Tom Piccirilli - The Fever Kill

Teddy on her lap, her small hands petting the bear, hugging it tight. What he'd done so far, what was the point of any of it?

Maybe it was Mimi's lost husband, longshoreman Lenny back there, who took off after the fourth or fifth kid, urging Crease to just cut loose and keep running. Skip out while he still could.

Man, when you didn't have your cool left you really had nothing at all.

Halfway to Hangtree, the window down and the breeze coursing through the car, rushing against him even as his forehead burned and the windshield fogged, he felt a wistful ache. It took him a minute to recognize the emotion for what it was. He wanted to check on Joan and Stevie.

He hit a cheap motel along the highway, paid for the night, showered, settled in, and reached for the phone. It was almost midnight. Joan would be sleeping but she wouldn't be angry if he woke her. He wondered if there was anything he could do to make her furious. And if so-if he had found whatever it was in time-if it would've somehow saved their marriage.

He called Joan. He wanted to hear her voice. Even if he didn't feel like saying much, she'd understand and do all the talking, trying to soothe him about things she didn't understand. When you got down to it, that's probably why his son hated him so much. Not for what Crease had done to Stevie, but what he'd done to the boy's mother. The kid had real pride and felt as great a sense of responsibility to protect her as Crease had felt about his father.

Instead, Mimi answered. "Hello, who's that?"

"Mimi, what are you doing there?"

"Your back screen door has slipped out of the track. I tried to get it back in but it won't go, it's bent. You'll have to fix that. I don't want Freddy getting out. Your side gate doesn't close either, the little thing, what do you call it, the latch, you have to jiggle it so it'll lock, except it doesn't work."

Crease tried to remember if Freddy was the kid with the beady eyes, or if it was the dog. He said, "But why are you there?"

"I can't visit my sister?"

"You never visit your sister."I could if I wanted to, though. Anyway, my oven broke. I'm afraid of a gas leak, so I packed the kids in the car and brought them over here."

He pictured her house. "Mimi, you've got an electric stove."

"What?"

"You have an electric stove, didn't you realize that?"

"How do you know? All of a sudden you're a mister fix-it, you've got plumbing skills, you're a carpenter? You haven't even fixed your side gate or the screen door."

"Your stove is electric. The coils turn red when they get hot. Somebody probably just knocked the plug out."

"Yeah, and what if you're wrong? We could all suffocate in our sleep. The gas company's there right now, checking it out. The only time they show up is when you tell them there's a leak, then they come, even if it's eleven o'clock at night."

He wasn't sure if Mimi was starting to become a serious attention-getter or if all the kids were driving her blood pressure up high enough to bake her brain. He'd seen it happen to guys on the force. Sharp, first-rate cops who, after having two or three children in short order, started falling asleep on the job, couldn't remember the call numbers, started cleaning their guns without checking to see if they were loaded.

The tiny details, the proliferation of minor annoyances, those were the ones that clogged your arteries and got you in the end. He still didn't know if her brood helped put things into perspective or just knocked them farther out of whack. He'd always fully expected to sit down one day and make a concerted effort to figure it out.

"Put Joan on," he said.

"She had to go talk to Stevie's principal, about the fighting. I told you."

"It's almost midnight."

"It was parent-teacher night, and then the P.T.A. had to have a special assembly about the situation, and then they have coffee and donuts. To them teachers, this is a big night out."

Crease said, "This the same thing or did he get in trouble again?"

"Again. He's shoving kids around. He knocked a girl down in the playground."

"A girl? Why?"

"He says he didn't like the way she was looking at him. She was six, he's eight. The school considers that sort of thing to be a serious matter. It doesn't take much for them to be scared about a lawsuit. A little girl gets her tooth broken or a bloody nose and you'll have a fleet of lawyers on your back. The school has a zero tolerance policy about violence. He might have to transfer." Mimi had shifted gears, she was sharp again, in asskicking mode.

"All kids get into fights."

"He's big for his age and knocking the crap out of six-year-old girls doesn't endear him to the faculty, you know? This is the age of Columbine. What do you think, Crease? You think maybe he's got some problems that need to be worked out?"

"Everyone does."

"Don't get flippant. Not when it comes to your own son."

"You're right, I shouldn't be. I'm sorry. I wanted to speak with him."

"Then you shouldn't have called at twelve o'clock at night. He's asleep, or pretending to be. He might be at his bedroom door, listening in. He does that, if you didn't know. When the phone rings. He's trying to get an edge, taking it all in. Joan will be home in half an hour. Call back then."

"I'll try."

"You settling up what needs to be settled wherever you are?"

"Little by little."

"Work it out faster and come home."

He hung up and a half hour later decided it would be a waste of time trying to talk to Joan or Stevie over the phone. Mimi had been right. He shouldn't have called so late, thinking he could just chat with his boy. He was in denial. Funny to realize it like this. In Hangtree he was maudlin as hell listening to Oldies with tears in his eyes, too scared to talk to his own kid and help him down the right road. He couldn't do it over the phone. Stevie would snarl and grunt and Joan would hum and sigh.

She truly did love him. Like Sarah Burke had said, The truth of love is that you accept what's wrong and ugly and stupid and tainted in your lover. Joan could do that, and it drove Crease berserk.

He really wanted to talk to longshoreman Lenny. He thought maybe Lenny had jumped in the East River just to throw everybody off his scent. He might be out there somewhere with a new name. He wanted to ask Lenny how his life had shaped up, if he'd done anything interesting with it. If he'd become a Hollywood stuntman, a missionary in Pago Pago, or an underwater demolitions expert. Or if he just had another wife somewhere with another brood of children. If he'd gotten it right the second time around. He could see Lenny in front of the tube with his eyes swirling, kids running in front of him, a dog barking, the new wife complaining about the broken dishwasher, wondering how the hell he'd been sucked into it again.

He thought of Morena and wondered if she'd still want him after he'd killed Tucco-if he could kill Tucco. And want him as a husband and a father to the baby, or if they were better off on the sneak, the way things had been for the past two years.

He drifted for a minute thinking about it. Seeing her so beautiful in the morning light that she cooled his burn, as she moved in front of the window with the view of the water, the breeze taking her hair, the skein of sweat dappling her naked skin, her brown skin shadowed by cloud cover. The way she looked when they were in a cab together, headed crosstown to catch a Truffaut revival. Her hair knotted back, her hand in his, discussing European cinema. The two of them chattering like college kids who'd just walked out of class. It gave him hope that there was a life beyond the life.

Yeah, everybody had problems they needed to work out. Jesus.

In the morning he checked out and saw a fifteen dollar charge for some X-rated flick. He vaguely remembered seeing skin on the tube. The bill said he'd ordered it at four a.m. He'd been on autopilot, feverish.