David Jackson - Pariah

‘I have a bad feeling about this, Mo.’

Franklin closes his eyes. It seems an effort for him to open them again. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘We’ll get a break tomorrow.’

He leaves the squadroom, looking every inch a man already in his twilight years.

Doyle runs the same gamut of emotions every time. He parks, gets out of his car and looks lovingly up at his apartment building, thinking how fortunate he is to be living here.

By the time he has planted his foot on the first step, the unease has already set in. He imagines the curtains twitching, the neighbors peering out at him and nudging their partners and pointing to his rust-bucket of a car and muttering about the area not being what it was.

The building is a brownstone on West Eighty-seventh Street, close to Central Park. It has wrought ironwork and stone lions above the doorway and the original stoop and hardwood floors. And he could never afford to live here. Not on the salary of a New York Detective, Second Grade. Not even if he were ever to make First Grade — an increasingly unlikely prospect, in his view.

He has his wife, Rachel, to thank for this place. Which is okay: he’s not so Neanderthal that he can’t live with that. But she in turn has her parents to thank for the apartment. Which is not so okay. Doyle hates the thought of being indebted. He especially hates the idea of being indebted to two people who refuse to recognize or approve of anyone unless they’re rich, white, right wing, and not a member of the Police Department.

Doyle turns the key in the lock of his apartment door and pushes it open. He hears raised voices, laughter, and feels drained by the prospect of having to dredge up polite conversation. When he identifies the owners of the voices, things don’t seem so gloomy.

He walks up the short hallway, glancing at the framed black-and-white photographs taken by Rachel, especially that one of Amy wearing a summer dress and a goofy smile.

In the living room there are more photos on the walls, including one of him shirtless, which he keeps asking Rachel to consign to the bedroom. Tan leather furniture surrounds a glass coffee table atop an Aztec-pattern rug. In one corner of the room is a small desk with computer equipment.

‘Evening, ladies,’ he says as he enters.

The two women parked on the sofa turn their heads to face him. Their bodies are still angled toward each other, and Doyle feels slightly awkward at the suspicion that he has just cut into one of those deep discussions that men must never be allowed to hear, on pain of death.

The visitor’s name is Nadine. She is blond, petite, and never wears a bra. She is, Doyle knows, twenty-four years old, but looks as though she has never escaped her teens. At the moment she is wearing a clingy silk dress. Her legs are crossed, and the dress rides high over her bare thighs. She has kicked off her shoes, and her button toes curl and uncurl as she beams at him.

If you could capture and bottle the essence of sexual desire, you’d have to call it Nadine. The girl can’t help it. It’s just there. Whenever she walks into a crowded room it’s to the accompaniment of male jawbones hitting the floor. What makes it worse, in Doyle’s view, is that she seems oblivious to her powers, and therefore makes no attempt to counteract her allure. Not that he’s sure how she could ever achieve that. She could put on a hazmat suit and still have the ability to straighten the Tower of Pisa.

More surprising to Doyle is that Nadine is married. To his boss, Lieutenant Morgan Franklin. A man who is twice her age. It’s a fact that constantly causes Doyle to battle the cynic within himself. Love is unpredictable, he reasons; it shines through in the most unexpected of circumstances. This is a bond which has nothing to do with the substantial inheritance that came to Franklin when his mother died. It has no connection to the colossal house in Westchester County they now own in addition to their Manhattan apartment.

‘Hello, Cal,’ Nadine says.

Two words, Doyle thinks to himself. A perfectly commonplace, matter-of-fact greeting. So why does it sound like she’s just invited me to take her clothes off?

‘Hi, hon,’ says the sofa’s other occupant.

Already feeling the guilt of keeping his eyes glued on Nadine for a split-second longer than is advisable, Doyle shifts his gaze to his wife. Rachel is wearing a baggy red Gap T-shirt and faded denim jeans. Her long dark hair is tied back in a loose ponytail. Her expression is saying to him, Look, I know you’re a guy and Nadine is, well, Nadine, but can you just remember that this is your wife sitting here watching you drool like an elderly St Bernard?

In return he flashes her a twisted smile that says, You’re jealous, even though there’s nothing to be jealous about, and I love you for it, and that’s why I like to tease you.

And she smiles back and arches an eyebrow that says, Keep on doing it, buster, and see what happens.

And that, Doyle thinks, is what makes the difference. The telepathy. The ability to convey volumes of information without uttering a word. Nadine, in all her eye-catching glory, is still just candy when it comes down to it. What he sees in Rachel’s eyes is what he first saw all those years ago when she was showing him around a crummy studio in Washington Heights. For some reason he found himself opening up to her, and it was only some time after she told him he could do better than this that he realized she wasn’t talking about the apartment. It was later, too, that he discovered she wasn’t some lowly junior, but that in fact her father owned the realty company and a lot more besides.

What he also sees in those eyes is the look of devotion and conviction that he saw when she was forced to defy her parents’ warnings to stay away from Doyle, opening a family gulf that still tears her apart.

Doyle inclines his head toward one of the bedrooms. ‘Amy gone to bed?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Rachel says, and it sounds to Doyle as though there is still a hint of admonition in there somewhere. ‘She left you this.’

She leans forward, slips a sheet of paper from the coffee table and holds it out to Doyle. He takes it from her and stares fondly at the colorful drawing of the house and the deranged-looking animal that towers above it. Some penciled writing begins tight in the top left corner and gradually droops to the bottom right:

this is my rabit. his name is Marshmallow. he cam in my yard and I gave him a carot. the end.

‘That’s pretty good,’ Doyle says. ‘She get any help with this?’

‘Listen to the cop,’ Rachel says to Nadine. ‘Why do they have to be so cynical about everything?’ She looks again at Doyle. ‘Would it do any harm to believe that this is all your daughter’s own work?’

‘Why Marshmallow?’ he asks.

‘Because he’s pink and white and fluffy. Jeez, where did you go to detective school?’

‘Well, we’re still not getting a rabbit,’ Doyle says and drops the paper back onto the coffee table.

From the corner of his eye he catches Rachel mouthing something to Nadine, and she responds with a conspiratorial giggle.

‘I had a rabbit once,’ Nadine says. ‘I used to sneak him up to my room and cuddle him in bed.’

‘Yeah?’ Doyle says. ‘What did Mo think about that?’

This sets her rolling about in girlish laughter, while Rachel sits there emanating further warnings that anything pertaining to whatever Nadine does in bed is strictly off-limits.

Rachel clears her throat loudly. ‘You eaten yet?’

Doyle flops into an easy chair, knocking a newspaper off its arm. ‘No. I’ve kinda got past it. I’ll make a sandwich or something in a minute.’

As he hears himself say these words, he knows there is a tone there that Rachel will tune into.