her hair’s blonde. Gold blonde. Natural, not out of a bottle. And curly but not teased, like some high-hair slut. And her face, it’s heart-shaped. Her body . . . Well, she has a nice figure. Let’s leave it at that.” His glance at me contained a warning. I was about to assure him that I had no impure thoughts about Allison Morgan when he continued. He said, “Twenty-one years old.” Echoing my exact thought he added sheepishly, “Kind of an age difference, huh?”

Manko was thirty-seven—three years younger than I—but I learned this after I’d met him and had guessed he was in his late twenties. It was impossible for me to revise that assessment upward.

“I asked her out. There. On the spot. In the emergency room, you can believe it. She was probably thinking, How d’I get rid of this bozo? But she was interested, yessir. A man can tell. Words and looks, they’re two different things, and I was getting the capital
M
message. She said she had this rule she never dated patients. So I go, ‘How ’bout if you married somebody and he cuts his hand in an accident and goes to the emergency room and there you are? Then you’d be
married
to a patient.’ She laughed and said, no, that was somehow backwards. Then this emergency call came in, some car wreck, and she had to go off.

“The next day I came back with a dozen roses.
She pretended she didn’t remember me and acted like I was a florist delivery boy. ‘Oh, what room are those for?’

“I said, ‘They’re for you . . . if you have
room
in your heart for me.’ Okay, okay, it was a bullshit line.” The rugged ex-Marine fiddled awkwardly with his coffee cup. “But, hey, if it works, it works.”

I couldn’t argue with him there.

“The first date was magic. We had dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. A French place. It cost me two days’ pay. It was embarrassing ’cause I wore my leather jacket and you were suppose to have a suit coat. One of
those
places. They made me wear one they had in the coat room and it didn’t fit too good. But Allison didn’t care. We laughed about it. She was all dressed up in a white dress, with a red, white and blue scarf around her neck. Oh, God, she was beautiful. We spent, I don’t know, three, four hours easy there. She was pretty shy. Didn’t say much. Mostly she stared like she was kind of hypnotized. Me, I talked and talked, and sometimes she’d look at me all funny and then laugh. And I’d realize I wasn’t making any sense ’cause I was looking at her and not paying any attention to what I was saying. We drank a whole bottle of wine. Cost fifty bucks.”

Manko had always seemed both impressed by and contemptuous of money. Myself, I’ve never come close to being rich so wealth simply perplexes me.

“It was the best,” he said dreamily, replaying the memory.

“Ambrosia,” I offered.

He laughed as he sometimes did—in a way that
was both amused and mocking—and continued his story. “I told her all about the Philippines, where I was stationed for a while, and about hitching around the country. She was interested in everything I’d done. Even—well, I should say
especially
—some of the stuff I wasn’t too proud of. Grifting, perping cars. You know, when I was a kid, going at it. Stuff we all did.”

I held back a smile. Speak for yourself, Manko.

“Then all of a sudden, the sky lit up outside. Fireworks! Talk about signs from God. You know what it was? It was the Fourth of July! I’d forgotten about it ’cause all I’d been thinking about was going out with her.
That’s
why she was wearing the red, white and blue. We watched the fireworks from the window.”