Final Breath

'He sounded scared,' she replied.

'A lot of them are paranoid. If he ever calls again, just hang up on him.'

He called again--two nights later. Joe was home, watching My Name Is Earl with Eli. Sydney was washing the dinner dishes when the phone rang. She checked the caller ID: 773-555-4159-- ARTHUR POLLARD.

Though she didn't recognize the name or remember the number, Sydney picked up. 'Yes, hello?'

'Mrs. McCloud?' said the man on the other end of the line. 'It's Polly--from the other night? Remember me? Is Joe home tonight? I really gotta talk to him.'

She hesitated. 'Um, I--I'll see if he can come to the phone. Hold on for a second.' Sydney put down the receiver, and hurried into the family room, where they'd switched off most of the lights. Joe, in sweatpants and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt, was in his recliner. Eli was stretched out on the floor in front of the TV. They were both laughing.

'Honey, there's a call for you,' Sydney said. 'It's that Polly character who called on Tuesday night.'

Joe glanced at her, and the smile ran away from his face. Getting to his feet, he brushed past her on his way out of the room. 'I'll take it in my office,' he muttered. 'Can you hang it up for me, babe?'

Sydney listened to him lumbering up to the second floor. His office was a small room at the top of the stairs. She went back to the kitchen, picked up the receiver, and listened. 'Okay, I got it, thanks,' Joe said on the other extension.

Sydney hung up, and then wandered over to the bottom of the stairs. She could hear Joe talking quietly, but the words were undecipherable. Only once did he raise his voice. 'Polly, I'm sorry!' he said loudly. 'Goddamn it, I'm in no position....'

She didn't feel right eavesdropping. Retreating to the darkened family room, she stood in the doorway and watched TV with Eli. A minute later, she heard Joe come down the steps. Sydney glanced over her shoulder at him. 'So--was he a crank?' she asked, under her breath.

'He has no business calling here,' Joe growled. 'If he calls again, hang up on him.'

He settled back down in his lounge chair. Something happened on the show that sent Eli into fits of laughter. Sydney glanced over at her husband--the light from the TV flickered across his handsome face. He didn't even smile.

Polly didn't call again.

The following Saturday morning--two days later--a headline on page three of The Chicago Tribune caught her eye. Sydney read the newspaper every morning for any human interest stories that might make for a good Movers & Shakers segment. She didn't know why she decided to read the article. It wasn't exactly the kind of subject matter she covered in her Movers & Shakers reports:

SHOOTING VICTIM FOUND IN WOODLAWN DUMPSTER

Murder Could Be Drug-Related, Say Police

CHICAGO : Rochelle Johnson, 23, a clerk at E-Zee

Mart Liquor on Martin Luther King Drive, made a grisly discovery Friday afternoon while emptying the garbage in a Dumpster behind the store. 'I saw this hand sticking out of a big garbage bag,' said Johnson, who immediately called the police.

Arriving at the scene at 3:20 P . M ., Chicago police found the body of a Cicero man, Arthur Pollard, 30. He had been shot three times. Early reports from the Cook County Coroner's Office estimate that Pollard had been killed sometime between midnight and 7 A . M . Friday.

Pollard, a part-time bartender at Anthony's Cha-Cha Lounge in Cicero, was well known to Chicago Police. Since 2001, he had been arrested nine times and convicted twice...

The article went on to list Arthur Pollard's criminal record, which included a stint in Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet for breaking and entering, and another at Stateville Correctional Center for possession of narcotics with intent to sell. The narcotic in this case was heroin. Most of Arthur Pollard's arrests were drug-related.

According to the article, the police were following several leads.

Sydney wondered if Joe was involved in the investigation. If so, why didn't he say anything to her? She couldn't get over the fact that Polly had phoned their home Thursday night at eight o'clock, and a few hours later, he was dead--with three bullets in him.

Joe was cleaning out their garage that Saturday morning. He was always in there; they probably had the cleanest garage on North Spaulding Avenue.

Sydney threw on a sweater and took the newspaper outside with her. She found Joe on a ladder, rearranging boxes of Christmas decorations on the top shelf of a storage area he'd built in the garage. 'Honey, did you know about this?' she asked.

'Know about what, babe?' he replied, climbing down the step ladder.

She gave him the folded Tribune, and pointed to the article at the bottom of page three. 'Isn't that the guy who called here the other night?'

He glanced at the article for a few moments. Then he sighed, and handed the newspaper back to her. 'Yeah, I heard about it yesterday afternoon. I knew sooner or later that sorry son of a bitch would get himself killed.' He glanced at his wristwatch. 'It's a quarter to eleven. When does Eli need to be picked up at school?'

'Basketball practice goes until 11:30,' she answered numbly. 'You've got plenty of time.'

Joe folded up the ladder and leaned it against the wall. 'Think I'll grab a shower.'

Sydney looked at the newspaper again. 'So why did he call here the other night?'

'Who?' Joe asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

'Arthur Pollard...Polly,' she said. 'I keep thinking about how scared he sounded. When he called the first time, he was afraid to go home.'

Joe kissed her cheek as he walked past her. 'Honey, I deal with this kind of stuff all the time at work. The guy was thirty-one flavors of trouble, and most of it he'd brought on himself. You shouldn't let it concern you.'

'But he called here, Joe. It sounded like he wanted your help. Did he--'

'Can we just drop it?' Joe said, cutting her off. He shook his head. 'Christ on a crutch, it's the weekend. I don't want to think about this shit right now. And it doesn't even concern you.'

Her mouth open, she watched him turn away and stomp into the house.

Sydney remembered thinking at the time that Joe was hiding something from her, something horrible.

'It doesn't concern you.'

She used that same line whenever Eli asked why she and his father were apart now. Funny, she hadn't been satisfied with that answer. She'd gone behind Joe's back, and started digging up what she could about Arthur 'Polly' Pollard. And what she'd found wrecked their lives.

What in the world made her think 'It doesn't concern you' would work on Eli?

She glanced at her son in the passenger seat. He'd put in his earphones and was listening to his iPod, completely tuning her out.

Sydney saw the temporary sign posted along Auburn's Highway 167. Balloons tied to the sign fluttered in the summer breeze:

VALUCO GRAND OPENING!

Fun Fair, Refreshments + Rides!

Celebrity Guests!

NEXT RIGHT

Sydney switched on her turn signal. 'Shit,' she muttered, knowing Eli couldn't hear.

'I'm really thrilled to be here today,' his mother announced. Thanks to the mike, her voice carried across ValuCo's vast parking area to the fun fair in the neighboring lot--over all the music, the people laughing and screaming, and the incessant honking of several car horns. Parking was a nightmare. His mom stood on a platform near the store's front entrance. Behind her sat the other local celebrities drafted into this shindig. They had some television news cameras aimed at her. Eli guessed about two thousand people were there, and among those, at least three hundred were listening to his mother. He wasn't one of them.

He clicked his iPod back on, and wandered across the lot to the fun fair. His mom had given him twenty-five bucks to go on as many rides as he wanted. He'd already tried their Crack the Whip roller-coaster ride, and it had