Live Wire

20

The address in Kasselton was a four-store strip mall anchored by a Kings Supermarket. The other three storefronts housed a Renato’s Pizzeria, a make-your-own ice cream parlor called SnowCap, and an old-school barbershop dubbed “Sal and Shorty Joe’s Hair-Clipping,” complete with the classic red-and-white pole out front.

So why had Suzze come out here?

There were, of course, supermarkets and ice cream parlors and pizzerias far closer to her home and somehow Myron doubted that either Sal or Shorty Joe did Suzze’s hair. So why drive out this way? Myron stood there and waited for the answer to come to him. Two minutes passed. The answer did not arrive, so Myron decided to give it a nudge.

He started with the Kings Supermarket. Not sure what else to do, he flashed a picture of Suzze T around and asked whether anyone had seen her. Working old-school. Like Sal and Shorty Joe. A few people recognized Suzze from her tennis days. A few had seen her on the news last night and assumed Myron was a cop, an assumption he did little to correct. In the end though, no one had seen her in the supermarket.

Strike one.

Myron headed back outside. He looked out at the parking lot. Best odds? Suzze had driven here for a drug buy. Drug dealers, especially in suburbia, used public lots all the time. You park your cars side by side, open front windows, someone tosses money from one car to another, someone tosses drugs back.

He tried to picture it. Suzze, the woman who had told him the night before about secrets and worried about being too competitive, all eight months pregnant of her, the woman who walked into his office two days earlier saying, “I’m so damn happy”-that Suzze had driven out to this strip mall to buy enough heroin to kill herself?

Sorry, no, Myron wasn’t buying it.

Maybe she was meeting someone else, not a drug dealer, in this lot. Maybe, maybe not. Great detective work so far. Okay, there was still work to be done. Renato’s Pizzeria was closed. The barbershop, however, was doing business. Through the storefront window, Myron could see the older men jabbering away, arguing in that good-natured ways guys do, looking remarkably content. He turned to SnowCap ice cream parlor. Someone was hanging up a sign: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAUREN! Girls, probably around the age of eight, maybe nine, were heading inside toting birthday presents. Their mothers held their hands, exhausted, harried, happy.

Suzze’s voice: “I’m so damned happy.”

This, he thought, looking at the mothers, should have been Suzze’s life. It would have been. It was what Suzze wanted. People do dumb things. They throw away happiness as though it were a soiled napkin. That could have been what happened here-Suzze, so close to true joy, messed it up as was her wont.

He looked through the parlor’s front window and watched the little girls pull away from their mothers and greet one another with squeals and hugs. The parlor was a swirl of colors and movement. The mothers moved to the corner with the coffee urn. Myron again tried to picture Suzze here, where she belonged, when he noticed a man standing behind the counter, staring at him. The man was older, midsixties, with the middle-management belly spread and citation-worthy comb-over. He stared at Myron through glasses that were a touch too fashionable, like something a hip urban architect might sport, and he kept pushing them back up his nose.

The manager, Myron figured. Probably always looking out the window like this, guarding the grounds, a busybody. Perfect. Myron approached the door with Suzze T’s picture at the ready. By the time he got to the door, the man was already there, holding it open.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

Myron held up the picture. The man looked at the photograph and his eyes closed.

“Have you seen this woman?” Myron asked.

His voice seemed very far away. “I spoke to her yesterday.”

This guy did not look like a drug dealer. “What about?”

The man swallowed, started to turn away. “My daughter,” he said. “She wanted to know about my daughter.”

“Follow me,” the man said.

They walked past the ice cream counter. The woman working behind it was in a wheelchair. She had a great big smile and was telling a customer about the oddly named ice cream flavors and all the possible ingredients you could mix into them. Myron glanced to his left. The party was in full swing. The girls were taking turns mixing and mashing ice cream in order to create their own flavors. Two high school-age girls helped with the heavy scooping while another mixed in Reese’s Pieces, cookie dough, Oreos, sprinkles, Gummi Bears, nuts, chocolate chips, even granola.

“Do you like ice cream?” the man asked.

Myron spread his hands. “Who doesn’t like ice cream?”

“Not many people, knock wood.” The man rapped a Formica tabletop with his knuckles as they passed. “What flavor can I get you?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Kimberly?”

The woman in the wheelchair looked up.

“Make our guest here the SnowCap Melter.”

“Sure thing.”

The store was blanketed with the SnowCap ice cream logo. That should have given it to him. SnowCap. Snow. Myron took another look at the man’s face. The fifteen years had been neither a friend nor an enemy to the man-normal aging-but now Myron started to put it together.

“You’re Karl Snow,” Myron said. “Alista’s father.”

“Are you a cop?” he asked Myron.

Myron hesitated.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing to say.”

Myron decided to give him a push. “Are you going to help cover up another murder?”

Myron expected shock or outrage, but instead he got a firm headshake. “I read the papers. Suzze T died of an overdose.”

Maybe a bigger push: “Right, and your daughter just fell out a window.”

Myron regretted the words the moment they escaped his lips. Too much too soon. He waited for the eruption. It didn’t come. Karl Snow’s face sagged. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me who you are.”

Myron sat facing Karl Snow and introduced himself. Behind Snow, Lauren’s birthday party was growing happily rowdy. Myron thought about the obvious juxtaposition-a girl’s birthday party being hosted by a man who lost his own-but then he let it go.

“The news said she overdosed,” Karl Snow said. “Is that true?”

“I’m not sure,” Myron said. “That’s why I’m looking into it.”

“I don’t get it. Why you? Why not the police?”

“Could you just tell me why she was here?”

Karl Snow leaned back, pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Let me ask you something before we get into this. Do you have any evidence at all that Suzze T was murdered-yes or no?”

“For one thing,” Myron said, “there’s the fact that she was eight months pregnant and looking forward to starting a family.”

He did not look impressed. “That doesn’t sound like much evidence.”

“It’s not,” Myron said. “But here’s what I do know for certain. Suzze drove out here yesterday. She talked to you. A few hours later, she was dead.”

He glanced behind him. The young woman in the wheelchair started toward them with an ice cream monstrosity. Myron started to get up to help, but Karl Snow shook his head. Myron stayed where he was.

“One SnowCap Melter,” the woman said, putting it in front of Myron. “Enjoy.”

The Melter would have trouble fitting in the trunk of a car. Myron half expected the table to tilt over. “This is for one person?” Myron asked.

“Yep,” she said.

He looked at her. “Does it come with angioplasty or maybe a shot of insulin?”

She rolled her eyes. “Golly, I’ve never heard that one before.”

Karl Snow said, “Mr. Bolitar, meet my daughter Kimberly.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kimberly said, awarding him with the kind of smile that makes the cynical think about the celestial. They chatted for a minute or two-she was the store manager, Karl just owned the place-and then she wheeled herself back behind the counter.

Karl was still watching his daughter when he said, “She was twelve when Alista…” He stopped, as though not sure what word to use. “Their mother died two years earlier from breast cancer. I didn’t handle it well. I started drinking too much. Kimberly was born with CP. She needed constant care. I guess that Alista, well, I guess she slipped through the cracks.”

As if on cue, a big laugh exploded from the party behind him. Myron glanced over at Lauren, the birthday girl. She too was smiling, a ring of chocolate around her mouth.

“I have no interest in hurting you or your daughter,” Myron said.

“If I talk to you now,” he said slowly, “I need you to promise me I won’t see you again. I can’t have the media back in our lives.”

“I promise.”

Karl Snow rubbed his face with both hands. “Suzze wanted to know about Alista’s death.”

Myron waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, he asked, “What did she want to know?”

“She wanted to know if Gabriel Wire killed my daughter.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her that after meeting privately with Mr. Wire, I no longer believed that he was culpable. I told her that, in the end, it was a tragic accident and that I was satisfied with that result. I also told her that the settlement is confidential, so that was really all I could say.”

Myron just stared at him. Karl Snow had said it all in a practiced monotone. Myron waited for Snow to meet his eye. He didn’t. Instead Snow shook his head and said softly, “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

Myron didn’t know whether he was talking about Suzze or Alista. Karl Snow blinked, looked off toward Kimberly. The sight seemed to give him strength. “Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Bolitar?”

“No.”

“I’ll spare you the clichés. In fact, I’ll spare you altogether. I know how people view me: the unfeeling father who took a big payday in exchange for letting his daughter’s killer go free.”

“And that wasn’t the case?”

“Sometimes you have to love a child privately. And sometimes you have to grieve privately.”

Myron was not sure what that meant, so he waited.

“Eat some of the ice cream,” Karl said, “or Kimberly will notice. That girl has eyes in the back of her head.”

Myron reached for the spoon and tried the whipped cream with the first layer of what looked like cookies ’n’ cream. Manna.

“Good?”

“Manna,” Myron said.

He smiled again, but there was no joy in it. “Kimberly invented the Melter.”

“She’s a genius.”

“She’s a good daughter. And she loves this place. I messed up with Alista. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Is that what you told Suzze?”

“In part. I tried to make her understand my position at the time.”

“Which was?”

“Alista loved HorsePower-and like every teenage girl, she was totally gaga over Gabriel Wire.” Something crossed his face. He looked away, lost. “Alista’s birthday was coming up. Sweet sixteen. I didn’t have the money to throw her a big party, but I knew that HorsePower was going to play a concert at Madison Square Garden. I guess they didn’t play many concerts-I never really followed them-but I knew that there was this Ticketmaster on the basement level of this Marshalls Department Store on Route Four. So I woke up at, like, five in the morning and got on line. You should have seen it. No one else there was over thirty, and I’m standing there, waiting for two hours, to buy tickets to the concert. When I got to the window, the woman started typing into the computer and first she tells me that it’s sold out and then, well, then she says, ‘No, wait, I have only two left,’ ” and I was never so happy to buy something in my life. Like it was kismet, you know? Like it was supposed to happen.”

Myron nodded as noncommittally as he could.

“So I get home and Alista’s birthday is still a week away so I figure I’m going to wait. I tell Kimberly about them. And we’re both dying. I mean, those tickets are burning a hole in my pocket. You ever have that? Where you buy someone something so special that you just can’t wait to give it?”

“Sure,” Myron said softly.

“So that’s how it is with me and Kimberly. We end up driving to Alista’s high school. We park there and I get Kimberly out and into her chair and Alista comes out and we’re just smiling like two cats that ate the canary. Alista makes a face at us, the way teenage girls do, and she says, ‘What?’ ” and I just held up the tickets and Alista”-he stopped, his world rolling back all those years-“she just screamed and threw her arms around my neck and squeezed so hard…”

His voice faded away. He pulled a napkin from the dispenser, started to go for his eyes, decided against it. He stared down at the table.

“So anyway, Alista took her best friend to the concert. They were supposed to go back to the friend’s house afterward. For a sleepover. But they didn’t. You know the rest.”

“I’m sorry.”

Karl Snow shook his head. “A long time ago.”

“And you don’t blame Gabriel Wire?”

“Blame?” He stopped and thought about that. “The truth is, I didn’t supervise Alista enough after her mother died. So part of it, I mean, when I really look at it closely, the roadie who spotted Alista in the crowd? He was a stranger. The security guy who let her backstage? He was a stranger. Gabriel Wire-he was a stranger too. I was her father-and I didn’t look out for her. Why should I have expected them to?”

Karl Snow blinked and flicked a look to the right.

“And that’s what you told Suzze?”

“I told her there was no proof that Gabriel Wire did anything wrong that night-at least, nothing the police could prove. They made that very clear to me. Yes, Alista had been in Wire’s hotel suite. Yes, she did fall from his balcony-and yes, she did fall thirtyt-wo floors. But to get from A to B, to get from those facts to indicting a powerful celebrity, not to mention securing a conviction…” He shrugged. “I had another daughter to worry about. I had no money. Do you know how hard it is to raise a handicapped child? How expensive? And SnowCap is a small chain now. How do you think I got the initial seed money?”

Myron was trying hard to understand, but his voice had more edge than he’d wanted. “From your daughter’s killer?”

“You don’t get it. Alista was dead. Dead is dead. There was nothing I could do for her anymore.”

“But there was something you could still do for Kimberly.”

“Yes. But it really isn’t as cold as that. Suppose I didn’t take the money. Now Wire gets away with it-and Kimberly is still in a bad way. This way, at the very least, Kimberly would be taken care of.”

“No offense, but that does sound awfully cold.”

“I suppose to an outsider it does, doesn’t it? I’m a father. And a father really has only one job. Protect your child. That’s it. And once I failed at that, once I let my daughter go off to that concert and I didn’t check up on her… Nothing can ever make up for that.” He stopped, wiped a tear from his eye. “Anyway, you wanted to know what Suzze wanted. She wanted to know if I thought Gabriel Wire killed Alista.”

“Did she say why she wanted to know? I mean, after all these years?”

“No.” He blinked, looked away.

“What?”

“Nothing. I should have told her to leave it alone. Alista tangled with Gabriel Wire-and look what happened.”

“Are you saying-?”

“I’m not saying anything. The news said she overdosed on heroin. She seemed distraught when she left, so I guess I’m not all that surprised.”

Behind him one of Lauren’s friends started crying-something about someone getting the wrong goodie bag. Karl Snow heard the commotion. He hurried over to the girls, all someone’s daughters, girls who would grow up quickly and have crushes on rock stars. But for now here they were, at a little girl’s birthday party, simply wanting ice cream and the right goodie bag.