Goldilocks

2

I offered Jamie our guest room, but he said he wanted to be alone, said he needed some time alone to pull himself together. He had not cried yet. I kept expecting tears, but none came. At the stoplight on the other end of the causeway, he told me he desperately needed a drink. So instead of making a left turn toward the airport and the string of small motels lining either side of the highway north, I turned right, hoping to find an open bar among those scattered along the South Trail. I was frankly dubious — but Jamie’s hands were beginning to tremble in his lap.

The eastern rim of Calusa Bay is jaggedly defined by U.S. 41, more familiarly known as the Tamiami Trail. It’s my partner Frank’s belief that “Tamiami” is redneck for “To Miami.” He may be right. If you follow 41 south, it eventually leads to Alligator Alley, which then crosses the Florida peninsula to the East Coast. I was driving south now, looking for an open bar, wondering if there might be one out on Whisper Key. There are five keys off Calusa’s mainland, but only three of them — Stone Crab, Sabal and Whisper — run north-south, paralleling the opposite shore. Flamingo Key and Lucy’s Key are situated like stepping stones across the water, connecting the mainland to Sabal and Stone Crab. Beyond the keys is the Gulf of Mexico. Sail out due west from Calusa, and eventually you’ll make landfall in Corpus Christi, Texas.

I found an open cocktail lounge just below the Cross River Shopping Center. The neon signs outside were still on, and there were several cars angle-parked against the stucco front wall of the building. But the moment we stepped inside, a waitress in a short black skirt and a low-cut white blouse said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” She seemed altogether too young and too fresh to be serving whiskey in the empty hours of the night. The bartender was pouring a fresh drink for one of the four men seated at the bar. The waitress caught my glance and said, “They’ve been here for a while, you see. Really, we’re just closing.” At the other end of the room, two young men were putting chairs up on tables and a third was beginning to mop the floor.

“Well, why don’t you just serve us till it’s time to lock up, okay?” I said, and smiled.

The waitress’s name was Sandy. It said so in white letters on a little black plastic rectangle pinned to her blouse. She said, “Well...” and looked at the bartender. The bartender shrugged philosophically, and then nodded us over to the bar. We took stools closest to the door, away from the drone of the television set. A late-night movie was showing. Something with Humphrey Bogart. I wondered if the waitress knew who Humphrey Bogart was.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked.

“Jamie?”

“Bourbon on the rocks.”

“I’ll have a Dewar’s and soda.”

The bartender nodded. On the television screen, Bogart was telling an actress I didn’t recognize that she was good, she was very good. Jamie kept staring at his hands on the bar-top, almost as if willing them to stop shaking. The bartender brought the drinks and Jamie lifted his glass at once and swallowed half the bourbon in it. He put the glass down on the bar-top, and then the tears came. I put my arm around him.

“Oh, Jesus, Matt,” he said, “I never... I never saw... oh, Jesus.”

“Take it easy,” I said.

“So much... blood, Oh, Jesus. All over the walls, she must’ve grabbed for the walls... like a damn cage... like trying to get out of a damn cage. Trapped in there with...”

“All right,” I said. “All right, Jamie, come on now.”

The drinkers lined up along the bar seemed lulled into a stupor by the television screen, but the bartender had turned to look at Jamie. I kept patting his shoulder comfortingly, and he kept sobbing and trying to choke back the sobs, and finally he took out his handkerchief and dried his eyes and blew his nose. He picked up the bourbon glass, drained it, and signaled to the bartender for a refill. As the bartender poured the fresh drink, he kept watching Jamie curiously. Even when he went back to the other end of the bar, he turned his head for a periodic look at him.

“The thing that froze me in the door... the doorway was the fury of it,” Jamie said. “The way who... whoever did it had had just ripped and slashed... Jesus, Matt, I went in there, I... Jesus...”

“Okay,” I said.

“So much blood,” he said, and began sobbing again.

“Okay, Jamie.”

“She... you know... she was my second-chance girl. I mean, how many chances do you get? Figure it out, how much time have I got left? I’m forty-six, what have I got left, another thirty years? It never works out the way you think it will, does it? Change your whole life, start a new family, never the way you think. This was my second chance, supposed to be my second chance.”

I’d known Jamie for three years. I knew, of course, that Maureen was his second wife. I knew, too, that she was a registered nurse and that she’d worked for him in his Calusa office. I’d reviewed and revised his pension plan only recently and had seen in old records the name Maureen O’Donnell listed as an employee. Moreover, shortly after their marriage, the plan had paid out an accumulated six thousand dollars in benefits to Maureen O’Donnell Purchase upon the termination of her employment. I deduced that theirs had been an office romance, and that it had led to Jamie’s divorce and subsequent remarriage. But I had never known the details of their relationship, and had never asked for them; locker room confidences are a form of male bonding I normally do not encourage.

It embarrassed me now to hear Jamie talk about personal matters he would otherwise have kept to himself. The bartender was facing the television screen, but there was something about the erectness of his head that told me he was alert to every word Jamie uttered. Across the room, one of the young men stacking the chairs said something in Spanish, and the one mopping the floor began laughing. The laughter was soft, it echoed guitars and fans and black lace shawls. The waitress looked at her watch. There was no one left at the tables to serve, I wondered why she simply didn’t go home. It occurred to me that she was waiting for the bartender.

“Fell in love with her the minute I saw her,” Jamie said, and blew his nose again. “I knew this was my second chance, Matt, the first marriage had been dead from day one. Maureen walked into that office, she’d been sent by the registry, the nurse I’d had before her was pregnant and had to leave the job. She walked in there, Jesus, I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I knew this was it, I knew I had to have her. I’d been playing around with other women for almost six years by then, but this was something else, this was... I don’t know. I’d never believed in anything like this, but it was happening, she was there, she was suddenly in my life.”

I signaled to the bartender for another drink. I didn’t need another drink, I didn’t even want another drink, but I was hopeful that a break in the conversation would turn Jamie in another direction. I truly did not want to hear about his affair with Maureen. When I was still living in Chicago, I used to see men walking along Michigan Boulevard, talking to themselves. Big cities do that to people. Once you’re reduced to anonymity, it doesn’t matter if you go around holding a spirited conversation with no one but yourself. Anybody noticing you will shake his head and say, “Crazy,” but he won’t know who’s crazy. Just some faceless lunatic ambling along in private solitary discourse, arms waving. Jamie was like that now. Ostensibly, he was talking to me; on the surface, this was a dialogue. But it was more like a monologue that flowed from somewhere in his unconscious, as if the brutal fact of murder had rendered him anonymous, the weight of the tragedy granting him both license and sanctuary.

I felt like an eavesdropper.

“My first wife was frigid, I told you that, didn’t I?” he said. The bartender was standing not a foot away from him, pouring Scotch into my glass, openly interested in Jamie’s words. Jamie seemed not to notice him. I looked up into the bartender’s face, directly into his eyes. He turned away and walked back toward where Bogart was talking to the brunette with bobbed hair.

“She was in analysis for four years, wait, five years I think it was. Yes. Woman in Tampa. Yes. You begin to think it’s your fault, do you know what I mean? Begin to think there’s something wrong with what you’re doing, she lays there like, you know, like a...” His voice trailed, I had the impression he’d been about to say “corpse.” He nodded, sipped at his drink, put the glass down again. “She came home one night, must’ve been six o’clock, a little after. I forget what time her hour was, three-thirty, four, something like that. She came in all smiles, six o’clock. Took my hand, led me into the bedroom. This was ten years ago, she was a few years late with her precious orgasm. I’d been through half her close friends by then, and was already involved with Maureen. Few years too late, my darling wife with her glorious orgasm. Too late.”

Just last month, I’d had a telephone conversation with his former wife. They still owned as joint tenants a piece of land in Sarasota, and they’d had an offer for it that was ten thousand higher than the minimum specified in their separation agreement. Betty Purchase had agreed to the deal and then abruptly backed out of it when Jamie missed sending his usual monthly alimony check. I did not know at the time that Jamie had no intention of ever paying her another cent. He mentioned that to me only after I’d had my conversation with her. On the phone, I told her if she didn’t go ahead with the sale, the real estate agent was well within his rights to sue her for his commission. She said, “Fuck you and the real estate agent.” I warned her that my client was intent on making the sale, and that if she would not agree to it as earlier promised, I would sue for a partition sale. She said, “Go ahead and sue, Charlie,” and then hung up.

“I met her at U.C.L.A.,” Jamie said. “I was going to medical school there, she was an undergraduate. You know my son Michael...”

“Yes, I do.”

“He’s got the same coloring as his mother, black hair, brown eyes. Karin’s different, she’s got my blond hair, but Michael’s the image of his mother, you couldn’t possibly mistake him for anyone else’s son. Tore him apart, the divorce did. He told me one night, he was crying in my arms, he said I’d lied to him all his life. Said that whenever his mother and I used to argue and he asked if we were getting a divorce — he used to ask that even when he was six years old — we’d always tell him, ‘No, no, people argue, that doesn’t mean divorce, that’s a healthy sign, Mike. People who don’t fight are people who don’t really care about each other.’ I used to believe that, Matt, but it’s bullshit, it really is. People who fight all the time are people having trouble.”

He sighed, drained his glass, and signaled to the bartender for a refill. The bartender was starting down the bar, collecting his tabs. The chairs were stacked, the floor was mopped, the Bogart movie had ended. The waitress in the short black skirt was tapping her foot impatiently.

“Took us eighteen months to reach a settlement,” Jamie said, “eighteen months, can you believe it? She got two hundred thousand in cash, plus the house we were living in, and thirty thousand a year in alimony. I’m a doctor, Matt, I’m not a millionaire, what she got represented everything I’d ever worked for. She sent Michael away to military school right after the divorce. Twelve years old, she sent him away. A school in Virginia. He wasn’t even there for my wedding, I couldn’t get him out of that damn school for the weekend. Betty sent him away on purpose, you can bet on that, to make sure I wouldn’t see him too often. Her whole idea was to alienate the kids, make them hate their father for the terrible thing he’d done. She succeeded with both of them.

“I once heard Karin and Michael talking together — this was Christmastime, Michael was home from that goddamn concentration camp and the kids were spending the afternoon with us. Betty had dropped them off after they’d already celebrated the holiday at her house, this was maybe three or four in the afternoon. That was her pattern. Keep the kids for herself, keep them thinking forever and always that I’d committed a heinous crime. Maureen and I were living in a small house on Stone Crab, she was already pregnant with Emily by then, this was seven years ago.

“There was a deck on the house, overhanging the beach, and when it was high tide the ocean would come right in under the pilings and the house would shake. We never could keep the sheets dry in that house, everything was always damp. The kids were out on the deck, looking at the ocean, their backs to me, I guess they didn’t hear me slide open the glass door. I heard Michael say, ‘Did you see the necklace he gave Goldilocks?’ and I realized he was referring to Maureen. That was what Betty called her. Goldilocks. And of course, the kids picked it up. There was such bitterness in Michael’s voice...”

The bartender was standing in front of him; Jamie held up his glass for a refill. When he realized the man was waiting to be paid, he blinked, and turned on the stool, and looked around the room as if he were waking from a bad dream. He was crying again when I paid the check.

I led him outside to the car. The night was still sticky and hot. I opened the door for him, and he got in and sat staring through the windshield, his hands folded in his lap. I backed the car out of the parking lot and began driving north. There was hardly any traffic at this hour of the night.

“Jamie,” I said, “the police are going to check on where you went after you left that poker game. Are you sure it was The Innside Out?”

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Because if you didn’t go there...”

“That’s where I went, Matt. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I should’ve gone straight home,” he said.

“Don’t start thinking that way, Jamie.”

“I’m as much to blame as whoever...”

“No, you’re not. Now quit it! You went to your usual poker game...”

“I left the game early...”

“You had no reason to believe anything would...”

“I should’ve gone home.”

“You went for a drink instead, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said, and turned sharply on the seat.

“I do believe you, Jamie.”

“Then why do you keep asking me where I went?”

“Only because the police...”

“The police never said a word about it. I told them where I went, and that was that. But my own lawyer...

“Come on, Jamie. You can’t believe they’re not going to check. You left the poker game at a little before eleven, and you didn’t get home till almost one. That’s a gap of two hours. And the police didn’t just let it pass. Ehrenberg asked how many drinks you’d had...”

“He was trying to find out if I was drunk. Down here, if you’ve had a drink...”

“No, it wasn’t that. Because the next thing he did was ask how long you’d been at The Innside Out. Almost an hour and a half, you told him. From eleven to twelve-twenty. Only two drinks in all that time. That’s what he was after, Jamie.”

“Well, if I had only two drinks, was I supposed to lie and say I had four?”

“Of course not. I’m simply trying to tell you that Ehrenberg considers you a suspect. And he’ll keep on thinking that way till he knows for sure just where you spent the time between eleven and one.”

“I told him where I spent the time.”

“Yes, and he’s going to check it.”

“I doubt if anyone’ll remember me. The bar was crowded, I was...”

“At eleven on a Sunday night?”

“It’s always crowded there, Matt.”

“How do you know? Do you go there regularly?”

“I go there often enough. It’s a good restaurant, they always get a crowd.”

“Do you know the people that run it?”

“No.”

“Do they know you?”

“I doubt it. They may, but I doubt it.”

“Ehrenberg’ll probably ask you for a picture, I’m second-guessing him now. He’ll want something he can show the owners, and the bartender, the cashier, whoever was there. You give him a good one when he...”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I keep telling you the man considers you a suspect, Jamie. You make sure you give him a good picture. I want somebody to remember your being there. Otherwise, he’ll be back with a lot more questions.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You keep saying okay, okay, but you keep circling back to it. Where the hell do you think I was, Matt?”

“Just where you said you were.”

“Then why do you keep asking me where I was?”

“Because... look, Jamie, I’m not a cop, I’m a lawyer. And I know when somebody’s evading a question. When Ehrenberg asked you if you or Maureen were fooling around outside the marriage, you didn’t answer him. He may have missed that, but I didn’t.”

“I answered his question, Matt.”

“No, you didn’t. You sidestepped it. You said you were happily married, but you didn’t answer the question.”

“If I didn’t answer it...”

“You didn’t.”

“It wasn’t deliberate.”

“Okay, it wasn’t deliberate. Then would you like to answer it now? For me? Privately? For your lawyer who’s trying to help?”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Okay. Straight out then. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“You said you were playing around in your former marriage...”

“Yes, but...”

“That can get to be a habit, Jamie.”

“Not if you’ve changed your whole life for someone. Do you think I’d jeopardize a chance at happiness to... to fool around with—”

“That’s what I’m asking you, Jamie.”

“The answer is no.”

“How about Maureen? Was there another man in her life?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Look, you either trust someone completely, or you don’t trust them at all.”

“And you trusted her completely, is that right?”

“Yes, Matt. Completely.”

“All right,” I said.

I kept driving till I saw the first VACANCY sign. The place was called the Magnolia Garden Motel, small and hardly distinctive, but I doubted if we could do better without reservations at the height of the season.

“Will you be all right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you for everything, Matt.”

“I’ll call in the morning. If there’s anything you need, even if it’s just to talk, pick up the phone.”

“Thank you,” he said, and shook my hand.

I left him then and began driving home. A breeze was coming up as I crossed the bridge to Stone Crab Key. I kept wondering why I still didn’t fully believe his story.