The Last Family

34

Eve Fletcher awoke to discover her small dog lying like a paperweight on the foot of her bed. She sat up and probed at his body with her toe under the sheet. “Puzzle? Mr. Puzzle?”

A block away, inside the DEA van, Larry Burrows sat with a cup of coffee watching the screen.

“Goddammit, Mr. Puzzle!”

“Hey, come see this!” Larry yelled. Sierra rolled from the bunk, rubbing her swollen eyes, her hair pressed against the side of her head. She looked at her watch. “What the heck, Burrows? It isn’t time for my shift.”

“Look, old Eve’s got herself that fur-covered doorstop she’s been praying for.”

“Owww, her’s gonna be in a foul mood today,” Sierra said.

On the screen Eve had got out of bed and stood hunched over, punching at the stiff dog’s flank with a pencil.

Sierra poured a cup of coffee and sat down in a swivel chair. “You taping this?”

“I’m going to send it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

Eve lifted the dog’s leg with the eraser end and peered at his belly.

“What’s she doing now?”

“Maybe she’s gonna give him the fuck-of-life maneuver.”

“Please, I haven’t had my coffee yet. Mouth to mouth,” she said, laughing.

Then, as Sierra and Larry watched, Eve rushed down the hall and into the kitchen. Larry switched the views so that they had the back of her leaving the bedroom, a long shot of her approaching the kitchen down the narrow hallway, and the top of her head and shoulders as she rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. When she straightened up, one of her sagging breasts came free of her gown.

“God, that turns me on,” Larry said.

“Grief,” Sierra said. “Have some respect for the bereaved. She just lost her sole companion and best friend. He was like her own child.”

“Does she look like Jerry Clower in drag, or is it just me?”

“Who’s Jerry Clower?”

“Country comedian… a hayseed Tip O’Neill clone,” he said.

The camera shots changed as Larry turned the selector switch to maintain continuity. B: hallway south, C: kitchen. When Eve came back, she stopped and put her hands into sandwich bags for mittens. Then she used one to lift the dog by its tail and the other to open the dark, already partially filled, garbage bag. She dropped him in, removed the sandwich bags from her hands, and tossed them in. Then Eve pulled the drawstring tight and tied it into a knot. The roof-mounted cameras followed her back to the kitchen and out the back door, where she opened the lid to the refuse can, threw the bag in, slammed the lid down, and then went straight back into the house without so much as a peek over her shoulder.

“Nice service,” Larry said. “But she wasted a bag that coulda held a lot more. Coulda used one of those little candy-sized bags.”

“Forget what I said about respect. I hope she catches her tit in a drawer,” Sierra said.

“I guess different folks deal with grief in different ways,” Larry added. “Something tells me she’ll get over this loss, somehow.” He removed his wire-framed glasses and wiped the lenses inside a pinched fold of Polo shirttail.

He changed to an image of Eve’s legs protruding from the closet in what had been Martin’s room. The room was as Martin had left it when he’d joined the service. Twin beds with baseball players depicted on the spreads. A round braided rug and a chest of drawers with Martin’s artifacts still displayed on the top, as though he could return at any minute to assume his previous life.

“What the hell’s she doing now, looking for the dog’s insurance policy?”

Sierra sipped at the cup of coffee. “Look,” she said. “What’s that she’s throwing out?”

Rectangular objects were hitting the floor behind Eve’s feet.

“Money!”

“Jesus, it’s bills! Old bitch’s got herself a stash of cash.”

“If those are C notes… there’s over a hundred thousand showing. She coulda bought the little carpet crapper a cigar box or something.”

Eve finished and then started stuffing the cash into a large wicker purse that had been under the closest bed. Then she pulled three wig boxes from the closet and took the wigs out and lined them up.

“She’s going somewhere as a woman,” Larry said.

Sierra tapped his shoulder and he ducked. “Ouch!” he said, laughing.

“She’s taking the money to Martin,” Joe McLean said over their shoulders. “Let’s get ready. She’s leaving for Florida. Fifty bucks says next flight.”

He lifted the telephone and dialed Paul.

Larry and Sierra looked at each other and wondered how long Joe had been standing there behind them.