Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

The doorbell. She answered it.

It was the UPS guy with a load of art supplies she’d ordered off the Web. He was short, pale, soft around the middle. He set the packages just inside the door, had her sign his clipboard.

She grabbed his arm as he turned to leave, pulled him inside. “Come in here a minute, will you? I need your help with something.” Even as the anticipation mounted, there was also the beginnings of guilt. Shame.

But the alternative was a cucumber.

Conner had driven two miles feeling pretty damn pleased with his own cleverness when he realized he didn’t know where he was going.

He pulled over.

He went back to the file and found a home address. Hopefully, the divorce had been particularly bitter, and Conner could get Jenny Folger to fink on her ex-husband. Maybe Jenny would get a kick out of taking away hubby’s big toy boat. Conner pulled back onto the road and drove.

The address from the file was a nice, three-bedroom, two-bath American apple pie special in a good neighborhood. But a yellow real estate sign sprouted from the overgrown lawn like a middle finger. Conner looked in the windows. The place was empty.

A phone book at a nearby convenience store had nothing to offer, but information had a J. Folger listed in Mobile. Conner scribbled the number on the outside of the Folger file.

Conner called, and she answered. He told her who he was and that he was looking for her husband. She said her husband could burn in the fiery pits of hell, and wherever he might be it sure wasn’t at her apartment. Conner said he wanted to find her husband’s boat and take it away from him. She said Conner should get a merit badge. He suggested she might be able to help. She didn’t see how but said if Conner held Teddy’s arms, she’d punch him in the gut. Conner offered to come by and discuss it. She gave him the address.

Teddy Folger’s ex-wife lived way the hell on the west side of Mobile, so Conner had to pass Hank Aaron Stadium to get there. The stadium was where the Bay Bears played.

I would have been a good Bay Bear, Conner thought.

When he’d blown his baseball scholarship at the University of West Florida, he’d tried a few more schools, even some community colleges, to see if he could get on with another team. Nobody was impressed by his 0.5 grade point average, and he’d struck out all around. Conner sat on his thumb for a year, drinking beer and shaking his fist at the world.

Then he’d gotten the bright idea to try out for the triple-A club in Mobile. It was still a long way from the show, but it was professional sports and a steady paycheck. He swung the bat, ran the bases. The coach said he had a good arm, a decent eye in the batter’s box, but maybe he should join a gym. He was out of shape and sucking wind. He was told there were a dozen guys in top form who could throw and swing as well as or better than Conner.

What if I got into shape, worked really hard?

Sorry, kid. Maybe next season.

He spent the next few months doing sit-ups and running three miles a day, but somehow when tryouts rolled around again, his heart wasn’t in it. His heart wasn’t in much of anything. He earned a buck here and there with repos and the occasional gambling score.

But it was more than a simple lack of willpower that kept him from tryouts, something worse and deeper. Fear. He was scared. It was that simple. What if he worked hard, did his best, gave it everything he had, and yet he still failed? Could he handle that? Would he be able to stand the knowledge that he was exactly as useless as he suspected he might be? It was easier for him not to try than to give it his best only to crash and burn.

Conner had failed at college, failed in his attempts to win Tyranny. Life had been so easy for him for so long, and now life was calling in all its markers. Growing up was unpleasant and uncomfortable.

He put baseball and Tyranny out of his mind. Today he was looking for a boat, and that was all.

Jenny Folger’s apartment complex rivaled Conner’s own in drab efficiency and unimaginative landscaping. He climbed a flight of steps and knocked. She let him in and directed him to a sofa that was a little too nice for the apartment.

“It’s early, but would you like a beer?” she asked.

“There’s no such thing as too early.”

She came back with a Labatt’s Blue, and Conner stopped her before she poured it into a glass. “Straight from the bottle is fine.”

She took hers from the bottle too, sat in the matching chair across from him. They drank beer and took each other in for a second.

Jenny Folger looked like she’d once been a sunny, stunning blonde. Hourglass shape, long hair pulled tight into a butter-silk topknot. Athletically thick, broad back, built for action. She was just into middle age. Bouncy, sun-kissed youth had left her behind but reluctantly, and she was just divorced. Jenny sent out a vibe of broken-winged desperation that stirred the predator in men. Conner sensed it filling the room between them, thick like perfume that was a little too sweet. He could see it in her eyes as she searched his face.

“I told you I was looking for the boat,” Conner said.

“Yes. Teddy’s little plaything.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have stashed it?”

“Not the faintest,” she said. “Believe me, if I did, I’d have my lawyer on him in a second. I was supposed to get a big, fat settlement. I haven’t seen a dime or I wouldn’t be here.” She waved her bottle at the apartment.

Conner sipped beer, shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

“It’s not so good either.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“The divorce?”

“Yeah.”

She frowned, took a hit off the beer. “The same thing that happened to the first Mrs. Folger. Teddy found somebody he liked better.”

Oh, yeah. Conner had heard this one before.

“I suppose I’m some kind of idiot,” Jenny said. “When he left his wife for me, I thought I was hot stuff. It never occurred to me I could get older and sag and sprout crow’s-feet.”

“You look okay.”

“Gee, you’re sweeping me off my feet. Anyway, he found this woman in Pensacola, tends bar at one of the beach places. Half Teddy’s age. It’s ridiculous.”

“How old is Teddy?”

She nibbled the inside of her lip. “Let’s see. Next month he’ll be fifty-six. He’s a motherfucker. He sold everything, cleaned out the checking account, and took off. He hadn’t made a mortgage payment on the house in five months. Bastard. I had to get the most hideous job as a receptionist downtown.”

“You didn’t get anything?”

“There was nothing left to get.” She finished the beer and lit a thin cigarette, exhaled gray smoke, her head back against the chair. “I got a lawyer, of course, tried to grab back what I could, but it was no good.”

Conner opened the file on Folger. “It says here he had some properties. You couldn’t claim any of that?”

“It was just one property.”

He rechecked the file. “It says a tanning salon, a comic-book shop, a Blimpie-”

“No.” She shook her head, puffed the cigarette. “It was all one property. A strip plaza in Pensacola. It burned down.”

“The whole plaza?”

“The insurance investigators were all over his ass,” Jenny said. “Nobody could prove anything.”

“Did he do it?”

“Of course he did. The new mall was killing him. He didn’t confess it to me, but you bet he torched the plaza.”

He asked, “You couldn’t claim any of the insurance money?”

She shook her head, mashed out the cigarette in an amber glass ashtray. “The banks were faster than I was. The plaza was mortgaged up the ass, and the insurance barely paid everything off.”