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Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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Cuba to cut cane with the proletariats. The plane went down in the Caribbean. Jeff was three.”
“The friends were your parents?”
She nodded. “The Starzeks were responsible enough to draw up a will naming a guardian in case they never came back from Cuba, and irresponsible enough to name my dear mother.”
“This is the mother who left you?”
“That happened later. I said they were stupid and irresponsible. I didn’t say they were criminally neglectful.”
“Why’d she agree to it?”
“I can only assume that when they approached her she thought it was a remote possibility at best. When the worst happened, I suppose she had some idea raising a second child would save her marriage. Everyone knows what a positive effect that has on a husband who sleeps on a barstool more often than his bed at home.”
“It’s been known to happen,” I said. “But only at the turning point.”
“All it did was turn him deeper into the bottle. A lot of men in those circumstances just leave, but he was too weak even for that. In the end he was too weak and afraid to see a doctor when a mole on his neck started changing shape. But Mother wasn’t weak. One morning she gave me lunch money, put me on the school bus, dropped Jeff off at day care, and kept on driving. My father was passed out in his chair as usual when I came home, and when the day-care people called to find out why no one had come for Jeff, I was the one who answered.
“That was twenty-seven years ago last September,” she said. “We were living in South Lyon. The police tracked her to a hotel in Chicago, but she’d checked out before they got there. She may still be alive. Then again, she may have driven straight from the hotel into Lake Michigan.”
“Oral said you practically raised Jeff.”
“It was a little more than practically. Dad tried to dry out several times, but he wasn’t much more help sober. I was just five years older than Jeff. He was in and out of trouble all though junior high and dropped out at sixteen to park cars at Carl’s Chop House. One night he forgot to bring one back. He did six months at the Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake, but all he learned there was how to jump wires and take a car apart in under an hour. He was crazy about cars.”
“Still is. I didn’t know about the stretch in juvie.” I wondered if Homeland Security did. They’d know his rap sheet as an adult, and Agent Clemson knew his blood relations were extinct. That was as much as he’d told me, apart from the fact Starzek had outgrown the cigarette trade into something of more interest to his bureau.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, “unless Jeff wanted you to know. They seal records under age eighteen.”
“And you think your husband wouldn’t understand if he found out Jeff isn’t really your brother.”
“I know he wouldn’t.”
“Not very charitable to Oral. He might be more open-minded than you think.”
“Open-minded,” she said. “Not stupid. Can I count on your confidence, Mr. Walker?”
Her face was polished alabaster, the delicate mouth less fragile than it looked. A jackhammer couldn’t chip it into an expression I could read.
I said, “I know who Deep Throat is. I’ve known for thirty years. You didn’t see it in the tabloids.”
“I only have the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, but I’ll trust you. Jeff trusts you or he wouldn’t have told me to hire you. I love him, Mr. Walker. I love him more than Oral and, God help me, more than little Jeffie. And not as a brother.”
This time I heard the baby cry, but not before she did. While she was upstairs, and to take my mind off the Deep Throat guff, I got up to look at the photographs sealed in Lucite on the mantel: a wedding shot of Oral and Rose, she in a tailored eggshell suit, he boiling like a lobster out of a tight collar and gray pinstripe, orchids pinned to their breasts; a studio pose of a couple hard on eighty who had contributed in equal parts
“The friends were your parents?”
She nodded. “The Starzeks were responsible enough to draw up a will naming a guardian in case they never came back from Cuba, and irresponsible enough to name my dear mother.”
“This is the mother who left you?”
“That happened later. I said they were stupid and irresponsible. I didn’t say they were criminally neglectful.”
“Why’d she agree to it?”
“I can only assume that when they approached her she thought it was a remote possibility at best. When the worst happened, I suppose she had some idea raising a second child would save her marriage. Everyone knows what a positive effect that has on a husband who sleeps on a barstool more often than his bed at home.”
“It’s been known to happen,” I said. “But only at the turning point.”
“All it did was turn him deeper into the bottle. A lot of men in those circumstances just leave, but he was too weak even for that. In the end he was too weak and afraid to see a doctor when a mole on his neck started changing shape. But Mother wasn’t weak. One morning she gave me lunch money, put me on the school bus, dropped Jeff off at day care, and kept on driving. My father was passed out in his chair as usual when I came home, and when the day-care people called to find out why no one had come for Jeff, I was the one who answered.
“That was twenty-seven years ago last September,” she said. “We were living in South Lyon. The police tracked her to a hotel in Chicago, but she’d checked out before they got there. She may still be alive. Then again, she may have driven straight from the hotel into Lake Michigan.”
“Oral said you practically raised Jeff.”
“It was a little more than practically. Dad tried to dry out several times, but he wasn’t much more help sober. I was just five years older than Jeff. He was in and out of trouble all though junior high and dropped out at sixteen to park cars at Carl’s Chop House. One night he forgot to bring one back. He did six months at the Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake, but all he learned there was how to jump wires and take a car apart in under an hour. He was crazy about cars.”
“Still is. I didn’t know about the stretch in juvie.” I wondered if Homeland Security did. They’d know his rap sheet as an adult, and Agent Clemson knew his blood relations were extinct. That was as much as he’d told me, apart from the fact Starzek had outgrown the cigarette trade into something of more interest to his bureau.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, “unless Jeff wanted you to know. They seal records under age eighteen.”
“And you think your husband wouldn’t understand if he found out Jeff isn’t really your brother.”
“I know he wouldn’t.”
“Not very charitable to Oral. He might be more open-minded than you think.”
“Open-minded,” she said. “Not stupid. Can I count on your confidence, Mr. Walker?”
Her face was polished alabaster, the delicate mouth less fragile than it looked. A jackhammer couldn’t chip it into an expression I could read.
I said, “I know who Deep Throat is. I’ve known for thirty years. You didn’t see it in the tabloids.”
“I only have the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, but I’ll trust you. Jeff trusts you or he wouldn’t have told me to hire you. I love him, Mr. Walker. I love him more than Oral and, God help me, more than little Jeffie. And not as a brother.”
This time I heard the baby cry, but not before she did. While she was upstairs, and to take my mind off the Deep Throat guff, I got up to look at the photographs sealed in Lucite on the mantel: a wedding shot of Oral and Rose, she in a tailored eggshell suit, he boiling like a lobster out of a tight collar and gray pinstripe, orchids pinned to their breasts; a studio pose of a couple hard on eighty who had contributed in equal parts
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