William Lashner - Marked Man

“Yes, I think you can. My name is Victor Carl. I’m a lawyer, and I’m looking for your husband.”

She tilted her head and stared at me with unfocused eyes, as if I were a puzzle which she really didn’t care to solve. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why do you need to see my husband at his residence?”

“It’s something important that really can’t wait. Is he at home now?”

“If you have a summons or such to deliver, you should really deliver it at his office. He doesn’t bring his work home with him.”

“Well, you see, he’s not at the office.”

Her lack of reaction told me she knew this already. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

“You don’t know where he is, Mrs. Quick, is that it?”

A voice came from behind her. “Mom, I’m going to be late.”

She stepped aside. Behind her I could see a young boy, about eight, dressed in his baseball uniform: maroon shirt, maroon socks, baseball cap with a big LM on it.

“In a minute, Sean.”

“But I’m going to be late.”

“In a minute.” She turned back to me. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“How long has he been gone?”

Her eyes slowly came into focus, and she looked me over as if I had just materialized in front of her. Then she stepped forward with the dog and closed the door behind her. “You were the one on television, the one with the client that has the painting.”

“That’s right.”

“Stanford was very upset about what was happening.”

“I’d bet he was.”

“Leave him alone. Leave us alone.”

“It’s not me you should be worried about, Mrs. Quick. Do you know where he is?”

“No. I don’t.”

“When did you see him last?”

She looked at me again, then turned her gaze toward the perfect expanse of her perfect front lawn with its graceful willow tree. “Yesterday morning. He left early. He was upset.”

“Did he say anything about where he was going?”

“He just said he might be away for a while. He said he had heard from an old friend who was in trouble.”

“Has he called at all?”

“No.”

“Have you tried his cell phone?”

“All I get is his voice mail. I’ve left four messages.”

“What kind of car did he take?”

“We have a Volvo station wagon. Green.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Will you find him for me?”

“I’ll try.”

“And if you do, will you tell him I forgive him?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

AT FIRST I didn’t know where I was heading. I was behind the wheel of my cramped gray car, and I was driving for sure, stopping at red lights and going on greens, but I wasn’t concentrating on the road. Instead I was swatting away the bluebirds of happiness that were flitting around my shoulders and crapping on my head. Why were they crapping on my head? Because they weren’t the bluebirds of my happiness, they belonged to Stanford Quick, who had somehow stolen the life to which I had always aspired.

He had the house, the wife, the job, the country club, even the little piece on the side – oh, Jennifer – which, while maybe not part of my original plan, certainly didn’t help the envy any. And how he had gotten it all was what really gouged my heart. He had simply up and taken it. Hugo Farr had been offered a chance by Teddy Pravitz to leap the abyss and become someone new, and he had seized his destiny. And if he had to cross the line of legality, and if he had to change his name, and if he had to pretend to be something he wasn’t, so what? He hadn’t let niggling details get in the way of what he wanted from his life.

Hugo Farr. Stanford Quick. Success on a stick. Sammy Glick. Son of a bitch.

And I guess what was bothering me the most was that he had blasted away the fiction with which I had justified the weakness in myself that seemed to stay my hand whenever I was finally reaching for the life I so desired. Sure I always had my reasons, failure always does, but underlying the hesitancy was a belief I somehow couldn’t shake. We are what we are, we can’t transform ourselves, the die is cast and we play out our fates. I might hit upon the million-dollar case, I might stumble upon the love of my life, something hard and clean might fall into my lap and change everything, but it really wouldn’t change anything. I’d still be Victor Carl, I’d still be second tier and second class, I’d still be less than I ever hoped to be.

But now, in the short span of just a few hours, Stanford Quick had shown me the lie that underlay my blighted state. Transformation was possible, absolutely, he was living proof, and my failure to transform was failure indeed. It wasn’t just bad luck, it wasn’t just a sorry twist of fate; I simply wasn’t man enough to take hold of my destiny and steer it myself. So I bobbed and floated and meandered to where the currents of my life led me, which was very much like the way I was driving right now, heading in whatever direction the road turned.

Except I wasn’t heading just anywhere, I was heading someplace very specific. And when I recognized the direction in which I was driving, I knew where and why. He had heard from an old friend in trouble, had said his wife, which meant he was heading back into his past. And I knew enough now to know where that lay.

I was looking for a green Volvo wagon, the kind you’d see at horse shows and suburban soccer games in Gladwyne, not the usual ride for the Northeast row-house set. I first checked Hugo Farr’s old street. Nothing. Then Teddy Pravitz’s old street. Nothing. Then Ralph Ciulla’s street. Nothing. I was about to head toward Mrs. Kalakos’s house when I remembered, despite my suburban heritage, that every row house in the city has an alley behind it. And there it was, parked in the spot right behind Ralphie Meat’s house.

Beside a door on the level of the alleyway, a wooden stairway led up to a small, rickety deck. There was police tape, wrapped around the banisters of the stairway, blocking the way up. And there was more of the yellow tape lying flaccid on the ground beside the door, yet the door itself was clear. Nothing too tricky to figure out there. The knob turned easily in my hand, but the door wouldn’t open right off. A push with my shoulder shoved it a few inches, and another shoved it open enough for me to slip through.

I entered a narrow passageway that led to a cluttered, musty basement, ragged cement floor, strange stacked boxes, old furniture piled haphazardly, legs and arms rising menacingly out of the shadows. It smelled damp, airless, it smelled of spilled laundry soap. With the help of the light coming through the open door and a mottled window, I could see the bulky cubes of an old washer and dryer in the corner, copper tubing leaning against one wall and casting twisting shadows, a heap of bizarre implements on a makeshift worktable fashioned from thick cast-iron pipes.

“Mr. Quick?” I yelled out.

The sound died swiftly in the darkness of the basement. There was no answer.

I took a step forward. I heard something creak. I spun and saw nothing and I knew right away. I think I had known as soon as grim-faced Jennifer approached me in the lobby of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase.

A narrow wooden stairway rose from the left side of the basement. I followed it up, sagging wooden steps groaning, to a closed door. I pushed it open and stepped into the kitchen, bright with sunlight. The room was wide, the appliances were avocado green and from the era before my childhood, the yellow linoleum floor was stained and badly scuffed.

“Mr. Quick? Stanford?”

No answer. But I smelled something I didn’t like, something familiar enough and yet too strange for words. I had smelled it before, not too long ago, in this very house. The homey aromas of decades of gravy stewing in the kitchen, of garlic and sausage and spices that clung to the very walls, along with the fetid coppery scent of death. Of an unnatural, murderous death. Ralph Ciulla’s death. His body had been found in this very house, which the police had closed down pending further investigation. And now I was inside, smelling it again.