The Vigilantes

[FOUR]

“How does survivor’s guilt fit?” Matt Payne was saying, reaching for another slice of salami and wrapping it around another big black olive.

Even though the platter was now nearly three-quarters empty, all the meat and cheese and fruit he’d eaten wasn’t keeping up with the alcohol he was washing it down with. He was starting to feel a bit tight.

Or maybe it’s a combination of that and being exhausted.

He’d made them both fresh drinks.

Luna was asleep at their feet, snoring softly.

“Survivor’s guilt,” Amanda Law said, “because Skipper died and Becca didn’t.”

Twenty-five-year-old Becca Benjamin, just shy of two o’clock in the morning on September 9, had been sitting in her Mercedes SUV waiting for J. Warren “Skipper” Olde, her twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend, to come out of a seedy Philly Inn motel room. Which he did, right after the meth lab inside had blown up the damn place, turning it into an inferno. The blast demolished the Mercedes.

Becca suffered a head injury from the blast that had almost killed her. Skipper was critically burned.

Matt had known them while growing up, since they were all at Episcopal Academy. Both came from families of significant means. And both had a history of getting in trouble with booze and drugs.

Because of the severity of their multiple injuries, both had been taken to Temple University Hospital’s advanced burn center, where the chief physician was one Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM.

“Matt, I’ll never tell anyone else this,” Amanda said, “but it’s my brutally cold assessment that Jesus Jimenez probably did Skipper a favor by killing him. Skipper was either going to die from his burns or suffer a long recovery and never be the same again.”

Matt nodded.

“But Becca,” she went on, “nonetheless is feeling responsible, saying they wouldn’t have been there if Skipper hadn’t wanted to make her happy with some of those goddamned drugs. To get past this damned survivor’s guilt, I sent her to Amy.”

“That’s interesting,” Matt said. “Amy never mentioned she was now Becca’s shrink.”

“She’s a doctor, sweetie. Just because she’s your sister doesn’t mean she’s going to tell you and break the physician-patient confidentiality.”

He shrugged.

Amanda said, “There can be a variant of survivor’s guilt among doctors. They get a guilty feeling that they didn’t do enough to save a patient. Luckily, I’ve never had it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. And I know that those who do have it need to look at the glass as being half full, not half empty, confident in their skills that they did the right thing.”

I’ve had a few of those myself, Matt thought.

It wasn’t that long ago that I held Susan Reynolds in my arms as her very life poured out from that bullet hole in her head.

And I loved her like I love Amanda.

Right down to the roadside cottage with the picket fence.

I endlessly questioned if I could’ve done anything different to save her from that madman of a killer.

And, bottom line, the answer was I couldn’t.

Still, finally realizing that didn’t ease the pain of loss.

He took a sip of Scotch as he glanced at Amanda.

Am I about to lose Amanda…?

Amanda was saying: “I also understand that sometimes things play out the way they do no matter what anyone does. In fact, in some cases we probably prolong the inevitable by taking the heroic measures. Which was why someone in a wise moment came up with DNRs.”

“Do Not Resuscitate orders,” Matt said.

She nodded.

He sipped his drink again and tried to understand where she was going with this.

Maybe it’s her body clock ticking. The abduction was a real wake-up call for her sense of mortality.

And maybe that’s some manifestation of survivor’s guilt-in part because she lived while that young teen Honduran girl, after being forced into prostitution, died a brutal death.

Then she said: “Two months ago, Matt, I went to Hawaii for an M and M.”

I know she can’t mean candy.

“It’s a conference doctors attend,” she went on, as if reading his mind, “Morbidity and Mortality.”

This is about mortality!

He said, “I heard those conferences are really just an excuse to write off trips to fancy places, like Hawaii, so you can play and take a business deduction.”

“The idea of M and Ms is peer review. We look at how others cared for patients and how it could have been done better. Particularly cases in which a mistake was made and the patient died. Being head of the burn unit, I tend to be the one doing the reviewing. It’s not exactly a pleasant task. No one likes to be told they screwed up, but we do want to do right by our patients-First do no harm-and the peer review, while sometimes painful, does help. You learn to modify behavior. And avoid repeating mistakes.”

She looked at him a long moment.

“Matt, I don’t like repeating mistakes. I can’t.”

“Of course not. I understand. There’re lives at stake.”

“Yes, there are. Ours.”

What?

She said: “We’re at a critical time in our lives. I feel we’ve both been given second chances, and I want us to get this next one right.”

“Oh.”

“I had a long talk with my father.”

Matt had met Charley Law only once, but had heard stories about him from Jason Washington, who’d known Law during his twenty years with the department in Northeast Detectives. Washington had said that her old man always had been full of commonsense gems, that he’d been a good cop because he could quickly strip away the bullshit and cut right to the chase.

Law had been off duty when he took a bullet to the hip. He’d walked in on a robbery of a gas station on Frankford Avenue. Returning fire, he’d shot the critter dead then and there-and wound up being offered disability and retirement. And he’d taken it, saying he was glad to get the hell out, if only to get past all the lame jokes about his name-“Well, well, here comes The Law.”

When Matt had first tried dating Amanda-right before the abduction-she had made it damn perfectly clear what a toll her father’s job had taken on their family. She told him about the daily pain of watching him go to work, and fearing that that would be the last time they’d see him alive.

Amanda went on: “When I turned thirteen, Dad sat me down at the kitchen table. He said, ‘This is your birds-and-bees speech. Pay attention. We’re on this planet basically to do two things: eat and reproduce. And we eat in order to have the energy to reproduce. Everything else-your clothes, TV, music, vacations, whatever-it’s all filler for between the reproduction times. That’s what we’re hardwired to do. Understanding that, you will know that boys want nothing more than to get in your pants and will tell you whatever you want to hear to accomplish that. So, understand that you-and only you-can control who gets in your pants.’”

Payne avoided eye contact as he took a long, slow sip of his drink.

Then he said, “I’m afraid to ask, but am I supposed to respond to that?”

She smiled. “No, I’m just trying to paint a picture.”

He chuckled nervously. “That’s one helluva picture.”

“The picture I’m painting is that my dad and I have a close connection. And recently, Dad and I were talking about relationships. He told me that ‘nobody has the first damn answer why two people ever get together,’ only that there was the hardwiring. But he could offer me the benefit of looking back, at his marriage and those of others. His experience.

“He said, ‘Amanda, so many women go into a relationship thinking they’re going to change the man, make him better. Civilize him. It just doesn’t work.’”

Matt looked in her eyes, then said, “I need civilizing?”

Amanda shook her head. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s more that both people in the relationship need to be in concert from the start. Not, as my dad said, have one trying to ‘fix’ the other along the way.”

Matt took a sip of his Scotch and nodded. “I fully agree with that.”

Amanda was silent a long moment.

Oh, shit! Did I just paint myself into a corner?

“Then why won’t you quit playing cop, Matt? And trying to get yourself killed?”

I wonder if she’s been talking about this with Amy, who’s been banging that drum forever?

The smooth voice of Diana Krall was now singing “The Look of Love,” and Matt thought, She’s got the player on shuffle. Has she been playing those CDs all night?

Amanda took a sip of her wine, then said, “Okay, now the fun part.”

“What?”

“Bear with me,” she said. “Not too long before she died at seventy-three, looking gorgeous even at the end, Anne Bancroft-”

She paused and looked at him questioningly.

Matt said, “Sure. Wife of one of the funniest guys ever, Mel Brooks.”

“Not just a wife. She was a successful actress on her own, you know.”

“Really? Like what?”

“She’s one of the few with a Tony, an Emmy, and an Oscar to her name. And you still only know her as Mel Brooks’s wife?”

Payne shook his head. “Sorry.”

“She was Mrs. Robinson.”

“Mrs. Robinson?”

“The Graduate?”

“Never heard of it.”

Frustrated, she sighed. “Matt! You can’t be that dense.”

He grinned. Then he started whistling the Simon amp; Garfunkel hit tune from the soundtrack, appropriately titled “Mrs. Robinson.”

Amanda punched him in the shoulder. He thought it was somewhat playfully done, but the sad look on her face didn’t seem to support that.

“Oh, you are just impossible!” she said, her tone exasperated, then upended her wine stem, emptying it.

He made an attempt at a smile, but she was having none of it. Then he leaned forward, touched her chin with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to lift her head, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Sorry. I was just playing. What were you going to say?”

“Well, Matt, I’m not playing. Goddammit, I’m serious.”

She inhaled deeply, exhaled, then said: “Not too long before Anne Bancroft died-and she didn’t say it because everyone knew she had cancer; she was very private, and no one knew she was dying but Mel Brooks and her doctors-she was asked in an interview what the secret was to her successful-and quite clearly loving-forty-year marriage.”

Oh, shit. I think I see where this is going.

He said: “Okay…”

“And what do you think she said, Matt?”

Watch out, Matty, ol’ boy.

This is a minefield.

Step carefully or… BOOM!

He thought for a long moment, then said, “I don’t know. What with being married to a brilliant writer, actor, director, probably something about patience. And about respect. And real love, of course.”

“Yes and no.”

“She said ‘yes and no’?”

“No! What she said was all that you said-and more. But she didn’t list them. It was the way she phrased it.”

With his right hand, somewhat anxiously, he made a gesture that said And that was? Then he saw her face, and immediately regretted it.

Amanda said, “Didn’t you just in your last breath suggest that patience was a virtue to have in a good lasting relationship?”

Well, kaaa-fucking-boom, Matty!

Nice job. You may as well have just taken a running dive onto that minefield.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

“Well, damn it, Matt! You should be. Because this is really important to me. Because you’re important to me.”

She paused, and she looked deeply, and genuinely lovingly, into his eyes.

It was powerful, and he felt his throat tighten.

She truly is a goddess.

And I truly am a complete and utter ass.

“Amanda, I’m sorry.”

“What she said was this: ‘When I hear the tires of his car come crunching up the stone drive of our house in Connecticut, I visualize him and think, ‘Now the fun begins.’”

Amanda stared Matt in the eyes again.

“Do you see?” Amanda said softly. “There was an excitement to their relationship. They weren’t together for any reason other than enjoying one another. Love, too, but enjoyment.”

He looked at her and thought, The way it is in the beginning, when just the thought of your mate makes your heart beat faster.

She added, “Theirs was a true companionship. A real relationship. Joyful.”

He nodded.

“Now the fun begins,” she repeated. “I want that, Matt. I need that. Now, and especially later, when most don’t have it.”

She looked down a moment, then back up at him, and softly added: “I felt that when I heard your key in the lock earlier. Now the fun begins…”

They looked each other in the eyes, and after what seemed like a very long time, Amanda said, “You don’t have any response to that?”

Matt didn’t trust his voice to speak.

He raised his eyebrows, then cleared this throat.

“Only,” he said carefully, “that I really admire Mel even more now. And, yeah, I want that, too.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“It sounds like there was a ‘but’ coming,” Amanda said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

He hesitated, then rolled his eyes.

“Nah,” he said. “Obviously, only in the movies.”

Her eyes grew wide with shock. “What?”

Then he smiled, held her hand, and said, “Baby, not yes, but hell yes it’s possible.”

He wrapped his arms around her. She rested her head on his shoulder.

As he gently squeezed, he said, “I do want that, too. I want you, Amanda, more than anything.”

Did I just prove her father’s point-that I’ll say anything she wants to hear? Particularly to get her naked?

But it’s more than that.

I meant what I said. I do want her.

I just have no damn idea what to say if she asks about me quitting the department.

He felt her arms wrap around him, and she squeezed gently back. She buried her nose behind his ear and softly kissed his neck.

As he thought he heard her begin to sniffle, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” came softly from the speakers.