I pulled a gallon or so of lamb stew out of the refrigeratorand set it to warm on the stove. Keeping three hundred pounds going takes aconsiderable amount of fuel. Then I settled into my chair, out of line of sightof any sniper outside the windows and with a clear view of the door.
I sat there, letting someone else’s problems stand between meand my own despair, letting noise soak into my bones and sour-mash whiskey soakinto my tongue, both working on the tension and that clenching sensation at thebase of my spine. Kratz. I didn’t need Kratz in my life. Again. I didn’t need any of that in my life. Not afterMaggie.
When I heard the key in the lock, my hand twitched and the SIGnotched its sights on the oak panels of the door, about chest height, before mybrain processed the sound. Music and the whiskey still had a ways to go. I laidthe pistol back down on the side table. My hand only shook a little.
It had to be Sandy. She had keys to both the locks, the onlyperson besides the building super who did. Lockpicks or magic wouldn’t havemade that sound.
The door swung in and she stood there, big and beautiful andblond, her quick glance darting to the SIG and then to me, nose wrinkled as ifshe’d smelled Kratz but hadn’t quite remembered what that stink meant. “Trouble?”
While I told her, she closed the door behind her and checkedthe locks. I could tell by her spine that she remembered now, rage and fear anddisgust coming off her in waves. She’d been my backup that afternoon. We’dtracked Kratz to that abandoned deli his father used to run. I’d followed himin, followed him up rotting cat-piss stairs to the empty apartments above, withbackup that time, all procedures followed. We’d burned the place down aroundour ears, not magic but a fire started by a tear-gas canister thrown in just toannoy him. We got out. He didn’t — clear trail going in, nothing coming out.The bastard died in the fire.
Or hadn’t.
She’d quit the force two weeks later. Showed more sense than Ihad, that’s for sure.
Then she turned back to me. “That . . . black . . .bitch. . . .” She swallowed her anger. “That’s why I smelled herat your office. She has no right to drag you back into this. You’re retirednow.”
Sandy had grown up in Mississippi, way back when. Long beforethe concept of “politically correct” hatched in the nation’s mind. “Black”equaled “nigger” in her deepest, darkest vocabulary, the words learned at hermother’s knee. Sandy had grown beyond that, but you could still see her mother’sgeneration if you looked close enough. We all have baggage we aren’t proud of.My father thought Hitler had been right about the Jews.
Dad would have lovedAl Kratz — would have fit the old man’s world-view like a glove. Probably waydeep down in some shadowy Freudian cavern of my soul, that was why I’d been so obsessive about tracking down the bastard.And why I wanted to get him now.
It isn’t pretty, but it’s part of me. At least I know it’sthere and I can fight it. Sandy was the same way about blacks. She couldn’t doa damn thing about where and when she was born, but she could wrestle with theway she acted on it.
“Al Kratz alive. Sweet suffering Jesus. . . .”
I shivered. Sandy must have stopped by my office after we leftbut before Kratz left his mockery. So close. He would have blindsided her. Shewouldn’t have had a chance.
She dumped her purse beside the door, sleep-walked her wayacross to that bottle of Tennessee whiskey, and uncapped it for a long swallowstraight from the neck.
“You mean it?”
I shrugged. “You felt him on the door. I saw it on your face.You just didn’t make the connection, because it wasn’t possible.”
She turned and stared at the door, wiping her mouth with theback of her hand. She’d probably learned that gesture from her daddy — she’ddescribed him as a Southern Baptist drunk offering his prayers on Sundaymorning with a holy hangover. More roots. Sometimes I think the human racewould do better with the way fish propagate their kind — dump the eggs on somestreambed gravel, fertilize them, and swim away. None of this nurture bit,making sure the kids get brought up with the right set of hates.
Sandy shook her head at the door, turned back, and walked overto me and grabbed my hand. “You need something to take your mind off yourtroubles.”
Afterward, I whipped up some batter and tossed it into thebubbling stew and covered it and we waited for dumpling magic. Lamb stew,simmered and then aged a few days in the refrigerator to strengthen and blendthe flavors, fragrant with garlic and tomato and onion and thyme, reheated withfresh parsley dumplings — that’s a gift for the gods. Sandy and I wiped thewhole pot clean. She ate as much as I did. Same amount of bulk as any othermage, same reasons. Calories are a measure of energy.
And then she went back to her apartment, two floors down andthe front side of the building. The sex was good but we couldn’t livetogether. Not like me and Maggie.
I’d just spent an hour in bed with one woman, and as soon asthe door clicked behind her size 20 butt, I was thinking of another. Maggie waspart of me, part of everything I did. I could still smell her signature in theapartment we’d shared, smell her on my coat and hat in an office she’d nevervisited. I’ll never live a day without thinking of her.
I poured myself another drink and lay back on the rumpledsex-sweaty sheets and stared at the ceiling, matching cracks in the ancientplaster against the street map of the city. Sandy hadn’t managed to take mymind off Al Kratz, after all. The bastard was out there, somewhere in my city,gloating, taunting.
Straight cop stuff, the city force could handle that. Cashcould handle that, interviewing everyone in sight — everyone who’d talk, thatis, with the diplomatic angle and the John Doe
