Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

She was the best mother any child ever had, one of her college roommates said. She adored that baby from the moment she knew she was pregnant. Then when Zachary was born, she fell in love. He made living with Emil almost bearable.

That guy Emil is a piece of work, said another old friend. The guy cheated on her all the time, and we suspected he was slapping her around. He wouldn’t let her see us much, but when she did, we noticed a lot of bruises on her face and arms-a lot more often than could be explained by clumsiness. But she was a devoted, old-fashioned Catholic. She refused to have an abortion when she got pregnant with Zachary. And she wouldn’t divorce Emil. So she just devoted herself to her son.

She was a wonderful friend, said yet another. It didn’t matter if her own life was a mess, she would drop everything for any one of us in a heartbeat. She was an unusual woman in that as beautiful as she was, other women weren’t threatened by her-everyone wanted to be her friend. And I don’t have to tell you that men fell in love the moment they met her.

The fourth woman Guma interviewed laughed at some recollection, then added, I’ll tell you what…she would have melted your heart, Mr. Guma, like butter in the sun.

Ray Guma didn’t tell the woman that Teresa Aiello Stavros already had. It had come as quite a shock that he’d fallen in love with a dead woman. He’d always adored women in just about all their myriad shapes and sizes, and he’d made it a mission to bed as many of them, in as many ways and as many places as possible.

Yet, in spite of the playboy image he’d carefully cultivated, he’d always believed that someday he’d meet the woman who would make all the others superfluous. Then he’d settle down and have the sort of marriage his parents had enjoyed for nearly seventy years. There’d be a handful or two of kids-who’d have been out of college by now if you’d met her twenty-five or so years ago, he thought as he looked out the window of the car at Teresa’s former home. And later, he and the ball-and-chain would retire and spend half the year in Miami and half the year in Manhattan, right up until the Yankees won the World Series every October.

There’d been a dozen “future Mrs. Ray Guma’s” he’d joked as he introduced each to friends or family over the years, but there’d never been a present Mrs. Ray Guma. Part of the problem-he was willing to admit after years of therapy, which he’d kept secret from even his best friend Karp-was that he’d never been good at keeping his zipper up. He looked at sex as fun and games; none of it meant anything. Unfortunately, the women who had meant something more to him than a passing lay never seemed to see it the same way.

When he was being less than honest with himself, Guma would contend that he’d messed around on the others because none of them were “the one.” He wondered now if Teresa had lived, and they’d met, would he have known she was the one.

Face it, a voice in his head said, you’re just all sentimental right now because you’re worried your guts are rotting again and you’ll be alone in your apartment to face it. And she’s dead, so she’s no threat to your “independence.” You can cheat on a dead woman, so you’re free to screw around.

“That’s not fair,” Guma said aloud to his conscience.

“It never is-bad things happen to good people,” Swanburg said. The old man cocked his head to one side and gave him an appraising look. “Talking to the dead, Ray? Don’t worry, it’s okay. I do it all the time. It helps me remember why I’m in this business.”

Guma patted Swanburg on the shoulder. “Thanks, Jack,” he said and pulled the handle to open the door.

As they stood on the sidewalk waiting for the others to unload their equipment and gather, Swanburg looked up at the brown-stone. “Whoo-whee,” he said and whistled. “Nice digs…more impressive from eye level than the aerials. What’s a place like this cost? A million?”

Guma snorted. “Yeah…for the fence around it. Land is at a premium in Manhattan and single-family residences a rare breed. This probably runs more like five or six million.”

Swanburg whistled again, then chuckled. “All the more fun digging it up. Isn’t that right, Mr. Clarkson?” he said to a tall, lanky man who walked up carrying what looked like the handles to a large lawnmower. Behind him two cops struggled with a large case. “Damn straight, Jack,” Dave Clarkson said. “So enough flapping our gums, let’s get to it.”

Guma asked Detective Clarke Fairbrother to do the honors of leading the charge. The old gumshoe, hobbled a bit by arthritis in his hips, knocked on the door as the rest of the team gathered behind him. They included several police officers to secure the scene, plus Guma, Swanburg, and Clarkson.

The door opened and a butler appeared, the look on his face as if he’d just got a whiff of a bad odor.

“Afternoon,” Guma said stepping up next to Clarkson. “Ray Guma, New York District Attorney’s Office. Is Mr. Stavros in?”

The butler couldn’t have looked more uninterested if Guma had just announced himself as a Fuller Brush salesman. “I’m afraid Mr. Stavros is…indisposed at the moment,” he said and began to shut the door.

With a dexterity born of practice, Fairbrother blocked the door with his big foot.

“I’d suggest that your boss might want to be disposed,” Guma said, “or maybe I get my friend Detective Fairbrother here to arrest you for obstruction. Then you’d get to experience a night in the Tombs, see if the rumors about what happens there in the dark are true.”

The butler blanched, then nodded. “I’ll inform him you’re here, Mr. Guma.”

“Thank you,” Guma called after the man and led his party into the foyer. The butler walked up a flight of stairs and disappeared down a hallway. There were shouts from wherever he disappeared and then the butler reemerged. “He’ll be here in a moment,” he sniffed and left the room.

A minute later, Emil Stavros appeared at the top of the stairs in a jogging outfit and looked over the railing. “What do you want?” he demanded. “I just got home after a long day and was going out for a run.”

Guma noted again that the once movie-star handsome face with its strong Mediterranean features had grown jowly and the features more pronounced until he was almost a caricature of his former self. But otherwise he looked to be in reasonable shape; his hair, though a pewter gray, was still full, and the tan looked real.

Reflecting how his former ballplayer’s body had shriveled, Guma felt a twinge of envy. This asshole was her lover, he thought, and he’s still in better shape than me. He shook off the feeling and shrugged apologetically, “I’m real sorry about that…right now, I’m asking your permission for me and my colleagues to nose about the premises a little, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind. As I said, I’m about to go out, and then I have a dinner engagement…. Perhaps, if you call my secretary at the bank tomorrow, you can make an appointment, and we can discuss why you think you get to look around my house. Even then, I’m sure my lawyer will insist on a search warrant.”

“Afraid it can’t wait,” Guma replied. “Tomorrow’s too late…you see, this search warrant I have in my hand is specific for today…right now, as a matter of fact. I was asking more as a courtesy.” A courtesy you don’t deserve, you scumbag, he thought. “Now, you can watch, go for a run, call your lawyer, whatever it is you want to do, but we’ll be going about our business. Come on, guys.”

With that Guma led the troop farther into the house toward the back. Stavros followed, protesting “this outrageous invasion. I am calling my lawyer. This is all obviously the Tammany Hall tactics of your boss.”