Steve Martini - Undue Influence

I wave Harry off. He’s in my ear.

‘Please — I can’t hear myself think,’ I tell him.

He turns and walks toward the window, a lot of motioning with his hands, talking to himself.

‘No, not you,’ I tell her. I’m back to Dana. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. Can we meet at my house?’

‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’

‘No. I need at least an hour,’ I tell her. ‘One errand I have to run.’

‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ she says.

We hang up.

‘You’re outta your mind,’ says Harry. He’s still facing the window, away from me.

‘You tell her you were there, and she’s gonna call in the fibbies.’ Harry’s term for the FBI. ‘They’ll have you in a chair with bright lights in your eyes before you can sneeze. You may as well have stayed there and talked to ’em at the scene. At least it would have looked better.’

Harry gives me one of his better expressions, the ones that tell me when I’m being a dumb fuck.

‘You gotta admit, I mean, you go to talk to this girl, Marcie Reed. You leave the office for two minutes and she’s turned into Spackle, all over the walls.’

‘Oh, shit!’ Suddenly I’m staring off at the middle distance, right through Harry.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

‘I’d forgotten,’ I tell him. ‘The package. The one the courier delivered. I handled it. I handed it to Marcie,’ I tell him.

‘How did you manage that?’

‘The room was too small. He couldn’t get in. So I handed it to her.’

‘Oh, great.’ Harry’s a quick-step, pacing between the window and my desk slapping his thigh, going, ‘Oh, great! That’s great. Why didn’t you finger the fuse while you were at it?’ he says. ‘You’re gonna need one helluva lawyer,’ he tells me. ‘I hope you know one.’ Harry’s not offering.

I’m wondering if forensics can lift prints from tattered and singed bits of paper. Not that it matters, I suppose. It’s only a question of time until they place me in the room. Fingerprints on the desk, witnesses who saw me.

‘I just need to buy some time. Long enough to check out the note. Try and run down the Merlows.’

‘And you think she’s gonna give it to you?’ He’s talking about Dana.

‘I’m hoping.’

‘Good luck!’ Harry’s face says it all. ‘In your dreams.’

He’s standing, staring out the window, looking at the lights of the city, the Capitol five blocks away, lit up like a crown by incandescent lights that arc up the sides of the dome, setting off the cupola topped by its golden sphere.

There is a gray cast that has us in its grip. The central valley in winter, where they know how to do fog.

I sit at my desk, studying the contents of Marcie Reed’s little singed envelope. There is a snapshot, its edges charred. In the photograph, what looks like a small one-room church, green clapboard over starched white plaster, set in lush greenery, tinges of a brilliant blue sky. There are glimpses of a few headstones, a small graveyard next to the church.

And there is the note, written in a feminine hand:

Dear Marcie:

I’m sorry, but I need to ask a favor. Left my Mom’s ring in the top drawer to my desk. Could you send it, general delivery, care of ‘Alice Kent.’ Thanks for all your help. You have been the only friend I have had in two years. This place is the end of the earth. One day when this is all over, I will call. Take care. All my love.

K.

My guess is that Alice Kent is a name of convenience, something quick and easy that Kathy Merlow could use to collect a package at general delivery. By now she would have some plausible ID, maybe more than one. Given the speed with which they lost themselves after Melanie’s murder, and the absence of any tracks — Harry still has no word from the Resolution Trust Corporation on the house rental — these are resourceful people, the Merlows. I look at the envelope, the little circular postmark.

Then I turn the snapshot over. On the other side a note, scrawled in a faint pencil, Kathy Merlow’s hand:

‘If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.’

It is a special place, where I spend my afternoons.

I flip the picture over, study the little church.

Whoever took the picture was careful. No place-names or signs in the frame, nothing I could use to blow up, to get a fix on where it is. Nothing I can see, anyway.

Harry’s looking over my shoulder.

‘My guess it’s part of a poem,’ he says.

‘What’s that?’

‘The wings and the sea,’ says Harry. ‘Lyrical stuff.’

Your heathen roots are showing,’ I tell him. ‘Sunday school does have its benefits.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘It’s part of a passage from the Bible. One of the Psalms.’

The doorbell rings. I haven’t had time to even take off my coat. Dana’s made it in less than an hour. I open the door to greet her.

‘Hey, man, you the lawyer? Danny Vega’s uncle?’

On my front porch are three kids, maybe sixteen, dark-complected, coal-black hair, shades dangling from their shirt pockets. They are wearing khaki pants and oversized black shirts with long sleeves, part of the uniform, Pancho Villa’s army of revenge, gang-bangers all.

‘Who wants to know?’

One of them has his hair tied in a tight bun, a black hairnet drawn over the top. He’s the one doing all the talking.

‘Hey, man. Just answer the question. Don’t give us no shit. You know Danny Vega? You know where he is?’ The kid has sixty-year-old eyes set into a face that is at best sixteen, but mean.

His two companions are giving me faces of resolve, expressions of enforcement.

I’m looking at the security chain, hanging limp from the frame of my door. The only thing between us is the tattered screen door, which has been mauled and ripped by one of my neighbor’s cats.

‘I think you should go.’

‘We goin’ noplace till you tell us where Danny is. We don’ wanna get into it with you, man. But you push us — ’

One of them pulls a butterfly blade from his pocket and whips it open. For the moment he’s cleaning his fingernails, making sure I see the razor-sharp edge.

‘We’re not lookin’ for no trouble — ’ The kid with the hairnet is back in the lead.

‘Sure. You’re just standing on my front steps threatening me.’

‘Hey, man, did we say anything that was threatening?’ Big eyes all around, a chorus shaking heads.

‘You hear anything threatening?’

‘Nada.’

‘What do you want with Danny?’ I say.

‘Hey. I think he’s inside.’ One of them smiles. ‘Hey, Danny — you in there? Come out, come out, wherever you are.’ His friends are laughing. They think this is cute stuff. The hairnet grabs the latch on the screen door. It’s locked.

A look on his face, crestfallen, like his feelings are hurt.

‘Hey, man. I tole you we just friends over for a visit. You let us in, okay?’

‘No, it’s not okay. I’m gonna suggest you get the hell out of here.’ The level of my voice is beginning to rise, signs of fight or flight.

‘Hey, not very friendly, man.’

The guy with the blade starts to whittle on my screen, near the handle.

‘Just send him out. We can talk here. How ’bout it?’ The hairnet flashes me a full load of pearly whites. ‘Come on out, Danny. Or else we’re gonna have to come in. Up to you.’ He’s singing through my screen door.

‘I don’t know where he is. He’s not here.’

‘You sure?’ He pulls on the door handle one more time, like maybe it will give. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet now, looking over his shoulder to make sure there are no nosy neighbors. Visions of the blade slashing through my screen door.