The sweet golden parachute

CHAPTER 6

Des made sure Cliff cut the loin pork chops mondothick for her, the way Mitch liked them. The butcher was happy to oblige. He had wonderful meat. Actually, everything at Dorset’s gourmet food hall, The Works, was wonderful. She gathered up fresh, beautiful mustard greens, pounds of sweet Vidalia onions. A bottle of champagne that the wine shopkeeper recommended. A chocolate cheesecake that was pure sin.

Armed with these provisions, she steered her cruiser up toward her cottage high over Uncas Lake. She needed a few more ingredients to make the meal perfect. One was the little yellow knit dress that clung to her every curve for dear life. Whenever Mitch set eyes on her in that dress he made her feel like she was the most delicious creature on the planet.

Not that she was ever able to keep the dress on for very long.

Bella was home. Des parked in front of the garage beside her roommate’s Jeep Wrangler. There was no room in the garage for their rides since it served as their designated home for wayward kitties. Presently, they had seventeen residents of all ages, colors and religious denominations-strays that she and Bella had rescued. Some were feral, others simply abandoned. All were healthy and neutered. She and Bella had seen to that, with a kind assist from Andre the mobile vet.

Des paused on her way inside to fuss over Mos Def, their newest, baddest arrival. He immediately went into a low crouch inside his cage and hissed at her, still not happy about being warm, safe and well fed. Most were that way at first. Mos would come around. The ones who had were given free run of the garage, where they were munching or hanging together in open crates lined with hunks of carpet. Des petted them one by one. That little smudgenosed gray guy, Carmelo, licked her nose and purred and purred. A real thief of hearts, little ’Melo was. She’d end up inviting him upstairs if she wasn’t careful.

When she’d renovated the cottage, Des had opened it up so that the dining room and kitchen were all one big room. The living room, which had floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake, served as her studio. Here, Des slashed away with a graphite stick at her fearsome portraits of the crime victims she came across on the job. It was how she survived the horror.

Right now she had an entirely different sort of portrait in progress on her easel-her own. Unfinished. Stubbornly so. Des had never tried a selfportrait before. And now she was genuinely sorry she had. Because she hated the face that was gazing back at her. Des saw selfdoubt in that face. She saw the face of a woman who had no idea what she was doing with her life. As she stepped back from the easel, studying the drawing with unflinching honesty, she could not help comparing it to that Giacometti selfportrait in Poochie’s parlor. His pen strokes were alive. Her own were so halting and timid it was as if she’d been nicking away at her own flesh with a razor blade.

Her stomach churning, Des ripped the selfportrait from her drawing pad and buried it deep under a stack of old drawings. Out of sight. Not out of mind.

“I didn’t hear you come in, tall person!” exclaimed Bella Tillis as she barged in dressed in her ancient black ERAYES sweatshirt and fuzzy red sweatpants. Bella was fivefeetone, totally round and truly the hardestcharging seventysevenyearold widow Des had ever met. “I was just on my way to my yoga class at the senior center-oyyoy, it starts in less than an hour.” Hurriedly, Bella started for the kitchen.

To many of Dorset’s oldschoolers, it seemed a bit odd that the resident trooper had a Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn for a roommate. Back when Des and her husband Brandon had lived in Woodbridge, a leafy suburb of New Haven, Bella was her nextdoor neighbor. Bella had rescued her when Brandon dumped Des for another woman. And, eventually, became her best friend. When Des moved here, Bella sold her own place and joined her.

“Bella, it’s a fiveminute drive to the center,” Des pointed out, following her into the kitchen.

“I like to get there early.”

“And do what, cruise for booty?”

“Oh, please,” Bella scoffed, filling her water bottle from a jug in the refrigerator. “Trust me, Desiree, you do not want to hear an old man attempt the downwardfacing dog. They moan. They groan. Teddy Cavendish, you’d think some tsotske was sucking on his pizzle.”

“Girl, do you kiss your grandchildren with that mouth?”

“Oh, please.” Now Bella fetched her yoga mat from the coat closet by the front door. “If I don’t get to class an hour early I don’t get a good spot. Your elderly people are pathologically early.”

“Okay if I steal a container of your chicken stock? I’m doing dinner for Mitch at his place.”

“Of course. I put away gallons for Passover. What are you making him?”

“Um, smothered pork chops. That a problem?”

“It is not. Better you should violate my dietary laws than use something out of a can. Besides, we both know the way to Mr. Berger’s heart takes a permanent detour through his tummy. Nu, what’s the occasion?”

“No occasion, okay?” Des growled, fetching a container of homemade stock from the freezer. Also the bag of stoneground grits her mom had sent her from a small mill in Georgia-not far from where she’d moved after she left the Deacon. Then Des went into her room for that yellow dress. When she returned to the kitchen Bella was standing right where she’d left her, a scowl on her bunched fist of a face.

“Let’s have it. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing’s bothering me, Bella. I’m totally cool.”

“Tie that bull outside, liar mouth.”

“Aren’t you worried about being late for class?”

“No, I’m worried about you. You’re still agonizing over his marriage proposal, aren’t you?”

“I’m not agonizing. It’s a big step, that’s all.”

“Indeed it is. But it’s the step that two people generally take when they want to be in each other’s lives. There’s an oldfashioned word for it that you hipsters don’t like to use-commitment. Is he bugging you for an answer?”

“Not at all. He’s been incredibly patient and understanding. And, time out, but hipster?”

“He loves you, Desiree.”

“And he knows I love him.”

“So what’s holding you back?”

“For one thing, I like my independence.”

“Vastly overrated as a concept. We are meant to be mated.”

“Yeah, well, I was ‘mated’ before. Didn’t have such a happy ending.”

“All the more reason to try again-this time with a man who, unlike Brandon, wants to be married to you.”

There was a time when Brandon did. Back when they’d been featured on the cover of Connecticut Magazine under the headline: “Our State’s Shining Future.” She was one of the youngest Major Crime Squad lieutenants in the state. And the only one who had happened to be a woman of color. A West Point graduate. Daughter of the Deacon, the deputy superintendent and highest ranking black officer in the history of the state police. Brandon was two years out of Yale Law School and the state’s top young district prosecutor. And as for eye appeal, well, Brandon was what Denzel Washington would look like if only Denzel were handsome. Except it turned out that Brandon’s shiny future was in Washington with the Justice Department-and the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia congressman. The affair had started when they were in law school together. In fact, it had never actually ended, not even after he’d married Des.

Bella was peering suspiciously at her. “You’ve got cold feet, haven’t you?”

“Not a chance.”

“Don’t you flap your gums at me, missy. I’m not some beery lout you just pulled over for making an illegal left turn. Friends tell each other the truth.”

“Real? Marriage opens up a whole lot of stuff that we’ve successfully avoided until now. There’s the whole racial thing, obviously. Our two families having to deal with each other. Plus there’s the issue of-”

“Children,” Bella acknowledged, nodding her head.

“Whoa, flag on the play! If you have a man in your life you already have one child. Who needs another?”

Bella just glowered at her like an angry Jewish bowling ball.

“What I keep wondering,” Des confessed, “is why we can’t just go on doing what we’re doing. Enjoying each other’s company. Having fun together, great sex.”

“Because that’s not how a relationship works. When you’re involved in each other’s lives you have to keep growing together. Mitch is a centered, caring man who wants to share his life with you. In return, you cook him dinner once in a while. Show up when you feel like it, give him a good, swift shtup…”

“Not so swift.”

“Then you jump in the shower-I trust-and out the door you go, free as a bird. You’re the boyfriend from hell. It’s a classic case of role reversal, if you ask me.”

“You know, I’m trying to remember if I did ask you.” Des slumped against the kitchen counter, sighing. “Want to know the crazy part, Bella? When I’m with Mitch I finally feel like the person who I want to be. I like myself. Brandon always had me right on the edge of panic. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. I’d sob for no reason. Scream at him, throw things. Brandon and me, we fought a lot.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I could hear the glass breaking from next door.”

“But then we’d kiss and make up and…” Without warning, Des suddenly remembered Brandon’s body against hers, his hands on her, how he tasted and smelled. The sense memories were so vivid that she felt lightheaded. “That part was so good. Except it was the only part that was good. With Mitch, it’s all sweet and warm and caring. It feels so much, I don’t know, calmer.”

“Well, it should, tattela. You’re not miserable. For God’s sake, don’t you realize that?”

The call came in as Des was heading out the door, groceries and little yellow dress in tow. She didn’t have very far to go. Just down the hill to an address on Uncas Lake Road, where two men were reportedly throwing punches out on the front porch. A neighbor had phoned it in.

High above the lake, where cool breezes blew during the summer, many of the cottages like hers had been gentrified in recent years. Down below, where dark, narrow side streets eadended at the oily water’s edge, this had yet to happen. Here, clans of swamp Yankees remained crowded into the moldering bungalows and cinder block ranchettes that were squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder.

The address she was looking for was a dogeared cottage that had a whole lot of beatup cars and trucks parked out front. One of them was a canary yellow van that said S amp; D PAINTING on its side.

Bement Widdifield and little Donnie Kershaw were flailing away at each other out on the floodlit porch. Justine was screaming at them to stop.

Des ran up the front steps and put herself between them, her long arms outstretched. “Step back right now, hear me?” she barked. “Step back or I’m running both of you in!”

“He started it,” Donnie protested, blood streaming from his nose down into his mustache and beard.

“I’m going to finish it, too,” vowed Bement, whose left eye was blinking rapidly and watering. He’d taken a poke in it. Bement was wiry and quicklooking. Also major hunkish in a Tommy Hilfiger boytoy kind of way. He had blond hair down to his shoulders, a cleft chin, cheekbones to die for. “This isn’t over!”

“Fine by me!” Donnie shot back.

“Both of you, stop this!” Justine hollered at them. She was a tiny, gorgeous thing, redfaced with rage. “Donnie, this is my house! And Bement is my boyfriend!”

“What brings you here, Donnie?” Des asked, continuing to stand between the two men.

“Me and Stevie came by to pick up Allison is all, I swear.” Donnie swiped at his bloody muzzle with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. His reflecting shades lay broken on the porch floor. “Stevie and Allison started getting busy in the bedroom, so I was having a brew and watching me some tube-until he came over.”

“And then you couldn’t leave him alone, could you?” Justine smacked her brother hard in the left ear.

“Ow, Teeny, that hurt!”

“It was supposed to, you cretin!”

The front door was open. Des grabbed Donnie by the collar and shoved him inside. “You two stay put out here,” she ordered Justine and Bement.

The living room was small and stuffy and reeked of cigarette smoke. There was TV, a sofa and coffee table. Not much else. A short hallway. Probably two bedrooms, one bath. The kitchen was spotless. Des found a dish towel and tossed it to Donnie for his nose.

Allison Mapes came padding barefoot out of her bedroom wearing a Tshirt and nothing more. Allison was built low to the ground and meaty through the hips, with little in the way of breasts. Her bare arms and legs were soft and pale. Allison’s hair was boyishly cropped and dyed a whitish blond with streaks of maroon and green. She had six or eight ear piercings, a nose ring. Eyes that were exceptionally lifeless. Des knew her from McGee’s Diner, where she waited tables when she wasn’t busy rolling those eyes or scuffing around like a surly princess. Mitch maintained that Allison could be a lot of fun. Des had never seen her so much as smile.

Stevie the mullethead followed Allison out of her bedroom, barechested, his flannel shirt in one hand. He was buttoning up his lowslung jeans with the other. “What’s all the commotion, little brother?” he asked, eyes widening at the sight of Des.

“Donnie and Bement were mixing it up,” she told him as Donnie stood with the towel pressed against his nose, not saying a word. “You didn’t hear them?”

“Me and Allison were getting reacquainted,” Stevie replied, leering unpleasantly.

Allison curled her lip at him. “You were getting reacquainted. I was trying to get dressed for dinner.”

Stevie slouched there in the doorway with his shirt off, his bare chest hairless and concave.

“Would you put your shirt on, please?” Des asked him.

He smirked at her. “Why don’t you put it on for me?”

“Not a problem.” Des grabbed him by his bare shoulders, whipped him around and slammed him facefirst into the wall. “Are we having fun yet?”

“Damn, lady,” Stevie protested angrily. “You are crazy.”

Des yanked his shirt from his hand and started to drape it around his shoulders-until she pulled back from him in horrified shock. There were dozens of raised scars on Stevie Kershaw’s back. The kind of scars that come from being whipped with a belt until you bleed.

She released him, swallowing. “Does Donnie have a set of those, too?”

“None of your business.” Stevie snatched his shirt from her and put it on. “Besides, it was a long, long time ago.”

“Yeah, we were little kids,” Donnie said defiantly. “We’re not anymore.”

“Did he hit Justine, too?”

“Not ever,” Stevie replied. “Teeny was his little princess. And we were his dogs. But the old man couldn’t hurt us. We were too tough for him. Right, little brother?”

Donnie held his fist out and the two of them bumped knucks.

Des observed them, unconvinced by their bravado. “Donnie, why don’t you tell me your side of what happened between you and Bement?”

Donnie glanced uncertainly at his brother before he said, “Nothing happened. Stevie and me were gonna take Allison out to dinner is all. You know, like a welcome home party.”

“So you three are old friends?”

“Growing up, me and Stevie were best buds with Lester.”

“My big brother,” Allison explained, her face darkening.

“Don’t believe I’ve encountered Lester. Does he live elsewhere now?”

“If you want to call it living,” she answered bitterly. “He joined the Army out of high school, and his Hummer got totalled in a roadside bombing in downtown Baghdad. He lost both legs, not to mention everything in between. He’s still rehabbing at a military hospital.”

“I’m sorry.” Des turned back to Donnie and said, “Keep talking.”

“Well, Allison said she was going to get changed for dinner-”

“And I went in to give her some wardrobe advice,” Stevie interjected, grinning. “Pretty soon, the two of us were getting all kinds of-”

“Stevie, I’m planning to eat a nice hot meal tonight,” Des said sharply. “I really don’t want to hear what you were getting, okay?”

“I was just hanging with Teeny, getting caught up, when that Vickers bastard pulls up,” Donnie went on. “And right away he gets all up in my face. Tells me, stay out of her life, go away. Hey, she’s my sister, man. I’m supposed to watch out for her, know what I’m saying?”

“Damned straight, little brother.”

“And I tell him that. So the bastard shoves me. And I shove him back, because I’m not taking that from him.” Donnie glanced down at the towel he’d been holding to his nose. The bleeding had stopped. “And then you showed up.”

“I see.” Des stood there with her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you three relax?”

The air outside felt bracingly cold. A frost was expected later that night. Bement and Justine were seated close together on the top step of the porch. She was stroking his face and whispering to him softly.

“Your turn, Bement,” Des said. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Donnie started it,” he replied, clenching and unclenching his fists. His hands were big and roughskinned.

“We’re not in the school yard anymore. I really don’t care who started it. Just talk to me, will you?”

Bement ducked his head, tucking his long blond hair behind his ears. “I stopped by to pick up Justine. We’d talked about going to a movie.” He reached into the kangaroo pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, pulled out a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes and lit one. He got to his feet and leaned against one of the porch support beams, smoking it. He wore a tweed blazer over his hoody, baggy cargo pants, scuffed wing tip shoes. A mismatched outfit, but on him it all seemed to work. “The second I walk in the front door Donnie starts ordering me to leave his sister alone. Acting all badass convict.”

“Donnie was being a confrontational jerk,” agreed Justine, her long black hair shining in the porch light. “Then he told Bement to step outside if he was a real man. Sweetie, I can’t believe you let him bait you that way.”

“I’m not afraid of those turds,” Bement snapped, his blue eyes blazing.

“It’s not about being afraid.” Justine’s voice was patient but firm. “It’s about stooping to their level.”

“Heshoved me. And he called you a slut for being seen with me.”

“Who cares?” she demanded. “I don’t.”

Des studied her admiringly. Seated there in her toobig leather jacket, Justine Kershaw looked about fifteen. And yet this darkeyed cutie was more mature than any man in the house. “Bement, do you wish to file an assault complaint against Donnie?”

Bement flicked his cigarette butt out into the darkness. “No way.”

Des went back inside. Allison was getting dressed. The Kershaw brothers were seated on the sofa together powering down beers.

“Let me guess,” Stevie said snidely. “He told you Donnie started it. And you believe him, don’t you?”

“Guys, I really don’t care who started it. This goes down as a simple domestic scuffle in my report, nothing more.”

The brothers exchanged a guardedly hopeful look.

“Does the old man have to hear about it?” Stevie wondered.

“Why, you afraid he’ll take you out to the woodshed?”

“Don’t joke about the woodshed, lady,” Donnie pleaded, wincing.

“Your father won’t hear about it from me. Really, I’m more concerned about whether or not this was a warning flare.” Des took off her big Smokey hat and twirled it in her fingers, gazing at the two of them. “I’ve dealt with guys my whole career who couldn’t stay out of jail. You guys have a decent trade. You have choices. That’s why I treated you with respect this morning. I thought we had an understanding. And now I’m realizing I was wrong, because you’ve come here and you’ve dissed me. You’ll get no more slack from me. You just used it all up. It’s gone. I get one more call regarding you two, I’m running you right in-and making sure you’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Do you want to go back in?”

“Not a chance,” said Stevie.

“Then start walking the walk. For starters, why don’t you find your own crib? Get out from under your father’s thumb.”

Donnie shook his head. “No way he’d let us.”

“What do you mean ‘let you’? You’re grown men. The only thing that’s holding you back is you.”

And their fear. They were scared to death of that snarly, abusive little father of theirs. This was what had unsettled her when she’d met them that morning. It wasn’t that Stevie and Donnie Kershaw were evil bad asses. It was that they were frightened. Which was definite cause for alarm bells. It was the frightened ones who you had to watch out for. The frightened ones who got in over their heads. The frightened ones who panicked and pulled the trigger.

“I saw for myself how he treats you,” she went on. “The man never stops telling you how stupid and useless you are. If someone like your father keeps telling you that, pretty soon you start believing it. Maybe you two think that’s just his way and he means well…”

“No, he doesn’t,” Donnie said. “He’s a mean bastard. We hate his guts.”

“Then stop letting him chump you.”

“Lady, you know squat about us,” Stevie said in a low, angry voice.

“Fine, have it your way. I’ve said what I wanted to say.” Des glanced at Donnie. “Now you’re going to bump knucks with Bement out on the porch.”

“Don’t do it, Donnie,” Stevie warned him.

Donnie furrowed his brow in confusion. “Will you run me in if I don’t?”

“Honey, you’ll leave me no choice.”

“You’re nasty, know that?” Stevie said. “You’re not a nice lady.”

Bement and Justine were still seated on the top step together, holding hands. Bement’s eye was starting to swell shut. He got slowly to his feet, he and Donnie staring hard at each other.

“I want to make sure there’s no hard feelings,” Des said.

Bement raised his chin at her before he said, “No problem.” And held his fist out.

Grudgingly, Donnie bumped it with his own.

“Now leave,” Justine ordered her brothers. “I want you two gone.”

“We’re waiting for Allison,” Stevie said. “Yo, Allison!”

Justine’s roommate came scuffing out the door now, clutching a denim jacket. She had on a belly shirt and ultra lowrider jeans that showed off a whole lot of skin, which might have been alluring if she was twenty pounds lighter and spent forty hours a week with a personal trainer. As it was, all she was styling were her jiggly love handles.

“Let’s get gone already,” Stevie huffed at her impatiently.

The three of them jumped into Stevie and Donnie’s van, Stevie behind the wheel. The van wouldn’t start the first three times Stevie tried it. It finally kicked over amidst a whole lot of flatulent rumbling, then stalled as they were backing out of the driveway. Stevie cranked it up again and they finally took off, leaving behind a billowing cloud of putrid exhaust.

“I’d better put some ice on this eye,” Bement said, flexing his right hand. His knuckles were swelling, too. He went inside, leaving the two women alone.

“You go with Mitch Berger, am I right?” Justine asked her.

“Why, have you got some smart remark for me? Because I’m really not in the mood right now.”

“No, I’ve got this…” She handed Des a fat 9x12 manila envelope, gulping nervously. “No big, but he’s kind of expecting it, okay?”