Jeremiah Healy - Right To Die

Cuervo cocked an ear toward upstairs before speaking in a low voice. "I was maybe fourteen, fifteen. After my mother died, I was pretty used to having the run of the house in Candés, you know? I mean, it was just my father, Manolo, and me when I was home from school. Well, one day I was coming back after going to the beach, and I was dripping wet on the tile floor near the staircase. So I stripped down as I was climbing the steps, hurrying so the water wouldn't get all over the rugs upstairs.

"I kind of burst into the bathroom, naked, and there's… there's Maisy. Naked, too, just stepping out of a bath. I was stunned, I guess. Then Maisy looked down at me" – Cuervo dropped his eyes to the crotch of his tennis shorts – "and she said, 'Ramon, you're your father's son,' and smiled. Looking back on it, I guess she meant it to cut the embarrassment, but at the time I took it… I took it for my father's marrying a whore, okay? A whore who'd make a play for her new husband's son."

"You ever talk it out with her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Cuervo blushed for the first time. "We don't do things that way."

" 'We'?"

"In Spain. We don't do that kind of thing. It's just… different over there. You wouldn't understand."

"This scene with Andrus in the bathroom. Is that why you were so long coming home to see your father?"

"Probably. It was all a long time ago, all right? Not a real happy time to remember either."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"Yesterday?"

"Right."

"At the plant."

"In New Hampshire."

"Yeah. Where you saw me before."

"When did you leave?"

"I don't know. I headed back here around four, four-thirty. What difference – oh. Look, I told you, I don't know anything about the shooting. I don't even own a gun anymore, okay?"

"You said Maisy Andrus got the house. What about the hunting rifles you and your father used?"

"I don't know what happened to them. I was thinking about college, man. I didn't care about guns."

"I'll let you get back to your day."

Cuervo glanced upstairs, then at the clock on his VCR. "Hope she isn't expecting breakfast."

I followed Louis Doleman and his teddy-bear hair through the second door of the spacelock.

He said, "Marpessa? Company's here."

I let Doleman take his seat before I took one opposite him. The same cardigan sweater and slacks as in December. The same worn copy of The Right to Die open, facedown, on the TV tray. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the cupcakes. The macaw perched on the arm of his chair, giving me a revolving-eye once-over as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

"Mr. Doleman, I wonder if you can help me here."

"I'll sure try, Mister…?"

I'd said my name for him thirty seconds before. "Cuddy, John Cuddy."

"Sure, sure. Cuddy. What can I do for you?"

"I'm thinking of doing some hunting this week."

"Hunting? Hunting? My boy, you can't go hunting this time of year."

"Not here. Overseas."

"It's winter in Europe too."

"Not Europe. Below the equator. It's just turning fall there."

"Ah. Ah, yes, I remember that. What… what is it you want again?"

"I'm trying to decide what firearms to bring with me. I wonder if I could see some of yours."

"Mine? Mine, they're awful old, son."

"That's all right."

"Besides, I don't know, I don't think it's legal somehow for me to loan them to you."

Doleman seemed like that the last time too. Fading in and out, foolishly inviting a bigger, younger stranger into his house, then fixing on some detail. Loose to lucid. If it was an act, he was one of the all-time greats.

"No, Mr. Doleman. I don't want to borrow them. Just look at them toward deciding which kind I should buy."

"Oh. Oh, sure, sure. Come on." Doleman stood, waggling a finger at the bird. "Marpessa, you be a good girl now."

The macaw pecked his finger and made an atonal squawk, but stayed put.

I followed Doleman into his kitchen. The appliances all looked 1950s and crudded over.

He paused to move a case of generic soda cans away from a cellar door. "I keep them down in the basement, of course."

The stairs were steep, each step shallow enough for the ball of the foot to land just a little too far forward. Doleman almost pranced down them, an agile gnome at home in his cave.

"Over here."

He stopped in front of a padlocked steel cabinet mounted on the wall. The cellar was neglected, a strong, musty smell matching the dingy whitewash on the cement.

Doleman fished in his pocket for keys. Getting them out, he held each up three inches from his face before settling on one. "Here she is, here she is."

He inserted the key in the padlock, having to force the lock itself off the hasp. He pulled open the door, grating from rust. "Help yourself."

Three rifles and a shotgun, standing muzzles up. I worked the first one out. An M-1 with enough dust on it to have been there since Truman fired MacArthur. I looked into the bottom of the cabinet. The dust around the other butts seemed undisturbed.

"Been a while since you've had these out."

"Long while. Haven't taken a deer since… I don't know when. Still have to apply for some kind of goddamn permit though. Every birthday, seems like."

Probably every fifth. I tried the action of the M-l. The outside bolt you wedge back with the edge of your hand wouldn't move.

Doleman said, "That's a military weapon, son. The others are your sporting arms."

I put the M-1 back and tried the next, a lever-action Winchester. I sniffed the breech area. No smell of burnt powder or gun oil to have cleaned it. Same with the third, a Ruger. I left the shotgun where it was.

"These are your only firearms, Mr. Doleman?"

"What, four ain't enough?"

Smiling, I still let him precede me up the stairs.

Back in the living room, I said, "Thought I saw you over on Beacon Hill yesterday."

"Beacon Hill? Me? Not a chance. Don't go into the city these days."

Not counting his trip to the library for the debate, I guess. "Why is that?"

"Too dangerous. Besides, Marpessa there would miss me something fierce. Wouldn't you, Marpessa?"

The bird said, "Right you are, right you are."

Doleman beamed. "See that? See? Better than kin, better than a son or daugh – "

His face got doughy, the lips working at cross-purposes to each other. "What… what was it you wanted again?"

I could have asked him about his daughter's treatment, about his contacting the Mass General over it. About a lot of things. Instead, I said, "I'm all set, Mr. Doleman. Thanks for your time."

He nodded, but more as a good-bye as he retook his seat, Hopping the opened book over into his lap and beginning to read. The macaw primped her feathers as I moved backward toward the spacelock.

The door to Walter Strock's house bowed open, Kimberly Weymond standing next to it. She was wearing a pink terry-cloth robe with a peekaboo front and a hood that rode down from the weight of her blond hair, recently washed. A floor lamp backlit the hood, making her look like a cobra. If you believed in omens, that is. Weymond didn't have to be reminded of who I was. "Come in, Mr. Cuddy."

"Is Strock here?"

"No, but come in anyway."

I moved past her into the living room. A thick hardbound case-book and a nearly as thick paperback vied with peach five by eight cards atop a low, square cocktail table. In front of the table was a beautiful marble fireplace, a couple of logs crackling.

Weymond said, "I've always loved a fire after a long, slow bath."

I took a chair facing away from the fire and nodded toward the worktable. "I thought everybody used computers now."

Weymond glided to the table, nestling behind it Indian-style. "Some things are better the old-fashioned way, don't you think."