Part 8 (1/2)

It gets worse. People are curious, so they hire me. But once I give them a first bunch of stuff it begins to chew them up. Cheating wives, dishonest parents... there's many good reasons to hire an investigator.

But finish it now, I'm telling you. Unless it's absolutely imperative, or doing it'll save someone's life, stop now. Pay me, walk out the door, and forget it. That may sound strange coming from me, but I tell ya, I've seen so much pain in this job... I don't get a charge out of seeing people dissolve. I lose some customers, but there's never any lack of them in this business.”

”You're probably right.”

”I know I am. In fact I'm so right, I'll bet I know exactly what you're thinking this minute. You're thinking: He's right and I will stopafter I ask him to look into only one more thing. But that's the killer.

The 'one more thing' usually ends up breaking your soul. What a client usually has now is their first whiff of smoke. It makes them suspicious, if not downright paranoid. 'What do you mean, you saw my wife leaving Bill's Bar? She doesn't drink!' Things like that. So please listen to me, take your suspicion and try to work through it. Go back to your life as it was and leave this alone”

I don't know where it came from, but I was instantly furious with this man. Where did he get off condescending to me, saying in so many words he knew what was best and I should go home like a good little fella...

”Thank you for the advice, Mr. Goff. But I'll make my own decisions. If I do choose to pursue this, and it's too difficult for you to handle”

”One more piece of 'advice,' Mr. Fischer. Don't be an a.s.shole when someone who knows what they're talking about gives you a worthwhile tip. Number oneI know how to 'handle' this. I'm only telling you I've seen a thousand people walk right off the gangplank with information they asked me to gather. Number twoI don't care what it does to you. I don't care if it makes you happy or sad or shocked. I'm the librarian, remember. I only bring the books. You read them and most of the time they do change your life. Guaranteed. I'm only saying: be careful with these books because too often”

”I get your point.”

Pursing his lips, he crooked his head a few inches to the side. ”Maybe you do.”

I have a very good memory. Often too good. People talk so much that sooner or later something's not true. They have good reasons: they want to impress, or be loved or funny. You are not expected to remember their exaggerations, the small lies, the big ones added to the recipe of a terrific story that needed that tasty distortion to make it sound perfect in the telling. But I do remember. Naturally with LilyI was more aware than ever. Two days before my meeting with Goff, she said something in pa.s.sing that stopped me then, but made me go forward now.

I'd bought a new s.h.i.+rt and showed it to her. Seeing it was made by a company named Winsted, she gave a small start.

”Winsted! How strange. That's the name of the town where Rick died.”

The first time she told the story of Rick Aaron, she said he'd died in Windsor, Connecticut. Now it was Winsted.

I casually asked again, ”Where?”

She pointed to the s.h.i.+rt label and looked at me. ”Winsted. Why?”

”I used to know a guy from Wallingford. Is that near?”

”Pretty near. Did he go to Choate?”

”Choate. Right!”

If she hadn't known about Wallingford or Connecticut geography, it wouldn't have struck me so hard. If she hadn't said her husband died here one time, and there the next. But she did, so I did too.

”Yes, you're right, there is one more thing. I'd like you to find out everything you can about a man named Rick Aaron. He went to Kenyon College and died in either Windsor or Winsted, Connecticut.”

My detective wrote this down on a pad. ”Windsor or 'Winsted ?”

”I'm not sure. Check both.”

He called back three days later. No Rick or Ric or Rich or Ricky or Richard Aaron ever attended Kenyon College. No one by that name had ever died in Windsor, Windsor Locks, Windham, Winchester, or Winsted, Connecticut.

So I told my own lie. After a long telephone conversation with my brother, I told Lily he was coming to New York. I wanted to take a break and fly there to be with him. Maybe we'd go see my parents too. That'd be a nice surprise for them, eh?

She said it sure would. When are you going? Day after tomorrow. So soon? Then I guess we'd better make up for the time we're going to lose. She slid into my arms, looking, smelling, feeling lovelier than ever. I realized, though, after she grunted the second or third time that it wasn't her l.u.s.t for me but that I was hugging her too tightly. Holding on for dear life, squeezing as hard as I could in hopes I'd find a real Lily in there somewhere behind or beneath skin and bones. A real Lily with a real child and true history of her own. How can you trust someone's love when you can't trust them? I remembered Mary's story about the people who thought they owned a dog but it turned out to be a giant rat. Her other story too, the one about the naked woman tied to the bed while her husband lay on the floor in his Batman suit.

Dogs that are rats, love so complicated one needs bondage and Batman to make it work. Perhaps without knowing it, Mary was telling me at the beginning of my relations.h.i.+p with the Aarons the same thing as the detective: Stop now. Stop before you realize what you've brought home, before you start making the ridiculous or terrible changes necessary to fit this situation into your life.

”I particularly like the comment one critic made about Beethoven: 'We feel he knew what can be known.' Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone said that about us?”

”f.u.c.k you, Herb!” Reaching forward, I snapped off the car radio with a vicious flick. Fall in love and everyone everywhere, everything, every other word's suddenly ”love.” Lose someone and the same applies. Since leaving California, I'd been hearing nothing but references to full knowledge, insight, clarity, understanding. Even an introduction to a Beethoven symphony on the radio reminded me of my feared task. On the plane, a terminally obnoxious woman behind me with a voice like a musical handsaw spoke for five loud hours about a woman named Cullen James whose autobiography had changed this woman's life. According to the acolyte, Cullen had somehow left her body and traveled to another land where (as usual) she went through all sorts of hairraising adventures. But by golly she persevered, learned THE TRUTH, and returned home a Whole Person. I'd seen this book in stores but one glance at the summary on the dust jacket made me put it down fast. Beethoven is one thing. It seems possible that viatheir gifts, geniuses might be able to find their way through life's maze. However, deranged housewives, aging movie stars, or Retro 1960s gurus who announce unashamedly they hear G.o.d or tenthousandyearold warriors telling them the secrets of the universe... give me pause. I know if G.o.d contacted me , I'd at least be a bit humble. The way these nuttos describe it, they're all on a firstname basis with Him. Besides, little daily truths are hard enough to bear. Told THE TRUTH by one who knows would, if we survived, surely scorch us inside and out like a blown fuse. It did me.

Driving down the New Jersey Turnpike toward Somerset, I tried to imagine the worstcase scenarios so that I'd be at least partially prepared for whatever guillotine blade was about to drop across my life. I had called the Meiers from L.A. and made an appointment, ostensibly to look at their dogs. I talked to Gregory, who had a pleasant but nondescript voice. In the background was the sweet static of yipping puppies.

I got off at the New Brunswick exit and followed his directions to their farm. What was I expecting? Probably something small and lovely, like a spread in House & Garden or Casa Vogue .

You knowone black Bauhaus chair to a room, exquisitely rustic beams and bra.s.s hinges, a swimming pool in back. Or nothing. A house for two broken people who were limping through the rest of their lives, having given up on the idea of anything beyond breathing and a sufficient roof overhead.

What greeted me was far worse.

As I drove down a long and remote country road, the flat, singlestory houses leading to the Meiers' address all ran together in my mind's eye. The kinds of places and surrounding human geography one would expect out in the middle of a seminowhere. Rusted mailboxes, cars up on blocks in the yard, women staring suspiciously at you as they hung droopylooking laundry on gray lines.

Whoa! I did an exaggerated double take when I saw the house. I also said, ”What the h.e.l.lll!”

because it was so strangelooking and so utterly, utterly out of place there. The colors struck me firstbloodred, black, and anthraciteblue stone. Then you saw, realized, the dazzling everywhichway angles at which they were set. Metal piping slithered up and along the sides of the structure like stripes of silvery toothpaste. What was this thing? Who would build such an interesting provocation in the middle of that undeserving countryside?

As I closed in on it, my next thought was it's a downed UFO! They always fall in distant cornfields where only indifferent cows or farmers look on. I'd recently read a columnist in the L.A. Times who'd specifically addressed that question. If there are creatures from other planets snooping around Earth, how come they never land in New York or Moscow, where both the leaders and the action are? Why are they always sited outside places like North Platte, Nebraska? After a gander at this steelandstone whatever thirty yards ahead, I thought maybe I'm about to have a close encounter.

Better to wave the flag of one's stupidity than try hiding it. What I was seeing was one of the early versions of the now renowned Brendan House.

Anwen Meier studied architecture in college and spent summers working in the offices of Harry Radcliffe, the famous architect. Although she didn't continue her studies after graduation, the subject remained a hobby. She was content to marry Gregory and set up house. After the child was kidnapped, her husband broke down, and she had her car ”accident,” she decided the only thing in the world that would save them would be to start life over again doing only the things that truly mattered to them. Her father had died and left her a small inheritance. Along with that they sold everything they could, including the stocks and bonds Gregory had been buying since he was fifteen years old. In the end they had a little under seventy thousand dollars. Anwen wisely decided to split it in halfthirtyfive thousand would go to the continued search for their son, the rest toward their new life in New Jersey.

She loved architecture, Gregory loved dogs. In their early thirties they did what most people feel they can do only after they retirelive the life they want. Dessert at the end of the meal. In the case of the Meiers, it was not dessert. It was the only nourishment either of them could digest. They would buy something simple and st.u.r.dy way out in farm country where land was cheap. Over the years she would make it theirs. He would raise his beloved French bulldogs. If they were clever and hardworking they would make it. Neither used the word ”luck” anymore. Luck is the poor man's G.o.d. Both stopped believing in Him the day their child disappeared.It gives me such pain to write this.

I pulled up in front of their remarkable home three thousand days after they lost the boy. I needed to look some more and collect my thoughts before ringing their bell. What would I say? Could I pull off looking them over, asking certain questions that had nothing to do with dogs, and still get away without their becoming suspicious? Do you people know a Lily Aaron? Do you know why she would know you?

Have you ever been to Los Angeles or Cleveland or Gambier, Ohio? How about a man named Rick Aaron? Although I have a strong hunch he doesn't exist ”Hi! Are you Mr. Datlow?”

Unaccustomed to my madeup name, I still turned so quickly in the seat it must have looked odd.

I'd been staring blindly at the road while thinking and hadn't heard her come up from behind, although the driveway was gravel and her boots made loud crunches when she walked, as I heard later following her back to the house.

Whether it was the years of suffering, a hard and active life lived outside much of the time, or simply premature aging, Anwen's face was beauty ruined. Deep sunken eyes and too thin all over; her cheekbones were as prominent as ledges. Still there was so much loveliness left in the face that you wished her head was a balloon you could pump more air in. Fill it up and shape it back out to what it must have once been.

”We've been waiting for you. Gregory's back in the barn. Come on, we'll go find him. Or would you rather have a cup of tea first?”

”Some tea would be great.” I thought it better to talk to her alone first, rather than take them both on at once.

”Fine, let's go in the house. Do you mind if I ask how you heard about us? Did you see the ad in Dog World ?”

I got out of the car and stood near. She was taller than I'd first thought. Five eight or nine, some of it from the boots she wore, most her natural height.

”Yes, I saw the ad, but I also heard about you from Raymond Gill.”

”Gill? I'm afraid I don't know the name.”