William Lashner - Past Due

“I suppose so,” I said. “So after his disappearance you never heard from him in any way?”

“No,” she said. “Never.” But even as she said it her eyes slid again toward the dining area. It was a small dingy alcove, overwhelmed by a dark table, high-backed chairs, a large dark sideboard with a china hutch above it. The hutch doors were ornately carved, with glass panels to show off the dishes. But there weren’t dishes in there, there was something else I couldn’t quite make out.

“Is Mr. Greeley around, we’d like to talk to him too?”

“He’s at the golf course.” Her nose twitched. “The city course. Every day,” she said with a hard smile.

“Is he a good golfer?” said Kimberly, with a bounce of solicitous excitement in her voice.

“No,” she said.

“You don’t happen to have a picture of Tommy, do you?” I said. “Something we could take with us?”

“I might,” she said, smashing out her cigarette and standing unsteadily. “In the other room. I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she left, I stood and meandered over to the dining area, right to that china hutch. I took a quick look around and then opened the doors.

“My God,” I said softly.

There were bottles, the shelves were filled with them, a score of bottles, all clear, all still sealed, all filled with their magic elixir. Gin. Gordon’s Gin. Same brand, stockpiled over the years, you could tell from the varied rates of yellowing on the seals. So much alcohol. Saved up for a rainy day, no doubt. Wouldn’t want to go an hour without. I bet there were bottles stashed all over that house, in the kitchen cabinets, beneath the sink in the bathroom, under the bed, because you never know. And as we talked about Tommy, his mother couldn’t keep her eyes from those bottles, waiting for us to leave so she could slit open a seal, unscrew a top, pour herself a stiff dose of amnesia. It was all too pathetic to bear.

When Mrs. Greeley returned with a photograph, I was again sitting beside Kimberly.

“This is from his college graduation,” she said as she handed it to us. “I expect it will do.”

Tommy Greeley, as his mother surely wanted to remember him, handsome and tall in his graduation robe, a mop of black hair falling from his mortarboard and almost cutting off his eyes. And a smirk that was particularly fulsome. There was an insinuation in that smirk, that this was just the beginning. It wasn’t the kind of smile a politician gives, a false, toothy, trustworthy smile, it was something else. Look what I scored, it said, his smirk, look what I pulled off. Aren’t I something, a geeky Irish boy from the wrong side of Moraine, with a brutal father and bitter drunk of a mother, graduating from Penn, off to Penn Law School, with a million-dollar business on the side? Aren’t I the damnedest thing?

“It’s fine,” I said, standing, anxious to be gone from that house, that woman. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Greeley. We’ll be back in touch if there is any more news.”

“Can I ask something?” said Kimberly.

Mrs. Greeley said, “Of course you can, dear, such a pretty girl. Such lovely skin. I had lovely skin as a girl too. But then you get old and you dry out. Think of an orange squeezed of all its juice. That’s what a husband and a child will do to you. You’ll see, my pretty. So, dear, ask your question.”

“Now think first, before you answer, because this is, like, not a true-false, okay? If your son was an animal, which animal would he be?”

I sighed loudly. “Kimberly,” I said.

“I saw it on TV.”

“I’m sorry for the disturbance, Mrs. Greeley. Thank you for your time. Let’s go, Kimberly.” I was in the process of leading her out of the house when Mrs. Greeley spoke.

“He would be a polar bear, dear.”

“Excuse me?” said Kimberly.

“He would be a polar bear,” said Mrs. Greeley, “because he was always hungry and he roared when he wasn’t happy and he could be very very cold.”

“I WAS JUSTtrying to ask a question,” said Kimberly, arms crossed and sulking as we drove through the streets of Brockton, “and you go tripping all over me like I’m telling a dick joke in front of the queen.”

“I thought we discussed this on the plane,” I said. “I would ask the questions. I have much more experience at this. Years in law school, in the courtroom, investigating my cases. That’s why I get paid.”

“You asked me along.”

“Yes, but just to observe. I mean really, what kind of experience do you have? Asking questions at sorority rushes?”

“Rush can be brutal, V.” She made a show of looking me up and down. “You’d last about a minute and a half.”

“That long? But then I don’t dress like a stewardess.”

“You like it?” she said, her hand flying to her hat. She was wearing a sky blue suit with sharp blue pumps and a blue peaked cap. She looked as tasty as a cupcake with extra frosting, an adolescent fantasy come to life.

“Very becoming,” I said, “though I’m not sure becoming to what.”

“Becoming to a vice president,” she said, “and it was a quality question.”

“It was a touchy-feely piece of Baba Wawa nonsense,” I said.

“Maybe I’m a touchy-feely Baba Wawa kind of girl, whatever the hell a Baba Wawa is. Is that, like, from Star Wars ?”

“Who, the bounty hunter?”

“No, the big hairy thing.”

“Chewbacca?”

“I always thought he was sexy.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Give him a razor he’d be pimpin’.”

“But he doesn’t talk, all he does is grunt.”

“A boy who knows he’s got nothing to say. Very rare. And you have to admit, the polar bear answer was interesting.”

“The only thing I found interesting,” I said, “was how Tommy Greeley survived in that house as long as he did.”

“I thought Mrs. Greeley was sweet. A little sad, sure. She still misses her son.”

“She was a harridan, Kimberly. Wasn’t it obvious? She was one of those women who numb their bitter resentment with alcohol and make everyone close to them pay for all the lives they failed to lead, all the goals they failed to achieve. She’s a cold-blooded killer.”

“You sound like you have issues, V.”

“I know the type,” I said, and as I said it I remembered those gin bottles, lined up like doomed soldiers standing at attention in their ranks. But something bugged me about those bottles, something different from the bouquets of glass I used to find around the house when my mother still lived at home.

“Is that it?” Kimberly said, pointing out her window.

My mind snapped back to the present. I looked down at the scrap of paper, looked up at a forlorn little storefront. “That’s it.” I managed to find a parking spot not too far off. “Now let me handle this, all right?”

“Suit yourself, V.”

“What’s this V stuff, anyway?”

“Like the president is W? You’re V.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m all that, V,” she said as she checked her lipstick in the mirror, “that’s what I am.”

Butch’s Sub Shop was a narrow little deli, with a brown linoleum floor and a few tables set out between the meat counter on one side and the tall glass-doored soda coolers on the other. At the register, a sharp-eyed older woman sat heavily on a stool, smoking a cigarette, gasping audibly for breath as she rang up a little girl and her ice pop. Other than the girl, the place was empty. Wiping down the deli counter was a burly dark-haired man with a mustache and a Red Sox baseball cap and above him a sign indicating all the varied sandwiches you could order so long as the sandwich you ordered was a sub.