David Levien - City of the Sun

Paul showed her to the door and held it for her. “Please, let me give you something. For your time,” he offered again.

“Well, I ’ m normally thirty dollars an hour,” she said.

Paul handed her some bills. “Here you go. Thanks a lot.”

She gave him a flyer from a store where she worked reading palms and tarot cards. “Here ’ s my number if you want to consult further.”

“Thanks again.” Paul closed the door and returned to the kitchen.

Carol was still sitting there. Tater had left the room.

“Do you think we should have listened to her more?”

Paul said nothing and tried to keep the cynicism off his face, knowing that if he spoke he could not keep it out of his voice.

“She was right about the van. And the bike.”

“She ’ s got a friend at the station. She probably read the file.”

“We should have her back and try — ”

“She took money,” he said with finality, “at the door.” He crumpled the flyer and fired it in the general direction of the trash can.

Carol began to tremble. A sob started and died within her. Paul moved to hug her. She drew away and into herself and left him standing there, unable to put his arms around her. It was always that way now, the turning away from each other. They didn ’ t touch intentionally anymore. There was a gulf between them in bed at night, and when an arm or a foot crossed the divide and contacted the other, it was quickly retracted in near apology. Their lovemaking was completely frozen over. The day Jamie disappeared was the first of its extinction. They were hardly friends anymore but lived as mere housemates. They were scrupulously polite to each other as they moved about the place.

Trouble came in batches. That was Frank Behr ’ s experience. And he was sure he ’ d find a fresh lot if he went ahead and pursued the case of this missing boy. It was late in the afternoon after the quiet man, Gabriel, had left and he ’ d finished with his trash. As Behr sat back in his recliner, he saw the folder on the television tray. His first instinct had been to leave it where it was, to call information for Gabriel ’ s number and tell him to get the hell back over here and pick it up. A man should recognize when no meant no. He didn ’ t call information though.

Instead Behr stretched, his knees and shoulders popping and cracking. He pounded out push-ups and wrestled with the idea of taking the case. Between sets four and five, he bounded up and flipped open the police file that Gabriel had left. He read the particulars, nodding to himself, unsurprised and unmoved at what he saw, until he came to the ranking officer ’ s signature at the bottom of the third page. Even now, nine years later, the cribbed, slanted writing was familiar to him. James P. Pomeroy, Captain Pomeroy now. He had been Behr ’ s lieutenant, his C.O., long ago. That signature, on change of duty orders, on poor performance reports, on demotion sheets, had changed Behr ’ s life.

After reading the file, there was no question about calling the father and chiding him for leaving it behind. He couldn ’ t do that. So he put on gray sweats, tied his running sneakers, and filled a frame pack with a fifty-pound bag of road salt and hardcover books. He strapped on the pack, which now weighed more than seventy pounds, cinched the belt around his waist, and set out for Saddle Hill Road, near the junior high, to run sprints.

As Behr sweated and chugged up the hill, he thought back to the days when Pomeroy had been his commander and personal hair shirt. It had long been his practice, despite the advice of numerous people, to comb through his history as he worked out. Whether it was the department shrink or his ex-wife, Linda, they had all warned him that he ’ d remain mired in the past if he kept it up. Fighting the burn of lactic acid and sucking in oxygen, Behr went back to the time right after his son, Tim, was born, after he ’ d guarded the witness in the hospital and been promoted. He ’ d gotten a pay raise and Linda had started looking for a bigger house he knew they still couldn ’ t afford.

It wasn ’ t long, a little over a year into his new assignment, when Behr ’ s first partner as a detective, Ed Polk, got lit up. Ed was off duty, as was Behr, and they weren ’ t even together. Ed was out on a roust of an illegal social club, where liquor was served. The club was on the north side, and back in those days, before it was cleaned up a bit, even off-duty cops tried to avoid that part of town. Polk, though, was a graft taker and was trying to shake the club down when words led to a fight and he caught two in the lung from his own backup piece, a. 380 auto he wore on his ankle. There was no reason for Behr to have been there backing him up, but his lieutenant, Pomeroy, didn ’ t make this distinction. He said, unofficially but widely, that a cop ’ s always got to have his partner ’ s back. It was also known, unofficially but widely, that Ed Polk was the lieutenant ’ s cousin. Behr became a pariah and things started to unravel.

He strained to the top of the hill for the tenth time, sweat jumping off his brow like grease from a hot pan. Making a hopeless attempt to solve a case his old boss couldn ’ t was just one reason not to take on this kind of work, he thought. What the case would do to him because of his own past was another.

There were days of stillness, stretches of inertia. Sections of calendar passed when Paul felt he hadn ’ t moved one foot in front of the other. The house had become a crypt. He and Carol were mirrors that reflected each other ’ s grief, intensifying the pain and futility until it was almost searing.

They tried to create positive momentum by attending some local encounter groups for the relatives of missing persons. Those in attendance would stand and speak of their loved ones (always in the past tense, as was the rule), giving the details of their particular story. It wasn ’ t so that others there could provide any help or information. The theory was that by intoning the events, one could gain power over them. Denial of the situation, clinging to the idea that the loved one was going to return — these were supposed to dissipate. Healing was supposed to ensue. Paul quickly came to dread the meetings. Withered, they sat in stale church basements, in classrooms after hours, like dead trees or tombstones. They poured coffee down their throats, not tasting it, chewed doughnuts, not tasting them. Everyone was missing somebody. Sons, daughters, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers. Where were they? The reasons for the disappearances were criminal, medical, accidental. But where were they? They were just gone. Carol seemed better after the meetings. Perhaps the sense of community helped her, or perhaps it was the forced talk that made her come alive momentarily. But he had felt it start to work on him, felt his belief that Jamie was coming back start to ebb, and that drove him away for good. He ceased going and returned to stillness.

There were days, too, of motion. Bursts of activity. The yard — mowed, weeded, seeded, watered. After weeks of neglect. The car — lubed, washed, waxed. After months of dirty buildup. He began to stay out of the house, selfish as that was. It had surprised him at first, this instinct in himself. But he pursued it and took to spending long hours at work. He managed to get busy and sell policies with no problem, forgetting the terrible state of his real life. As he gave his regular pitch about being prepared for the unexpected, he could read the faces of those clients who knew his story. The worst could happen. The policies sold themselves.

The most unseemly aspect of his behavior, he knew, was his staying away from Carol, but he couldn ’ t help it. To this end he bought and hung a heavy bag in the garage, so even when he was home he still wasn ’ t at home. He began punching it daily, making it swing and shriek on its chain. He pounded out his rage and pain in hourlong burst. In that bag he saw the faces of anonymous attackers, drunk drivers, predators, who had come for Jamie. He lashed out at the formlessness. The dark leather of his bag gloves grew streaky white with sweat salt and creaked around his fists. After three weeks he felt some of the flab begin to melt away from his once rangy 195-pound frame. Forgotten muscles rose to the surface despite themselves. But most of all he punched to escape the weakness inside of him, a softness he knew was there and couldn ’ t eliminate.