Steven Womack: Dead Folks' blues

Sometimes I don’t feel like a very nice person anymore. We grow up with these little, safe notions about the lives we want to lead, the people we want to love, the work we want to do, and how we’ll be rewarded for our hard work. Then we get out there in twentieth-century urban America and it’s Dodge City all over again. The spoils go to the ones with the best aim, the quickest draw, the biggest guns. It tends to make one want to be as big a bastard as the rest of the world.

“Quit thinking, damn it,” I said out loud. “Stop this ridiculous pontificating. The world’s the world, that’s all, and there’s no use in pouting because it isn’t what you think it should be.”

What I had to do was figure out how I was going to handle this. Any way I looked at it, all the options sucked.

In a blind leap of faith, I pulled out onto the roadway and made the curve around to Gallatin Road, then out into the heavy traffic. Up ahead, the brake lights of a large, mid-Sixties Chevy suddenly glowed cherry-red, then oscillated back and forth across the road as the car hydroplaned. The thunderstorm pelted us with rain so hard it was like staring through a shower spray. I pumped the Ford’s brakes carefully, feeling for that moment when the wheels lost contact with the road and you became simply a passenger in a two ton chunk of out-of-control metal. The Chevy ahead of me slid into the oncoming lane of traffic, slammed into a rock wall, and came to a floating stop in six inches of water, blocking both lanes of traffic. I slowed the car to stop, but there was a semi behind me, the driver laying on his horn, letting me know that if I slowed any further I was going to wind up roadkill tartare.

Yeah, I thought, the world’s a dangerous place. It seems more so now than it did when I was young. Or maybe I just notice it more.

I slowed to a fast walk and drifted easily into the left-hand turning lane. Once off Gallatin Road, I made it safely back to Mrs. Hawkins’s driveway and into the backyard. My dry, safe apartment was only a few feet and a flight of stairs away.

One thing was for sure: I couldn’t handle seeing Rachel. I wasn’t ready to deal with it, and there was no way I was going to make chatty all evening, drink wine, have a good dinner, maybe wind up in bed with her again. I’d see Rachel, and soon, but only after I sorted some things out.

As quickly as it roared in, the storm was gone, leaving everything damp and lush. I stood on the landing outside my kitchen, that peculiar earthy smell that hangs around after a heavy rain filling me. I’d changed into a dry pair of jeans. The rickety metal stairway up the side of Mrs. Hawkins’s house groaned a little; I wondered how long it would be before I came home from work one day and found myself stranded by a twisted heap of metal in the backyard.

I looked down at my watch: 3:30 in the afternoon. I was supposed to pick up Rachel at six. There was some new fern bar trendy chic restaurant in Green Hills she wanted to try. I’d have been happy to run her through Mrs. Lee’s and let her see how the other half eats.

I felt sour, out of sorts. I either needed to resolve this whole mess or start taking a fiber supplement. If I’m not going to dinner, I thought grumpily, then I damn well better call her and beg off for the evening.

I dialed her number and waited through six rings before she picked up. She must have had the answering machine off. Maybe she had to tear herself out of Walter’s arms. God, I’m a bitch.

“Hello.”

“Rachel?”

“Harry, how are you?”

Her voice sounded different. Maybe it was because in my mind, hers was now the voice of a murderer.

“I’m fine, Rachel. But listen, I’m going to have to skip out on dinner tonight. I’ve had some things come up at the office that have to be taken care of tonight.”

“On a Sunday night?”

“Yeah,” I said, lying as convincingly as I knew how. “It’s another client of mine. Sometimes he calls me up with some strange requests. I can’t really talk about it, and it’s not a big deal or anything. I’ll just need to reschedule with you.”

“Okay, you want to give me a call tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that’ll work. Okay with you?”

“Sure. Harry, are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

My heart thumped in my chest. I swallowed a gulp of air, then let it out evenly as I spoke. “Yeah, everything’s fine, Rach. I’ll miss seeing you tonight. I’ll make it up to you, though.”

“All right, Harry,” she said, hesitating like she wasn’t sure whether to believe me. If I were her, I wouldn’t. “Call me tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, I will. Listen, you take care now.”

“I will. You, too.”

“Bye, now.”

Yeah, I thought, take care. I wish she’d done that before, back before she got herself into something that was bigger than all of us.

I didn’t have much appetite, but I figured a trip to the store would at least get me away from the shrinking walls of my apartment. I picked up some salad makings, a six-pack of beer, a few other munchies, then returned to my apartment in a fog that was at least as thick as what was on my windshield earlier.

I turned on the television, looking for something totally mindless. Television being television, I found it with no trouble at all. But while my eyes watched “America’s Funniest Heart Attack Videos,” or some such crap, my mind was subliminally running around in circles.

I still wasn’t sure, still couldn’t believe it. Could, in fact, still create a half-dozen ways in which she didn’t do it. Husbands die with lots of insurance every day; doesn’t mean the wife did it. Rachel was a nurse; that didn’t mean she was the one who shot Conrad full of protocurarine. She wasn’t the only person in the world who knew how to read a PDR , or how to fill a syringe.

I bounced around from one extreme to the other, one moment my heart racing because she was innocent, the next sinking because she was guilty. I ate my salad without tasting it, drank a couple of beers, picked up books to read and couldn’t stay focused, looked for a decent old movie on television, found only trash. Mind pudding.

Ten o’clock rolled around. I locked up, turned off the lights, stripped down to my shorts, and crawled in bed with another beer. Three beers on a Sunday night; Christ, this whole business was driving me to drink. The news came on. More disasters. Muggings, rapes, armed robberies-the whole litany of savage horrors in an allegedly civilized worid. I was beginning to think I needed to buy a gun, especially in my line of work. Maybe get one of those electronic zappers. I wondered if that was what she hit me over the head with the night of Conrad’s-

Wait, I thought, shooting up in bed like a bird dog on point. That’s it. My head. I held the answers right beneath the butterfly strips on my head, only I’d been too stupid to see it. But maybe not. I had to be sure. If I were right, that cinched it. But if I were wrong …

There was only one way to find out. And that wasn’t going to be pleasant. I flicked on the nightstand light, grabbed the white pages, flipped through to the S s. I ran my finger down the column, hoping like the devil he wouldn’t have an unlisted number. I could see where he’d want to keep his number a secret. After all, cops probably get some pretty weird phone calls.

“Spellman,” I said out loud, reading down the list. Then I came to it. He was listed as H , with no address. Just a number.

“All right, Howard! Who loves ya’, baby?” I said, dialing the number. A few seconds later, a sleepy woman’s voice answered.

“Mrs. Spellman?”

“Yes?” She yawned as the end of the word rolled off her tongue.

“May I speak to Lieutenant Spellman, please.”