The Way Home

FIFTEEN

Come down here,” said Thomas Flynn. “Dream with me.”

Thomas Flynn was in the home of Eric and Linda Wasserman. He was on his knees in their living room, pitching carpet. A large book of samples was open beside him.

Linda Wasserman, a blonde in her midthirties, stood over Flynn, her arms crossed. Her husband was at work and their child was at sleepaway camp. She had a toned body, a perfect dye job, immaculately pedicured feet at rest in designer sandals, and lovely skin. Flynn reckoned she spent a great deal of time working out and getting worked on. He was in the presence of new Potomac money.

“Come on down here,” said Flynn again.

“Should I?”

“Absolutely!”

Linda Wasserman got down on all fours. She was looking to replace her living-room carpet with something nicer. The Wassermans had recently bought the house and inherited its shag carpeting and scuffed-up floors.

Flynn was there to guide her and make a sale. He was trying not to concentrate on her tight, perfect ass, which was small enough to fit into one of his hands. It would be like palming a basketball. You could actually carry her around the house, thought Flynn. She’s light enough. Put her in one hand and rest her on your hip, hold a beer in the other, and walk her to the bedroom.

What’s wrong with me? thought Flynn. And in his head he heard a reply: Nothing that isn’t wrong with any other man.

“Now what?” said Linda Wasserman.

Flynn had his fingers deep in one of the samples, and he was kneading it while looking into her eyes.

“Put your hand on this,” said Flynn. Meaning the sample.

She reached out and stroked the carpet sample. As she leaned forward, her breasts became pendulous beneath her pullover blouse, one of those jobs with an oval cutout and a little string tied at the scoop of the neck.

“Plush pile,” said Flynn. “It’s sheared several times to give it a velvety sheen. Imagine walking on this. You’re not going to want to wear shoes in this room, I can tell you that. Neither are your guests.”

“We don’t actually use the living room much.”

“Perfect. This is low-traffic carpet.”

“It is nice,” she said. “Is it expensive?”

“Yes,” said Flynn. With her, the high cost would be a positive. But not too high. They weren’t stupid rich. “It’s not overextravagant, mind you. It’s the Benz of carpet, rather than the Ferrari.”

“Hmm.” She caught him glancing at her breasts and quickly got to her feet. “I’m going to have to discuss this with my husband, Mr. Flynn.”

“Of course,” said Flynn, standing more slowly than she because of his aging knees. “My wife and I always talk about these kinds of purchases before we come to a decision. Let me just size this out and give you an estimate.”

While he was measuring the room, his cell rang. He read the caller ID, prepared himself mentally, and answered. With one finger he made an “excuse me” sign to Linda Wasserman, then he walked out of the room.

“Thomas Flynn speaking.”

“Mr. Flynn, this is Mindy Kramer.”

“Hello, Mindy-”

“I need to see you down at the job site right away.”

Clearly she was agitated. But with these aggressive, hard-charging types, it could be nothing more than a few drops of soda spilled on a hardwood floor by a worker, or a piece of the old carpet left behind on the site. A negotiating ploy to get the price of the job down.

“Is there a problem?” said Flynn.

“A very serious problem.”

“With the product or the installation?”

“The installation. Maybe the product. I don’t know.”

“So I should send my guys down.”

“I’d like you here, too. Frankly, I have no faith in them at this point.”

“Can you just elaborate a little bit so I know what we’re talking about here?”

“I don’t have time. The police are here, Mr. Flynn, and I have to go. On top of the subpar work that was done by your men, this house was broken into last night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Okay. I’ve got to finish up here, but it won’t be long.”

“I’ll see you shortly.”

Flynn phoned Chris and asked him if he knew the nature of Mindy Kramer’s malfunction. Chris, on a Northwest job with Ben, told him that the install at her row house had been clean and error free. Flynn caught a bit of hesitation in Chris’s voice that did not comfort him.

“Finish up what you’re doing,” said Flynn, “and meet me down at the house.”

Flynn gave Linda Wasserman her estimate, deliberately not allowing his eyes to drop below her chin as he explained the pricing and terms. He shook her hand and headed back down into the city.

Flynn spotted a Third District cruiser on the street as he pulled up near Mindy Kramer’s row house. He went through the unlocked front door and followed the sound of Mindy Kramer’s distinctive voice to the kitchen at the rear.

The kitchen door opened to a small deck whose steps led down to the alley. Mindy Kramer and two young uniformed officers, a woman and a man, were standing on the deck. Mindy was smoking a long, thin white cigarette, gesturing with it as she spoke to the two rather uninterested-looking police.

“I don’t have an alarm system,” Mindy Kramer was saying, as Flynn joined the group. “I’m flipping this place, so I’m not going to invest in one. And you don’t want to try and sell a home with bars on its windows. I mean, the house is unfurnished, so what’s there to steal?”

“Whoever broke in didn’t know that till he got inside,” said the female officer.

“That’s right,” said Flynn, just to inject himself into the conversation.

The female police officer looked at Flynn. “And you are?”

“He’s here for something else,” said Mindy Kramer, by way of both introduction and dismissal, waving at him with her cigarette, waving him away.

The male officer drifted and eyed the severely splintered doorjamb. It looked to Flynn as if a jimmy or crowbar had been taken to it. It had been an unprofessional and successful effort.

“It could have been kids,” said Mindy Kramer. “Or a junkie. I don’t care who it was. But you’d think the neighbors would have heard something. A couple of people on this block have dogs, for God’s sake.”

“We’ll knock on some doors,” said the female officer. “See what we can find out.”

“Aren’t you going to dust for prints?” said Mindy Kramer.

The female officer looked at Flynn for a moment and light danced in her eyes. They could “dust” the whole house, but, short of walking into the 3D station himself and confessing to the crime, this particular perpetrator, who apparently had stolen nothing, would not be brought to justice.

“First thing, I’m gonna need to fill out a report,” she said.

“Ach,” said Mindy Kramer, rolling her eyes. It was as if the officer had told her that she was about to be strip-searched.

“Excuse me,” said Flynn. “About that problem.”

“Go have a look at it,” said Mindy Kramer. “You’ll see what I’m talking about right away. I have to stay here and help her fill out a report.”

Flynn exchanged another commiserating look with the officer before moving away.

He was not in love with the police, but he was empathetic about the job they did and the people they had to deal with every day. He had never once regretted his decision to leave the MPD, but he was glad he had experienced that life, if only for less than a year. The brevity of his tenure aside, the man in blue had never left his blood entirely.

He owned a. 38 Special, which had been the MPD sidearm in his day, before the force switched over to the Glock 17. Though it probably wasn’t true that all police felt naked without a gun after their retirement, it happened to be true for Flynn. Despite the District handgun ban, recently lifted, he had bought the revolver hot from one of his installers and kept it loaded in the nightstand beside his bed. He liked knowing that there was a firearm within reach. Given the relative safety of his neighborhood, his decision to own an illegal gun was emotional rather than rational. He realized he’d pay a heavy price if he was caught with it, but he was willing to take the risk.

“Pardon me,” said Flynn to the male officer, as he stepped around him and went through the open kitchen door.

Flynn went toward the front of the house, into the center hallway, and cut left into the library. He inspected the work that Chris and Ben had done. It had simply been a sloppy performance. One side of the carpet was misaligned with the wall and slanted away from the bead. On that side, nearest the built-in bookshelves, the corner of the carpet had not been laid properly and appeared to have been pulled up and hastily put back down.

“Chris,” said Flynn, shaking his head. Flynn knew that he had measured correctly and he had double-checked the size of the roll when it had come into the warehouse. This was on Chris and his friend Ben. They just hadn’t done the job with conscience or care.

He went to the spot that looked worse and got down on his knees. He lifted the corner to check on the padding and saw that a cutout had been made in the hardwood floor. With one knee holding down the bent-back carpet, he got his fingers under a notch in the cutout and lifted it away from the floor.

A kind of basket, fashioned with wood slats, had been built in beneath the floor. It was meant to hold something, but it held nothing now. Flynn actually scratched his head. The concealed cutout and basket were nothing to him, and asking Mindy Kramer about them would only be a further complication. He replaced the panel, put the carpet back down, and phoned his son. Chris and Ben were headed south on 16th Street, just five minutes away.

When they arrived, they came straight to the job site where Flynn was waiting.

“Hey,” said Chris.

“Chris,” said Flynn, “what’s this?”

Chris breathed through his mouth, his eyes darting nervously as he revisited the work they’d done. What Flynn used to call his “what the fuck did I do” look. Ben stood beside him, silent, not able or willing to look at Flynn. Flynn smelled the alcohol sweat coming off Ben and could see a hard night and shame in his eyes. He wondered how long he could carry this man. When poor performance began to affect Flynn’s business, he had to reconsider the hire. Even if it was his own son.

“That’s not how we left it,” said Chris.

“C’mon, Chris. Don’t play me like that.”

“Listen to me, Dad. We did this job right.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Chris thumb-stroked the scar above his lip, something he did unconsciously when he was struggling with a problem. “What are the police doing here? We saw ’em in the back of the house when we came down the hall.”

“Somebody broke in last night,” said Flynn. “It’s got nothing to do with this.”

Flynn noticed Chris glance at Ben, and he saw Ben stare down at his shoes, his posture slackening. Something wasn’t right.

“Maybe whoever broke in came in here and messed up our work,” said Chris.

“Please,” said Flynn.

“I’m tell ing you. We did the job correctly.”

“I don’t have time for this right now,” said Flynn. “You two get to work and correct it. I’ve got to go back out there and make some sort of price adjustment for the customer. It’s gonna cost me, but hey, what’s a few hundred dollars.”

“Take it out my check,” said Chris.

“You know I don’t do that,” said Flynn. “Go on, get to work.”

Flynn left the room. Chris stared at Ben, who would not meet his eyes.

“You heard him,” said Chris. “Let’s fix this shit.”

Chris and Ben refinished the job properly while Thomas Flynn dealt with Mindy Kramer and adjusted her bill. When they were almost done, two young police officers came into the room where they were working and had a look around. The female officer asked Chris what he was doing, and he told her that they were correcting a new-carpet install that had been done the day before. Chris and Ben said nothing further. If they had been asked other questions, their responses would have been similarly to-the-point and minimal. They did not hate police, but neither did they trust them or have any desire to cooperate or fraternize with them.

The day had cooled little by early evening, when Chris pulled into the small parking lot behind Ben’s apartment house, finding a spot shaded, somewhat, by a thin-armed maple. Chris pushed the transmission arm up into park and let the motor run. Ben had his elbow resting on the lip of the window and was staring out toward the cemetery. They had spoken very little on the ride uptown.

“You gonna talk to me now?” said Chris.

Ben turned his head and looked into his friend’s eyes. “I didn’t take the money, Chris.”

“You told me that already.”

“You believe me, right?”

“I do. But you know who took it.”

Ben nodded slowly. “Had to be Lawrence Newhouse.”

“ Shit. You told Lawrence?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why him?”

Ben briefly shut his eyes, as if that could erase what he had done. “Lawrence came past my spot last night.”

“He just dropped in for no reason.”

“Nah, he wanted something. You know that. Ali’s been tryin to help his nephew out. Young man’s up on charges, I expect. So Ali’s lookin to, you know, help him get a job at a McDonald’s, someplace like that. Lawrence don’t think that’s good enough for his nephew. He wanted to see if your father could put him on.”

“I’m not doing that,” said Chris. “I’m not getting involved with Lawrence or anyone in his family. I wouldn’t do that to my old man.”

“I told Lawrence the same. In a different way, but I told him. And then I went for a drive with him, just to get him out my apartment.”

“I would’ve shown him the door.”

“That’s what I should’ve done, but I didn’t. We ended up down by the river, and Lawrence got me all fucked up on weed and alcohol. You know I can’t hold my drink. I started to talk behind the vodka. I’m not making an excuse. I’m just sayin, I was trippin and that’s what I did. I can’t even tell you what I said to him. I mean, I was that far gone. But I woke up this morning and I knew I had told him enough and that I had messed up bad.”

“Shit, Ben.”

“I know, man. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry don’t fix this.”

“I could talk to Lawrence. He still stays down there at Parkchester. Ali could get up with him through his nephew.”

“What for?” said Chris.

They sat there for a while without speaking. They thought about what to do, and it came to Chris that there was nothing to do. There was no one to return the money to. There was simply a basket, now empty, underneath a floor in an unoccupied row house. No one would miss the money or know that it had been there or that it was gone.

Naturally, their thoughts drifted toward regret and then resentment. Why hadn’t they gone ahead and taken the money themselves when they had come upon it the day before? If taking it had no consequences, and it appeared that there would be none, then what had been the wrong in it? Now Lawrence Newhouse had the money, and he didn’t deserve to have it. Lawrence would blow it on bad clothing, strippers, potent weed, and stepped-on cocaine. And Chris and Ben would be ass-broke and back at work at seven in the morning, sweating through polo shirts they hated to wear.

“Bughouse,” said Chris under his breath. He managed a small incredulous smile.

“Stupid,” said Ben, shaking his head. “Stupid.”

“Anyway,” said Chris.

Chris and Ben shook hands.

“Same time tomorrow?” said Ben.

“I’ll pick you up.”

Ben left his tool belt in the back of the van and shut the doors. Chris watched his friend go into the stairwell of his building, then pulled from the lot and headed out of the city. By the time North Capitol became Blair Road, his bitterness had dissipated. He was thinking of a cool shower, a cold beer, and Katherine.

In his apartment, Ben Braswell washed up and changed his clothing. He phoned Renee to see if she wanted to hook up that night, and she said she did. She’d come by with a pizza and a Blockbuster movie when she got off work, around ten o’clock.

“See you then, girl,” said Ben.

“That’s a bet,” said Renee.

He took a catnap on his sofa. When he woke, the room had darkened. He got up, went to the window, and parted the blinds. There was still light left in the day.

Ben slipped a paperback into the back pocket of his jeans, left his place, went along the black iron fence to the open gate at Rock Creek Church and Webster, and entered the cemetery grounds. He was headed toward the Adams Memorial, where he would sit on the marble bench shielded by evergreens and read until dark.

He stepped down a road so narrow it was no kind of road, then went off it, taking a shortcut across a stand of graves. The dying sun settled on the headstones and threw shadows at his feet.