The Bright Spot Page 7

  He took another long hit, which left little of the joint to hold. Naturally, he handed it to me. I popped it into my mouth to put it out, then swallowed it.

  “Never met the man in my life,” Kennemeyer said deadpan, leaking smoke.

  This couldn’t be true. I’d just spent a major, unpleasant portion of my life getting out to this godforsaken place, and he didn’t even know the man? “But the two of you were actively campaigning against workware at the same time. Surely—”

  “Surely nothing. I didn’t know him. Besides, that’s all settled now. It’s a free country, right? We’re all free as fucking birds. Nobody has to work any stinking workware job if he don’t want to. There’s plenty of other jobs. Like executive vice president or theoretical physicist or artist-in-residence or only-son-and-heir. What is it you do, Nick?” He took another big swallow of wine and eyed me with his big owl eyes.

  “I told you. I’m a writer.”

  “And I’m a starting quarterback. What have you written?”

  “Nothing you would’ve heard of.”

  He laughed. “My hearing’s fine. Open your jacket. I’ll prove it to you. Go on. Just open it up.”

  I held open my jacket.

  “See there. Not even a pen. You’re not a writer. Why should I talk to you, if you won’t even level with me?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten a pen like some dumb amateur. I hadn’t thought it through. I’d thought it would be easy to take in some old man. Never underestimate your audience. He had me, so I retreated to the truth. “Okay. I’m an actor.”

  “They don’t have workware for that yet?”

  “So I don’t smell the bad lines?”

  “What workware’s always been for, Mr. Bainbridge— so you don’t ask too many questions. Like ‘Why do you pay me so little when you make so much?’ and ‘Why do I take all the risks?’ ” Another healthy swallow of wine. “Like ‘What did you know and when did you know it, Mr. Kennemeyer?’ ” He was trying to be funny, but he was also scared, which meant he knew something.

  “You’re forgetting, questions are part of an actor’s job. ‘To be or not to be?’ ‘Which way did they go?’ ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo?’ ”

  “That’s Juliet’s line.”

  “I went to an all-boys school. Look, Mr. Kennemeyer. I’ve just got one question. If you didn’t know James Dumfries, what do we have to talk about? You wouldn’t have let me come all the way out here just to get you blitzed, would you?”

  He smiled, he brought his glass to his lips—yes, he wanted me to believe, I’d been conned by one sly, old fox—but I wasn’t having any of it. “Maybe we could talk about Galatea Ritsa instead,” I said.

  That blew his cover. He almost dropped his wineglass. He could try to tell me he never met the woman, but there was no way either one of us would believe it. “Who the hell are you?” he said.

  “I met James Dumfries in a virtual a couple of months ago. He sent me to you. He said you’d know what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m not sure. Galatea Ritsa, I guess you might say. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  He winced when I said the name, like even saying it out loud was risky. “So you’re not writing a book, and whatever I say is strictly between the two of us?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But how do I know Jim sent you to me? You might just be nuts. You might . . . have some hidden agenda. Talking to you doesn’t sound very safe to me.”

  That iced it. Safe. What the hell was I doing here anyway? “You’re right. You don’t know. I could be the psycho bus killer who spends half the day riding the bus out to otherwise safe communities, offing the first old man I find living in the pool house. The toy cop out front pays me to do it so there’ll be some reason for his pointless existence other than harassing anyone stupid enough to show up on foot. Safe. You can have it.” I tossed back my wine, picked up my bottle, and stuck out my hand. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Kennemeyer. Enjoy the buzz. Safely, of course.”

  “Don’t get sore. You don’t have to rush off.” He gestured toward my abandoned wicker stool with one hand and clutched his empty glass with the other. Thin, little, old-man hands, even if they were corded with muscle. I guess I’m a soft touch.

  I poured some more wine in his glass, pulled the other joint out of my pocket. “I don’t know why I should light this if you won’t level with me.”

  “Okay, okay. But first you have to tell me why you’re so interested in Jim.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Not here. They listen to me. They call it looking after me. I call it spying. God, I hate this place. Follow me.”

  We slipped out of the pool house and took a gravel path to a garage at the back of the property. Inside the garage was a fleet of vintage cars. We climbed into a monster SUV that was new about the time Galatea Ritsa died. Hell, it might’ve been one like this that hit her. The garage opened onto a two-lane blacktop.

  “Do you know how to drive?” I asked Kennemeyer as we whipped onto the ancient asphalt, tires squealing, and he only laughed at me. What did it matter if he knew how to drive? There was no way this old behemoth was licensed to be on the road no matter who was behind the wheel.

  “Where’s that other joint?” he asked, and I reluctantly lit it for him.

  I started to tell him my story, but he shushed me again. “Not now. I want to drive. Besides”—he gestured at the old radio—“they might be listening.”

  He couldn’t be serious, but I didn’t have much choice. He took me on a tour of bucolic countryside, and I kept waiting for the cops to swoop down on us. After a while, I finally rolled down my window and got into it. I could worry just so much. Whatever kind of radical nut Kennemeyer was, he had one rich nephew, and I imagined Ed Kennemeyer could only get in just so much trouble, this side of killing somebody richer than he was.

  On both sides of the road, horses posed behind white plastic fences—the horses at Llewellyn. They frolicked, they gamboled, they arranged themselves in touching tableaus. There was probably a calendar for sale down at the Commons autographed by them all.

  Kennemeyer turned down a dirt road, and we bounced down it, raising a plume of dust behind us that must’ve been visible for miles, but Kennemeyer was having too much fun to care. When we reached the end of the road, he slammed on the brakes and slid sideways to a stop, raining the forest with dirt and rocks, grinning from ear to ear. “God, I love to drive!” he said, and hopped out, beating his chest and breathing deeply of the dust-filled air redolent with exhaust fumes.

  An abandoned house sat alone in the woods, all boarded up, someone’s prewar dream palace in the wilderness. We went around to the back porch that overlooked a wooded ravine and sat on a half-rotten, mossy bench.

  I told him my story, showed him the pictures. He listened intently. The whole thing was agony for him, as if he too was haunted by murdered Galatea. He sat staring at the picture of old Dumfries in his rocker for a long time. His eyes filled with tears. He traced a fingertip across the old, wrinkled face, then put it down, staring into the ravine, wiping the tears from his eyes. I wasn’t even sure he remembered I was there. Finally, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Bainbridge.”

  This wasn’t the answer I was expecting. An audience that cries usually applauds, tells their friends, comes back for more. Not Mr. Kennemeyer. He wanted to remain safe. Maybe I should’ve let him. Maybe it was too late for that already.

  “Thanks for nothing, Mr. Kennemeyer. You must have some idea what this is about. And obviously it’s about something, or you wouldn’t look like that, wouldn’t make such a big secret of it. I guess Jim Dumfries didn’t know you as well as he thought he did. He could’ve sent me to anybody. He sent me to you. And all you know is dance steps.”

  “He didn’t send you. He thought he was sending himself.”

  “Well, I’m all he’s got. And I’m beginning to wonder what I’m doing here, if even his best frien
d doesn’t care what’s happened to him.” I was guessing with the best friend line. Who else would you send yourself to when the world’s falling apart? I thought about the way he’d touched the photo. Maybe they’d been more than friends.

  “What do you want from me? You admit you were trying to swindle him, and now you’re all righteous? About what? Helping? Helping’s over, Jack. This was forty years ago. It’s over. It’s done. You can’t change what’s already happened.”

  “You can always change something. Otherwise things wouldn’t keep changing. What was it Jim Dumfries wanted to change?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  He caught my tone and stared into the ravine again. “Do you have some reason to think . . .”

  He couldn’t even say it. “That two plus two equals four? No. No reason in the world. I’m sure Jesse Salvador is propping Jim up in bed right now, feeding him milk shakes, discussing the wonders of time travel.”

  Kennemeyer surveyed the woods. There could be a dozen people out there listening to every word we were saying—or one drone, it was all the same. “What do you want? I draw you a picture of where he is?”

  “I’ve got pictures.”

  “Then you don’t need me,” he said. Kennemeyer looked into my eyes and held them, then looked pointedly at the picture of the old man that lay on the bench between us. Exactly, he seemed to be saying: You’ve got a picture of where he is, and that’s all I’ll say.

  So that was that. There wasn’t anything else to say. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought there just might be people in the bushes, hanging from the trees, passing over in balloons, or piloting little drones, all listening to every word we said. And they probably all had a better idea what it meant than I did.

  We were pretty quiet driving back. There didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about. When we reached the turnoff to his place, he slowed.

  “You want to have sex?” he asked. “I know I’m old, but I’m in pretty good shape.”

  “No thanks. Age doesn’t enter into it.”

  “You straight or faithful?”

  “Both.”

  “That’s too bad. I thought all you actors were queer and easy.”

  “A common misconception. It’s philosophers you’re thinking of.”

  He chuckled softly. “You’re all right, Nick.”

  “You’re kind of cute yourself, Mr. Kennemeyer.” He dropped me off at the bus stop and saved me another mile-and-a-half mulch hike. I left the half bottle of box wine on the seat.

  “You look just like him, you know. Way back then.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I got the part.”

  “Do you think you’ll see Jimmy again?” he asked.

  “I suppose anything is possible.”

  “Well, if you do, tell him Ed said hello, though he may not want to hear it.”

  “Will do. You’ve got my number in case you think of anything more you want to tell me about all this.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Mr. Bainbridge. I’d leave it alone if I were you.”

  He drove off toward the guardhouse, accelerating rapidly. The toy cop probably screwed his chair into the floor when he saw that thing roaring down on him. I bet he knew Ed Kennemeyer’s number. I bet he knew it by heart. I imagined the nephew’s wife probably had to interrupt her jog through China to throw on some clothes and come bail the old geezer out again. And people think rich people have it easy.

  OH

  7

  “Who was that masked man?” “Why, that was the Lone Ranger!”

  —The Lone Ranger

  KNOWING THE BUSES WERE CONFUSING DIDN’T spare me any hassles getting back. There were ways to mess up I hadn’t tried yet. I caught the 27E instead of the 27N and ended up miles out of my way, walking the last leg through the neighborhood. By the time I got to my street, there was already an early crowd at Murphy’s, and Sylvia called me over to the fence to give me the heads-up.

  “You got company, Ted. They been there almost an hour.” She pointed to a police cruiser parked on the nice upgraded road.

  “Is Lu back?”

  “Oh yeah. She must be serving them tea.”

  There were two of them, both plainclothes, which I took to be a good sign. Perhaps they didn’t plan on making any arrests today, though cops working Sunday was never a good sign. They looked alike in that played-on-the-same-football-team kind of way. One was black and one was white. But they were the same age, the same build—now crumbling and sagging, but still big. You wouldn’t want either one of them to fall on you. They wore the same cheap suit—one blue, one brown, in a fabric that wasn’t supposed to wrinkle, and it didn’t. They were named Murphy and Johnson, or maybe the second one was Lawson. I couldn’t hear too well on account of Buck barking his head off at the intruders for a second time, showing off for my benefit, to let me know he was on the job. I stumbled into the living room, trying to look surprised the cops had come calling. Always look surprised when cops show up out of the blue. They don’t like to be expected—it means you’re guilty or they’re predictable, both of which are probably true.

  I finally shut Buck up by scooping him off the floor and plopping him onto my lap as I sat in my usual chair. The lapdog gene kicked in, and he lapsed into a low growl that sounded more erotic than threatening. The cops sat on either side of me. Lu was straight across from me in a chair she’d brought in from the kitchen. I didn’t know where to look. Every face was questioning but Buck’s, whose eyes were now closed.

  “You and the dog are awfully close, aren’t you?” Lawson asked, or maybe it was Johnson.

  “You might say that,” I said, scratching Buck’s head.

  “Do you have any idea why we’re here, Mr. Bainbridge?” Murphy asked.

  For anybody out there who doesn’t know, the correct answer to that question is always, always, always “No.” “No, Officer,” if you can pull it off, which I thought I delivered with just the right amount of servility for a man with a clear conscience.

  “A neighbor of yours has sworn out a complaint against you. He says you threatened him and mounted a”—he held up a paper to read—“ ‘unrelenting campaign of harassment and intimidation’ against him that’s gone on for a couple of months. Would you know anything about that, Mr. Bainbridge?”

  I didn’t have to lie. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and told him so.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, taking out a little sound player and setting it on the coffee table.

  What was I supposed to say? I’d rather hear Beethoven? Oh no, I don’t mind—I love to hear evidence against me?

  “Go ahead,” I said pleasantly.

  And so the cop played it, and there was my voice clear as a bell, threatening poor Mr. Casual with a shit shrine behind his house. Definitely a threatening tone. A real sick individual. You could hear Buck in the background, growling and snarling and egging me on in the vilest street talk of Ipso Factos. We were a couple of dangerous customers, all right. The audio was great. The video was probably equally impressive. Mr. Casual spared no expense on security.

  All the latest systems recorded everything that went on around the perimeter of your property. Evidence, you know. It helped keep the country safe for everyone, the pitch went. Evidently Mr. Casual had one of those and found a use for it. A real patriot, a real little helper. I felt safer just having him in the neighborhood.

  I didn’t know what to say. No line came to me but the truth. I’d been harassed for stupid shit before, but this was literally stupid shit. “Come on. I was kidding the guy. I was walking my dog. He was an asshole. That’s it.”

  “Is it?” Johnson or Lawson wanted to know. “Your neighbor has recorded you depositing canine feces in his trashcan on twelve separate occasions since then. He has also salvaged the physical evidence, so there’s no doubt it came from your dog. Would you like the dates?”r />
  “The physical evidence? He’s saving Buck’s shit? And you guys are calling on me? What is that—two months ago, now? Buck shits twice a day like clockwork. That’s one hundred and twenty shits. I’m sorry that ten percent ended up in Mr. Casual’s can, but it’s not a conspiracy, I’m not trying to harass the man, and it’s not his can anyway—it’s the city’s.” I thought this argument might appeal to public employees like the police, but it sailed right by them. They knew who they worked for.

  “ ‘Mr. Casual’?” Murphy asked.

  “That’s what I call him.”

  “You have a name for him?”

  “He didn’t exactly introduce himself. I was telling the story to Lu. I gave him a name. He had on nice casual clothes. Mr. Casual.” I glanced at Lu and smiled, but she wasn’t smiling back. This wasn’t just about shit. Not Buck’s shit anyway.

  As if he could read my mind, Murphy said, “And then there’s the question of just who you are, Mr. Bainbridge. That’s your name, Nicholas Bainbridge?”

  You’d think cops would learn some subtlety, some acting skill for just such moments as this, and you’d be wrong. They were so excited to have discovered that Nicholas Bainbridge wasn’t my real name, they could hardly contain themselves. They were forgetting that their knowing my name was a fake was only useful to them if I didn’t know they knew. I was tempted to tell the hoped-for lie, defend my false identity with tooth and claw, make the cops’ work easy for them, and get the whole business over with, but I wasn’t ready for that. I’d probably have to come clean to somebody, Lu sprang to mind, but not these assholes. Who I was was none of their business. They were just cops.

  I gave them a big, condescending smile. “Oh no, of course not. Nicholas Bainbridge is a stage name. My real name’s Richard Tedowski. With an i on the end.”

  “Do you have any identification?”

  “It was stolen—had my pocket picked at the Oktoberfest. I reported it to the police at the time and filled out the form for a new ID, but I never received it. They said there was a backlog.”