Goodnight, Irene

36

ITURNED ON THE RADIO and listened to rock and roll from the modern world so that I wouldn’t sing oldies all day. It was a good day for a drive down to the beach. I pulled up in Frank’s driveway and went to the door. He opened it, and I must confess to giving him a very unladylike stare. Barbara would have been appalled. But she wasn’t looking at Frank’s legs for the first time.

He was wearing a pair of shorts and some sandals, and his legs were tanned and muscular. He had on a T-shirt that didn’t make the top half look so bad either. Yowza.

By the time I got up to his broken nose and bruised eyes, I realized that I was being pretty obvious in my assessment of him.

“Hi,” I said, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. “Been out in the sun?”

“Just out back for a few minutes. Are you up for a walk on the beach? If I don’t get out of the house for a little while, I’m going to start climbing the walls.”

“A walk sounds great.”

He closed up the house and we made our way down to the beach at an easy pace. Frank walked a little slow and still seemed a little stiff because of the ribs, but he was moving around a lot better than the day before.

We reached the boardwalk, where a double stream of humanity strolled in each direction past food vendors, street musicians, and little booths offering sunglasses, beachwear, jewelry, sandals, and every kind of T-shirt imaginable. We forded the stream without getting jostled, a real accomplishment. Of course, Frank looked as if he had just stepped out of a boxing ring, so people tended to back off from him.

“Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?” he asked, noticing their reactions. “Once I’ve shaved, I tend to forget that I look like this.”

“Not embarrassed in the least. Besides, I figure you earned some of those bruises on my behalf.”

“Just the way things happened.”

“No sale, but the modesty does make you more charming.”

“You are impossible.”

“No, but I’m not easy either.”

He shook his head as if to say he gave up, and we started walking again, this time winding our way between bodies tanning on towels. The soft sand was harder for him to manage. I could see he was relieved when we made it to the wet, firm sand near the waves. I stopped to tie my shoes. He watched me, and smiled.

“I can’t believe it. You still don’t know how to tie your shoes.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, though I knew exactly what he meant.

“I just remember that in Bakersfield, you always had trouble keeping your shoes tied. I remember figuring out that you tied them backward-you’re the only person I know with shoestring dyslexia.”

“Blame my father. I learned to tie shoes by tying his for him in the morning before he went to work. So I still tie them as if they were on someone else’s feet.”

“Yeah, but how long ago was that?”

“Never mind how long ago. Besides, they come untied because I step on my own laces.”

“I can see how it would make you feel better to believe that,” he laughed.

“You better quit it, Frank, you’ll make your ribs sore again.”

“Tell you what-let’s take our shoes off-then we won’t be interrupted all the time while we walk.” He eased himself down onto the sand, and we took off our shoes. It felt good, sitting there in the warm sand, a few feet out of the reach of the waves.

“Seems like I spent whole summers running around barefoot,” I said.

“I can see why.”

“Enough about the shoelaces, already.”

“Okay, okay. I spent whole summers barefoot, too. Drove my mother nuts. ‘You’ll step on a piece of glass!’ she’d say, or ‘People will think I don’t buy you shoes.’ But after the first week or so, my feet were so tough I could have walked on razor blades.”

“My mother used to say the same things to me. Barbara would be inside, trying on my mother’s high heels, and I’d be barefoot, climbing the tree in the front yard.”

“You had lunch with Barbara, didn’t you? How’s she doing?”

“Other than the fact that she spends too much time sitting there staring at four walls and trying to cheer Kenny up, she seems all right. We actually got along with one another today. I don’t know. We’ve never been real close, but we were okay until my father’s illness; then Dad died and she got married to Kenny, and except for a brief spell after Kenny dumped her, we haven’t had much to do with each other. We always seem to get on each other’s nerves.”

“I didn’t know your dad had died,” he said.

“It was before you moved down here, about seven years ago. He had a long fight with cancer.”

“I’m sorry.” He was quiet for a minute, watching the waves. “My dad died three years ago.”

I looked over at him.

“I guess I should be grateful,” he said. “It was quick. He had a heart attack.”

“Not any easier on you.”

He was quiet for a long time, but then said, “Maybe not.”

“How’s your sister?”

“Cassie? She’s doing great. She and my mom still live in Bakersfield. She’s married and has two kids.”

“Two kids? Your little sister has two kids?”

“Two boys, four and six-Brian and Michael Junior-hellions, both of them. But I’m crazy about them. Her husband is with the Highway Patrol. Cassie did okay by marrying Mike-he’s good to her. We’ve turned out to be one of those real cop families: my dad, Mike, and me.”

For a long while, we didn’t say anything.

“You know what’s crazy?” I asked.

“Yeah-the fact that we didn’t get in touch with each other more often.”

“Right.”

We watched a big black dog dive into the waves, swimming after a Frisbee. He returned soaked and sandy, but carrying his trophy proudly, prancing back to his owner, whom he showered with ocean water as he shook his dripping coat.

“I guess we could have tried harder,” Frank said.

“I don’t know. Timing was bad, I guess. We get to know each other, I move down here. You move down here, but you’re with somebody. You get in touch with me, but by then I’m with somebody.”

“What happened to that guy?”

“Greg?” I asked, grimacing. Greg, the man I was seeing around the time Frank returned to Las Piernas, was part of my Dating Hall of Shame. “In a word, nothing. I got tired of nothing and we broke it off. He just never got his act together. I think I was going through one of my desperate periods when I hooked up with him.”

“I can’t imagine you being desperate.”

I laughed. “Believe me, Frank, I have. And I ended up with some real doozies. True disaster cases. I pride myself on the fact that it has been a while since it happened. Maybe I matured enough to figure out that it was better to just ride out any panic I was feeling about being alone.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You do?”

“You think that only happens to women or something? I think it’s almost a universal experience for anyone who’s single long enough.”

“I guess you’re right. You were pretty serious about somebody for a while, weren’t you?” Of course, I was pretending Pete hadn’t already given me the salient details about the woman who lured Frank to Las Piernas.

“Yeah. Her name was Cecilia. She was with the Highway Patrol. I transferred down here to be with her, then she decided to go back to Bakersfield. It was just as well.”

“I suppose I should be grateful to her.”

He looked at me. “You don’t have to be grateful to anybody.” He looked back out at the water, suddenly self-conscious. “I should have looked you up again. I’ve thought about it lots of times.”

“Yeah, I thought about you, too. Guess I didn’t want to find out you were married or in some steamy romance with somebody.”

He laughed. “I’ve come close to being a monk.”

I decided not to reply that close only counts in horseshoes. I also decided I’d be better off not recounting the details of my last decade.

A big wave hit the shore and came within inches of soaking our behinds.

“Time to move on?” I asked.

“Sure.”

We started an easy stroll toward the pier. It took a while, but we made it there just as the afternoon winds were starting to come up. I could see that his ribs were bothering him by the way he walked, and that he was starting to wear down.

“Let’s take the boardwalk back,” I suggested, seeing that the afternoon crowd had thinned out.

“Okay,” he said, and took my hand. We walked like that all the way back to the house, not saying a word, just watching people. I had noticed earlier that Frank had the cop’s habit of casually but constantly taking in all that was happening around him.

When we got to the house, I followed him into the kitchen, where he opened a fairly empty refrigerator, then asked me if I had plans for dinner.

“No, but you look tired. Why don’t I run to the store and pick up some groceries-I’ll make something for us here.”

“I’ll go with you. I’m enjoying being out.”

He looked pretty beat to me, but I said, “Okay.”

“If you won’t call me a yuppie, I’ll invite you to sit in the hot tub later on.”

“So that’s what’s in the corner of your yard. Yuppie, huh? You’re not exactly in one of those lines of work they classify as ‘yuppie.’ I’ll have to stop at my house and get my suit.”

“Okay, great. Hang on a second.” He walked down the hall into one of the bedrooms while I waited. It took him a while to come back out.

When he did, he had his shoulder holster and gun on. I have to admit that it took my mood down a notch.

He caught the change and said, “I just want to make sure you’re safe while we’re over there.”

“It makes sense, I just wasn’t thinking along those lines.”

He put on a windbreaker and we walked out to the car. He had a hard time lowering himself into my little convertible. He managed it, though, and said, “God, I miss my old Volvo.”

“Sorry, Frank. You’re at the mercy of those of us who still have their wheels.” I backed out as gently as I could, not wanting to jar him around any more than I had to. But he seemed so glad to be out of the house, I don’t think he would have noticed.

“You’re not supposed to be doing this yet, are you?” I asked.

“That just makes it more fun,” he said.

When we got to my house, I was worried about him trying to get in and out of the car again.

“Why don’t you stay here-I’ll only be a minute.”

“Get real,” he said, and shoved himself up out of the seat. Except for a kind of exhaling noise he made when he stood outside the car, he wasn’t going to show me that it bothered him. I decided not to comment on it.

I wasn’t so shocked by the appearance of the house this time. I unlocked the door, but Frank made me wait while he checked the house. “It’s okay,” he said at last. He walked to the back of the house with me, and I thought he was going to follow me around, but he was going toward the back door. He opened it and checked out the door and lock. “The guy was smooth, I’ll say that for him.”

“Pete told you what happened?”

“Yeah.” He was looking out at the backyard. “Roses,” he said, as if he were a thousand miles away.

“Isn’t that supposed to be ‘Rosebud’?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Sorry. I was just thinking about pesticides.”

“You think there’s some kind of bug in my roses? I know my garden doesn’t look half as snazzy as yours, so I’m open to suggestions.”

“No, it’s something that Hernandez told me today. They’ve identified what killed the guy you saw in Phoenix-the one you call Hawkeyes. It was nicotine poisoning.”

“He died from smoking?”

“No, he didn’t smoke. Nicotine is very toxic. Someone put it in his after-shave-it’s been done before. If you absorb nicotine into your skin at a high-enough dosage-and it doesn’t have to be very high-you’re a goner.”

“Someone poisoned his after-shave?”

“Yeah. Weird. But like I said, it’s been done before. Hernandez said there was a famous case in England-woman did her husband in the same way.”

“So where do you get nicotine? Boil cigarettes?”

“I suppose you could, but I’m not sure. Hernandez said it’s sometimes used as a pesticide-especially on roses. I was just thinking that it would be easier to trace if it was a pesticide for something a little rarer than roses.”

“So he knew whoever killed him?”

“Most victims know their killers.”

“Hard for me to think of him as a victim.”

“I know what you mean. I’d say he probably did know the poisoner. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment kind of murder. It would take planning, knowledge of Hawkeyes’s habits, where he lived, when he’d be away long enough to gain access to his house to poison the after-shave. Maybe it was given as a gift, knowing sooner or later he’d use it. I don’t know what the level of nicotine was, but someone would probably not try it with a smoker except in a heavy dose-smokers sometimes develop a level of tolerance to nicotine. The poisoner also had to have some idea of his taste in after-shave. No use dosing something he’d never use.”

“Do you know who Hawkeyes was?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’ve identified him. He had a record. Even had a conviction on a prior use of the trick with the hot iron on the feet. His name was Alf Bryant. Very twisted kind of guy. Apparently somebody didn’t want him talking about his recent work on their behalf.”

He looked out the back-door screen, making me think about the possibility that this “twisted guy” had been in my house while I was taking a shower.

Frank looked over at me. “Don’t think about it anymore. Not today-I’ll quit bringing it up.”

“I’m okay. I’ll get my suit.”

WE LOCKED UP and drove over to the store. There was some fresh swordfish on sale, so we picked up a couple of steaks of it, a cold bottle of fumй blanc, and salad fixings. After a brief hassle at the checkout stand, we agreed to split the bill.

It was starting to get dark by the time we got back to his house. While Frank opened the wine, I made a call to the paper to make sure the story about the nicotine poisoning had gotten out of the coroner’s office. They had heard about it and already had someone working on it.

We let the swordfish cook on the grill while we made the salad. We ate outside on the patio. The warm evening air was redolent with honeysuckle.

“Great dinner,” he said.

“My compliments to the co-chef.”

We finished the wine and cleaned up.

“We should wait awhile before sitting in that hot tub,” he said. He turned the radio on to a classical station. “This okay?”

“Fine.” I don’t know what it was, but it was gentle and soothing. I sat down on the couch next to him. He was rubbing his forehead. “Headache?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Lie down with your head in my lap.”

He gave me a look that said “What are you up to?” but he did it. A long time ago, a friend of mine taught me a few things about massage-the genuine article. One type of massage is great for headaches. Keeping in mind that he had some tender spots from the accident and that his concussion was probably causing the headaches, I very gently started rubbing his forehead, his neck and shoulders, and the area behind his ears.

“That feels great,” he said.

“Good. Let me know if I hurt you-I’m trying to avoid the bruises.”

“You’re doing fine.”

He closed his eyes, and within about two minutes was fast asleep.

“I knew you were worn out,” I whispered.

I watched him for a long time. After a while my feet started to tingle from lack of circulation, but I held off waking him.

He moved a little and I guess that woke him up. He seemed a little startled at first, then relaxed. “Well, I’m an exciting kind of guy to be around. You’ve probably spent more time around me asleep than awake this week.”

“You’re a guy who was in the hospital a couple of days ago. Why don’t you call it a night? The concussion, wine, and hot tub might not be such a great combination right now anyway.”

He reached up and traced my brow. “You’ll take a rain check?”

“It’s a deal.”

He dropped his hand to cover a yawn.

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll admit to being dead tired and a little achy and thank you for being understanding.”

We said goodnight and I left.

As I crawled into bed later that night, I thought about how I had made it through two days in a row in a fairly peaceful fashion. Cody jumped in with me and I snuggled close to him. I felt good all over. I don’t know how I could go from feeling so good to the nightmare, but that night I dreamed that someone was trying to cut off my hands and feet.