Archer Mayor - The surrogate thief

"Leo," he heard her call out, summoning his younger brother. "Pick up. Joe's on the phone."

He also heard the television in the background. The reading material had once been all there was-her window on the world and a symbol of her devotion to the written word. Over the past few years, though, he'd noted sadly that the TV had been growing in dominance. Her eyes weren't what they had been; her attention span was shortening. She still did read and write, but in shorter spurts and with decreasing retention, more out of hard-won habit than with true enthusiasm.

"Joey," came the perpetually upbeat voice of his brother. "How's it hanging? Sorry, Mom."

"That's disgusting, Leo," she countered. "And I didn't hear it."

Both of them allowed for that particular leap of logic.

"Okay," said Joe. "I just figured I hadn't called in a while. A very short while. I was wondering how you were both keeping. Why aren't you out on a date, Leo?"

Leo was a lifelong bachelor, a popular and skilled deli butcher in Thetford who wooed the local housewives with charisma, humor, and good cuts of meat. He had a passion for less-than-mint cars of the sixties and for women who saw him as having no promise whatsoever, and a habit of shaking your hand and kneading your arm simultaneously, as if judging both your character and your fat content.

"Woulda been, shoulda been, but her husband got home early."

"Leo," their mother said sharply. "Enough of that. It's not even true. He's not the Casanova he pretends to be, Joe. He spends most of his time with those broken-down cars, making a mess in the barn. If the EPA ever came by for a visit, this place would be on the Superfund list."

Leo still lived in the home they'd known all their lives, the farm Joe's father had worked until his death decades earlier. He'd left behind his two boys, his much younger widow, a few buildings, and little else beyond some free-and-clear acreage, which she'd slowly sold off to pay bills and simplify her life. For some reason, whether habit or a comfortable lethargy, Leo had simply stayed on. His mother had made it easy by leaving him to his own devices, a show of respect that was paying off now that she had a built-in and devoted caregiver.

"You working on any big cases, Joe?" Leo asked, clearly hoping to deflect their mother's attention.

"Not really," Joe admitted. "Just reopened one that goes back a bit. It's interesting but probably academic by now." He generally downplayed his job-a veteran cop's inbred discretion.

"We heard about the shooting down there," Leo continued. "The hostage thing that turned inside out? The TV loved that one. You have anything to do with it?"

"Leave him be, Leo."

"No, that's okay, Mom," Joe answered. "The PD handled it, Leo. Remember Ron Klesczewski?"

"God," Leo said. "He caught that? Poor guy. Sounded like a mess."

Joe couldn't argue. "Just another offering from our so- called dominant species."

"Ouch. That doesn't sound good."

"How's Gail?" Joe's Mom asked, revealing her intuition.

Leo wasn't as sensitive. "Yeah. Boy, she's really making headlines. You think she'll pull it off? That Parker guy could smile the chrome off a fender, and he's well funded, too. I heard what's-his-name-Tom Bander-has thrown in with him. Isn't he, like, the richest guy in the state?"

"I don't think he's that big, Leo," Joe answered. His heart wasn't into talking politics, although he would have had to admit he knew little about the man, aside from his wealth. "It's a famously liberal county. She might have a shot."

"Not much of one, from what the pundits're saying. But hey. I'd vote for her. Guess that's not kosher, though, right?"

"No. Probably not. I'll tell her you offered, though."

"Say good night, Leo," his mother said quietly. "I need to speak with Joe alone."

Leo took no offense. "You got it, Ma. I'm in midautopsy with a carburetor anyhow. Come up and visit, Joe."

"Will do, Leo. Keep out of trouble."

"Ha. That'll be the day."

There was a click on the phone, a momentary pause that often followed Leo's departures, before his mother said, "You don't sound well, Joe."

"I really am. Promise. Maybe a little tired."

"Then what is it?"

Joe's mother had been a parent and a half to him and Leo, since their taciturn and older father had spent most of his days working the fields in stolid silence. He'd been a generous and gentle man, not at all cold, but he waited for people to come to him, and then responded only to direct questions he felt he could answer. It fell to his wife to fill in the blanks, something she did with animated conversation, an avalanche of good books, and an honesty that combined respect with openness.

Joe conceded defeat, which he now realized was why he'd called in the first place. "The old case I mentioned was the one I was running when Ellen died. It's brought a lot of stuff back."

Her voice softened. "Oh, Joe. I'm so sorry. That's got to be very tough, especially with Gail being so busy."

She'd put her finger on it, as she so often did. Years before, after Gail had been raped and her life turned upside down, Joe had almost died trying to bring the perpetrator in. Then, as now, Joe's mother had helped him see clearly through the tricky emotional maze.

"Does Gail even know what you're working on?" she asked.

"No," he confessed. "I haven't had a chance to tell her."

"Because of her schedule or because it involves Ellen?"

He hesitated. "Both, maybe. Mostly the schedule, but I do feel a little weird about this. I haven't thought about Ellen so much in a long time."

"Her death changed your life, Joe. It took years before you allowed someone like Gail to get close, and even then it only worked because she didn't replace what Ellen was for you."

"A wife?"

"More than that," his mother pursued. "Ellen would have been the mother of your children, if you two had chosen to adopt. You've been mourning that all this time, too, whether you admit it or not."

Joe remained silent, pondering the truth of her argument, looking for flaws he realized might not be there.

"Are you feeling a little widowed all over again?" she asked after a few moments.

Joe was caught off guard. "I'm not sure I'd put it that way."

"Maybe you should. It might help you see things more clearly."

"That's a little dramatic."

"Is it? You're not married. You live apart. Your quiet moments together are shoehorned in. What's left if you lose those? I wouldn't downplay the importance of this."

Joe hesitated again, somewhat at a loss. "I can't tell her to stop running. She wouldn't do it, anyway."

"That's not the debate to have. There may not even be a debate. But this has got to be put on the table between you, Joe. You're not going to be able to settle this in your own head. People don't have good conversations in the mirror, not ones that count, anyway."

This time the ensuing silence was respected by both of them, allowing her words to find their proper nesting place.

Finally, Joe sighed. "Thanks, Mom."

"I love you, sweetheart."

Willy Kunkle pointed through the windshield. "That's your man."

Sitting behind the wheel, Joe watched as a thin young hustler with a struggling beard swung off the porch of one of Brattleboro's ubiquitous decrepit wooden apartment houses on Canal Street and began walking west, his body language at odds with itself, hovering between watchfulness and cool indifference.

"John Moser?" Joe asked.

"The one and only."

"You have anything we can use to squeeze him?"

"Not much. Like I told you before, he's cagey that way. I do have a bluff that might work, though. Remember Jaime Wagner?"

Gunther thought back, his brain, like those of most in his profession, filled with a gallery of people no one else would choose to know. "Pimply guy who ripped off the Army Navy store a few years back?"