Steve Martini - Prime Witness

I can’t tell if he actually believes I would consider him for the assignment, or if he’s just stirring dissension in the office, his way of getting the juices going in Goya.

“What did you call it?” I say.

He’s all smiles. “Hmm?” A quizzical look. “Oh that.

‘Shiska Bob,’” he says.

I nod.

“One of the guys at sheriff’s homicide,” he says. “When you work there for a while you get a funny sense of humor.” He says this with familiarity, fostering an image. Roland, I think, would like us to conjure the picture, he and his redneck buddies from homicide lapping up brew together, talking about the inside stuff, the hard core cases, the real dirt.

I shudder to think what Feretti might have thought of this headline “Shiska Bob,” blazing above the fold from the little local newspaper, the Journal , what Mario called the “Davenport Urinal.”

“I don’t care where it came from,” I tell him. “I don’t want to hear it again.” There’s stone-deaf silence in the room.

“You might pass the word to the hot shot in homicide.

I’ll talk to the sheriff myself. We have families of the victims to deal with. We don’t need to inflict any more pain. They will be angry enough if we don’t come up with some answers soon.”

“I will,” he says. “Sure.” The smile is gone from Roland’s face.

For the moment I have side-stepped the question of who will get the nod on the Putah Creek cases, but Goya is looking at me. True to form, Overroy has opened the furrow and planted the seed of dissension.

My daughter is to be a rose petal, as distinguished from the shy violets, the seven- and eight-year-olds, in their hues of purple.

Sarah is dressed in a pink tutu, a rigid skirt that sticks out like the whirling rotors of a helicopter from her hipless little form. She wears this outfit over chartreuse tights so petite I could not fit one forearm into them. Yet even these form wrinkles like the skin of an old apple on Sarah’s spindly legs.

Nikki is busy with the camera, taking still shots of tripping pirouettes, poses by the fireplace in the living room, while I dress. Tonight is the capstone of a half year of lessons and a month of rehearsals, a cast of hundreds. The children’s dance workshop presents “Alice in Wonderland.” For this, the studio owner has rented the high school auditorium. It is the only place in town large enough to seat the legion of proud parents, and grandparents, siblings, and cousins, who will be on hand for this event.

As I look down the hall I see the litter of last night’s gathering. We’d entertained, and our guests had kids and these together with Sarah have trashed the better part of our house. The hallway is a scene of devastation. Ken and Barbie are on the floor, half naked. There is a littered trail of tiny clothes to the living room door and beyond, left as if by some dying tribe of Lilliputians wandering in the desert.

“Do you have the tickets?” Nikki asks me.

I check my wallet. They’re not there.

“I thought you had them,” I say.

“I gave them to you while you were shaving.”

I look in the bathroom. There they are on the countertop next to the sink.

“I have them.”

I hear Nikki sigh from the other room, something that says I would lose it if my head was not tethered to my body. Lately, she might be right. It seems that work is taking its toll, torn between two offices, living in the schizoid realm, half defense and half prosecution, commuting a million miles between each daily.

“Did you get cash at the ATM?” she says.

“Oh shit.” I say it to myself, under my breath, and still she hears this.

“I told you to get some money on your way home,” she says.

“I know, I forgot,” I say.

“Well, what are we going to do for cash?” she says.

“We’ll take it from grocery money,” I tell her.

“And forget to put it back,” she says.

While she talks I am raiding the system of little envelopes in the top drawer of our bedroom dresser, thirty dollars from the envelope marked “Food.”

“Damn it, Paul.” Nikki is standing behind me in the doorway. “I don’t ask you to do much,” she says. “I run the house, do the cooking on top of a job,” she says. “And you can’t remember to go to the bank on the way home.”

“OK. I forgot,” I say. “Give me a break.”

I pass her in the doorway, looking for my tie which I laid on a chair in the living room earlier. Sarah is watching television, the sound muted, CNN. It is the news I left on after dinner. Nikki is oblivious to television, so long as she does not have to listen to the noise. Of late, increasingly, what little time I get, I watch in silent mode only hitting the volume for some seeming world crisis. It is part of the price for peace in our house.

I find my tie, stop for a moment, and watch my daughter. She is dark locks primped and combed, like a gossamer fairy princess in her costume. Her gaze, sparkling brown eyes, is anchored to the screen. Then I look. Pictures of starving little children in some far-off place, bodies emaciated, in pain, bloated bellies and round, wanting eyes. She fixes on these, intense, absorbed, a communion of the innocent.

The picture changes, a talking head. Sarah looks over at me. I am struggling with my tie.

“Daddy, what is wrong with those children?”

It’s better, I think, to confront this than to sugarcoat it.

“They don’t have enough to eat,” I say.

“Why not? Why doesn’t somebody feed them?”

“There isn’t enough food where they live.”

“Why doesn’t someone bring food to them?”

“There are bad men there with guns,” I say.

“Why doesn’t somebody get rid of the bad men?”

In a nutshell, the circular debate of nations.

“That’s complicated,” I say.

She looks at me, the first thing she has not understood. Like most little ones, Sarah has acquired selfishness only as a competitive instinct when confronted with the rivalry of other children at play. On a more native level she is an ocean of empathy. In the quiet and solitary play that she seems to enjoy, her dolls are nearly always sick, throwing up. They suffer from a physician’s desk reference of maladies. It is any excuse to mother them.

To Nikki and me, Sarah is a litany of little offerings, crushed petals and broken stems, the gatherings of the garden, scraps of paper colored and punched, certificates of devotion folded and rolled in every hue made by Crayola. Tonight, for Sarah, it is not so much her performance that matters, but that she offers this achievement, as a gift to us. At five, children it seems have no concept of parents’ unconditional love. In Sarah’s limited view, I think, she feels the need to make some partial payment in the coin of acceptance, some compensation for our continued affections. She does not realize that she is compensation enough.

The phone rings in the kitchen. Nikki answers it.

“Just a moment,” she says.

“It’s for you.” She looks at me, an expression that says “this better not be what I think it is.” She hands me the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Madriani. It’s Claude Dusalt.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry to call you at home at this hour,” he says, “but it was important. We have a break in the case. Out near the university. Some evidence in a van. A lead on the Putah Creek killer. We need a warrant, tonight,” he says. “Can you meet me at your office in half an hour?”

I swallow hard and look at Nikki. She is watching me through the practiced eyes of cynicism. On my face, in the cast of my expression, she reads the message of still another disappointment.

“I understand,” I say. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I tell him.