Макс Коллинз - True Crime

That way I wouldn’t have to see her eyes when I told her.

“Sugar, remember when I told you I thought you ought to go home, and see your daddy?”

“Yes. Aren’t we going tomorrow?”

“I have to tell you something first. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about what was best for you, when I said that.”

“Who were you thinking of?”

“Me.”

I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

So I went on. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. I’m not Jimmy Lawrence.”

She still didn’t say anything; but she didn’t pull away from me, either. Stayed cuddled right up next to me. Her breathing easy, calm, regular.

I said, “I’m the guy whose name is on the door. I’m Nathan Heller.”

“I know,” she said.

“You know ?”

“I may be from the farm, Jim. Sorry — Nathan? But I wasn’t born in a barn.”

“How...?”

“When you were gone, I looked through the drawers in your desk and your file. I found snapshots of you and a pretty girl at the fair. And some clippings about a trial with your picture and your name under it.”

“Hell. Why aren’t you mad?”

“I am mad.” She said this like, pass the salt.

“You don’t sound mad...”

“I forgive you, Jim. Nathan.”

“Nate, actually, but—”

“I asked you before... Nate. I’ll ask you again. I’m with you , now — aren’t I?”

“You’re with me. I’m right beside you, all the way.”

“Then what does it matter what your name is, or why you came looking for me?”

“You — you know I came looking for you? How did you figure that out?”

“You had my picture in your desk. Did my husband hire you to find me?”

“No, your father.”

“Daddy gave you that picture?”

“That’s right.”

“He really wants to see me again?”

“He does. He says his health is bad...”

“He’s a lunger. Since the war.”

“That’s what he told me. He says he’s got enough of a pension to get by on. He sold his farm, has a house in De Kalb — where you can stay if you want.”

“My father sold his farm? I thought he’d never do that.”

“Louise, he’s coming to the end of his road. He says all he wants in life at this stage is to have a second chance with you. Make it up to you, for how rough he treated you, growing up.”

“He used to beat me with a belt.”

“I know. And if you don’t want to go see him, you don’t have to.”

“I don’t think I want to live with him. No matter what.”

“You don’t have to. It’s like I told you before — we’ll get you set up in the city, here.”

“As your secretary?”

“If we can’t find you something better, why not? It wouldn’t pay much, but I hear the boss is a soft touch.”

She snuggled to me. “I love the boss.”

We made love.

And the next afternoon I was back on the road in the Auburn, gratefully free of Burma Shave signs and hymns and the threat of hillbilly music. This time the female next to me was perky and fresh and young and not wearing a floral tent: first thing this morning I’d taken her to Marshall Field’s, and bought her a yellow-and-white frock with lace trim on the short sleeves and a little white collar. She’d have a whole new wardrobe tomorrow, after I got that grand from her old man.

That was the only thing I’d kept from her: that I’d be getting a bonus today for delivering her. It probably wouldn’t have mattered to her, but who could tell? She wasn’t from Chicago.

We took Highway 30 west for about an hour and then a sign said,

WELCOME TO DE KALB — BARBED WIRE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Every place is the capital of something, I suppose. We drove through the quiet little town, a brick oasis in the desert of corn we’d been driving through, and on the northern edge, there it was: Hopkins Park, lushly wooded, rolling. Saturday afternoon, and crowded: picnic benches packed with families chowing down, like Ma Barker and the boys, some having to settle for their picnic basket on a checkered cloth on the ground, ants and all; a swimming pool with a diving board and bathhouse brimming with people, particularly kids, darting about in their bright-colored bathing trunks, making up one big erratically waving flag of summer. This was August, after all, school looming up head. Desperate days. Time running out.

There was a band shell, and Louise and I walked around it; I slipped my hand in hers. If her father saw that, it might irritate him — the man he hired getting fresh with his daughter and so on. But she needed the support, and I gave it to her. Petersen was nothing to me except a thousand bucks, and a guy who used to beat his little girl.

We were a little early. I bought some popcorn from an old man at a stand; we shared a bag, she and I, sitting on benches before the band shell, an audience of two, as if waiting for some show to start. You could hear the kids splashing, yelling, in the pool, though we were well away from it. Over at the left, under a tree, a young mother sat on the grass reading a romance magazine and keeping one eye on her little boy who was tossing a stick for his little terrier to retrieve.

Louise said, “I hope I can make things right with my daddy, I’d like that. But I can tell you right now I want to go back to the city with you. I hope to make peace with my daddy — but I want you , Jim.”

I smiled at her. “I’m not Jim, remember.”

She smiled back. “You’re no gentleman, either.”

It was the closest I ever heard her come to making a joke.

Then she said, “You’ll always be Jim to me.”

We sat on the bench, not holding hands now, but sitting close enough to touch, just barely, enjoying the sounds of the kids splashing and families picnicking and a dog barking and I was just checking my watch when a voice from behind us said, “Louise! Louise.”

I glanced back and Petersen was standing there, in the grassy aisle, in the midst of all those empty benches; his eyes were sunken in his weathered face, red, from crying, and crazed, from... craziness?

“Jesus,” I said.

He was standing there in those same Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes he’d worn to my office, dark brown suit, light brown bow tie, shiny brown shoes, hands behind his back, leaning forward like a man about to fall on his face; the benches were on a gentle slope down to the band shell, which added to the effect. He had a whisper of a smile on his face. It made Karpis’ smile seem like the Mona Lisa.

And Louise was screaming.

Just like that night she woke up and saw me in bed next to her and screamed. Exactly like that.

I tried to touch her shoulder, to calm her, but she slid off the bench, cutting her scream short, and stepped out in the aisle and faced him. They were maybe ten feet apart, and she pointed up at him, as if pointing at an animal in a cage, and said, “What are you doing here? You stay away from me...”

“You shouldn’t have run off, Louise.” His voice as dry and cracked as parched earth.

I got up and stood in the aisle next to her. “Mr. Petersen, you promised me...”

She looked at me with her eyes so wide I could see the red lining them. “ What did you call him ?”

“Mr. Petersen. Louise, your father’s obviously upset, so maybe we should just—”

“My father ! This isn’t my father !”

Petersen’s smile was a wound in his face that wouldn’t heal. “I love you, Louise. I still love you.”

“He’s my husband ! That’s Seth !”

He said, “But you shouldn’t have been bad.”

“He lied to you! He knew I’d never come back if I knew it was him who hired you!”