Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“Chief? This voice? If it’s in your head, it’s you. You can’t be smarter than you. ”

“It’s telling me not to trust you, Charice.”

This seemed to bring her up short. “Me?” she said.

“ Can I trust you, Charice? You’re not in cahoots with Gus, are you? Because—”

“It’s you I work for, not the damn mayor. You.”

“Tell Jerome if he wants my job, he can have it.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Charice?”

“Yes, Chief?”

“I’m sorry if I’ve stood in your way. On the job. You’re my best officer. It’s just…I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know. You said already you’re in love with me.”

“You keep leaving out the maybe, ” he told her. Then, looking up, he added, “Uh-oh.”

“What’s that mean? ‘Uh-oh’?”

“The News Channel 6 van just pulled in.”

“Good,” she said. “Go take a bow. You nabbed a criminal. Removed a public menace. Solved two cases.”

“I’d just say something stupid. I’m not happy until you’re happy. That sort of thing.”

“Actually?” Charice pointed out. “You said it right that time.”

“See?” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “Even when I’m right, I’m wrong.”

“Please tell me you’ll go out to Hilldale. The mayor’s calling every fifteen minutes…”

After the word “Hilldale” her voice gradually faded into the ambient buzzing in his ears. What he’d been trying to recall earlier, its signal too weak to pull in, was nagging at him again, the connection stronger now.

“Charice?” he said. “Send Miller out there. To the cemetery. Get the custodian to let him into the maintenance shed.”

“What for?”

“Because that’s where our stolen wheel boots are.”

“And you know this how?”

“Call it a hunch.”

The radio was silent for a beat, then, “Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t resign.”

“Why not?”

“You’re just getting good.”

—

HALFWAY BACK to Bath, stalled at a red light, he felt the buzzing in his ears spike and knew what that meant. And sure enough: Happy now?

No, Raymer told him.

You’re grinning.

How would you know?

I feel it. I can feel you grinning.

Okay, maybe I’m a little happy. Would that be okay with you?

You could thank me.

What for?

Letting you flirt, uninterrupted, with Butterfly Girl, he said. Then, after a pause, She’s playing you like a fiddle.

Again, how the fuck would you know?

You just don’t get it, do you? What you know, I know. That’s the deal.

I trust her, Raymer insisted.

It’s your funeral.

A horn honked, and in his rearview mirror Raymer saw that another car had pulled up behind him. Distracted by his conversation with Dougie, he’d evidently sat through a green light. He waved back at the guy in apology.

Then he decided to try a different tack. If I asked you a question, would you answer me honestly?

Ask away.

Becka’s lover? Do you know who he is?

Sure. So do you.

Sully’s son, right? All those times she claimed she was out with her theater friends at that wine bar…Adfinitum?

Infinity.

She was actually meeting him.

Raymer had seen Peter Sullivan around town. Good looking. Well dressed, in that tweedy college fashion. Clearly educated. Did something out at the college, Raymer didn’t know exactly what. Definitely the sort of man Becka would’ve been drawn to. They could talk about books and plays and art and music. The kind of guy she should’ve married to begin with, who’d help her understand what a mistake she’d made in ever taking up with Douglas Raymer.

The driver behind him was honking his horn again, though Raymer ignored him.

Anyway, here’s what I’m coming to realize, Dougie. So what? Fine. I don’t care.

Bullshit.

I thought I did, but if this with Charice…

Finish one lunacy, please, before you begin another.

Becka’s dead. It’s all finished. Not finding that garage-door remote was a sign. Charice is right. It’s time to move on.

More honking, louder now, the guy really laying on the horn. Raymer felt like his head might explode.

Dougie gave him a Bronx cheer. Listen to yourself.

Yeah? Well, listening to you almost got me killed.

You think you can be shut of me that easily?

Maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe I’m stuck with you. But that doesn’t mean you give the orders. I’m in charge here, not you.

Now the horn was one long, steady blast. Raymer closed his eyes, but this only seemed to intensify the sound, as if the horn was right in his own car. The light was green again, but it turned red before he could step on the gas. The driver behind him was apoplectic, his fat face beet red with rage as he kept laying on the horn, urging Raymer through the intersection. Rolling down the window, the man poked his head out and shouted, “Hey, asshole! What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

The change that registered on the man’s face when Raymer got out of the SUV and came toward him was gratifying to behold, rage segueing into misgiving and then pure fright. His window hummed up again, and the door lock thunked. Slapping his badge up against the windshield with his left hand, Raymer motioned with his right for him to roll down his window. The guy looked from the badge to Raymer’s face, then back to the badge and finally to the ugly stigmata on his palm, as if trying to resolve conflicting testimony. That this was obviously a policeman seemed reassuring enough for him to roll the window back down and offer Raymer a sheepish, toothy grin, which vanished under the impact of Raymer’s fist. The man’s head swiveled violently to the right, spittle flecking the passenger-side window, and he slumped forward in the seat, his body held upright by the seat belt. When Raymer saw that the man’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets, he felt a surge of well-being. This, it occurred to him, was how Sully felt all those years ago when he’d punched him in the face. Why, he wondered, had he denied himself the pleasures of physical violence for so long? It was a shame, in fact, that there was only one belligerent asshole in the car, because it would’ve felt good to coldcock a few more. The static in his ears was almost as loud as the honking had been, but as he went back to his car he found himself happily humming a tune from a couple decades earlier and recalled the lyric: I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.

The light was green again, so he put the SUV in gear and proceeded cautiously through the intersection. The car behind him didn’t budge, grew smaller in the mirror and, when Raymer turned onto the Bath road, disappeared altogether. After he’d gone about half a mile, the buzzing quieted, and he pulled over on the shoulder and adjusted the rearview so he could examine in its rectangle the face that had so frightened the asshole back there. If he’d shown that face to Becka, he wondered, would she have stayed in love with him? Was this what women wanted? Even what he wanted?

Returning the mirror to its proper position, he was looking straight at his palm. The ghost staple was still visible at its center, but the red, swollen, probably infected area around it had doubled in size and now resembled a bullet wound. He scratched it, hard.

Harder. What ecstasy.

Tell me again, said Dougie . Who’s in charge here?