The Wrong Case Read online

  He wasn’t long for the world, I feared, wasn’t going to survive many more winters. He would freeze in a dark doorway some night or stumble in front of another car or forget which role belonged to which time. He would die soon, I knew that, and dead, have a tiny gold star pasted into the corner of his portrait, which shared the walls of Mahoney’s with those of his compatriots, the living and the dead and those still trapped in between. And that was nearly as sad as losing the lady.

  —

  Leo had been a hack photographer in upstate New York, shooting weddings and smarmy babies and beaming old couples whose bland lives had blurred their features into the same characterless mold, using his camera to support his painting and drinking. He had a good eye but no hand, so he gave up painting for drinking. His wife and family finally left him, and he couldn’t find many customers who wanted their sentimental memories recorded by a drunk. He sold his business and equipment and fled into a long, down-spiraling drunk, heading West to die in a strange place where he wouldn’t shame his family. But he didn’t die; he broke the pattern and dried out. He didn’t miss the drunks or the drinking, but had been at home in bars so long that he missed them—so he bought Mahoney’s. I co-signed the note, putting up my timber land to secure it, and Leo made a success of the old bar. Then after he was sure he was going to stay dry and successful, he took up the camera again, seriously this time. His eye found the lost history in ruined cabins and old mines, the poetry in spare winter landscapes, and the dignity and pride in the battered faces of his patrons. He caught them in brave laughter and elegant sad loss and then hung the portraits on the walls of his bar, as if to remind them what they could be. The large pictures reminded us of hope, reminded us that we weren’t social drinkers, and the gold stars in the corners of the dead were like medals.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t been shot and hung yet. I meant to speak to Leo as soon as I finished my drink, to suggest that my time might have arrived.

  But I never finished that drink. My friend Dick Diamond, my handball partner who taught English out at Mountain States University, came bounding into the tranquil and languid afternoon to harass me about missing another match.

  “Thanks, old buddy. Had a great game. Really great. Played with two kids who were learning the game. Slowly. Only one was blind, though. And the other only slightly crippled. Both retarded, though. Don’t have any idea how they ever passed the entrance exams. But thanks for the game, old buddy,” he said as he walked toward the table. Dick had never recovered from a strong dose of college basketball. He had been both too short and the only Jew on the team, but he made up for it by believing that death was preferable to losing. Sometimes I thought he only liked to play with me because he could beat me eighty percent of the time.

  “You’re welcome,” I said as he grabbed a chair and straddled it at the end of the booth.

  “Know you’re a busy man, Milo—dark corners and high transoms and all that—but can’t you make it one time a week?”

  I raised my shot glass at him, and he nodded. “Understood, old buddy.”

  “Is Marsha still mad at me?” I asked.

  “Marsha?”

  “Your loving, devoted, forgiving wife,” I said.

  “Oh, you mean that woman who lives in my house, mothers my children, but who hasn’t spoken to me in several weeks, not since my best friend ruined not only my marriage but also my career?”

  “Yeah, her.”

  “She forgives you, sure, she loves you more than your mother did, loves you because you’re such a dear, lonesome man. But me? She hasn’t gotten around to forgiving me. I’ve been sleeping in the study again, old buddy.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I said as Leo arrived with a mug of beer for Dick. “I’m innocent.”

  “Sure, man, innocent,” Dick said.

  “Everything’s your fault,” Leo said.

  Simon nodded wisely.

  “Couldn’t you at least have found a fetid corner of the bathroom or gone out on the lawn like any self-respecting dog. Jesus H. Christ,” he said, then was silent long enough to drink half his beer.

  “Want a divorce?”

  “Wise-ass.”

  “Look, it wasn’t my fault, how did I know…”

  “Sure, man,” he said, “she drug you into the wardrobe—Jesus, man, my antique cherrywood wardrobe—forced you in there at gunpoint, right?”

  “I didn’t know what she wanted in there,” I said, grinning at the memory of Hildy Ernst. “I didn’t know until it was too late. And what sort of gentleman would I be if I stopped in the midst of the act? Besides, it wasn’t my fault the damned thing fell over. That’s your fault for having unstable antiques.”

  “Jesus, man,” Dick said, gunning the rest of his beer as if in a race. He waved to Leo for another round, but I told him to leave me out, since I still hadn’t started yet.

  “Who shouted ‘Earthquake!’?” I asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  “That’s what Marsha’s mad about, huh?”

  “Right. Who gives a rat’s ass? Sleeping in the study has certain advantages,” he said.

  When the wardrobe hit the floor with Hildy and me engaged within and Dick shouted “Earthquake!” the departmental chairman’s wife was in the upstairs bathroom, drunk as a sow, and she believed it. She had fled down the stairs like an avalanche, her enormous white panties flapping about her feet like a small but very angry dog. After she had been laid to rest in the guest bedroom, six men lifted Hildy and me and the wardrobe off the floor, and we sauntered out the doors, grins on our faces and jism on our clothes like icing on the cake.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re happy about everything,” I said.

  “Jesus. Every time I see the chairman, he harrumphs like a bull moose with terminal phlegm because his chubby, lovely wife has fled to Indiana and may never return,” Dick said, “but I can’t tell if he’s happy or sad. And when I meet Hildy in the halls of Academe, she giggles like some monstrous child bride. I hope to hell it was worth it, Milo.”

  “It was,” I said. “It surely was.”

  It had been one of those moments. Hildy and I had been talking politely about nothing. She looked at me, I leaned over and kissed her, and we fled into the wardrobe beside us. Wonderful. I didn’t care. I had made a small career out of breaking up Dick and Marsha’s parties, either by getting too drunk or fondling some faculty wife in the kitchen. Hildy had tenure, so she didn’t care. We left the party hand in hand like young lovers, vowing loudly to do it again. Which we did, whenever and wherever we found the energy and room. It was a brief but athletic affair, fun while it lasted, but Hildy had an aversion to beds. Beds were for sleeping, she said, not balling. Which I found tiresome. Then she wanted to make the affair a crowd scene, so I moved aside, bowed out. But it had been fun.

  “I wonder if all German ladies are like that?” I asked Dick. “Have you ever been to Germany?”

  “Are you kidding, man? Jesus.”

  “Maybe I should go to Germany for these golden years while I await my fortune.”

  “You’ll be too old to ball by the time you’re rich,” he said, grinning. “Maybe that’s what your sainted mother intended when she persuaded your old man to tie up the trust.”

  “I think she had something else in mind,” I said.

  “What?”

  “To keep me from being a drunk like my old man. A heart as big as all outdoors and a liver as big as a salmon,” I said, raising my whiskey.

  “Didn’t work, did it,” Dick said, then casually added, “Did Helen Duffy talk to you yet?”

  I set the shot glass down without spilling a drop. “Who?”

  “Helen Duffy. She’s, ah, an old friend of mine. From graduate school.” So I wouldn’t mistake his meaning, he said, “We were, ah, pretty close.” Sometimes we competed for women too, and part of his mock anger about Hildy was real because I had and he hadn’t. But that didn’t make up for Helen Duffy.

  “She’s lost her lit
tle brother, or something, and I told her you might be able to help,” he said. “Told her you’re great at finding lost people. Thought maybe you could use the business too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, more shortly than I meant to.

  “I didn’t think he’d gotten too lost, maybe just a little misplaced, and you have enough contacts among freaks to handle that—don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, man, seriously,” he said, then glanced at Simon, who seemed so busy with his bourbon and political complaint that he wouldn’t have noticed an earthquake. “Listen, man, we were really close for a long time. She’s something special.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “No, really, man, I nearly left Marsha for her—”

  “It’s a good line, Richard, but don’t waste it on me. Hell, man, I’m easy,” I said.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”

  “Nothing, man.”

  “Come on. So I fuck around, so what? Everybody fucks around. But this was different. It might have worked out. But Marsha caught us. She drove over to Helen’s apartment one afternoon after somebody called her and told her what was going on, that there wasn’t a Victorian seminar on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Marsha was six months pregnant, man, but she hammered the shit out of me. A terrible scene. Helen felt so bad about it that she left school right after that. Never even finished her degree.”

  “How tragic,” I said.

  “You saw her, huh? She does that to men, particularly the old and corrupt, the young and lonesome. How did you two get along?”

  “Just great.”

  “That bad, huh,” he said cheerfully. “You couldn’t help her, huh?”

  “We couldn’t agree on a fee.”

  “That’s strange. She’s loaded, man. Her father sued the New York City Police Department a few years ago—false arrest and brutality, something like that—got over a hundred thousand in the settlement.”

  “We weren’t exactly dickering over money,” I said.

  “You bastard. You propositioned her the first time you met her, didn’t you? You bastard.”

  “Didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Goddammit, Milo, sometimes you piss me off. You’ve got the moral fiber of a—a baboon.”

  “Didn’t you?” I repeated.

  “All right, so what if I did?”

  “Then get off my ass about ‘moral fiber.’ You know as much about morality as you do about baboons. So get off my case, man.”

  “Okay,” he said, “you’re right. For a change. I’m sorry, but just talking to her on the phone brought it all back, man. She showed up at a bad time. Marsha is really pissed; I’m really sleeping in the study. No joke.”

  “You know where she’s staying?”

  “She didn’t say; I didn’t ask.”

  “Afraid?” I asked.

  “You’re damned right. That woman does things to me, man.”

  “I know,” I muttered, remembering her face all over again, remembering the awkward walk and the torn hands. “Say, man, if you hear from her, tell her…tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I was drunk or something, distraught over…over business failures. Tell her I’ll seek her little brother all over the county, find him and put him safe and sound in her arms. And no fee. Okay?”

  “Sure, man. If I hear from her.”

  “You and Helen Duffy,” I said quietly, holding up the shot of pale Canadian whiskey, staring through it into the bars of afternoon sunlight that fell through Leo’s front blinds. “I can’t get over it…”

  “Say, man, I think Simon wants something,” Dick said.

  Simon was rolling his eyes dramatically, flapping his tongue, and shaking his head like a palsy victim. He was so excited he couldn’t talk. When I shook my head like a man who didn’t want to be bothered, he nearly fell out of the booth, so I relented, got up and followed him into Leo’s empty poker room. But that wasn’t good enough for Simon; he wanted to go into my other office. We went into Leo’s walk-in cooler, where he kept case and keg beer and enough smoked trout and whitefish to feed most of the drunks in the county, then I unlocked the door to my other office.

  Unlike my regular office, a man could live in my other office. There was a double bed, a small table and chairs, a hot plate and sink, a fridge and shower, and a tiny Japanese color television, which was hot as a fresh muffin. All the comforts of home and as secure as a prison cell. It was my interest on Leo’s note, my hiding place, except that everybody in town knew it was there. Drunks can’t keep secrets. But Simon liked it; the room suited his sense of the melodramatic and made him feel as if we were as important as a detective and his trusty sidekick in a movie. He wouldn’t tell me anything he thought really important anyplace else. And as part of the cinematic ritual, he always made me pay him for the information.

  He wanted to talk now so badly that he had to hop from foot to foot just to stay quiet, but still he rubbed his fingers rapidly together, his sign for money.

  “Come on, Simon, I been buying shit information from you for years and I’m in no mood for games today.”

  “You wouldn’t be nothing without me, boy, nothing. And this is something you really want to know, so come up with some scratch,” he said adamantly. “Or find out for yourself.”

  Since I didn’t have any money in my pocket, I had to go back into the bar and borrow two dollars from Dick, who gave me a very odd look, then I carried the two bills back to Simon, who held them up as if they were scraps of used toilet paper.

  “Goddamn, Milo, this is hot stuff and you come up with two lousy bucks. What sort of friend are you anyway?”

  “A two-dollar friend, Simon. What the hell do you want?”

  “Ah, what the hell. You really liked that lady, didn’t you?”

  “So?”

  “Well, I know who her little brother is. You do too.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “He’s that kid who used to hang around with Willy Jones.”

  “Who the hell is Willy Jones?”

  “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Milo. Willy Jones was that old fart who claimed to be Henry Plumber’s son, the old man who burned up with the Great Northern. Remember?”

  “Vaguely,” I lied.

  “And this Duffy kid, he also hangs around with that large and ferocious faggot, Lawrence what’s-his-name, the one that affects leather pants and purple eyeshadow.”

  “Reese, Lawrence Reese. Shit, you mean the Duffy kid hangs around with that bastard? Jesus.”

  “Absolutely,” Simon said. “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Nothing Helen Duffy had said prepared me for this. Reese was a bad dude, giant glitter queen of the Northwest. He dealt drugs and seduced young boys. Or maybe raped them. He was large enough, as big as a professional defensive end and probably even meaner. When he found the heat oppressive, Reese also taught one of those esoteric, violent but dutifully spiritual Eastern combat arts. And he was hell on bare feet. Once in a northside bar, I’d seen him destroy three sawyers who made fun of his eyeshadow. Reese chopped tables and bit the necks off beer bottles between rounds as he waited for the sawyers to get up. When it was over, the sawyers went to the hospital, and when they got out of the hospital, they left town. And Raymond Duffy must have been his buddy, a tall, skinny kid in cowboy clothes leaning against the bar, watching the fight with what looked like a mad sexual excitement. He had a heavy black beard that grew high on his cheeks like a mask, and the eyes above the beard were as hard and opaque as marbles. If that was Raymond Duffy, Helen had a sick little brother. Really sick.

  “This Duffy kid, Simon, tall, dressed in cowboy clothes, a black beard—”

  “That’s the one,” he said.

  “He hangs around with nice people.”

  “He’s a creep, Milo.”

  “But he shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “Just hope you don’t find Lawrence what’s-his-name at the same time,” Simon said, shaking his head. He w
as so afraid of Reese that he wouldn’t even stay in the same bar with him. Truth was, neither would I.

  “But if you’re really looking for the kid, I’d bet money that Muffin knows where Lawrence lives,” Simon said.

  “Why?”

  “They’ve had dealings in the past,” he muttered mysteriously.

  “Well, I’ll ask him,” I said. “That should be a paternal right, right?”

  “Hell, Milo, Muffin don’t give anybody any rights.”

  “I’ve noticed. Listen, thanks, Simon,” I told him as we walked out, but he didn’t answer. He seemed worried about something. “What’s the matter, old man?”

  “That kid, that Duffy kid. Milo, how could a lady like that have a brother like that…”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, patting him on the shoulder as we stepped out of the cooler.

  “Save your goddamned sympathy, Milo,” he said roughly, waving the two one-dollar bills. “Two lousy bucks, Milo, two lousy bucks…Lemme alone. Needa taste.” He pushed past me and hurried toward the booth for his drink, but somebody had drunk it while we were gone. Fat Freddy was grinning broadly when Simon looked at him, and Simon shouted at him, accusing him of all sorts of incoherent crimes. He made such a fuss that Leo came around the bar and ran both of them out of the bar.

  “Dick said he had to go,” Leo said when he came back, still puffing with outrage. “Goddamned drunks,” he sighed. “Dick said he’d call if he found out where the lady was staying.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I walked away from the booth.

  “Hey, Milo, you didn’t finish your drink,” Leo said.

  “Yeah, well, give it to old Pierre.”

  “Sure. Say, did you hear about the colonel?” he asked. The colonel was a retired mustang who lived upstairs in the Dottle Hotel, which catered to those members of the wino brigade who received monthly checks from the government.

  “Nope.”

  “Some crazy kid jumped him last night. Right in the hallway. Nearly killed him for six lousy bucks. He’s in critical condition. The kid threw him down the stairs. Broke some ribs. One punctured his lung. He ain’t got a chance in hell. Six bucks. Christ.”