Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

The kids’ birthdays were always a hard time for Rosie, and when she’d finally worked up the nerve (okay-gotten drunk enough) to actually make the call after all those years and all those halfhearted attempts (calls she’d abandoned in mid-dial or mid-ring; answering machines she’d hung up on), only to have Simon hang up on her, there just didn’t seem to be much point in sobering up anymore.

But like many alcoholics, it gave Rosie a feeling of control to discipline her drinking. Her allotted intake was determined by her shows. One vodka tonic apiece during the morning soaps, a can of Ensure for lunch, then another vodka tonic with each of the afternoon soaps. In the evening, she would either dine out with one of her gentlemen or dine in with Dinty Moore-the beef stew, not one of her dust bowl relations, she liked to joke. In either case, her nightly allotment was determined not by television but by how much vodka remained in the bottle, because her iron rule was never to open two in one day.

Of course, if one of her gentlemen had the funds to purchase adult beverages with dinner, or bring a flask back to Rosie’s apartment afterward, that didn’t count against her quota.

Last night had been a Dinty Moore evening. This morning Rosie had awakened with a menacing hangover and a vague memory of having spoken to someone about Simon over the phone. The who and the why of it had vanished into the mist of memory, however, and Rosie knew better than to try to go into the mist after them-the only thing she’d ever found there was frustration.

But whether it was the call or something else, Rosie’s schedule had definitely been thrown off. By the end of General Hospital, the last soap of the day, less than three inches remained in the red-labeled fifth of Select Choice vodka; by the time Oprah was over, less than two. That was going to make for a difficult evening, unless of course it was Wednesday. Wednesdays, Rosie could count on Cappy Kaplan springing for a bottle of wine.

And, Rosie told herself, she might even be able to persuade Cappy to stop off at the corner liquor store on the way back to the apartment. True, it was a little late in the month for those on fixed incomes, but Cappy’s circumstances weren’t as straitened as hers, on account of his VA benefits.

But was it in fact Wednesday? Rosie was working that one out by dead reckoning-she remembered Monday for sure, because Ralph Rosen, her Monday gentleman, had taken her to the buffet at one of the casinos; so if yesterday was Dinty Moore, then today had to be Wednesday-when the doorbell rang. Rosie checked the time on the cable box: 5:05. She rolled her eyes: Cappy and his twilight/senior discount dinners.

The intercom hadn’t worked for months. Rosie buzzed Cappy up, then unbolted the door and retired to the bathroom to freshen up. Cappy was among the spryest of Rosie’s beaux-he even rode a motorcycle-but it still took him a few minutes to climb the four flights of stairs to her fifth-floor walk-up. Sometimes she would wait for her gentlemen in the lobby to save them making the climb twice in an evening, but they certainly couldn’t expect that courtesy if they insisted on showing up in the middle of the afternoon.

“You’re early,” she called from the bathroom when she heard the apartment door open. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Take your time.”

It didn’t sound like Cappy-maybe he had a cold. Rosie splashed a little water on her face, freshened her lipstick, opened the bathroom door.

Her first reaction was the same as Nelson Carpenter’s-or that of anyone who’s ever seen a ghost made flesh. If something can’t be, but is, then it is the nature of that is-ness, of reality, of the universe itself, that will seem to have shifted.

Unless of course it was only the d.t.’s. Rosie snatched at that explanation like a drowning woman at a piece of driftwood. Some people get pink elephants, she tried to tell herself-I get Marcus Childs sitting on my bed.

In her heart, though, she knew he was no hallucination, and when he looked up from the bed with a strange, imploring look, as if he were begging for her to recognize him, it was in her heart that the recognition of his true identity first blossomed.

“How are you feeling, hon?” Miss Pool asked from the doorway. She already had her coat on.

“Like death warmed over,” replied Linda. The sluggish, leaden feeling had persisted all day. No real symptoms had popped up, which made her think she might indeed be having a Betaseron reaction-but if so, it had lasted longer than it ever had before.

“Why don’t we call it a day?”

Linda looked up at the clock: 5:10. “You go on home-I’ll lock up.” A little joke: the office locked itself, of course.

“What are you working on?”

Linda held up a faxed death certificate. “Elaine Ferry, Petaluma. She was a pharmacophobe-terrified of taking drugs, even prescribed medicine. They found her at the bottom of her swimming pool twelve years ago, wearing an overcoat with the pockets stuffed with rocks.”

“Virginia Woolf,” said Pool.

“Beg pardon?”

“That’s how Virginia Woolf drowned herself.”

“Yes, well, the thing is, the SF field office got a call from Elaine Ferry’s mother yesterday-she recognized Simon Childs as a friend of her daughter’s. They got permission for an exhumation and necropsy, to run some toxicology exams on the bones, teeth, hair if any, for traces of parent drugs or metabolites.”

“Are they likely to find anything after all this time?”

Linda shrugged. “It’s like that joke about the guy who lost his watch on Forty-second Street but looked for it on Forty-third because the light there was better-you can only do what you can do. And who knows, maybe they’ll find a note tucked between her ribs: ‘I did it, Love Simon.’”

“Which reminds me,” said Pool. “Do you have any plans for Halloween?”

“Is it that time already?”

“This coming Sunday. The reason I asked, we always have a costume party and put together a haunted house for the trick-or-treaters. Why don’t you come by-we’d love to have you.”

It occurred to Linda that after working with Pool for a week and a half, she still had no idea who that “we” represented. Husband, girlfriend, aged parent? “I don’t know-I don’t have a costume or anything.”

“We’ll fix you up-you can be a bloody corpse in the haunted house.”

“Somehow, being a bloody corpse has never been one of my ambitions,” remarked Linda, as the phone rang. Pool started back to her desk to answer it-Linda gave her a g’wan-g’home-getouttaheah wave and picked it up herself.

It was Pender. “Got any red pins on that map yet, kiddo?”

“Just the one in San Francisco.”

“Stick another one in Concord.” He told her about finding Nelson Carpenter in the bathtub.

“Homicide?”

“Unless he glued himself to the enamel.”

Linda winced. “Any estimate as to the time of death?”

“The M.E. hasn’t gotten here yet. From the looks of it, I’d say around a week.”

“Oh, jeez.”

“Oh, jeez is right.” But Pender spared her the worst of the details: the floating, gas-bloated corpse, the sloughed skin. “And guess what we found in the garage?”

“Silver Mercedes convertible.”

“And guess what we didn’t find?”

“Whatever Carpenter drives.”

“Late-model white Volvo sedan, according to the mailman. I’ll call you back as soon as the plate numbers come in from the DMV.”

“I’ll get the BOLO updated. Do we want to notify the public?”

“No-hold that back. If he knows we’re looking for the Volvo, there goes any chance of catching him in it. As it is, we’ll probably find it abandoned some-Whoops, here comes Erickson. Gotta go. I’ll call you back with the plates and the VIN.”