Legal Tender

21

Bill’s eyes were wide open in a face that looked frozen, and his skin had the unmistakable gray-white of a corpse. Blood caked in a parched river from his nose and dried over his child’s freckles, staining his shirt brown and soaking stiff a shabby plaid bedspread. I couldn’t believe my eyes, even as they moved down his body.

A twisted pink balloon was wrapped around his upper arm like a tourniquet. It was jarringly out of place, cheery and bright, next to a lethal syringe still stuck in the crook of his arm. The balloon was still taut, so Bill’s forearm was the only part of his body that had blood in it. It was red and grotesquely swollen to the size of a club, rendering his fingers shapeless and puffy. Lying beside him on the bed was a plastic Baggie.

I backed against the bedroom door. My eyes smarted but I couldn’t look away. Bill, on drugs? An overdose? Was it possible?

“Miaow?” asked the kitten. It had jumped to the bed and was futilely rubbing against Bill’s too-pale leg.

Bill hadn’t been the type to do drugs. Had he just become despondent, or made a mistake? Maybe whatever happened with Eileen and the CEO had set him off. I remembered Mrs. Zoeller. Bill was her only child. If only I’d gotten here sooner. If only I hadn’t gotten lost.

Why had he died?

I forced my brain to function. I flashed on Bill at the stationhouse, his arms flabby and white in his jumpsuit. Weren’t his arms clean when I saw them? I’d had a client, a former heroin addict, and he’d showed me his arms once. They were so bumpy with scar tissue they looked like Amtrak’s eastern corridor.

“Miaow?” said the cat, pacing back and forth on the bed.

I fought back my emotions and leaned over Bill’s body, catching a scent of blood and feces. His arms lay stiff at his sides, and I squinted at them. No needle tracks on either one. It didn’t make sense. Was it the first time Bill had tried heroin? How likely was that? What about Eileen, did she have something to do with this? Who else did Bill know?

“Miaow!”

I looked around the bedroom. There was a bare night table and a cheap dresser with some paperbacks on top, next to an Ace comb. There was no sign to reveal what had happened. Beyond the dresser was the bathroom, and I crossed to it and peered inside. A tube of toothpaste and one of Clearasil sat on the tiny, dirty sink. There was no medicine chest, just a toilet and an old frameless mirror, its silvering wrinkled.

I faced the bedroom and poor Bill’s body on the bed. My heart felt heavy, my chest tight. From all outward appearances, he had sat at the end of the bed, mixed himself his first hit of heroin, then flopped backwards, dead of an overdose.

“Miaow! Miaow!”

“Oh, shut up,” I shouted at the animal, instantly regretting it. It was Bill’s, after all. I picked it up from the bed. It felt frail and bony, but I found myself hugging it. It gave more comfort than I expected, or knew I needed. I took one last look at Bill and a fruitless look around the cabin, then retrieved the CD and left.

I struggled back through the woods with the kitten’s flimsy claws stuck in my suit. Rain drenched us until I finally got a bead on the glow-in-the-dark Camaro. I headed toward it herky-jerky, confused and distracted, thinking about Bill. I’d have to call Mrs. Zoeller. To hell with my cell phone records, her son was dead. I dreaded how she’d take the news. I reached the car, pried the kitten off, and dialed the Zoellers.

“Murderer!” she screamed, as soon as I told her.

“What?” I asked, stunned.

“Murderer!”It came out like a scream of anguish.

“No-”

“You killed him! Bill? Bill? Oh God, Bill!”

“No, wait. I didn’t kill him, nobody killed him. He overdosed, I saw the needle!”

“Overdosed? Bill never took drugs a day in his life! Never! You killed him and made it look like he did drugs!”

“No! He must have-”

“Never! With a needle? Never!” She burst into sobs. “Bill fainted… when he saw blood, all his life! They couldn’t… put anything in his arm without him lying down first, even the school nurse!”

My heart stopped in the cold, dark car. She was confirming something I hadn’t allowed myself to suspect. Mark murdered and now Bill? Where did the CEO fit in? I felt sick inside.

“His stepfather always called him a… sissy on account of it, but he wasn’t! He wasn’t! You killed him! You said you were going to help him but you went up there to… to… kill him!”

“Mrs. Zoeller, why would I do that? It makes no sense!”

“Bill knew you killed that company president! He was gonna tell the police… and you killed him! Gus? Gus, call the police! Call 911!”

I hung up the phone, my hand shaking. I slammed the car key into the ignition and roared out of there.

I had to get away. Fast. Faster. I careened through the woods, tearing up the road I hoped led out. My high beams swung in an arc on wet tree trunks as I took the curves. In time the dirt and rocks under my tires turned to asphalt and I was rolling. Out of the woods. Gone. The rearview was clear and the hammer to the floor.

The next few hours were a dark blur of rain and fear as I sped down the slick highway. I watched the rearview for cops, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d seen and heard. Bill fainted at the sight of blood and there were no needle tracks in his arms. It was a murder set up to look like an overdose. Who had done it? Was it connected to Mark? I sensed it was, but didn’t know how. It made me more determined than ever to find out what was going on.

I clicked on the car radio for the news. Would they announce the murder? They didn’t have enough to charge me with, did they? I accelerated despite the yellow caution signs. I knew where I was going, I had decided almost as soon as I started the car. I’d felt out of place the whole time I’d been out west. The country, the woods, inland. I got lost out here. I didn’t fit in, with my tailored suit and pumps. I was out of my element, a rower out of water.

I needed to get back to Philly. It was the most risky place for me, but it was also the only place I had any leverage. I’d lived there all my life. Knew its neighborhoods, its ways, its accents. I could disappear there, I knew how. What place is more anonymous than a city? What person more forgettable than a lawyer in a suit?

Going where the weather suits my clothes. I drove into the night and the storm and the fear, Midnight Cowboy with an attitude.