Fear itself

“FBI, hunh? What I told your partner, I was off Monday, but I come back yesterday, Saturday is still in the box, along with Monday. Now, this guy Carpenter, he’s kinda weird, doesn’t like to answer the door, keeps it on the chain if I need a signature or something, but I’ve been on this route five years now, and in all that time he has never not emptied his mailbox. I was gonna give it one more day, then report it in. We’re supposed to report stuff like that-you’d be surprised how many dead people get found that way.”

“A sad comment on our times,” said Pender. “Thanks for keeping your eyes open.”

“I don’t need to report it, then?” asked the letter carrier.

“Not necessary,” Pender replied. “My partner and I can take it from here.”

Pender jimmied the patio door with the lockpick he’d been carrying in his wallet since his days as a Cortland County sheriff’s deputy. In another five days, after his retirement had officially taken effect, carrying it would be at least a misdemeanor bust in most states. Not that entering the house on Baja Way without a warrant wasn’t, he thought, sliding the door open.

But in a quarter century with the FBI, Pender had never willingly turned his back on a virgin crime scene-if this even was a crime scene. If it wasn’t, he could be in and out in five minutes, no harm done and nobody the wiser. As for Dorie, if she wasn’t going to follow instructions, it would obviously be better to have her where he could keep an eye on her. “Stick close, walk in my footsteps, and don’t touch anything.”

“Can do.” Without being consciously aware of it, until a week ago Dorie had had her life arranged so that she’d rarely had to walk into a strange house or an unfamiliar room until someone had vetted it first (you never know, could be a mask on the wall: booga booga!). Now she was starting to regret her newfound boldness. It wasn’t just the musty smell of the soaked carpet that had her spooked, it was Pender’s manner, the hushed but commanding tone of his voice, the grim set to his jaw, the wary tilt of his head as he started up the carpeted stairs, which were also squishing underfoot-somehow Dorie’s affable, comfortable, slow-moving Pen had turned into an FBI agent before her very eyes.

“Wait here,” he told her when he reached the top of the stairs.

“Pen, what’s that smell?” Stuffy, as if the rooms hadn’t been aired out in months. Or, no, not stuffy, more like sickly sweet, like old melon rinds in the garbage.

But he’d already disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Wait here? thought Dorie. Alone? You’d have to handcuff me to the banister. She followed him through the door, saw him standing in an open doorway on the far side of a bedroom. When he turned around, Dorie could tell from the look on his face that for a moment there, he’d forgotten she was even in the house. She started toward him-he met her in the middle of the room and put his arms around her to stop her from going any farther.

“You don’t need to see what’s in there,” he said softly.

“Is it Nelson?”

“It was.”

6

The seventy-six-year-old woman watching her soaps in a studio apartment in a deteriorating, if not blighted, neighborhood on the outskirts of Atlantic City had been born Rose Ella Moore and passed her happiest years as Rosella Childs, so it sometimes seemed strange to her to look back and realize that she’d spent a larger portion of her life as Rosie Delamour, a name she’d adopted half in jest and three-quarters stoned, than she had as Rose Moore and Rosella Childs combined.

Rosie’s drug of choice back when she’d first adopted her name was Moroccan hash-which was appropriate, as she was living in Tangier at the time. More recently, her drug of choice had been vodka, the cheaper the better- store brand would do nicely, thank you. If you asked her, she’d have admitted to being, if not a drunk, then a binge drinker; if you pressed her, though, she’d have had to admit that her current binge had begun last February, after the fiasco on Missy’s birthday.

The kids’ birthdays were always a hard time for Rosie, and when she’d finally worked up the nerve (okay- gotten drunk enough) to actually make the call after all those years and all those halfhearted attempts (calls she’d abandoned in mid-dial or mid-ring; answering machines she’d hung up on), only to have Simon hang up on her, there just didn’t seem to be much point in sobering up anymore.

But like many alcoholics, it gave Rosie a feeling of control to discipline her drinking. Her allotted intake was determined by her shows. One vodka tonic apiece during the morning soaps, a can of Ensure for lunch, then another vodka tonic with each of the afternoon soaps. In the evening, she would either dine out with one of her gentlemen or dine in with Dinty Moore-the beef stew, not one of her dust bowl relations, she liked to joke. In either case, her nightly allotment was determined not by television but by how much vodka remained in the bottle, because her iron rule was never to open two in one day.

Of course, if one of her gentlemen had the funds to purchase adult beverages with dinner, or bring a flask back to Rosie’s apartment afterward, that didn’t count against her quota.

Last night had been a Dinty Moore evening. This morning Rosie had awakened with a menacing hangover and a vague memory of having spoken to someone about Simon over the phone. The who and the why of it had vanished into the mist of memory, however, and Rosie knew better than to try to go into the mist after them-the only thing she’d ever found there was frustration.

But whether it was the call or something else, Rosie’s schedule had definitely been thrown off. By the end of General Hospital, the last soap of the day, less than three inches remained in the red- labeled fifth of Select Choice vodka; by the time Oprah was over, less than two. That was going to make for a difficult evening, unless of course it was Wednesday. Wednesdays, Rosie could count on Cappy Kaplan springing for a bottle of wine.

And, Rosie told herself, she might even be able to persuade Cappy to stop off at the corner liquor store on the way back to the apartment. True, it was a little late in the month for those on fixed incomes, but Cappy’s circumstances weren’t as straitened as hers, on account of his VA benefits.

But was it in fact Wednesday? Rosie was working that one out by dead reckoning-she remembered Monday for sure, because Ralph Rosen, her Monday gentleman, had taken her to the buffet at one of the casinos; so if yesterday was Dinty Moore, then today had to be Wednesday-when the doorbell rang. Rosie checked the time on the cable box: 5:05. She rolled her eyes: Cappy and his twilight/senior discount dinners.

The intercom hadn’t worked for months. Rosie buzzed Cappy up, then unbolted the door and retired to the bathroom to freshen up. Cappy was among the spryest of Rosie’s beaux-he even rode a motorcycle-but it still took him a few minutes to climb the four flights of stairs to her fifth-floor walk-up. Sometimes she would wait for her gentlemen in the lobby to save them making the climb twice in an evening, but they certainly couldn’t expect that courtesy if they insisted on showing up in the middle of the afternoon.

“You’re early,” she called from the bathroom when she heard the apartment door open. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Take your time.”

It didn’t sound like Cappy-maybe he had a cold. Rosie splashed a little water on her face, freshened her lipstick, opened the bathroom door.

Her first reaction was the same as Nelson Carpenter’s-or that of anyone who’s ever seen a ghost made flesh. If something can’t be, but is, then it is the nature of that is-ness, of reality, of the universe itself, that will seem to have shifted.

Unless of course it was only the d.t.’s. Rosie snatched at that explanation like a drowning woman at a piece of driftwood. Some people get pink elephants, she tried to tell herself-I get Marcus Childs sitting on my bed.

In her heart, though, she knew he was no hallucination, and when he looked up from the bed with a strange, imploring look, as if he were begging for her to recognize him, it was in her heart that the recognition of his true identity first blossomed.