Whitney Terrell - The Good Lieutenant

Maybe it was a weakness, wanting to belong so badly. Harris certainly had seen it that way. And there were times, like this morning, when she wore the uniform as protection and as a warning, even though by regulation she should’ve probably been in civilian gear. She was passing a restaurant with tables set out on the sidewalk behind an iron railing, and the patrons were out in wire-backed chairs, every one of them eating something different — salmon, salad, fruit, a plateful of pasta. She tried to imagine herself as one of the women there, tried to imagine herself holding a job, maybe living in one of the glassy apartments off to her left, up the hill. Tried to imagine not having a platoon, not knowing Dykstra, not knowing Crawford, not knowing Hartz, not having to go to PT, never having replaced the hydraulics on a Hercules, or signed her commission, or given a briefing, or fired an M4.

She’d reached the bank building by then. The windows along the sidewalk were clear and oversize and the décor inside was, if anything, retro compared with the shops she’d passed: broad red carpet, teller window of newly stained wood, potted plants, a set of three very large and very heavy-looking desks with nameplates, brass lamps, and translucent green shades. It had been two years since she’d last seen her brother, and nearly seven now since their fight over the Ryersons’ car, and as she paused outside the revolving glass door, buffeted by women in their high, unsteady heels, she wished, if only briefly, she’d worn something that would make her seem as helpless as she felt.

“Hello! Can I do something for you?” The girl who approached her could’ve been one of the ones from outside on the street: glossy black hair cut straight across her forehead, a pencil-thin skirt, two-toned shoes.

“Yeah,” Fowler said, “I’m, uh…”

“Are you wanting to open an account?”

“No. No — I mean, I have a bank account.”

“Looking to finance a mortgage?”

“That would be, um…” She was still scanning the room, past this woman’s silk, pin-striped shoulder, searching for … what, she wasn’t sure. A patch of curly ginger hair (I kissed that once; I combed it; I washed it with soap and water). Yes, I’m here to see my little brother, but I have no idea what he does here. No idea how he got here. No idea how long he’s been here. Or why he didn’t tell me. “That would be a little premature,” she concluded, folding her arms so that her briefcase covered the name tag on her blouse. “I’m afraid. Unless, you know, you got something outside Baghdad.”

It was a joke — at least Fowler had intended it that way. But even though the woman seemed to understand this, there was no corresponding laughter. Only a reshuffling of possibilities behind her plucked eyebrows, her wide-eyed, mascaraed face.

“We have a federally funded program for servicemen and — women,” she said, thrusting a brochure into Fowler’s hands. “I can prequalify you at a rate of five-point-six percent for the first five years of your mortgage. I can fold your closing costs and your down payment into the loan, so you can walk out of here with immediate access to a couple hundred thou in equity. Plus”—the woman came around so that she was shoulder to shoulder with Fowler, her perfume sharp as spoiled wine—“we will actually pay off, in cash, your title fees. It’s our way of saying thanks.”

“For what?”

“For your service,” the woman said. She nodded at Fowler’s fatigues.

Fowler handed the brochure back. “Do you think you could help me find Harris Fowler? He’s supposed to work around here someplace.”

Speaking her brother’s name out loud caused Fowler’s legs to go wooden, and her hands seemed cottony and distant, as if her blood sugar had suddenly dropped. For the woman, however, it seemed to have the effect of a slap: her face dimmed without changing expression, like a phone screen that had shifted to sleep. She stepped off briskly to her desk, pushed a button, spoke into her phone’s intercom, then savagely rifled her drawers before returning with her business card: Rachel Nystrom.

“I know that Mr. Harris has a good reputation,” Rachel said, “but I can really use the business — and I can pay better attention to you too.”

She hadn’t considered the possibility that Harris would have a reputation of any kind, certainly not one that would intimidate a woman like Rachel; she’d imagined that he’d still be wearing a hoodie and a faded T-shirt promoting some deliberately obscure band — Echo and the Bunnymen, the English Beat — that had been popular before they’d been born, and even then not very. His “ironic” Budweiser cap. But instead he exited an office at the far end of the room dressed in a starched white shirt and a flashy yellow tie with a gold clip. His tightly curled brown hair was now cut short along the sides, he was taller than she’d remembered (was he still growing?), but the expression on his face — a studied and carefully arranged lack of focus, an overstudied calm — was familiar. It was the same expression he’d worn when she’d confronted him about the Ryersons’ car, as if he knew exactly why she’d come, how she’d found him — though in fact Pulowski had done it on the Internet. “Well, look who’s here,” Harris said. “This is a surprise.” He appeared to be evaluating the room to see if anyone else would notice their meeting.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” she said, then stuck her hand out at Rachel Nystrom, rather than hugging Harris, since she wasn’t sure what sort of reception she’d receive. “Lieutenant Fowler. I’m, uh — well, I grew up with this kid.”

Immediately Harris stiffened, and a slight warp lifted his lip. But when he turned toward her previous host, his voice seemed artificially loud, designed to draw the attention of the tellers and the other employees. “You learn anything interesting from my sister, Rachel?”

“No,” Rachel said, in a tone that seemed to imply that she hoped that Fowler wouldn’t repeat anything she’d just said.

This seemed to set Harris at ease. “No? You’re kidding me. You let a client walk in here and don’t get a read on her? Come on, haven’t I taught you anything?”

“Hey, take it easy,” Fowler said. “I was in the neighborhood. I came by because I’ve got some family business. If you aren’t free, I understand.”

“Now, there’s a revealing comment,” Harris said. “Do I have a choice about this meeting? Or does the lieutenant really mean that because we’re family , she can show up out of the blue and expect me to take off work? That , Rachel, is information you can use. Rule one, make sure you know what your client values most.” This was spoken while Harris executed what looked like a series of community-theater stage directions: return to the last, largest desk on the bank’s open floor, adjust your name tag so it’s visible, hunt busily for props. “Rule two, pay more attention to what they do, not what they say.”

“What’s the third?” Rachel asked.

Harris came beaming around the desk, swinging the briefcase, a golden moleskin coat over his arm. It was an impressive sight — as if he’d finally arrived in character, a banker who looked just exactly like a banker. He gave Fowler a dry peck on the cheek, slipped Rachel’s folder from her hands, and waved it as he headed for the doorway. “The third rule is if you want to steal a client, never let them go to lunch with me.”

* * *

The skating rink had been Pulowski’s idea. He’d called it a tactical move. The fact that neither he nor Fowler nor Harris actually knew how to skate was the point: here would be an opportunity for Fowler and her brother to encounter each other on neutral ground. It also revealed a helpful chink in Harris’s man-about-town armor, since Pulowski was the only one who’d googled the rink’s name and saved its address — it was farther downtown, in a large shopping complex, and thus Fowler got to drive all three of them in her truck, following the chirps of Pulowski’s GPS. The soundness of this plan felt less evident twenty minutes later, however, when Fowler found herself at a white steel-mesh table with a pair of beige rental skates bound about her feet, feeling about as comfortable as an amputee. Pulowski had already wobbled out onto the ice while Harris sat across from her, paging through the forms she’d brought that named him the beneficiary of her estate. Tactically, the papers were her excuse for why she needed to see her brother, but all she’d really wanted to know was how Harris was doing and the answer — as the rink’s boards thumped with the toes of other skaters and Justin Timberlake pulsed from speakers overhead — appeared to be fine. Better than she’d expected. Definitely better than in San Antonio, when she’d tried to bail him out of jail for a DUI. So why didn’t she feel more relieved? “So you didn’t have any trouble with your record?” she asked when Harris finished reading. “I mean, I’m glad you’ve got a job, I’m just trying to make sure you didn’t have to lie to them or anything. Make sure it’s secure.”