Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

“Only it wasn’t,” I said. “I think the wail Nancy heard was actually Veronica Dentman down by the water.”

Dentman stood. “You son of a bitch.”

“You told me yourself that night in the cemetery that your sister was your sole responsibility and you wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That’s why you lied to the police. You were covering for her.”

Dentman’s chest was expanding, retracting, expanding, retracting. From across the table I could feel his hot breath in my face. “You don’t know nothing.”

I turned to my brother. “It’s all there in the paperwork.”

Very slowly, Adam set the printout down on the table. His face was white. He said nothing.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Dentman said, turning to leave.

“Stop,” Adam called after him.

Amazingly, Dentman froze in midstride. His hands were trembling, and his profile resembled something that might have been on the bow of a pirate ship.

“Is this true?” Adam asked him.

“Fuck you. I didn’t have to come out here.”

“Will you sit down, please?”

“I don’t have to answer your goddamn questions.”

Adam stood. “I need you to come to the station with me, Mr. Dentman.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not asking. We’re going to the station.”

“I want him in jail,” Dentman said, glaring at me. His eyes were slits cut into the ruddy fabric of his face. “I want the son of a bitch arrested for harassment.”

Gathering up the paperwork from the table, I stood and said, “Fine. Let’s all go downtown.”

“You shit!” Dentman lunged at me, knocking the table onto its side with a crack.

I jumped backward as one of Dentman’s massive fists swung at me like a wrecking ball; the wind from the blow blew the hair off my forehead. I braced myself for a second strike—Dentman already had his arm cocked and ready—but Adam was on him in a heartbeat, pinning one wrist behind his back and throwing his weight against the larger man. Dentman’s second punch went wild as he fell forward on his knees.

Adam shouted something unintelligible at him and pressed down on Dentman’s shoulder as if he feared the larger man might fly away. “Stay down. Don’t resist.”

Handcuffs appeared. Their serrated teeth ratcheted at the small of Dentman’s back.

Tooey charged out from behind the bar. “What the hell’s going on?” He paused when he saw the handcuffs.

“Get up,” Adam said to the side of Dentman’s face.

At first, Dentman did not move. With his yellow eyes locked on mine in a death stare and his flushed cheeks visibly quivering, I thought we would all remain frozen where we were until Armageddon turned us into smoldering piles of ash. Then Dentman got one foot on the floor and, with Adam’s assistance, pulled himself up.

The next one to move was Tooey—he rushed over and righted the overturned table.

Adam pivoted and shoved Dentman toward the door. “Let’s go, Travis,” he said without facing me. “Let’s go.”

Bending down, I picked up the copied records from the construction company and crammed them back into the envelope. As Tooey went on setting the chairs back around the table, I noticed something else, too: the letter I had slipped through the Dentmans’ mail slot, the one he’d had clenched in one fist when he first arrived. I picked that up, too.

It said:

David—

Meet me at Tequila Mockingbird in Westlake tomorrow at 5 p.m. sharp, or Veronica goes to jail.

There had been no need to sign it.

Stuffing the letter into the rear pocket of my jeans, I followed Adam and Dentman out into the rain.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

As it turned out, Strohman’s office did function as an interrogation room, albeit only when the main interrogation room was occupied. On this night, David Dentman, escorted by two uniformed officers, was led into Strohman’s uninspired little office where he awaited a meeting with Paul Strohman himself.

The ride from the ‘Bird to the police station had taken only four or five minutes, though it had seemed like half an hour. Adam had shoved Dentman into the backseat, then barked at me to get in the passenger seat. Behind the wheel, Adam cranked the engine and flipped on the flashers and siren. No one spoke until we pulled into the bay at the station when Adam muttered to me under his breath, “Get out.”

As I sat in the hallway just outside Strohman’s office, I heard one of the officers inside issuing Dentman his rights. Each time Adam went by me in the hall, I made a half-assed effort to stand up and not look so incongruous. Each time, he told me to remain seated. So I sat.

When one of the two uniformed officers exited Strohman’s office, he seemed perplexed to see me—it was just that obvious I didn’t belong here—that his eyes bugged out comically. Someone else came by and wordlessly gave me a cup of coffee.

Two more uniformed officers appeared at the end of the hall, standing on either side of the walking skeleton that was Veronica Dentman. In a tattered cotton nightgown of faded pink and nothing but a pair of dirty socks on her feet, they led her down the hallway like nurses ushering a patient through a psych ward. Her scraggly hair hung in tangled ropes over her gaunt face, and her eyes were sunken pits in the center of her skull. As they passed, her socks made whooshing sounds on the fire retardant carpet. I caught the acrid scent of unwashed skin.

Nearly spilling my coffee, I shot up like a bolt out of my chair. In their passing wake, I felt a whole other presence brush by me—almost tangible, almost visible. Frigid as the basement of 111 Waterview Court. I thought of dead autumn leaves and creaking hinges on the doors of haunted houses.

Strohman’s office door opened. I caught a glimpse of a number of people inside—David Dentman among them—before Strohman quickly closed the door behind him. He held the time and attendance records in one hand, bound down the margin with brass pins. When he saw me standing there, he did a double take, the rubber soles of his shoes skidding on the linoleum. “I thought I told you to keep your fingers out of my soup,” he said, proffering the bound galley of paper out before him like a gift.

Before I could think of a retort, he pivoted on his heels and clomped down the hallway. As he turned into another room, I heard him bark at someone to get him coffee.

When Adam returned, he was with another officer who was wearing a ski cap and a Redskins jacket over his uniform. “This is Officer McMullen,” my brother said. “He’s going to ask you a few questions.”

“I think your chief wants to punch me in the throat,” I told him.

“Call me Rob,” said McMullen, ignoring my comment. He was lantern jawed, with eyes like chips of gray ice. He looked young enough to still reek of the womb. “You need more coffee? No? So, uh, let’s go chat by the vending machines, yeah?”

There was a circular Formica table with immovable chairs affixed to steel poles in the floor at the other end of the hall. The table sat in front of a wall of vending machines that looked like they hadn’t been serviced since the Vietnam War.

We sat and McMullen fumbled a small spiral notepad from the breast pocket of his shirt. He seemed to put too much thought in every question he asked me, which dealt primarily with how I’d gotten a hold of the time and attendance records from the construction company. I answered the questions as truthfully as possible, though I refused to give Earl Parsons’s name. McMullen did not seem interested in Earl’s name, however, and appeared mostly concerned with the rapidly dulling point of his pencil.