The Night Remembers

2

That was how Wednesday morning began. With Faith Hallahan, a thirty-two-year-old woman thirty-two years my junior, finding a lump on her breast and rushing off to the doctor’s.

After talking with Marcia I went out to the parking lot of the apartment house I manage and got into my blue 1978 Pontiac Firebird. I was stunned enough by the news about Faith that I just sat behind the wheel for a time. I had a cigarette, one of the six a day I was allowing myself of late, and I watched Mr. Fredericks, an aged black man who always seemed to be wearing the same gray cardigan, the same denim work shirt buttoned tight at the top, and the same gray wrinkled work pants. He used to be a postman. He retired when he was fifty-seven and lived for two years in Florida until he found out his Miami daughter was a prostitute. An angry man and a religious man, he found himself incapable of forgiving her and moved back here to Cedar Rapids. He told me all this one Christmas Eve when neither of us had anything better to do than become friends of a vague but necessary sort. Now, he pulled the lid off a garbage can and slammed a greasy grocery sack inside the can with exceptionally violent grace. After putting the lid back, he became aware of my gaze, looked up, and stared at me. He shook his head as if he’d caught me doing something despicable and then went back inside the three-story brick apartment house called The Alma. Rather than have another tenant get suspicious about me sitting out in my car (What would they think? Suicide? Masturbation? Some sort of stroke?), I worked the gas pedal carefully — you couldn’t give her too much or too little — and left the parking lot.

“You look surprised to see me,” Irma said.

“Not at all.”

“I shouldn’t be here?”

“Of course you should be here.”

“I realize I’m not a licensed private investigator, but I’ve picked up a few things over the years.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“You want some coffee?”

“God, that would be great.”

“Then why don’t you go get us some down at the Big Boy? I’d like cream in mine if you don’t mind.”

“My pleasure,” I said, and left.

Ozmanski and I were members of the Linn County Sheriff’s Office a total of sixty-one years — thirty for me and thirty-one for him. Both detectives. We’d met over in Salerno during World War II, just as things were turning the right way for the Yanks. We bowled, fished, drank, played shuffleboard, and, after retirement, opened up a small investigative agency in downtown Cedar Rapids, in one of those gray four-story stone buildings that are falling, one by one, to urban renewal. Mostly our shop does two types of work — trial backgrounds for defense attorneys and background checks for employers. We were in business two years before Ozmanski ran his new Dodge Dart into the rear end of a bread truck out on 149. And died. Everybody assumed he was drinking. Being his partner, I had to defend him and say hey bullshit you knew Don better than that. But I assumed he was drinking, too.

Three weeks ago, four months after Don’s death, his widow, Irma, started showing up. Not every day. Just once in a while. “To pick up,” she’d say. So she’d dust or sweep or ask me if I had any typing that needed doing. The hell of it was, Irma and I had never much gotten along. My dead wife, Sharon, always called Irma a gossip and a troublemaker, and she’d been absolutely right. Every time Sharon and I had any sort of spat, Irma would start the story, under the guise of great sorrow, that we were on the verge of a divorce. She didn’t single us out. She spread such stories about everybody. So now when I was nice to her I felt I was being disloyal to Sharon. That probably didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but when you think about it, very little does.

I got two big paper containers of coffee and walked back to the office. The temperature was fifty-seven and downtown Cedar Rapids was beautiful in the Indian summer day, morning sunlight golden off the windows of the brokerage houses, the breeze soft and warm off the Cedar River two blocks away. At my age, though, you keep flashing back to the way things used to be. I could still taste the strawberry malts Woolworth used to serve at their lunch counter, and the tang of the pickles on their cheeseburgers. Up the street from Woolworth had been the Palace Theater, a second-run place just right for a cop and his family. They’d played a lot of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart movies for Sharon and me and a lot of Francis the Talking Mule films for the kids. There is absolutely no evidence of Woolworth’s or the theater’s existence now. They might have belonged to a lost race. Today the downtown is largely a business and financial center unexpected and impressive in a small city like this one, with BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes wheeling around the streets. I still miss the Palace and eating at Tony’s next door with my family and listening to Jo Stafford and Nat “King” Cole on the jukebox.

“Visitor.”

“Huh?”

“You got a visitor.”

“Oh.”

“You won’t believe who she is.”

I sat her coffee down on the desk and leaned forward to her. Irma is twenty-five pounds overweight, always wears a little-girl blue ribbon in her iron-gray hair (sort of like Petunia Pig, actually), and tends to flowered housedresses that she obviously feels hide her bulk. “Sound carries in this place.” I put a finger to my lips. “If I’ve got a visitor in there, then she probably heard every word you said.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No problem, Irma. You just have to whisper is all.”

She splayed her hands. “So I’ll whisper from now on.” She sounded defensive and maybe even irritated.

“Good.”

The outer office where Irma sat doubles as the reception area and the working office. You can’t work for long in the other office. Too hot. In the winter the steam heat gets overwhelming. In the summer direct sunlight broils the place. About all you can do is have brief conferences with clients and then get out of there. That’s why you’ll find the reception area packed with two desks, two upright manual typewriters, two phones, and three filing cabinets. And a lot of dust. In a building this old — in stone just above our window is a piece of fancy carving that reads In God We Trust 1888 — dust settles slowly but without mercy. It’s a perpetual process and God help you if you’ve got bad sinuses.

“You got any typing or anything?” Irma said. Now she sounded hurt.

“Irma, it’s great having you here. I’m sorry I kind of snapped at you.”

“It really is? Great having me here?”

Why had I lied? It was terrible having her here. Maybe if I’d kept up the mean stuff she’d have taken the hint and done what she was always threatening to do, go live with her oldest boy up near Green Bay, Wisconsin, the professor who was always in trouble because he was the only supporter of Lyndon LaRouche on the entire faculty. (I’d always voted Democratic, even for McGovern though that had been a pretty tough lever to pull, and that had always bugged the hell out of Ozmanski.)

“This coffee is delightful,” Irma said. “You got just the right amount of cream.”

I heard all the loneliness and grieving in her voice then and felt, as I usually do, like a total slug. I remembered the way she’d sobbed in spasms at graveside when they’d lowered Don into the ground in his coffin, the sound of that first thrumming shovel of dirt throwing her back in her seat as if she’d been shot. A total slug I was.

I raised my paper cup and saluted her. “Nice to have you here.”

Then I went into the other office.

She sat in a perfect blue suit in perfect blue pumps with a perfect blue leather bag on her lap. She had once been beautiful, but even with a few laugh lines at mouth and eyes, even with a little loose flesh on the neck, she was still damn near perfect, one of those prim, trim women who never quite lose their appeal no matter how old they get. Her, I put at forty-five to fifty.

As I closed the door behind me, I noticed how the sunlight made a nimbus of her frosted hair. “Hello,” I said.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

I walked into the room. It contained a couch and two wing chairs the building manager had found in the basement. His guess was that they’d belonged to two women who’d run an interior decorating service. Over in the corner was a dead 19” Motorola black and white TV set. It hadn’t worked since the Cubs had started using lights at the ballpark. Maybe the set was protesting.

I looked at her more carefully, which was certainly a pleasure, but still I saw nothing familiar about her.

Then I remembered what Irma had said: “You won’t believe who she is.”

I sat down in the facing wing chair. “I’m sorry if I sound rude.”

“Then you don’t remember?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Pennyfeather. George Pennyfeather.”

Then I remembered. Of course. “And you’re—”

“Mrs. Pennyfeather. Lisa.”

“That’s right.”

“How is—” I stopped myself. I’d been about to ask, How is he doing these days? But that probably isn’t the right kind of casual social question to ask about somebody you helped put in prison.

“He’s out. Just last week.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“It’s been a long twelve years.”

“I’m sure it has.” I realized now why Irma had been so amused at the presence of this woman in our office. Most ex-convicts don’t send their wives to see the detective who conducted the investigation that ultimately landed them in the slammer.

“He’s still innocent, Mr. Walsh. He was when you put him in prison, and he is to this day.”

“I see.”

“I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I?”

“A little, I suppose.”

“I don’t mean to. I’m speaking without recrimination. I’m simply stating the facts.”

“Oh.”

“We don’t even blame you for thinking he was guilty.”

“He was guilty, Mrs. Pennyfeather. He really was.”

She waved a sweet little hand dismissively. She even had a perfectly sad little smile for me. “I know you hear this all the time. How this man or that was framed. Over the past twelve years I’ve gotten to know a number of women whose husbands are in prison. Almost all of them believe their husbands are innocent.”

“That’s a natural defense mechanism. It’s how you deal with that particular kind of grief is all.”

“You’re awfully philosophical for a policeman.”

“Ex-policeman. And not all of us move our lips when we read.”

“I’ve embarrassed you again.”

“I’m just not really fond of stereotypes.”

Something I said seemed to amuse her. “How about the stereotype of the meek little accountant who couldn’t deal with his wife’s infidelity in any other way but to kill her lover? That’s been a cliché ever since I was a girl, anyway.” She opened her blue leather bag, which even from here looked expensive, and took out something that almost shocked me: a package of Lucky Strikes. Women of her generation still smoked — despite all the Surgeon General’s reports and rough TV advertising to the contrary — but probably not many of them smoked Luckies. She tamped a cigarette against the pack and then put it between red lips that parted perfectly to receive it. She clicked on a tiny gold lighter and got her cigarette going and then threw her head back and let a long blue stream of smoke escape her mouth. With a delicate fingertip, she daubed a minuscule fleck of tobacco from one of her gorgeous lips.

“First of all, he was never my lover.”

“Karl Jankov, you mean?”

“Yes. Karl Jankov. That’s not to say that I didn’t consider it. At the time, George was having a few — problems, and my life was fairly miserable.” She blew out some more smoke and then looked at me with a gaze that managed to be both harsh and seductive. “George and I came from very different backgrounds.”

“Your father was a prominent state senator, correct?”

“Yes. He even served a term in Washington, but he was thrown out during the Goldwater debacle. I’ve always resented that. My father was a very moderate Republican. It’s terrible how people blame you for things you didn’t do.” She stopped herself. A tint of red was in her cheeks. “I wasn’t making a reference to George.”

“I know.”

“I suppose I’ve grown into this victim attitude. All the years waiting for him to be set free.”

“I’d like to ask you a question.”

“I’m sure I know what it is.” She sighed. Her small hands fidgeted on the surface of her purse. “Why did I come here to see you?”

I nodded.

She put her head down. I looked over at the Merchants Bank building. It filled most of the westerly window.

She raised her head. There was an angry dignity in her eyes now. I would pay for trifling with her, her gaze said.

“I want to hire you.”

“I see.”

“You hide your shock well.”

“Years of practice.”

“It makes sense when you think about it.”

“What makes sense?”

“My hiring you to prove that George is innocent.”

“What?”

“That time it showed. Your nostrils flared a little bit and your eyes narrowed. But why else would I be hiring you, Mr. Walsh?”

“I’m the man who arrested him.”

“Believe me, I’m quite aware of that. As is my entire family. At Christmastime Carolyn, my youngest child, used to work herself into a frenzy thinking about her father sitting in prison and you home enjoying yourself. Oh, believe me, Mr. Walsh, I’m quite well aware of what you’ve done.”

“And you still want to hire me?”

“Who knows the case better?”

“It’s been a long time.”

“But you’ll have access to all the records. Spend an afternoon with them and you’ll be caught up to date in no time. I’ve hired several detectives over the years, and they got nowhere.”

I said, “I’m not sure I’ll be taking any cases anyway. Not for the foreseeable future.”

“Oh? Is something wrong?” She leaned forward in the wing chair like an animal that had suddenly sensed something amiss.

“A friend of mine may be ill. I just can’t make any commitments.” I tried to picture Faith in the doctor’s waiting room. She’d be biting her fingernails and solemnly shaking her head, convinced that the worst possible fate awaited her.

“That is it, then.”

“What is?”

“Your slight air of being distracted.”

“You’re observant.”

“I haven’t had much else to be the past twelve years. There were friends who thought I should get divorced and friends who thought I should run away and friends who thought I should date. I did none of those things. I sat in our very large house and looked out our very large window and sometimes it would snow and sometimes it would rain and sometimes the sun would be shining and then one day I looked at my son, David, and he was a twenty-five-year-old graduating law school and getting married. And Carolyn was in college. And I was alone. That’s when I became observant, Mr. Walsh. Loneliness does that to you — it’s a survival technique, I think. You become very aware of deceit and dishonesty on the part of those around you.”

“I’m sorry for the life you’ve had.”

“So you don’t see any chance that you were wrong?”

“There’s always that possibility.”

“How diplomatic.”

“But I don’t think I was. Not as I remember things, anyway.”

“If I wasn’t Karl’s lover, then George would have had no reason to kill him.”

“Actually consummating the relationship is irrelevant. People get threatened over things as small as glances and smiles. If your husband was having ‘problems,’ as you describe them, he was probably predisposed to anger anyway.”

She looked at me not with dislike but a certain pity. “How easy life must be for you, Mr. Walsh.”

“It’s not easy at all.”

“To be so certain of yourself and all your perceptions. So certain.”

“I think you can see why it’s probably not a good idea I work for you.”

She stood up. She exhaled the last of her Lucky, blue smoke against the golden stream of sunlight. She put out a slight hand and I shook it. For the first time I saw some sign of what this visit must have cost her. Her mouth had begun to quiver, and her eyes were wet with tears.

“I’m sorry for my sake that you’re not more open-minded, Mr. Walsh,” she said.

I started to open the door for her, but she stopped me with an upraised hand. She opened the door for herself and went out. She shut the door very quietly. If she’d slammed it, I could have just dismissed her as another crank. But the quiet way reminded me of her lovely sad eyes and the disappointment I had put in them. I would remember those eyes far longer than I would a slamming door.