The Most Dangerous Thing

im is surprised and pleased when Gwen calls out of the blue and asks to meet him for lunch. It’s as if she has picked up on his own desire to talk about the past, about Go-Go. He asks her to meet him at the Towson Diner, in part because he likes it, but also because it’s bright and shiny, the kind of place where friends meet. He is sensitive to appearances, especially since he has begun toying with the idea of vying for state’s attorney in the next election, or maybe positioning himself for a judgeship. Gwen is a good-looking woman, and if Baltimore is a small town masquerading as a city, then Towson, the county seat, is smaller still. He never goes out for lunch or runs an errand without seeing someone from the courthouse or the police department.

Here in the Towson Diner today, he spots two homicide cops, good guys, not like the lunkheads who have handed him his latest loser of a case. Although, of course, it’s his boss who determines the assignments. He wonders if his ambition is showing. He would not run against the sitting county attorney, not unless there was a major fuck-up to exploit. That would be idiotic. Unfortunately, the time to run was probably four years ago, when his previous boss stepped down. Why didn’t he go for it then? But Tim’s late-blooming ambition has been fueled by watching someone no smarter than he is do the job. Now he knows he can do it. He doubted himself before.

Tim has often doubted himself, and although he hates the whole blame-your-parents school of thought, especially since he is now a parent, he can’t help thinking it would have been nice if his father and mother had been a little more rah-rah on his behalf. He was once doing something idiotic, and his father called him stupid. Doris, parroting advice gleaned from a woman’s magazine or daytime talk show, said: “They say you should never call children stupid, but say that their actions are stupid.” Tim Senior took his oldest son’s full measure with his eyes and said: “This is a stupid child.”

Of course, Tim was tough-skinned, a good foil. Go-Go was so crazed that a statement like that wouldn’t land as a joke. And Tim has never doubted it was a joke. His old man had his moments, dry and inappropriate as his humor might have been. If his father had been around for the Twitter generation, he definitely could have been the hero of Shit My Dad Says. He was anti-PC before there was PC.

Sean, for all his confidence, was a sensitive little shit, could not stand for the joke to be on him. So it fell to Tim to be the butt of most family punch lines. Tim and Doris, to be fair. They all ganged up on her. She was the odd woman out, the spokeswoman for cleanliness and sanity and don’t-play-ball-in-the-house. Tim loves his daughters, but he wouldn’t have minded one son, if only so that there would be someone in the household he actually understood on a regular basis.

Gwen breezes through the door and catches almost everyone’s gaze, especially the younger homicide cop, a total hound of a guy. Tim has logged a lot of hours in courthouse corridors, passing time by listening to this guy’s exploits, as his sergeant likes to call the guy’s one-night stands. “Tell us about your latest exploit .”

The stories were funnier before Tim’s daughters started growing up.

There is a moment of awkwardness when Tim and Gwen greet each other. At Go-Go’s funeral, an embrace had been the proper thing, but here-she starts to shake his hand, then almost kisses his cheek, only to pull back, lets him kiss her cheek.

“Not a very diet-friendly menu,” she says, studying the laminated place mats.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Tim says. If anything, he thinks that she should put on a few pounds. Her slenderness looks a little rough, the result of stress. He doesn’t think Gwen was really meant to be thin.

“I’ve been worrying about my weight for most of my life. If I stop, I won’t know what to do with myself. Cottage cheese and a pear! I love that. Did I enter a time machine?”

Tim knows she’s making fun of the diner, not him, yet he feels a little mocked. So it’s not tapas or sushi, or whatever the fuck she eats most days. It’s good, honest food.

“What the hell, I’ll have an open-face turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes, gravy, and a fountain Coke. What’s the point of coming to a diner if one doesn’t eat diner food? Seize the day. One never knows-” Her voice trails off, and Tim doesn’t have to ask where her train of thought is headed.

“What’s the point?” he echoes. “And what’s the point of this meeting? You promised it wasn’t work related. You know my office doesn’t do the glory hog thing. I’m not going to talk about my current case.”

“No, although if you did want to talk-” She gives him a mischievous smile. “It is awfully interesting. If you ever do decide to spill the beans, I expect you to honor your old friend with the story.”

“Are we old friends, or once-upon-a-time friends? We haven’t really stayed in touch.”

Gwen shrugs. “When you’re friends as kids, it never really ends, does it?”

“Sure it does. Childhood friendships end all the time. I see it with my girls. Friendships end, romances end, half of all marriages end. Family’s the only thing that’s forever, and I’m not even sure about that sometimes.”

“I’m here about family, actually. Your family.” She studies the photo of the open-face sandwich on the menu, as if she might not recognize it when it arrives. “Did you know that a private investigator tried to get in touch with Go-Go earlier this year?”

Tim, by dint of his profession, is used to treating conversations as poker games. Surprised by Gwen’s information, he automatically reverts to state’s attorney’s mode, guarding his emotions. “Where did you hear that?” It’s a calculated phrase. He’s not admitting that Gwen knows something he doesn’t and he wants to find out more before he commits himself.

“I ran into his ex-wife, and she told me. It’s why she threw him out. A PI kept calling, saying she needed to talk to him, that someone from his past needed him. But he wouldn’t talk to the PI and he wouldn’t tell Lori what was going on. She decided he must be cheating on her and threw him out.”

“That’s her story.”

“Well-yes.”

Tim has enough information now to stake out his territory. Some would say he’s being the devil’s advocate, but as he sees it, he’s standing up for his brother, who isn’t here to defend himself. “Did it ever occur to you that Lori wants to revise their history? She threw him out, he started drinking again, he ended up dead. She doesn’t want to be responsible.”

“Yes, but why confide in me?”

“Because here you are, sharing it with his brother. She saw you at the funeral, she knows there’s some connection. She’s trying to get back on my mother’s good side.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why does she need to be on your mother’s good side?”

“For one thing, my mother essentially owns the house she lives in. She loaned Go-Go the money to buy it. She could call in the note.”

“Grandmothers don’t do that to their grandchildren, no matter how they feel about their daughters-in-law. Lori is the one who has the power in this situation. She could sell the house and move away. She can keep your mom from seeing the girls. Anyway, I assume you know your sister-in-law better than I do, but that strikes me as way too devious for her. She’s pretty direct.”

Tim is ready to counter-to say he does, in fact, know Lori better than Gwen, to ask who she is to presume to tell him about his family, his sister-in-law-but he starts to laugh instead.

“What?”

“It’s like we’re kids again. This is how we argued then.”

Gwen laughs, too. “So maybe we are still friends.”

“Maybe.” He can’t go that far. As Gwen said, it’s like entering a time machine. They went into the past there for a moment. But they can’t stay there. He doesn’t want to stay there.

“Look, Tim, the reason I called you is because-this private detective. What if she was hired by his family?”

He is confused by the pronoun. “Go-Go’s? My mom, you mean?”

“No.” She lowers her voice and leans toward him. He wishes she wouldn’t. Her posture is a secret personified. He leans back, crosses his arms. “ His . Him. From the woods.”

It takes another second to process. “He didn’t have any family.”

“That we know of. But he would disappear, remember? Why did he disappear? I never really thought about it, but chances are that a family member would intervene from time to time, if his health was jeopardized. They’d get a judge to put him in a hospital for his own good, but then he would sign himself out. I know it was easier to