It seems the mystery is over. All that's left is the paperwork. Maybe there's some more loose ends than just police reports and witness statements. Let's see how Law and Bea deal with the coming dissolution of their partnership.
I hope you like the chapter. Drop me a line if you want. I'd be pleased to hear from you!
NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
Disclaimer:
If you're younger than 18 or find these kinds of stories offensive, please close up now and have a great day! If you are of legal age and are interested, by all means keep going. I'll be glad to have you along for the journey. Please donate to Nifty. This is a great resource for great stories and a useful outlet to authors like me and readers like you.
Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
27 Saying Goodbye
The process at the station took hours. In the late afternoon, a shift change called my attention to the time. I checked my watch. The hands told me it was five o'clock. That meant I was evicted. It was five o'clock and I was homeless and penniless. My only belongings were the clothes on my back and whatever was in my pockets. That amounted to a few bucks left over from the twenty-five that Bea had given me, a box of matches, two cigars, my battered wallet, and both of my guns.
I figured I'd have to pawn the guns, but I didn't know what I'd do after that. .38 revolvers weren't worth much. I guessed I could get a room and eat for about two days per gun. After that...after that was a blank. I shrugged my tired shoulders. I just didn't care. That was a problem for another time.
Police work, the routine part of police work that I waited for, was slow work. Sessions of activity were punctuated by long periods of idleness. Between answering questions, review, filling in forms, and all the paperwork that goes into a police file, there was lots of time to think. During the idle time, I sat in a hard chair, in a faded, yellowed corridor, and stared at a row of dusty wooden filing cabinets. To pass the time, I smoked my next to last cigar and dropped my ashes on the brown linoleum floor.
I felt my pockets to find the photo of Preston. I wanted to look at him again. I found the glazed snapshot and raised it to my face in the dim electric light of the windowless corridor. When I looked at the image, I saw only Preston Arlott. Whatever he was and whatever he wasn't, he wasn't anymore. The photo that I had was a picture of the past. "Poor bastard." I said to the photo.
I stared at the smiling blond man and thought over what I knew about him. I figured that if I took him as the sum of his actions, he'd been a good man, as good as any of us. I figured he'd been as good as his circumstances allowed him to be. I reasoned that's all any of us can do.
I realized that Preston Arlott had never been the ideal man. He'd never been as pure as I'd thought he was. He was very much a regular guy who reacted the way many regular people would have when backed into a corner. Preston's horserace prediction system, his theft of the prints, punching Simon, getting drunk, and even trying to extort money from his employer, were all the actions of a normal person with his back against the wall. I set Preston aside and put his photo away.
With Preston in my pocket, I tried to remember David. I thought that Preston's image would have helped me to picture him, but it hadn't. I pushed my memory hard but found it difficult to call David's face to mind. His likeness was blurry from long years of not seeing him. When I couldn't picture David, I tried to imagine Peter. His image was even harder to call to mind. I gave up on them both.
As I did, I heard Walt's question echo in my head. It made me wonder if there was such a person as beautiful as the David of my memory or if he was another normal person who was doing his best in difficult circumstances. I wondered if that's what Peter was. I wondered if that's what we all were.
Did they ever exist the way I imagined them?' I asked myself. We're they real or was it just the contrast of gentle kindness in a war and boyish innocence in a brothel? Did my fantasies and the circumstances of what I lived with elevate them to perfection, when they were really just regular people? Did God create man, or did man create God?' The questions seemed very similar.
When I looked hard, and looked dispassionately, I saw both David and Peter for what they were. They were wonderful, attractive, kind men who were both in places that accentuated their good qualities because of the depravity of the surroundings. Both were very much normal people, and neither of them loved me, and I didn't love them. I had admired them, maybe even worshipped them, but I'd never loved them.
"Well, Walt, it looks like you were right after all." I said aloud to no one. The true disaster and the final mistake in the long string of mistakes that made up my life, was refusing Walt. I should have agreed to be his partner when I still had something to offer him. I should have swallowed my fear and committed to him when I was still my own man. I should have...but it was too late for `should haves.' Far too fucking late.
I finally understood that the only real man out of any of them, the only one that offered love and a shared experience, was Walt. It was too late for that, though, too late for me and Walt. I had no right to try to be a part of his nice life when I was at the very bottom of my own. "Fuck." I said to no one and rubbed my tired face. "Fuck."
It was after six when Marshall escorted Bea and I out through the front doors of the station house and down to the street. "Thanks, Edwards." The old man said. "That was a nice, clean wrap-up. Beedle is burning in hell, Anderson is going away for a very long time, if they don't hang him, and after tomorrow when I turn those drawings over the military authorities, Consolidated is going to get torn apart by the Navy. Everyone wins."
Marshall caught Bea's hands in his. "Miss Arlott, I'm sorry that no one will know your brother was a hero. He deserves better. If it would help any, I can have his file changed from suicide' to death by misadventure.' It's a small thing, but..." He trailed off with a slight lift of his big shoulders.
Bea consented quietly. "Thank you, Mister Marshall. That would be nice. Preston would appreciate that."
We shook hands all around and Marshall turned to go back inside the station. He didn't quite make it. I noticed he got caught in a conversation at the top of the stairs. I left him to his chat and turned to take my leave of Bea.
Bea thanked me. "If not for you, I don't know what I would have done."
I had to acknowledge that Bea had been a great partner. I had enormous respect for her. "I couldn't have done it without you. That's not a compliment, that's a fact. Thank you for forcing yourself on me."
Bea smiled a sad little smile and cast her eyes around. I could tell by her awkward manner she had another question for me. I didn't know what there could be left to talk about.
"I was thinking, maybe I could work for you." She said, then quickly added, "at least until I work off what I owe you for all the time you spent. I don't want to go back to father's office and wear a dress and be a little helper. I want to be who I am. You let me do that. Can I?" She pleaded.
I shook my head at her. I wasn't going to tell Bea the whole truth of my situation, because if I did, she'd insist on helping. I couldn't accept her help. I still had some pride...somewhere. I told her as much as was necessary. "Bea, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm out of business. I can't take your time and I don't want your money."
She didn't understand. "But, what will you do?"
"I hear the merchant marine needs men." I said with a mocking shrug. "I'll send that stuff of your brother's along as soon as I can." I had a momentary qualm that Preston's things were now locked in my former office and officially the property of the landlord. I hoped he'd be reasonable and release them to me. I'd been a decent tenant for a long time. I hoped that would buy me a stack of letters and one worthless suitcase.
I realized that Bea was staring at me, so I finished what I'd planned to say to her. "And, if you don't want to wear a dress and be a little helper, don't. You're one of a kind, Bea. Don't let anyone change you."
Bea took a sudden, aggressive step forward and hugged me. I hugged her back. We separated and I shook her hand. "Go home now and bury your brother."
Bea's face crumpled at my words. She erupted in tears, like all the emotion she'd repressed was spilling out at once. She bawled in great, big wracking sobs of desperate grief. I tried to comfort her but found that I was as useless as most men are when a woman is crying.
Luckily for me, Marshall abandoned the conversation he was in at the top of the station house steps and hurried down to see what the matter was. I asked him for his help. "Captain, can you get someone to drive her home?" I asked. "She can't take the train like this."
"NO!" Bea gasped. "No, please...please you take me...please." She begged through her sobs. I glanced a silent request at Marshall. He put one finger up in a `just a minute' gesture and hurried away. He came back at the wheel of an unmarked sedan and helped me get Bea into the passenger seat. I climbed in behind the wheel, thanked Marshall again, and set off.
I hadn't driven a car in a long time, and it took a few blocks for me to get the feel of the unfamiliar vehicle. The experience was like the clichŽ about riding a bike and it came back to me quickly. I drove us along the surface streets through the city until I reached the bridge over the Delaware River.
Since there was almost no vehicular traffic that wasn't for the war effort, the tolls had been waived for the duration. I drove through the permanently raised barrier arm at the toll plaza and over the bridge. Bea wept freely until we descended the New Jersey side of the green-painted steel arch. By then, she cried herself out. She mopped her face with a large, white flag of a handkerchief from the pocket of her slacks. She gave directions to her home in a low, but steady voice.
I steered as she directed until we reached a very nice neighborhood in the town of Pennsauken. We turned down a residential street that was lined with alternating stone and wood-framed houses. They were set wide apart and well back from the street. Big oak trees shaded manicured lawns. Bea pointed to one of the nicer frame houses. It was built in the Cape Cod style with light yellow clapboard siding and white trim with some frills and ornaments. There were potted plants on the patio and a small flower garden out front.
Everything looked like an idyllic suburban setting, except for Elliott Arlott who was sprawled and snoring on the porch swing. There was an empty whiskey bottle lying where it had rolled from his hand onto the lawn.
I tried to ask a delicate question but found I didn't have the words for it. "What's...uhm?"
Bea didn't make me go any further. She answered with gentle pity in her voice. "He was like that in the living room when I got home yesterday. I guess he got another bottle. Would you help me get him in the house, please?"
I parked at the curb and heaved myself out of the car without comment. My feelings about the man hadn't changed, but I wasn't going to refuse Bea a favor to spite her father. As I dragged him off the swing, I fought the urge to slap him awake. Instead, I shook him into semi-consciousness and got him on his feet. Bea held the doors and led the way while I half-carried the man to his room.
"Does he do this?" I asked.
"He never drinks." Bea admitted. "I haven't seen him drunk in a year, since...you know. I don't know what happened."
I had an idea that the dressing-down I'd given to Mister Arlott had put a mirror in his face and he hadn't liked what he saw. I kind of hoped that was the case. I thought the man deserved to suffer for what he'd done to his son. I felt bad for Bea. I felt bad that she had to see her father passed-out drunk, but I didn't regret anything I'd said or what my words may have done to the man.
Bea pulled the covers back on her father's bed and helped me get him into it. We laid him down. She took his tie off while I removed his shoes and belt. With my task complete, I left Bea to tuck him in and took myself to the living room. She came out a few minutes later.
"He just asked my brother not to hate him." Bea announced after she'd closed the bedroom door. "He opened his eyes and begged like I was Pres. Do you think my brother hated him?"
"He had a right to." I said and folded my arms over my chest to buffer the question.
Bea eyed me carefully, like she wanted to ask a question she knew would upset me. She asked it anyway. "You still hate your father, don't you? Even though it's so long ago and he's dead, you hate him."
"Yes." I admitted.
"That's a shame." She said plainly.
My stomach spasmed. I unfolded my arms and held it until the pain passed. "I have to go. Are you alright?"
"Yes. I'll be fine now. Thank you...for everything."
I shook Bea's hand. "Thank you, Bea. Don't underestimate what you did for me."
She didn't understand my words. "What did I do for you?"
Bea's question put me in one of those awkward situations where I either had to tell her nothing or expose more of myself than I normally would. I went ahead because Bea had earned my honesty when she earned my respect. "You accepted me for all that I am. No one can ask any more than that, and no one should have to take any less. You reminded me that people like you exist. I regret the cause of our acquaintance, but I'm glad of the fact of it."
"I'm glad too." She said earnestly.
We said `goodbye' and I left.
On the way back toward the bridge, I thought of my father. I thought of him because Mister Arlott had begged forgiveness from someone who could no longer grant it. I wondered if my father ever had a second thought. I wondered if he ever wished he knew where I was, or how I was doing. I wondered if he thought of me as he died. I wondered if someone would have held him up to himself, if he would have regretted what he did.
My father had been a wonderful man, a great teacher, a mentor. He was someone I looked up to and tried to model myself after. In one instant, he threw it all away. I wondered if we could have reconciled if he had lived.
I pulled the rearview mirror down and looked at my eyes, my father's eyes. I pictured him in his shop, surrounded by the clothes he made. He had a cloth ruler draped around his neck. The gold of his watch chain and pince-nez glasses shone in the light of the gas jets.
"Why?" I asked the memory like I'd asked it many times before.
"I didn't understand." He said in my imagination. He took his glasses off and slipped them into the pocket of his vest. Whenever we spoke of important matters, he'd take his glasses off instead of looking over them like he usually did. It was a sign I had his full attention.
"Did you ever miss me?" I demanded.
"Of course, I did." He said in that apologetic tone of his, the one he used if he was late with a customer's suit. "You're my son."
"Would you take it back if you could?"
"I'd like to think I would, but I can't because I'm not there anymore. Do you think you could forgive me anyway?"
"I don't know, Dad." I said honestly to the mirror and to the memory. "You hurt me. I've had to hurt my whole life because you didn't understand. If not for that, I might have been good, like you, instead of the violent animal that I am. I have a right to be angry."
"You have that right," the memory of my father agreed with me, like it did each time we had this conversation, "but you've been angry for a long time. If you forgive me, you won't have to hold onto it anymore. I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I ask for it all the same. I ask for it, so you won't have to live with hate. Please, son, you'll never figure out how to love if you can't release the hate."
I didn't know what to say to that. I never knew what to say to that. He and I were at an impasse we'd been at many times before. I could go no further with the conversation, so I readjusted the mirror and let the image fade from my mind.
I drove over the bridge, back into the city. I parked the car in the precinct lot and left the keys hang in the ignition. I should have carried them into Marshall and thanked him for letting me borrow the car, but I couldn't find the willpower. I figured he'd find them where I left them. I figured a police car was safe with the keys in it as long as it was in the stationhouse parking lot.
As I walked away, I noticed that the hour was getting late. The sun was almost down. I decided to walk home so I could think. My plan didn't work. No thoughts came for any of the sixteen blocks.