One of the few things I appreciated about Abby, my ex-wife, was she never felt the need to apologize for anything. She was often wrong, but rarely in doubt. It seemed like a habit with most women to get you to say that something that was clearly all right was, in fact, all right.
“Figure out a time when you can have that cup of coffee and you can make it up to me.”
“I suppose that would only be fair.”
“Okay,” I said, “call me when you can.”
“Okay.”
Eddie barked at me from the side door to let him in. I scratched his ears and gave him a large dog biscuit, the consummate joy of his life. He waited while I gathered up the ice bucket, a glass, a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes, so the two of us could enjoy our favorite consumables out on the porch together. The Little Peconic was calm, a gray mineral mass flecked with scintillations. The far shore, a gray-green hump trimmed with huge sandy cliffs, hid partially in the coming mist. The pink
I first made love to Abby on a moldy pool table in the attic of a half-abandoned fraternity house on the Charles River. It was a time when fraternities were out of political favor, so the declining membership had consolidated down on the lower floors, leaving a large garret to the dust and rats and me. I was on a government scholarship to MIT. Abby was at Boston University. She lived in an apartment next door. At the time, sex was about all we had in common, though we rarely had time to notice. That would come later. We kept at it straight through my college career, which ended the year it started. It took ten years of night school to get my degree. I loved to learn, I just had trouble with authority. And money.
But that first night I wanted to live for a million years. Naked and wet, mostly drunk and seething with sexual insanity, we stood wrapped in the pool table cover and watched the lights of Cambridge fracture and reform on the surface of the river.
The walls of the attic room were lined with books. It was furnished with cracked and scuffed red leather chesterfields and a ratty, oversized oriental rug. I felt like a barbarian squatting between the marble pillars of fallen Rome. And incidentally, screwing one of its princesses.
Her full name was Abigail Adams Albright, which accurately reflected her family’s tirelessly vigilant social pretense. I think she might have been a brilliant woman if she’d given herself the chance. If she hadn’t been born just a few years too early into a family that was already a hundred years out of date. I admit with shame that I was awed by her family’s self-prepossession, by the way they slouched comfortably within a social order presumably anointed by God. I married her partly because I thought old family poise and bone structure was something you could suck up through exposure, like sunshine.
Abby was a pretty girl when I met her, in a big-skulled, big-blond kind of way. As she aged, her skin and overall shape held up remarkably well, but her expression grew tight across her face until it formed a kind of mask that I used to think I could reach over and peel off her face.
I lived in that attic for two years after dropping out of school. Abby went on to graduate. I’ve actually forgotten what her degree was in. Maybe I never knew. I worked at whatever I could parlay into something I could parlay into a job in industrial design. That’s what I wanted to be—an industrial designer. I didn’t know what that was, but it seemed to fit. That I succeeded eventually means something, but I can’t tell what. I often wonder about it when I’m sitting on the porch looking out on the Peconic, when the bay water begins to look like the murky Charles and the buoys grow into the implacable towers of MIT.
Before I went to bed I woke up Sullivan. It was later than I’d realized. He was unhappy, but tried to hide it. I heard some feminine snarling in the background. Muffled but edgy. Sullivan spoke louder to cover it up.
“No, we didn’t do an autopsy on Regina Broadhurst. Old ladies croak. It’s standard procedure. They get old, they croak. Boom. I think an autopsy report would say, ‘one old lady, deader ’n shit.’ End of story.”
I nodded with understanding, even though he couldn’t see me.
“Did you see anything on her head when you pulled her out of the tub? You know, like a bruise or blood where it hit?”
“I don’t do the pulling. That’s the county coroner. You’ll have to ask her. Or the paramedics. I don’t even think the coroner got involved.”
“No other bruises or marks that you remember?”
“Jesus, you think I study week-old cadavers? I don’t even like to think about it. Yech. I’m sorry. I appreciate your help, but I gotta get some sleep. You oughta go to bed yourself.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“That’s okay.”
“Just one thing.”
He sighed.
“Where’s her body?”
“Coolin’ at the coroner’s. Which is also standard procedure until some family member tells us what to do with it, or it gets past some statutory time limit. I don’t know what happens then.”
“The family could order an autopsy.”
“If the family turns up they get the body. It’s up to them from there. This is usually what happens. You want to know more about it, I’ll have to ask around.”
“No, I’m sorry. Go to bed. Just call me when you get a fix on Jimmy Maddox.”
It was quiet on the other end of the line for a moment.
“I got a fix. I got a place where he’s workin’. From a builder. I forgot about it.”
“Great.”
“It’s on my desk. I’ll call you with it tomorrow. I gotta go now, my fuckin’ wife’s gonna kill me.”
After he hung up I put the portable phone on the table and lit a cigarette. The night was thoroughly established. The bugs were buzzing and little bay waves were slapping at the beach. It was totally dark over at Regina’s house. And quiet. No moaning.
Eddie jumped up on the bed and spun around a half-dozen times while scratching up the bedspread before finally dropping down. He looked at me like, “Okay, man, time to sleep.” I told him to stay, but he followed me anyway when I left the porch.
I went out to the car and got the heavy Mag light and my tool chest out of the trunk. I dug out a ten-pound persuader and a cat’s paw, and stuck them inside my belt. I put a big old Craftsman screwdriver and a pair of Vice Grips in my back pocket. The neighborhood was silent as a cathedral. All you could hear was the tiny surf breaking on the off-white, sea-polished pebbles that lined the bay. No wind.
Somebody had put a padlock on Regina’s front door. It didn’t look like much. I tucked the cat’s paw between the padlock bracket and the door jam and gave it one good thwap with the little sledge. Almost. Another thwap and it was off. I sat down on the front stoop and looked around at the other houses nearby. No lights came on. Sleeping the sleep of the righteous, or just indifferent. Or wary. Skills learned in New York City.
I had a key for the door. Eddie padded silently up the walk and slid past me through the door. As I figured, the power was off. Everything was still basically undisturbed, though someone had neatened up the living room and cleaned out the dishes that had been left in the sink. The broom closet looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. There was just a faded cotton robe hanging by a hook on the inside of the door and some beach towels on a shelf. Eddie scanned the baseboards, snorting into the cracks and corners. I warned him not to bark.
I looked in the drawers of the tall hutch in the pantry where I remembered Regina kept her checkbook for those rare moments she paid me back for something I bought her. The papers stuffed in the drawers were carefully organized. This surprised me. I remembered Regina as an indifferent organizer.
The house still smelled like death.
I found the basement door and went down to look at the fuse box. I made Eddie wait for me at the top of the stairs. The mildewy smell was sticky sweet and mildly nauseating. The flashlight defined a tight little island of light and threw big black shadows against the walls. Something skittered across the concrete floor. Eddie whined, but held his post. The main switch was off, so I threw it back on. The light above the panel snapped on. That was too
