Ed Gorman - Short Stories, Volume 1

On Thursday she was there again. (This was on a soap opera he’d picked up by accident looking for a western movie to watch since he was all caught up on his work.) Parnell had seen her Monday but not Tuesday then not Wednesday either. But Thursday she was there again. He didn’t know her name, hell it didn’t matter, she was just this maybe twenty-two twenty-three-year-old who looked a lot like a nurse from Enid, Oklahoma, he’d dated a couple of times (Les Elgart had been playing on the Loop) six seven months after returning from WWII.

Now this young look-alike was on a soap opera and he was watching.

A frigging soap opera.

He was getting all dazzled up by her, just as he had on Monday, when the knock came sharp and three times, almost like a code.

He wasn’t wearing the slippers he’d gotten recently at Kmart so he had to find them, and he was drinking straight from a quart of Hamms so he had to put it down. When you were the manager of an apartment building, even one as marginal as the Alma, you had to go to the door with at least a little “decorousness,” the word Sgt. Meister, his boss, had always used back in Parnell’s cop days.

It was 11:23 A.M. and most of the Alma’s tenants were at work. Except for the ADC mothers who had plenty of work of their own kind what with some of the assholes down at social services (Parnell had once gone down there with the Jamaican woman in 201 and threatened to punch out the little bastard who was holding up her check), not to mention the sheer simple burden of knowing the sweet innocent little child you loved was someday going to end up just as blown-out and bitter and useless as yourself.

He went to the door, shuffling in his new slippers which he’d bought two sizes too big because of his bunions.

The guy who stood there was no resident of the Alma. Not with his razor-cut black hair and his three-piece banker’s suit and the kind of melancholy in his pale blue eyes that was almost sweet and not at all violent. He had a fancy mustache spoiled by the fact that his pink lips were a woman’s.

“Mr. Parnell?”

Parnell nodded.

The man, who was maybe thirty-five, put out a hand. Parnell took it, all the while thinking of the soap opera behind him and the girl who looked like the one from Enid, Oklahoma. (Occasionally he bought whack-off magazines but the girls either looked too easy or too arrogant so he always had to close his eyes anyway and think of somebody he’d known in the past.) He wanted to see her, fuck this guy. Saturday he would be sixty-one and about all he had to look forward to was a phone call from his kid up the Oregon coast. His kid, who, God rest her soul, was his mother’s son and not Parnell’s, always ran a stopwatch while they talked so as to save on the phone bill. Hi Dad Happy Birthday and It’s Been Really Nice Talking To You. I–Love-You-Bye.

“What can I do for you?” Parnell said. Then as he stood there watching the traffic go up and down Cortland Boulevard in baking July sunlight, Parnell realized that the guy was somehow familiar to him.

The guy said, “You know my father.”

“Jesus H. Christ—”

“—Bud Garrett—”

“—Bud. I’ll be goddamned.” He’d already shaken the kid’s hand and he couldn’t do that again so he kind of patted him on the shoulder and said, “Come on in.”

“I’m Richard Garrett.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Richard.”

He took the guy inside. Richard looked around at the odds and ends of furniture that didn’t match and at all the pictures of dead people and immediately put a smile on his face as if he just couldn’t remember when he’d been so enchanted with a place before, which meant of course that he saw the place for the dump Parnell knew it to be.

“How about a beer?” Parnell said, hoping he had something beside the generic stuff he’d bought at the 7-Eleven a few months ago.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Richard sat on the edge of the couch with the air of somebody waiting for his flight to be announced. He was all ready to jump up. He kept his eyes downcast and he kept fiddling with his wedding ring. Parnell watched him. Sometimes it turned out that way. Richard’s old man had been on the force with Parnell. They’d been best friends. Garrett Sr. was a big man, six-three and fleshy but strong, a brawler and occasionally a mean one when the hootch didn’t settle in him quite right. But his son... Sometimes it turned out that way. He was manly enough, Parnell supposed, but there was an air of being trapped in himself, of petulance, that put Parnell off.

Three or four minutes of silence went by. The soap opera ended with Parnell getting another glance of the young lady. Then a “CBS Newsbreak” came on. Then some commercials. Richard didn’t seem to notice that neither of them had said anything for a long time. Sunlight made bars through the venetian blinds. The refrigerator thrummed. Upstairs but distantly a kid bawled.

Parnell didn’t realize it at first, not until Richard sniffed, that Bud Garrett’s son was either crying or doing something damn close to it.

“Hey, Richard, what’s the problem?” Parnell said, making sure to keep his voice soft.

“My, my Dad.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

Richard looked up with his pale blue eyes. “He’s dying.”

“Jesus.”

Richard cleared his throat. “It’s how he’s dying that’s so bad.”

“Cancer?”

Richard said, “Yes. Liver. He’s dying by inches.”

“Shit.”

Richard nodded. Then he fell once more into his own thoughts. Parnell let him stay there a while, thinking about Bud Garrett. Bud had left the force on a whim that all the cops said would fail. He started a rent-a-car business with a small inheritance he’d come into. That was twenty years ago. Now Bud Garrett lived up in Woodland Hills and drove the big Mercedes and went to Europe once a year. Bud and Parnell had tried to remain friends but beer and champagne didn’t mix. When the Mrs. had died Bud had sent a lavish display of flowers to the funeral and a note that Parnell knew to be sincere but they hadn’t had any real contact in years.

“Shit,” Parnell said again.

Richard looked up, shaking his head as if trying to escape the aftereffects of drugs. “I want to hire you.”

“Hire me? As what?”

“You’re a personal investigator aren’t you?”

“Not anymore. I mean I kept my ticket — it doesn’t cost that much to renew it — but hell I haven’t had a job in five years.” He waved a beefy hand around the apartment. “I manage these apartments.”

From inside his blue pin-striped suit Richard took a sleek wallet. He quickly counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills and put them on the blond coffee table next to the stack of Luke Short paperbacks. “I really want you to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“Kill my father.”

Now Parnell shook his head. “Jesus, kid, are you nuts or what?”

Richard stood up. “Are you busy right now?”

Parnell looked around the room again. “I guess not.”

“Then why don’t you come with me?”

“Where?”

When the elevator doors opened to let them out on the sixth floor of the hospital, Parnell said, “I want to be sure that you understand me.”

He took Richard by the sleeve and held him and stared into his pale blue eyes. “You know why I’m coming here, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m coming to see your father because we’re old friends. Because I cared about him a great deal and because I still do. But that’s the only reason.”

“Right.”

Parnell frowned. “You still think I’m going to help you, don’t you?”

“I just want you to see him.”