Body Language

‘No, he’s not.’

‘But he dresses like one, that uniform he wears.’

‘He drives a truck,’ she said, ‘an armored truck.’

‘The ones full of cash? Those big square ones? Steel-reinforced, bulletproof windshield.’

She said yes, eyes on the rearview mirror, a tailgating asshole in a black Camaro. Testosterone in the tank, nothing between the ears.

‘It’s a dangerous job, driving an armored truck. You worry about him?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Just like your mother used to worry about me. But see, I got through it just fine. Like I tell her. All your worry didn’t change a thing.’

The tailgating asshole swung around her, burned some rubber, his windows impenetrably dark. He was gone in a blur.

‘Dad, what you did this morning, shooting the gun like that, it was wrong. You know that, don’t you?’

Lawton reached into the pocket of his red-and-black-plaid shirt and came out with an old scrap of newsprint. He unfolded it, flattened it against the dash, got all the wrinkles out of the paper, then held it out to Alexandra.

‘Something from my files.’

She took a couple of quick looks but couldn’t make out the article. Finally, she got a red light at 124th. She read it quickly. Took a second look at the photograph. And Jesus, it did look like Stan!

‘Frank Sinatra,’ he said. ‘I caught him, sent him up the river. Late seventies, just like I said.’

Alexandra had to chuckle.

‘What? You thought I was talking about the singer? That Frank Sinatra. Hey, I’m not some loon. I got an excellent memory for names. Names and faces. That’s my expertise. Never was any good with directions. Ask your mother. She’ll tell you. I never could tell north from south. Hand me a compass, a map, I’m lost in a minute. But names and faces, those I can remember. It’s a cop skill. Ask your mother; she’ll confirm everything.’

‘Okay, Dad.’

‘You know, your mother blames me for getting you involved with police work. She doesn’t understand why her little girl would want to do something like that. One awful scene after another. All that grim business. All night, every night. She doesn’t understand that.’

‘But you do, Dad. Don’t you? You understand me.’

‘Sure I do. You’re my girl. I know you through and through.’

Alexandra glanced over at him. He was smiling sadly.

‘But, Alex,’ he said, staring straight ahead at the windshield, ‘nobody should have to do penance their whole life.’

‘What?’

‘There’s such a thing as time off for good behavior.’

‘What’re you talking about, Dad?’

‘You know what I’m talking about, Alex. The thing that happened back a long time ago. The reason you do the kind of work you do.’

She slowed for a light, looked over at him.

‘And another thing while I’m on a tear,’ he said. ‘I know how goddamn annoying I can be, repeating things, going off like I do. I hear myself doing it, but I can’t shut up. It’s like I’m way down underwater and there’s another guy floating up on the surface and I can hear him saying all that nonsense, and I try to yell up at him to shut the hell up, but when I open my mouth, only thing that comes out are bubbles. Bubbles and more bubbles. Because I’m way down there underwater, you know, like a frogman.

‘I know it’s awful to listen to. And Stan’s right. I’m an old fool. But I can’t make myself stop yammering to save my life. I’m trying, though. I want you to know that, Alex. I’m down here trying to be good. Hanging on. Trying not to get on your nerves, or Stan’s. But it’s hard. It’s damn hard. A frogman, down on the bottom. Blowing bubbles. Glub, glub.’

He looked over at her. For a moment, his eyes fluttered between the two worlds where he lived. Then they lost their grip on her face and slid away. A foolish smile took possession of his lips.

‘We don’t see much of your mother anymore, do we?’

Alexandra drew a long breath and pulled into the parking lot of the Harbor House. Some of the other daughters were delivering their mothers and fathers. Twice as many mothers. Even though most of the women were twenty years older, Lawton liked those odds. He had six or seven girlfriends at Harbor House and was always bringing home tins of cookies.

‘Your mother died, didn’t she?’

‘Years ago, Dad. Years ago.’

‘You shouldn’t keep things from me,’ Lawton said. ‘I can take difficult news. Believe me, Alexandra, I’ve dealt with some bad situations in my life. If your mother died, then I should be told.’

Alexandra pushed her hair back. It needed cutting. It had been years since she’d had a manicure. Years since she’d bought herself anything frilly or impractical.

‘All right, Dad, fine. I won’t hide things from you anymore. Everything out in the open.’

Most of the time, he didn’t bother with the paper. The only reason he bought a Herald that morning was because he wanted to see if the reporters had discovered the poses yet.

They hadn’t, the idiots. Or else they were cooperating with the police. You never knew for sure anymore. Nowadays, you couldn’t trust the stuff in the paper and you couldn’t even trust the stuff that wasn’t in it.

Taking an early lunch, he sat in a booth at Denny’s on Biscayne, with the traffic pouring past, and he read the article slowly and listened to his waitress talking to another waitress about the latest dead woman. His waitress had black dried-out hair and was thick-waisted and tall. She wore her makeup heavy and had bangles on both wrists. The hair on her arm was dark and longer than normal, and he looked at it carefully as she poured him more coffee.

‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? That young woman, with everything to live for.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘Right there, that article you’re reading,’ the waitress said.

He looked up into her eyes and said nothing. He kept his mouth dead, and in a few seconds she gave a confused little shake of her head and took her pot of coffee and her chirpy bullshit off to another customer.

Rapists and killers in the movies were always flamboyant madmen. They lived in rooms with outlandish insects flying around or with the walls papered with ten thousand creepy newspaper clippings. They were losers who wore polka dots and plaids together and their glasses were thick and greasy. The movie rapists slunk around at night with whores and go-go dancers. But he was none of those things. He was well-informed, well-read, but without intellectual pretensions. He was handsome, but not strikingly so. He could be intense, but he could also laugh. He had good taste in clothes and furnishings, a sense of style that floated between contemporary and classic, and he was bright and had friends, male and female. He made good money. He drove a two-year-old Honda, the most common car on the streets of Miami. He was a good singer, could find the harmony in almost any song he’d ever heard, and he could tell a joke well. He voted in every election and made contributions to environmental causes. He went to church now and then, but he wasn’t a zealot. He was polite to people in grocery stores and movie theaters and he was a good driver. He liked to eat and drink but was no glutton. He enjoyed fast food as well as four-star restaurants. He kept himself in excellent shape with weights and running. He played chess and darts in an Irish bar he went to now and then. People knew his name and liked him and called him up sometimes to cry on his shoulder or ask him over to watch a heavyweight fight or a play-off game on the tube. He could go anywhere and not be noticed. He was comfortable and secure in nearly any environment.

He didn’t have a creepy bone in his body. Not one.

He watched the traffic go by on Biscayne Boulevard and sipped his coffee. He hated newspapers and he hated television even more. He hated journalists. Their superior, cynical attitude, assuming the worst of everyone. Like they’d seen it all, crime and grime, and nothing surprised them. Calling him ‘the Bloody Rapist,’ making a joke out of it.

He shifted around on the bench seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. He was exhausted and his joints ached like he might be coming down with the flu. The bitch probably gave him some germ, all that kissing on the couch, her tongue down his throat like she was starved for something he had inside him and was trying to scoop it out.

He was drained and vaguely depressed. These things took a lot out of him, more all the time. The recovery could take a full week. That long before he even started thinking about it again, looking for another woman, starting to get the prickling in his blood. He wasn’t a horny guy by nature – ready to go all the time, like some men his age. He’d never been that way. Slow to rouse, actually.

He hated those television experts with their sound-bite explanations of rape. The so-called authorities claimed rape was about violence, not sex. Saying the act sprang from a man’s need to dominate a woman, or his hatred of her, or some other bullshit. But it wasn’t like that. If it was about hate and violence, then the guy wouldn’t rape the woman; he’d beat the shit out of her, strangle her, and leave her lying on the floor.