Commonwealth(18)

“It was a quirk of the brain, or at least that’s how they explained it to me later. Too much had happened and somehow I mixed up the slides, exchanged one suspect for another. But to this day I’ll tell you: I saw what I saw. This was my partner dead. I didn’t know how it happened but the guy was standing under a light maybe fifteen feet in front of me. We looked straight at one another, just like you’re looking at me. When the cops came to the scene I described him to the letter. Hell, I gave them his name. But Jorge Mercado was in a holding cell in Rampart. He’d been there all night.”

“And the guy who killed Lomer?” Franny said.

“Turns out I never saw him.”

“So they never found the person who did it?”

Fix bent down the neck of the straw and drank. It was hard for him to drink because of the strictures in his esophagus. The water went down in quarter teaspoons. “No,” he said finally, “they found him. They put it together.”

“But you identified another man.”

“I identified another man to the police. I didn’t identify another man to a jury. They found someone who’d seen a car driving crazy near the gas station. They made it a point to find the driver and then they made it a point to find the gun he’d thrown out the window of the car. You shoot a kid in a gas station and the police department will make a sincere effort to find you. You shoot a cop in a gas station, that’s a different story.”

“But they didn’t have a witness,” Franny said.

“I was the witness.”

“But you just said you didn’t see the guy.”

Fix held up a single finger between them. “To this day I haven’t seen him. Even when I was sitting across from him in court. It never straightened out. The psychiatrist said when I saw the guy I’d remember him, and when I didn’t remember him the psychiatrist said it might come back over time, that I might just wake up one day and it would all be there.” He shrugged. “That didn’t happen.”

“So how were you a witness?”

“They told me who the guy was and I said yes, that’s him.” Fix gave his daughter a tired smile. “Don’t worry about it. He was the right guy. What you’ve got to remember is that he saw me too. He looked out of the fish tank just before he tried to shoot me. He knew who I was. He killed Lomer and he killed the kid and he knew I was the guy who saw him do it.” Fix shook his head. “I wish I could remember that kid’s name. At the funeral home his mother told me he was a serious swimmer. ‘Very promising’ is what she said. Half the things in this life I wish I could remember and the other half I wish I could forget.”

Beverly had stayed for another two years after Lomer died, even though she’d already made a promise to Bert that she was leaving. She stayed because Fix needed her. She’d pulled the car over to the side of the road on that day of the bad fight after school in Virginia and told Caroline and Franny to stop thinking she had just walked out on their father because she hadn’t. She had stayed.

“I managed to get Lomer out of my head eventually,” Fix said. “I carried him around for years, but one day, I don’t know, I put him down. I didn’t dream about him anymore. I didn’t think what he’d want for lunch every time I got lunch, I didn’t look at the guy riding next to me in the car and think about who he wasn’t. I felt guilty about that but I have to tell you, it was a relief.”

“But now you’re thinking about him again?”

“Well, sure,” Fix said, “all of this.” He raised his hand to the plastic tubing that tied him down to life. He smiled. “He’ll never have to do this. He’ll never get old and sick. I’m sure he would have wanted to get old and sick if anyone had asked him. I’m sure that we both would have said yes, please, give me the cancer when I’m eighty. But now . . .” Fix shrugged. “I can see it both ways.”

Franny shook her head. “You got the better deal.”

“Wait and see,” her father said. “You’re young.”





3

On the day before Bert and his soon-to-be second wife, Beverly, were to drive from California to Virginia, Bert came by the house in Torrance and suggested to his first wife, Teresa, that she should think about moving with them.

“Not with us, of course,” Bert said. “You’d have to pack, sell the house. I know it would take some time, but when you think about it why shouldn’t you come back to Virginia?”

Teresa had once thought her husband to be the handsomest man in the world, when in fact he looked like one of those gargoyles perched on a high corner of Notre Dame that’s meant to scare the devil away. She didn’t say this but it was clear by his change of tone that the thought was written on her face.

“Look,” Bert said, “you never wanted to move to Los Angeles anyway. You only did it for me, and not, if I may remind you, without a great deal of bitching. Why would you want to stay here now? Take the kids back to your parents’ place, get them started in school, and then when the time is right I can help you find a house.”

Teresa stood in the kitchen they had so recently shared and tightened the belt of her bathrobe. Cal was in second grade and Holly had started kindergarten, but Jeanette and Albie were still home. The children were hanging on Bert’s legs, squealing like he was a ride at Disneyland, Daddeee! Daddeee! He patted their heads like drums. He patted them with a beat.