Deceit

SIX

It must’ve glanced off my forehead.

That’s what I determined later.

That I managed to turn my head just enough to avoid a dead-on blow. Nothing really hurt then-my nerve endings were numbed by the natural Novocain of raw fear.

I must’ve touched my forehead to confirm that something had in fact hit me-I only know this because my forearm took the next shot. I went down.

I landed on a fluffy white cloud. The white shag remnant of the sixties I’d laboriously rolled up and carted downstairs upon moving in-this memory actually rattling around the head someone was trying to cave in.

He whispered something in that eerie falsetto, and came at me.

I instinctually covered up in expectation of two hundred or so pounds crash-landing on my bones. When I didn’t feel it, I picked my head up and peeked.

He was standing stock still, staring down at me.

He leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder, then smiled and took off up the stairs.

I lay there till I heard the screen door rattle shut.

You’re it.

What he’d whispered to me.

FRANK FUTILLO, MD-MY BOWLING OPPONENT OF THE OTHER NIGHT-pronounced me more or less okay.

“A contusion on your arm, a head bruise, but that’s pretty much it. What did he hit you with?”

“I don’t know. Something metal.”

I was sitting on that waxy paper that is used to cover every doctor’s examination table in America, and trying mightily not to smell the ammonia. It was a scent I forever associated with childhood falls. Only it was my brother Jimmy who was always falling.

Never me.

“Yeah, well, all in all, I’d say you got off pretty easy,” Dr. Futillo said.

“You mean compared to the average person assaulted by a stranger in their basement?”

“You talk to the sheriff about that?”

Yeah. I’d talked to the sheriff about that.

Sheriff Swenson had listened to my story of assault very much like a certain editor had listened to my increasingly outlandish exclusives during my imploding days in New York. With a tired and deflated look of disbelief. Tap dancing at Auschwitz-that’s how I’d described it later to my court-appointed therapist. On my way to the gas chambers, but soft-shoeing all the harder.

“Now, Lucas,” Sheriff Swenson said. “You looking to make the front page?”

Okay. I’d expected a little skepticism. But I was standing in the sheriff’s office with a clearly tattooed forearm and a darkening bruise on the left side of my head.

“I’m looking to make a complaint. Aren’t you supposed to do that when you’ve been assaulted?”

“Well, sure. You want to look through our mug book of homicidal plumbers?”

“That’s funny. It is. But I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t actually a plumber. Just a suspicion.”

“Right. Well, what do you think he was doing? Stealing your copper wiring?”

“I don’t know. I asked him what company he worked for and he slugged me. We never got to the specifics of his visit.”

“Too bad. The fact is… Lucas…”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” I said.

“You do? Tell me something, would you? Why’d Hinch hire you again?”

“Believe it or not, I used to be a good reporter.”

“Really? I thought it was because he’s related to your PO. I stand corrected.”

Ordinarily, I might not have minded.

That’s the thing about doing penance, as the court-appointed therapist, Dr. Payne-yeah, his real name-repeatedly drummed into me. You had to learn to accept your moral failures. That meant accepting reminders of it. It meant turning the other cheek and saying: go ahead-slug me again.

Only I’d already been hit today-twice, by someone who probably had a lot more to atone for than me. I was going to verbally swing back, to stand up for myself, when Swenson disarmed me.

“What I was going to say, Lucas… is that we’ve had a number of home break-ins lately. Apparently he carries a plumber’s kit in case he gets surprised, or a neighbor sees him strolling in. He uses it to stash whatever he walks out with. You’re not the first complaint. I was just making sure-given your past history-that you were being on the up-and-up with me. You understand?”

Sure, I understood.

I told Dr. Futillo about the burglaries.

“Apparently we have some breaking and entering going on in the neighborhood.”

“You’re lucky your skull didn’t get broken,” he said.

It occurred to me that this was the second time in two days someone was being told they were lucky when they didn’t feel that way. Ed Crannell, and me.

“Has the body been sent back?”

“What body?”

“Dennis Flaherty’s body. Was it sent back to his mother in Iowa?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely.”

“I looked up a sex offenders’ Web site.”

“Huh?” Dr. Futillo looked like someone who’d been told an intimate secret he’d rather not have been made privy to.

“The National Sex Offender Public Registry-a kind of Pedophile Central. I thought maybe our friend’s castration was court-ordered.”

“Well, was it?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t listed there.”

“Funny thing,” Dr. Futillo said, “about our friend.”

I’ve already mentioned that two things happened.

Two separate things that made me sit up and keep going instead of roll over and slip back into sleep. Which was pretty much what I’d been doing in Littleton for the past year, and two thirds.

The first was being assaulted in my own basement.

This was the second.

“What funny thing?” I said. “His castration?”

“Oh yeah, that. But something else. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say our deceased was black.”

“Huh? I thought you said he was Caucasian. White.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what it looked like on his license.”

“So?”

“His thigh bones. Longer, and thicker at the joints. A signature of the African American race.”

“You sure about that?”

“Well, I saw it on Forensic Files.”

“What?”

“I saw it on Forensic Files. On Court TV. You never watch that show?”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say our deceased was black. Only he didn’t know any better. He was a village MD playing forensic investigator, which made him only slightly more qualified than the village idiot.

“I spoke to his mother,” I said. “She didn’t sound very black. Besides, unless I’m crazy, Flaherty’s an Irish name.”

“Okay,” Dr. Futillo said.

“Okay?”

“Bones don’t lie, my friend.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you just told me your entire expertise in this area comes from TV.”

“Fine, don’t believe me.”

Funny. For just a second, I heard myself. Sitting in the office of a truly prestigious newspaper, the kind of newspaper you sweat and bleed to merely have the chance to work for, and calmly and with a perfectly straight face stating this to that weary editor sitting across from me.

Fine, don’t believe me.

It worked for a while.