Deceit

THIRTEEN

Sam Weitz called me at work to ask if I’d like some life insurance.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because everyone should have life insurance. Didn’t you just get beat up?”

“Yeah.”

“There you go.”

“What does that have to do with anything? If I died, whom would I leave the money to?”

“You evidently aren’t up on the latest advances in the insurance paradigm. It’s not just about dying. There’s protection for long-term medical absences, for example. So you can keep getting paid. Haven’t you seen those commercials with the duck? What if you were laid up and couldn’t be a reporter anymore?”

I was tempted to tell him my salary, so he’d understand that if I couldn’t make it to my job at the Littleton Journal, I could always follow the path of upward mobility and go to work at McDonald’s.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I think I’ll forgo the insurance, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s your funeral,” he said, then added, “poor choice of words.”

“No. It’s funny.”

“Really?” he said, his voice brightening. He’d probably been called a lot of things as an insurance agent. Annoying, boring, bloodsucking-funny might’ve been a first. “Well, if you change your mind…”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“Okeydokey.”

Norma asked me if I wanted anything to eat. She was making a lunch run next door; Nate had already put in his order for moo goo gai pan and fried wontons.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

“You always say you’re not hungry, and then I have to give you half of mine because I feel God-awful sorry for you.”

“That’s me,” I said. “The proverbial object of sympathy.”

Maybe she took her cue from Hinch on that score. After all, Hinch had felt God-awful sorry enough to hire me.

“I can’t interest you in a half-pint of shrimp chow fun, huh?”

“Sure,” I said. “I could use a little more fun in my life.”

My attempt at a witticism flew right over Norma’s head.

I’d put the phone down after Sam’s call, then immediately picked it up again, only I’d forgotten whom to call. Then I realized I hadn’t forgotten, but had simply run out of possibilities.

There was no Ed Crannell listed in the entire city of Cleveland.

I’d tried everything in a hundred-mile radius and come up empty.

I wanted to ask Crannell whether the face he’d glimpsed through the oncoming windshield had been black or white.

Cleveland never heard of him.

The one in Ohio? I’d asked Crannell to be sure we were talking about the right Cleveland.

He’d nodded and told me he was a pharmaceutical salesman.

I tried that next. Wrote down every major drug company I could think of, then called each one of them and asked for an Edward Crannell.

No such salesman on payroll.

Maybe he was part-time, I suggested. Freelance?

There was a freelance saleswoman at Pfizer named Beth Crannell. Couldn’t be her I was looking for, could it?

No, it couldn’t.

Okay. There was a clear pattern developing here. No skid marks and no Ed.

I called the sheriff’s office.

He’d have all the valuable particulars from Crannell’s license. Assuming those particulars were in any way, shape, or form true. Assuming the license wasn’t bought mail-order or forged.

Sheriff Swenson wasn’t in, a female officer informed me. He would have to get back to me.

Something else was gnawing at me, of course.

I hadn’t forgotten. No. The note from Belinda Washington’s room hadn’t slipped my mind, been summarily dismissed, or relegated to the file of very strange things.

Happy hundred birthday.

Love, Benjy.

Could it have been another Benjamin?

Someone, for instance, not her dead son?

Sure. This was possible. Given the fact Benjamin Washington had died fifty years ago in the Aurora Dam Flood, even plausible.

I called Mr. Birdwell.

“Did a middle-aged black man visit Belinda before her birthday party?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” he responded.

“Well, who would know if someone visited someone in the home?”

“Guests would have to register at the front desk,” he said. “What’s all this about?”

“Trying to get hold of a relative who might’ve stopped by,” I explained. “Could you check for me?”

He sighed and said he’d get back to me.

Twenty minutes later he called and said, “No one visited Belinda in years.”

“Really? What if someone didn’t want to register at the front desk? What if they decided to just waltz in? Couldn’t they?”

“No,” Mr. Birdwell said. But he’d hesitated before saying it, and it came out defensively enough to make me think he was lying.

I drove back to the home.

I parked two blocks away in front of an aging Rexall.

I tried to ignore the midday heat. Natives are fond of noting there’s no humidity in the California desert. True. They conveniently leave out the part about the 110-degree summer temperatures, which make it feel as if you’re breathing in a sauna, and the murderous Santa Ana winds. The Santa Anas are murderous, but not in the way you might imagine. They don’t blow you away like the wolf huffing and puffing at the pigs’ door; they kill you by attrition, by blowing so incessantly that people go mad. Just ask John Wren, who’d allegedly gone Littleton loco-reclusive and squirrelly enough to barricade himself in the Littleton Journal one night, before absconding to parts unknown. It’s true. Suicide rates soar during the Santa Anas.

Speaking of suicide.

I’ll admit to contemplating it once or twice back in New York. Not seriously-not like I was about to do it that very second, the way OSS agents dropped behind enemy lines must’ve fingered the strychnine capsules sewn into the waistbands of their pants. They knew what Gestapo interrogation entailed; there had to be true comfort in knowing peace was a simple swallow away. If it got bad enough.

During my agonizing stretch as a public piñata-for a while I was assaulted by daily articles, from sensational exposés to sober treatises on how good reporters go bad-it had now and then been comforting to consider the eighteen stories from my apartment window to the graffitied sidewalk below.

When I reached the nursing home, I ignored the front door.

I meandered around the back, where an expanse of brown lawn sloped down to a muddy pond, choked with cattails and milkweed. There was a metal gate circling the backyard, but I simply reached over and flipped the latch. Evidently, Mr. Birdwell was more concerned about residents wandering out than visitors wandering in.

There was no one strolling the lawn.

This wasn’t surprising since the brutal heat would’ve been lethal for your average 80-year-old. The raucous hum of the massive air-conditioning unit sounded like an army of angry cicadas. I walked up to the back door and turned the knob.

It trickled open.

Anyone could’ve walked in this way. If they hadn’t wanted to be noticed or have their signature dutifully added to the guest register. If they’d wanted to make a surprise visit.

I walked in and was immediately enveloped by an artificial chill.

I passed two male orderlies, one of them pushing a wheelchair-bound patient who looked comatose. Neither orderly asked me what I was doing there, demanded ID, or redirected me elsewhere.

I made it all the way to Belinda’s old room.

It seemed even emptier now.

There’s something pathetic about the ease with which a room gives up its owner. Especially when it was someone who’d lived over a century.

The door across the hall creaked open. A withered man with a large liver spot on his forehead peeked out at me.

“Dan?” he said.

“No.”

“Dan, is that you, Dan?”

“No, my name’s Tom. I’m not Dan.”

“Oh.” Suddenly at sea, he retreated behind a door festooned with faded children’s drawings.

I walked in and sat down on Belinda’s old bed.

Hello, Mom. It’s Benjy. Happy birthday. I forgive you.

On the way out, I ran into Mr. Birdwell.

Literally.

I was walking with my head down, kind of mesmerized by the alternating black and white tiles in the linoleum floor, and bumped straight into him as he turned the corner of the hallway.

He didn’t seem pleased.

“What are you doing here?”

“I needed to check something.”

“Check what?”

“Whether I could get in without anyone knowing.”

Mr. Birdwell looked even less pleased than before. He folded his arms and stared at me as if I were one of his elderly charges who’d been caught disobeying a home rule. Snatching an extra cookie at snack time, or pinching a nurse’s bottom.

“Now that wasn’t very smart of you.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, that’s trespassing. I explained that you have to register at the front desk. For another thing, you didn’t get in here without anyone knowing, did you?”

“Well, I didn’t get out without anyone knowing. I’m not sure that’s the same thing. Getting in was kind of easy.”

“To what purpose? You mind telling me that?”

“I’m not doing an exposé on nursing home security, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Why don’t you let me decide what I’m worried about? You broke into my home and I’d like to know why.”

“Isn’t ‘broke’ a little dramatic? The back door was open.”

“You entered without permission.” Mr. Birdwell was getting flustered. His cheeks had reddened; he was rocking back and forth on his heels. “You think we can have anyone just walk into a nursing home filled with sick and frightened people?”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“You can have anyone walk in. I just did.”

“We’re talking in circles here, Mr. Valle.”

“I wanted to know if Belinda Washington might’ve had a visitor you didn’t know about. You said it wasn’t possible. I wanted to see if it was. That’s all.”

“What visitor?”

“I don’t know. But she had one.”

“Great. Bravo. I’m sure you’re on your way to a Pulitzer. On the other hand, the halls of journalism aren’t exactly ringing with your praises these days, Mr. Valle, are they?”

He smiled. That was the worst part, really-the smile. Not that he knew, not that he’d looked me up or talked to Swenson or bumped into Hinch and knew, but that smugly superior smile.

I had no answer for that smile. None.

Once upon a time, my dad bought me a Hardy Boys crime-detection magnifying glass on the last birthday we celebrated as a family. After he left, I would sit outside in the searing afternoon sun and train the glass on my naked palm until blisters formed and I couldn’t stand the pain.

That’s what Mr. Birdwell’s smile felt like on my quickly retreating back. It burned a hole in me.