Wolf Hour

16 Alice, October 2016

Kay Myers stood in the doorway of an office that was being decorated. In her hand she was holding a coffee mug with I LOVE CHICAGO written on it. She watched the man painting the ceiling. He reminded her of a crime scene technician, masked and dressed in white. Maybe that was why she had decided she liked him even though they had only said ‘Hi’ to each other when she passed the office. He climbed down from his ladder and turned to her.

‘It’s going to be nice,’ she said. ‘You’re good.’

The dark eyes behind the mask twinkled as though he was laughing. ‘This is just a job. You should come see my art.’

She liked his deep, calm voice too.

‘You paint... er, paintings?’

He shook his head. ‘Not quite. I can show you.’ He spoke with a very slight accent. She wondered how old he might be.

‘OK,’ she said and took a sip of her coffee. ‘So you’ve got an exhibition?’

He laughed. ‘Yes. Soon. Very soon.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Can’t tell you yet. I’ll let you know.’

Kay saw Bob enter the reception area and instead of taking the shortest route to his place he walked in her direction. He didn’t look happy, and she figured it had something to do with what she’d heard about the previous evening.

‘Hi, Bob. How’re things?’

‘I’ll find out soon enough,’ he said. ‘Walker wants to see me.’

He carried on walking. She turned to the painter, but he was busy painting again. Kay sighed and went back to her desk.

‘Tony Stärk has reported you for attacking him,’ said Walker as he stood by the window with his back to Bob. Bob had worked out that this habit must have developed because the chief felt more comfortable talking to the view, or maybe his own reflection, than he did face-to-face with his own subordinates.

‘Bullshit,’ said Bob. ‘It was self-defence. He was the one who attacked me. Take a look at me, chief.’

Walker turned reluctantly. He looked on indifferently as Bob pointed to the lump on his forehead which had now assumed the familiar blue colouring.

‘Tony Stärk should be relieved I’m not fucking reporting him for violence against an officer in the performance of his duty. But if he doesn’t withdraw his complaint then obviously that’s what I’ll do. If you tell him that then I think this case will just fade away.’

‘Tell his lawyer, you mean? He is of the opinion that your professional status is irrelevant since his client came to see you as a private individual.’

‘Tony Stärk came here to the Homicide Unit, chief.’

‘Because you are no longer living at your registered address. The lawyer is claiming that you provoked his client to strike the first blow specifically so that you could then attack him without the risk of legal action. Tony Stärk hasn’t any martial arts training or anything suggesting he’s skilled in unarmed combat.’

‘He weighs twice as much as me, chief.’

‘The lawyer claims that the fact that it took three of your colleagues to pull you off him is proof enough of your use of excessive force. I’ve got statements from Olav Hanson and the others, and they confirm the lawyer’s account of what happened. I’m sorry, Bob, but I’m going to have to suspend you while this matter is thoroughly investigated.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Bob, my decision is made.’

Bob stared at Walker. The superintendent looked like a man who at that particular moment hated his job but had absolutely no intention of not doing it.

‘You’ll hear from me when we know more. In the meantime you’ll have to hand over your ID and your service weapon. Plus the keys to your service car.’ Walker coughed. ‘I’m sorry.’

Bob opened his mouth and then closed it again. Wondered how things could have worked out any differently. If things could have worked out any differently. And even if he actually would have wanted them to. When you start falling into the abyss you might as well enjoy the free fall as best you can. He stuck his hand into the inside pocket of his cashmere coat and placed his ID card on the chief’s desk. Followed by the car keys.

‘You have a car of your own, right?’ Walker sounded troubled. ‘A Volvo?’

‘Correct,’ said Bob. ‘But I don’t have a gun, it’s—’

‘I know that.’ Walker’s voice was a little shaky. ‘I know that when something like that happens it can make a father hate his own service weapon.’

Bob looked at his boss. Was the bastard standing there empathising with him? He felt the rushing sound start up in his head.

‘That business with the gun,’ said Walker, and had to clear his throat again. ‘A thing like that can destroy a relationship. It happens time after time. It isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just the way we are as human beings. But you just have to accept it and move on.’

‘What are we talking about now, chief?’ Walker’s features and his body, the features and body of a man Bob respected, some days you would even say liked, seemed to be changing before Bob’s eyes into something reptilian and repulsive, the kind of thing that should be beaten to death with a stick.

‘Alice,’ said the reptile. ‘It wasn’t easy for her either. Forgive her, Bob. Let it go. If you don’t you won’t be able to move on. Perhaps you should look on this as a kind of holiday. Take the chance to think about what you want to do with your life.’

‘Jesus,’ said Bob. ‘You’re not only the superintendent, you’re a psychologist too. Or is that just stuff they teach you on leadership courses?’

Bob saw Walker’s jaw muscles tighten. ‘I mean it, Oz. Take it easy. Free yourself. Move on.’

‘On where?’ Bob said loudly as he blinked away tears of rage. If there was an answer he never heard it, he’d already left the office without closing the door behind him. He didn’t look either right or left but headed straight for the elevators, punched the button and waited. Turned, walked back through the office, registered that Hanson and Kjos weren’t at their desks. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out an old ID card he had reported as lost to the MDP, only to get a phone call two weeks later from a brunette in Near North who told him he’d left it behind in her apartment after using it to cut cocaine. She’d returned it to him in the post, and he’d hung on to it without telling anyone, on the principle that you never know.

Bob took a last look at his place of work.

Was there anything else here he might be needing?

His gaze took in the notes pinned to his desk divider.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He hurried back to the elevators, changed his mind, retraced his steps and pulled out the pin holding the fixture list for the Vikings.

He reached the elevators just in time to see the doors sliding shut.

He felt a strange impulse to laugh as he slowly trudged down the stairs.

Exiting into the square in front of city hall he stopped, breathed in deeply, closed his eyes and summed things up. He was a man with no woman, no job and no car. In other words, he was finished. He tried to think. Then he headed off in the direction of the bank.

The Minneapolis communal impound yard was located at the roughest end of Colfax Avenue, with scrap-metal dealers and used-car sellers as its neighbours. Stella Cibulkova sat in the booth and checked the ID the man in the orange coat had just shown her.

She looked back at the computer screen where she’d typed in the number he’d given her.

‘You are aware that there is 2,300 dollars owing on this vehicle, Mr Oz?’

‘I confess I didn’t realise it was quite so much.’

‘That’s not just the unpaid parking fines. It also includes reminder fees and the cost of keeping the car here for the past four weeks. This isn’t a parking lot.’

‘I know, but it’s expensive, isn’t it? Love your earrings, by the way.’

Stella looked up. The man smiled. She didn’t smile. She rarely did at work. It didn’t pay.

‘If you want to take the car you have to settle up first.’

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way, Stella.’

Nor did she like the fact that they had to wear these name tags, as if she was a waitress in some restaurant.

‘You can transfer—’

‘You take cash, Stella?’

‘Er, yes. In principle.’

The man produced a bundle of notes and began to lay them on the counter in front of her.

‘I swear by paper, see. The paperless society, that isn’t for me. The paperless marriage, for example. No, there’s no obligation there, Stella. Too easy to just run from it all.’

The notes looked smooth and as if freshly ironed, as if they came straight from the bank. As he peeled off the fifty-dollar bills and laid them down he counted them off in a loud, steady voice. There was something about his voice, a wounded sensitivity that made her feel as though it was the last of his money he was laying down in front of her.

‘Two thousand three hundred,’ he announced finally as he looked down at the few notes that were left in his hand. Peeled off one last one and held it out to her with a broad smile.

‘And this one is for you, Stella.’

Stella Cibulkova didn’t smile at work. Not usually. But today she laughed.

Bob left the Star Tribune building carrying a paper mug of coffee and with today’s newspaper under his arm. Got into the Volvo that was so illegally parked he’d left his ID card easily visible on the dashboard. Opened the paper. He’d read somewhere that the Situations Vacant column would soon be gone completely from the paper. It was bound to be true, he just didn’t know if he believed it. The only police job vacancies he found were in neighbouring states, none of them detective level, naturally. He carried on looking, but after a while realised he wasn’t taking in the words, that his thoughts were somewhere else completely. He was a cop. Had been all his life, never wanted to do anything else. He’d fulfilled that dream, even managed to join the Homicide Unit. He’d managed it, though it hadn’t been easy. He was a good detective. Not brilliant, not the type with supernatural intuition or intelligence, not FBI material. But solid. Someone who made up for everything he lacked by never giving up. Now and then there had been friction with his bosses, of course, as when he couldn’t let go of certain cases once other priorities had been announced. He didn’t have the highest number of cases solved or even the highest-percentage success rate. But that was because he always angled to get himself the most difficult cases, the most time-consuming ones that often ended up being shelved. He had a few feathers in his cap, but a case being difficult didn’t necessarily make it high-profile, and those were the ones his colleagues snapped up.

Bob took a sip of coffee. He had a car and a roof over his head, what more could a man need? Why does a man need a job when he doesn’t have a family to look after? He folded the newspaper and put it down on the passenger seat. He could easily have picked up a Star Tribune somewhere else besides the paper’s headquarters, but it was here he had come. He looked across to the far side of the little central park. The sun sparkled on the glass facade of the building housing Alice’s psychology collective. How often had he stood in front of that entrance, waiting to pick her up on those bitterly cold winter days when you didn’t want to use your bike or even wait for the bus? Or when it was dark. Not that Alice had a phobia about the dark — that would be him. That, and horror movies. She never tired of reminding him of the time he borrowed Psycho from a video store. It was soon after they’d met, and she’d told him she liked horror movies. They’d reached the scene where Lila Crane, to the accompaniment of hysterical violins, walks toward the back of the old woman in the rocking chair. Alice knew that Bob knew it was a mummified corpse sitting there because they had told each other they had both seen the movie before. But in the dark Alice saw Bob with his eyes tight shut. Later, when some friends were visiting, Alice told that story, and said that was the moment she knew she was in love with him.

Bob checked the time. How fucking slowly it crawled along. Maybe look for a bar?

Easy, easy, easy.

We talked about loneliness.

He looked at his phone. Made up his mind. Found the name and made the call.

‘Hi, Rooble, Bob here.’

‘Hi.’

‘Listen, I’m really sorry I haven’t managed to drop off that barbecue.’

‘Forget it, Bob. Really. You’re doing me a favour by hanging on to it.’

‘You’ve got something there, I really ought to be charging. Our place isn’t exactly a parking garage.’

Rooble laughed.

‘Hey, just to satisfy my curiosity, how is the Gomez investigation coming along?’

‘Not good,’ said Rooble. ‘It’s like he’s vanished into thin air, no trace at all.’

‘Have you done anything else besides send out a BOLO?’

‘We’ve spoken to everyone we know of who had some connection with him, but there aren’t many. The janitor, landlord, neighbours. But they don’t know much. Nothing, really.’

‘Did you get Myers’s report from the neighbour we spoke to?’

‘Sure we did. But that didn’t give us much either. It’s never easy with people like Gomez who aren’t registered anywhere. You don’t find employers, relatives, school friends. Perfect situation for somebody working as a hit man, of course.’

‘Good job he isn’t then,’ said Bob.

‘You sure about that?’

‘A hit man doesn’t shoot his own neighbour. He doesn’t miss. He doesn’t leave the gun bag behind in the apartment along with a lot of technical traces.’

‘You’re right there, Bob. But vanishing completely the way he’s done, that’s pretty good.’

‘To go missing for two days isn’t difficult. Day three is when the planning has to start.’

‘Just like you say, Bob.’

Rooble. Always diplomatic, always listening. Humble when it paid to be, firm when necessary. The boy would go far.

‘I gotta go, Rooble. But can you keep me in the loop, d’you think?’

‘On the Gomez case?’

‘Yes. I’ve got a homicide that’s similar, so I’m wondering if there might be a connection. Just call this number, I’m working mostly from home at the moment.’

‘OK. Which homicide would that be?’

Bob hesitated.

‘Good to know in case there’s information there I can use,’ Rooble added.

Bob hoped Rooble didn’t notice the amount of time he needed before answering. ‘It’s on the Saint Paul border so there’s some uncertainty about the jurisdiction. I’ll let you know if I get the case.’

‘OK,’ said Rooble. ‘Nice to talk to you, Bob. Say hello to Alice.’

They ended the call.

Bob glanced down at the newspaper, which was still open at the Situations Vacant column. He tore out the page, took a Swiss Army knife from the glove compartment, flipped open the little pair of scissors and started cutting the page into strips.

Alice stood by the window in the kitchen of the psychology collective. She’d made herself a cup of green tea and was looking down at the park. Her thoughts were still preoccupied with her last patient, a teenage girl with an eating disorder. The girl had made progress over the four years she’d been coming. And Alice had too; she no longer saw Frankie in every patient under twenty who entered her office and wondered what her daughter would have looked like now. Alice’s gaze fell on a Volvo parked on the far side of the park. It was the colour, not the make, that awakened the memories. Mustard yellow. Bob loved that colour, that was why they had agreed that she would choose the make — a family car, strong on safety features — and he — the dandy — would choose the colour. She noticed that unconsciously she had begun to smile. But then she recalled the message he had left on her machine yesterday, about how he was reneging on their agreement about the house, and she stopped smiling. The estimate they’d been given on the house was so high that they both knew Bob couldn’t afford to buy her out, so they’d agreed that she was to get the house at market price while he got the car free of all debt. All that remained were the signatures on the transfer of ownership papers. That would be the last practical link between them. Would she miss him? No, she didn’t think she would. But she could be wrong about that, some days she could be overcome by a feeling of missing him. Missing those times when she left here in winter and got into the warm car waiting outside, where Bob had put on a song he wanted her to listen to, and him looking like she was the one doing him a favour by letting him pick her up and transport her back home like a princess. And now this was all that remained after twelve years together, a signature. Could things have been different? If what happened that day had never happened, would they still be a couple?

The car on the far side of the park glided out into the traffic. Alice looked at her watch. Next patient in five minutes. She sighed, took a last sip from her cup and went back to the office.