True Crime

3

" Hippopotamus!” Davy shouted. Shit, I thought. It stood just inside the zoo entrance on a sun-dappled patch of wood chips under the green trees: a four-foot-high statue of a hippo with its mouth jacked wide open. Two or three kids were already climbing on it, crawling into its mouth, sliding over its back, snaking between its trunky legs. Davy let go of my hand and ran across the patch toward it, waving his arms with excitement. He could spend half an hour on the thing before he even thought about going inside to see the real animals.

I looked at my watch. It was quarter past one. I’d have to start down to the prison around three, I figured, maybe a little after. I could pretty much forget about talking to Porterhouse before that. I stuck my hands in my pockets and strolled after Davy, kicking through the chips. I tried to shrug the thing off. It was nothing important anyway. Just like Nancy Larson and her gunshots. Just a loose end that would be tied up as soon as I got a closer look.

Davy was poking his little blond head into the hippo’s mouth now. Peering into its black depths, bouncing on his toes. Waiting for the boy who was already in there to come out so he could have his turn. I could feel my stomach buzzing as I watched him. Those goddamned potato chips. It was probably nothing, but it sizzled in my belly like an electric spark going pole to pole. Of course, there were so many sparks and sizzles going off in there just now that the place felt like Dr. Frankensteins’ laboratory on the big night. But this was another one, and I wished Porterhouse could’ve waited a bit longer before heading out to lunch. And I wished I didn’t have to take my goddamned kid to the goddamned zoo.

Davy pulled his head out of the hippo’s mouth as I approached him. His face was bright and shiny.

“Look, Daddy, it’s the hippo,” he said.

I forced myself to grin. “Shiver me timbers, so it is.”

“Why is it a hippo?” he asked me.

“Well, son, that’s an existential question.”

“Oh.”

The little boy in the hippo’s mouth came crawling out backwards, and Davy, knowing the law of the kids’ jungle, started muscling his way in there before anyone else could steal his turn. He got his knee on the creature’s lower jaw and hoisted up. His trailing foot hung off the ground but he paused and looked over his shoulder at me.

“I’m going into the hippo’s mouth,” he said, “because it won’t bite me.”

“You sure?” I said.

He hesitated, uncertain, but then said, “Yeah. Yeah, because he’s a pretend hippo.” “Ah. Gotcha.”

He climbed down into the mouth, the bottom of his shorts wriggling as he worked his way in. I stood, fidgeting, in the broken shade of the new-planted oaks. It was a relief after the white glare of the sky, but the day’s heat still smothered the hippo grove and my skin felt like it was slowly turning into glue. As a side effect, the electric stomach syndrome seemed to rise closer to the surface, seemed to spread until the sparks were doing a dermal dance from my crotch to my eyebrows. As moms and housemaids stood by their strollers, watching their charges wrestle over the beast and under it, I shifted on the wood chips, impatient and irritable.

Davy’s voice rose up to me, hollow and echoic, “Look, Daddy, I’m in the hippo’s mouth!”

“I’ll bet you taste good.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so sweet,” I murmured indifferently. I knew he never listened to the answer to that question.

I watched him distantly as his butt wriggled, as he tried to work his head around so he could get himself out of there. I felt almost frantic with boredom; frustration. I lifted a hand from my pocket and wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. Why am I like this? Why can’t I ever stop? I thought.

“Why am I so sweet?” said Davy, his round face peering up at me now out of the hippo’s mouth.

I smiled at him. “There’s no reason,” I told him. “You were just born that way.”

And three notes trilled from the beeper on my belt.

“It went beep, beep, beep!” said Davy happily. He began to crawl out of the hippo.

“Yeah,” I muttered. My hand was unsteady as I reached down to fiddle with the thing. I swiveled it round on my belt so I could see the readout on the bottom. I recognized Porterhouse’s number and my first thought was: Christ. Not now. But I was already scanning the area for a phone.

Davy lowered himself to the ground. “Now I’ll climb on his back!” he announced.

I’d seen one earlier, I remembered. As we came in. It was just out beyond the entrance.

“Listen. Davy,” I said.

He was wrestling comically with the animal’s flanks. He was too short to climb it and was stretching his hands up high against the smooth gray sides and making little jumps. “Give me some help, Dad,” he said.

“Davy. Look. I’ve gotta go to the phone for a minute.”

“Help me up the hippopotamus.” He was still scrabbling up, sliding down.

“Look, I’ve got to talk on the phone for a minute, Davy. We’ll come right back.” But I already suspected that was a lie.

Davy looked around, surprised. He lowered his hands to his sides. He stood on the wood chips gazing up at me, forlorn. “But I want to climb on the hippopotamus now,” he said.

“Okay. Okay. But first I’ve got to talk on the phone.”

He frowned. He stamped his sneaker against the ground. “I don’t want to talk on the phone. I want to climb the hippopotamus.”

“Come on, son,” I said. And bending down, I lifted him up in my arms.

“No!” He started to cry. “I want the hippopotamus!” He started to wail. His face screwed up, reddening. He struggled in my arms and reached back toward the hippo. The mothers and babysitters pretended not to look at us. I carried Davy away.

“We just have to …” I had to hold him tight to keep him from squirming out of my grip. “We have to …”

“I want the hippo-pot-a-muuuus!” He sobbed as if his mother had died, pushing against my chest. “I want the zoo!”

“We’ll come back to the zoo. We’ll come back,” I said desperately, walking faster round the hedges toward the entrance gate.

Powerless, Davy’s face plopped against my shoulder. Pressing against me for comfort, he cried miserably. “I want to go to the-to the zoo now,” he said.

I would have to meet with him, I thought. Porterhouse. I already knew that’s the way it would be. The man wasn’t going to break down over the phone and shout, “Yes, yes, my sworn testimony was a lie.” He wasn’t going to break down at all, ever. I would have to sit down with him, sit across from him, look into his face as he explained. And I would have to do it now, if I could. Before I went down to interview Beachum. By the time I walked into that prison, I wanted that crackle of doubt in my gut turned off. I wanted to know what this story was about.

With Davy crying inconsolably in my arms, with sweat pouring down my face and my stomach churning with guilt and excitement, I passed under the gay filigree of the gate. The pay phone was right there against the zoo’s brick wall, the blue sign brightly lit by the sun.

“Ssh,” I said to Davy, bouncing him light. “Ssh.”

“We’re going to the zoo,” he cried into my shirt.

Holding the boy in one arm, my left arm, I wrestled a coin out of my pocket with my right hand. With that hand only, I picked up the receiver, wrangled the money into the slot and punched the buttons.

“Ssh, Davy, ssh,” I said.

“Porterhouse and Stein,” said the receptionist.

Davy raised his head. “Don’t talk on the phone!” he demanded. He slapped weakly across my face at the receiver.

“Mr. Porterhouse please,” I said. “It’s Steve Everett of the News. Ssh,” I told Davy. I tried to kiss him. He twisted away. “I’m sorry, pal. I have to do this.”

Frowning, he forced back his sobs. “We’ll go back to the zoo in a minute,” he said manfully.

“Hello,” said a man’s voice over the phone. “This is Dale Porterhouse.”

It was a small, high, soft voice, trying, I thought, to sound bigger and deeper and firmer than it was.

“Hi! Mr. Porterhouse. This is Steve Everett of the St. Louis News. I’m covering the execution of Frank Beachum today. I know you were one of the chief witnesses against him …”

“Yes.” I could almost hear him swelling proudly on the other end. “Yes, I was.”

“I was wondering if you had some time to talk to me about the case.”

“Well …” He actually huffed. He sounded very important indeed now. “Unfortunately, I’m in a meeting right this minute.” He really did sound sorry about it too.

“I was wondering …”

I had to shift my arm as Davy twisted around against my hip. He looked longingly over his shoulder in the direction of the gate. He began to cry again. “I was climbing the hippo,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He was getting tired now. No nap.

“I was wondering if you could meet with me for a few minutes. Just to give me your take on the thing.”

He wanted to. I could tell he wanted to by the sound of his voice. By the rhythm of his breath, or some emanation out of the receiver, I don’t know. But you get so you can tell the ones who like to see their names in the paper.

“Zoo,” said Davy disconsolately to himself. And, heartbroken, he rested his head against me again.

“Yes, I suppose …” said Porterhouse. “This wouldn’t be a very good place … What if we met downstairs. At the Bread Company, the restaurant. Do you know it?”

“Pine Street. Yeah, sure.”

“Say in half an hour.”

“Great.”

Davy started to wail again when I carried him away from the zoo, when he saw which way we were going.

“We’ll go back to the zoo in a minute,” he kept sobbing.

The sweat streaked my face as I hurried to the car. “We’ll come back, I promise. Another day, another day, Davy, I swear to God.”

He fought me as I strapped him into his kiddie seat, his little legs kicking out, his arms thrashing helplessly. I worked in silence, forcing his soft body back against the cushion, forcing the belt between his legs, clicking it shut. By the time I got behind the wheel of the car, he had worked himself into a full-blown tantrum. I could see him in the rearview mirror, his face purple, his body writhing convulsively against the straps. Screaming without words, beyond words.

“Jesus, Davy, would you stop!” I said. But I bit my anger back and kept it lodged, bitter, in my throat. I turned on the Tempo’s engine. Davy reached for the window, for the zoo, longing after it as we drove away.

I prayed he’d fall asleep as we drove, but he didn’t. Where the hell was this famous nap of his? He just went on and on, crying and crying, more and more weakly as we sped beneath the trees, by the lakewater, over the winding park roads. The zoo was over for him now. He just wanted his mommy. “I want Mommy,” he kept screaming.

“All right, all right,” I kept answering between my teeth.

Barbara must have heard him as I carried him down the hallway to our apartment. Once again, she opened the door before I reached it. Davy stretched his arms to her, sobbing, and she took him from me. She stared at me, her lips parted, as he burrowed his face into her neck.

“I wanted to go-to go-to the zoo,” he told her. “I wanted to climb on the … on the … I wanted …”

I lifted my hands from my sides but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Barbara swallowed hard, bouncing our son gently in her arms. I stood with my hands raised, looking into her unblinking blue eyes.

“What …” she said finally, putting her hand on the boy’s neck, leaning her face against his hair. “What is wrong with you.”

I started to answer, but she closed the door in my face.