Slob

Jack Eichord meets the Lynch Family

For three days and the better part of a fourth Jack Eichord sat on his butt at a borrowed desk in the squad room alternately reading the file on Sylvia Kasikoff and making fruitless phone calls of one kind or another. He was tromping over old ground. As police work it was probably worthless, as a time killer it was only slightly better. Boring stuff. People had moved, phone numbers had been disconnected, people had days off at work, work numbers had changed, out for illness, busy but he'll call you back, and so on. There's nothing worse than having to spend hours and hours on a telephone, especially when the results were zipadee-doodah.

A lot of calls were long distance, and everything involving a direct dial call seemed to backfire, and every time Eichord got a phone operator it was as if he'd played Operator Roulette and lost. That's like you have all these operators waiting, in theory, and you dial 0 and the most vile-tempered, arrogant, stupid, offensive, abrasive, sententious, officious and slow-witted bitch at AT&T gets you. After a couple of days of this he was getting phone paranoia, and subconsciously concocting little scenarios in which the phone company, pissed at divestiture, decides to seek revenge on the populace at large and instructs all its operators to be as obtuse, recalcitrant, irritatingly brusque, and shitty-tempered as possible.

On the third day something happened to the lines and all 1-plus calls were answered by operators who kept insisting that he "report your trouble to Repair." After a few of those he gave up on phone calls, both local and LD, and concentrated on pouring through old police reports, crime-scene photos, interviews, newspaper write-ups on the Lonely Hearts Killer, lab reports, transcripts, all manner of fun reading from official CYA tap dances to autopsy summaries. There was a ton of paperwork to digest, and he'd barely scratched the surface.

At approximately 1400 he packed it in and took his map into Vernon Arlen's office and got directions on how to get to the Lynch home, filled his battered attache case with unread homework, and headed north for suburbia, despite having been unable to get an answer at the Lynch house for the fourth day in a row. It beat sitting in the squad room sucking up used smoke.

About this time he always thought about stopping in some nice little neighborhood tavern for a cold one, just to relax in familiar surroundings, mellow out for a few minutes, and enjoy watching the working folks come in for their boilermakers, a little shot n' beer or two on the way home, and a little double for a tightener on the way out the door what the hell. He loved the booze smell of bars and he'd nurse his Light and let the effluvia seep into his bloodstream by osmosis.

Or he'd stop into some little bistro for a little happy-hour pick-me-up. A nice dark saloon, atmospheric and dense with smoke and that rich, brain-battering booze aroma that he loved. Even as he drives through the gray Chicago streets the ambience swirls around his imagination engulfing him in the memories of that mixture that is uniquely happy-hour bistro. Lentheric, VO, Johnny Walker Red, Chanel, Gibsons, margaritas in icy glasses, a Harvey Wallbanger; assorted scents and flavors of urban decadence waft through his imagination.

His mind's eye pictures a nice, dark saloon with that heavy old wainscoting, an ornate backbar full of crystal, a shiny, gleaming brass rail. Leather stools. No chrome. No plastic. No disco bass thumping. The music drips out of the darkness and booze smell, the notes cool and fluid, golden colored and intoxicating like the stuff in the glasses—and it drips into a drinker's wet daydream. The music cuts through the swirl like a silver stiletto plunged into wet, black velvet, piercing the boozer's back with blue-note jazz. Unsmiling, tough, a little twisted maybe, convincingly alcoholic, sustaining the buzz and nurturing the feel of a serious drinker's saloon.

But now he is out of the mainstream, driving with frequent checks to find the next street marked on his map, on a route that looks like any midwestern small town, cleaners and package stores and video shops and Radio Shacks and fast-food places in an endless blur of neon, gray streets and the beginnings of a pretty sunset in the background, as he negotiates the unfamiliar territory, fixing it all in his mind so he can find his way back after dark. And now through the commercial section and out past the junkyards and salvage places and nurseries and on his way to the suburbs.

1619. Eichord has been parked across from the Lynch residence for an hour. He's read reports with half an eye on the street traffic, after having rung the bell and waited a couple of minutes. No barking dogs. The street is quiet save for a pack of kids on the way home after school. He watches a couple of jets go over and leave contrails in the stratocumulus, and he moves his head from side to side to get the cricks out, hearing the second vertebra pop like a finger snap.

Twenty minutes later and he's got his long legs stretched out diagonally across the front seat, and wishing he'd brought a thermos of coffee. So far this day is shaping up to be a king-size cipher. So much of police work is in the waiting. Surveillance, to some, can be one of the most hated jobs. A plant is one of the necessary evils in the job. He looks at his watch again. He decides to stick it out another twenty minutes, then go catch a cheeseburger and get some coffee and come back. She's got to come home sometime. There's only one newspaper on the lawn so that's an encouraging sign. No neighbors home yet either. This place would be a natural for some B&E guy who wanted to take down six or seven places in one afternoon, just for the silver and the shotguns, and minimum risk.

Nobody home. No cars in the driveway. Kids' toys all over the yards. Where is everybody? Other than a handful of cars and that pack of kids he hadn't seen a human face. One of the houses had a FOR SALE sign in the yard. Lawn a little shaggy, but every other yard looked like it had been trimmed with a scissors right before the last of the fall grass. Leaves all raked. Neat City. He waited with his mind on hold and watched one of the most beautiful, dazzling sunsets he could remember. The sky high up still lightly blue with a little peach color and then down where he could see the horizon a ribbon of the most beautiful red lighting up the dark bluish gray with a bright, breathtaking slash of color. And he was enjoying looking at it when Edie Lynch drove up into her driveway.

"Are you Mrs. Edward Lynch, ma'am?" he asked her, smiling pleasantly as she turned to face him by her front door.

"Yes."

"Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Lynch," he said, showing his shield and ID as he spoke, "but we're investigating some related matters and I wonder if I might ask you just a few questions. It wouldn't take but a minute." She seemed to deflate visibly as he said the words.

"Oh. Yes."

"Can I help you with those?" he offered.

"Oh, no, that's all right, just let me get this one bag in with the milk and things and—Lee Anne, get that little sack on the backseat for Mommy please—and I can get this." He took the larger of the sacks from her as she spoke, and she shrugged a thank-you and smiled as he followed the woman into the house, the child running up the sidewalk after them with a sack of what looked like paper towels.

"That's fine," she said, "just sit it down there, thanks."

"Go ahead and put your groceries away, ma'am, no problem."

"That's okay. Just—uh, Lee, honey, go in and start cleaning up your room now, please, and I'll get the other things." She turned back to Eichord. "I don't want to talk about it in front of— "

"I understand. I won't take up much of your time here, but I'm just coming on board this investigation and if you can I'd just like to go over some old ground with you from the time of the tragedy that happened. Just to make sure I have all the information."

"They asked so many questions back then and I'm sure you'll have more than I'll be able to remember now down there in your reports, but I'll try to answer whatever I can of course." She was obviously very tired. He didn't ask but he wondered where they'd been for the last few days.

Glancing down at the report cover he was holding, he began without any hesitancy, getting right after it. "I have to take you back to some sad, painful old ground, and I want to ask you to help me reconstruct that evening," he began softly, soothingly, speaking in measured tones, building a layer of trust as he always did. Within a few minutes he'd be calling her by her first name, asking her calm, easy questions in preparation for the heavy stuff that was his sole reason for going back to this ancient, cold trail.

She repeated all the information that she'd given countless times before, embellishing one or two things, forgetting here and there, very straightforward in her willingness to retrace the ordinary events that had led up to that fateful night as well as she could remember them. And then he pitched her his change-up, and the long, slow curve that preceded his high hard one.

"What were his exact words if you can recall when he left that night?"

"He said he was going out for cigarettes and he'd be right back."

"No. Edie try to tell me the exact way he said it to you that night."

"Well . . . he said." She paused, trying to get it right. "I'm going to run down to the 7-Eleven and get some cigarettes. Do you need anything?"

"And you said what?"

"I said no thanks," she said, shaking her head.

"How much did Ed smoke—how many packs a day, do you remember?"

"Not too much, I guess. He never smoked over two packs a day."

"Do you remember the brand?"

"Parliaments," she said, somewhat exasperated at the question.

"Edie when Ed was found he had a half a pack of Parliaments in his pocket. We found cigarettes here in the house according to the reports. Now, that could just mean that he hadn't had a chance to get to the store yet when he was attacked. But it could have another meaning." She raised her eyebrows and made a little frown of irritation. He let the pitch go. "It could also mean that Ed wasn't going out for smokes that night."

"What do you mean?"

"What it could mean is that he'd gone to meet somebody."

"No. He said he was going to the store, I just told you that."

"But husbands don't always tell their wives the truth." He was watching her very carefully, boring into her with those hard eyes and keen reason.

"Well, Ed and I weren't like that. He was always truthful with me."

"What if—just to make a hypothetical situation, Edie—what if he'd wanted to meet someone that night. Another woman, for example, and he didn't want you to know. How certain are you that he wasn't going out to meet someone that night?"

"That's the most ridiculous question anyone ever asked me. We had a good marriage and Ed was a fine, upstanding man. I can't imagine why you would come around asking something like that."

"I apologize," he said to her softly, "but I have to ask that question for this reason. The man who attacked your husband may have begun committing crimes again. If there is a chance that there might have been some other witness that night, someone who might have seen—oh, let's say someone suspicious looking and they could help us in that regard, I know you'd want us to have that information."

"I can assure you that isn't a possibility. Ed was going to the store that night and that's all there was to it."

He ever so gently began turning the questions back around to the safer area, times, places, things she'd be more comfortable answering. Slowly some of the strain and irritation went out of her face and he was getting ready to wrap it up, hoping to leave a less bitter taste as he faded back out of her life, when an irrepressible bundle of cuteness came bounding down the stairs and came up saying, "Hi! Mom can we eat now?"

"Hi," he said, smiling, as her mom shook her head.

"No, dear, we'll be eating soon. This is my daughter Lee Anne, Mr.—"

"Eichord. Jack Eichord."

"Mr. Eichord is a detective working on Dad's case."

"Mr. Acorn?" she repeated quizzically.

"Eye-cord," her mother corrected.

"I'll bet you never heard that name before, did you?" he said. She shook her head in response shyly, smiling, standing very close, one of those people who will go through life never meeting a stranger.

"Lee Anne is a pretty name."

"Thank you."

"How old are you?"

"I'll be nine."

"That's a great age to be. Do you like school?"

"Uh-huh. I like Mrs. Spencer the best of all. Are you a real detective that's like on television?"

"I'm a real detective."

"Can you come talk to my bear. He's been very bad and needs to have a police detective investigate him."

"I happen to specialize in bears. What kind of bear is it?"

"He's a talking bear."

"Sweety," her mom interrupted, "Mr. Eichord doesn't have time to—"

"No. It's fine. Really," he said quickly. "In fact that's the main reason I came out here, to see what some of these bears have been up to." And Lee Anne was sort of helping him out of the chair and showing him toward the room where the bear was even as he soundlessly gave Edie the signal that it was okay with him, if she didn't mind, and she did a little shrug and head move kind of thing that said okay, but really said, well, whatever turns you on, because she was still angry inside. And before anyone could change their mind and let better judgment and wiser heads prevail, Jack Eichord, who a couple of minutes before had implicitly suggested Mrs. Lynch's late husband might have been having an extramarital affair was now in the bedroom with her daughter. Fate works in strange, mysterious ways.

"What is this talking bear's name?" she could hear him ask.

"My name is Ralph," her daughter answered in her bear voice, "and my brother's name is George."

"Just give me the bare facts, please," Eichord said, and the bear giggled.

"Now I've heard rumors that you have misbehaved. Could you tell us the bare essentials?"

"I bite sometimes."

"Oh, my, Ralph. Biting is absolutely un-bear-able," giggling, "of course this is barely admissible evidence."

"My brother George is a talking panda."

"That's very interesting. I'm afraid I'm going to have to frisk you for weapons, Ralph old boy." Squeals of delight. "Uh-oh. Afraid this has become a ticklish situation. I don't think you'll be able to bear up under this sort of interrogation. If you promise to behave, I'll let you go with a warning, but no more biting. Okay?"

"Okay," she said.

"And no putting up bearicades, either. It's too em-bear-using, if you know what I mean." Lee Anne was laughing at the routine and he kept it up. So she had to show him George and Eichord had a long talk with the panda, and finally ended up back downstairs. Edie had been listening to every word of it and suddenly realized she'd been grinning from ear to ear for the last few minutes. They came back into the kitchen hand in hand, Lee leading him quite contentedly, both utterly charmed by the other.

"That was very nice of you to take so much ti— "

"Mom, I asked Mr. Eye-cord to stay for dinner is that okay?"

"I really can't," he said before she could have a chance to be totally flustered by it, "but that's very sweet of you, Lee Anne. Thanks." He seemed nice. He seemed different now too.

"I have to get back downtown," he said, and so very obviously didn't that before she could catch herself she said, "We'd like for you to stay and have a bite with us. We're only having hot dogs. How about it?"

She smiled at him and he felt so warm all of a sudden it kind of stunned him and the usually glib Jack Eichord just stood there like a schmuck and went, "Uh—" Brilliant, he thought. "No. I appreciate it. That is very nice." He was heading for the door. He felt like he was slogging through wet cement.

"Please," she said, with sufficient sincerity that he turned. She was finally snapping out of her anger enough to have sensed what it was he had been going for and she realized that he was probably a pretty decent cop, trying to do what amounted to an impossible task. And she saw herself as having been a little bitchy, whether justified or not, and she decided she'd make amends.

"If you don't have to be somewhere for supper right away, please stay. We'd enjoy having your company. Just hot dogs. Nothing fancy and no trouble." She told him with her eyes that she wasn't being polite and he stood there saying yes and felt a small hand pluck the hat out of his hand and the suffusion of warmth from a family start reaching out and touching him unexpectedly.

And something funny happened. Suddenly they were looking at each other and seeing a man and woman instead of the adversaries they'd been looking at before. And everything tilted a little, and Edie felt so funny as she was putting little slivers of cheese inside the split franks and putting them inside the microwave, and she was so dumbfounded at what she was suddenly thinking as she looked at this detective, this perfect stranger, thinking to herself the oddest damn thing, wondering what he'd be like, and she took a deep breath and couldn't make the thought go away.

And he looked at the back of her standing there in front of the oven with an apron over her dress and all tall and slim on those long, great-looking legs, and the look of her just came out of nowhere and destroyed him. He knew it was only because it had been so long since he had been in a situation like this, a real home, when it wasn't the home of one of his colleagues, and with an eligible young woman cooking him dinner, a lovely woman in fact, and not some one-night stand he'd picked up somewhere or the other way around. And the sight of her in heels, all that leg, and the little apron, with her back turned, just demolished him. And inside he went, Jesus, man, get a hold of yourself, are you nuts or what?

And inside Edie Was thinking with her back turned, What am I letting myself in for here? And sensing that he was looking at her and not really minding it so much but just wondering what was going on and then thinking she'd been imagining the whole thing. It was ridiculous. Shape up. And with a tilt of her head and a feeling of relief she turned and their eyes locked, and hell the old cliches like "chemistry" have been so abused you can't even say them with a straight face but that's what it was, a chemical thing between them happening in spite of their best intentions, happening for no reason, coming out of nowhere, a thing that worked its way out of the secret heart of a person somehow and warms on its way up and then comes out of the eyes all hot and hungry.

This didn't even make a lick of sense she told herself and what are you doing and hold on and whoa and oh it's too late now, she thinks, sinking down into something that is pulling her like the current of a river of mighty whirlpools, and she tries not to let it show and feels the hot red flush of her cheeks and almost laughs at it out loud.

And he goes, Now wait you've got to be kidding here I'm not believing this, you go to somebody's house to ask some questions and you're looking at this woman like some love-starved teenage kid and this is some lady who lost her husband a couple of years ago and just what in hell do you think you're doing and they'll laugh you right out of the place if you and oh my God I'm failing and that wonderful awful feeling as he senses what is happening between them, wonderful if it's real, awful if it's onesided and then the chemistry is just so strong that neither of them are trying to hide it.

And the dinner is cold and they're still there at the table just talking, talking about nothing, who remembers what, who knows what, just watching each other's mouths move, carrying on a conversation. Christ, he thinks, even the word conversation means sexual union, and he bites the insides of his lips raw to keep from laughing and telling her and yet knowing she'd understand. And now he knows that something is going to happen between them because it already is starting and she isn't saying yes or no but she is aware of something and he's going to make it happen.

It is very important to him now not to blow it. Not to do anything stupid or oafish or frighten her in any way. This is something special. Different. He feels something and he can't really analyze it because of the hot, flooding rush of desire that flows through his loins as he looks at her and he wants this woman and aware as they both are of the incongruities he can't stop himself.

Somehow they manage to part company that night, and of course he can't go out that door without leaving a connection, something, how the hell can he leave it so he can ask for a date, ask her out somehow, and he mumbles something about paying her back and he'd like to take her and her daughter to dinner next time mumble mumble, and now Christ almighty he's blushing like a little kid this is just unbelievable and she wants a man for the first time since she lost Ed and neither of them has said anything more provocative than the most mundane conversational things and yet—and oh and yet—they finally manage to part, leaving each other as happy if confused, very friendly strangers.