Lady in the Lake(19)
She’s been crying. “I have a son,” she says. “A teenager.” I tell her that I haven’t been married long enough to have any kids, which is more or less true. I’ve been married three years and we’ve had two miscarriages. The doctor says there’s no reason we won’t have healthy kids one day. Sons, I hope, to follow me into the line of duty. My father was a police and I’m a police. My grandfather arrived from Poland in 1912 and his English was never really that good, or else he might have been a police, too. People today are always talking about prejudice and stuff, like the rest of us never knew it. When my family came to America, to Baltimore, the Irish ran it and they took care of their own. Then the Italians ran it and they took care of their own. Then us bohunks finally got a turn. On and on, that’s the way things have always been and always will be. You just have to wait your turn.
I ask what her husband does and she starts as if the question surprised her, but if you have a kid, you have a husband, right? She says: “Attorney,” then adds quickly: “Not crime. Civil. Real estate law.”
“I bet he makes a good living,” I say, just to say something. The night is so quiet. You can hear the traffic noises not far away—Northern Parkway, the steady swish of cars on the new expressway, the Jones Falls, visible through the trees this time of year—yet it still feels hushed, like church. We keep our voices low out of respect.
Speaking only for myself—I don’t know what goes on in Paul’s head most of the time, if anything, other than a desire to eat at Burger Chef and chase tramps—I want these women to be wrong. Not because it will make for a late night. We’ve just come on, we have nothing better to do. But I don’t want anything to do with a dead kid. It feels like bad luck. Two miscarriages, that’s enough death for me. I wonder sometimes if the miscarriages are a punishment, but for what? I’m a good man. I had some wildness when I was younger, which is natural and right. In a man. My wife, Sophia, is six years younger than me, very pure. She deserves to have her babies. If God feels He needs to punish me for some reason, that’s one thing, but Sophia doesn’t deserve that. And if He would just give us children, we would raise such good citizens, boys who would follow me into the department and girls who would learn to make all the wonderful things Sophia can make, cabbage rolls and brisket and pierogies.
We reach Cylburn Avenue, and at first, it looks as if I’m going to get my wish. There’s no body to be seen.
“Where is—?” The dark-haired one frets. “I thought she was right here.” The younger one, she’s barely spoken up ’til now, Paul has been nattering to her all the way down the hill. He’s single, technically, has a pretty steady girl, although I guess that isn’t my business. Before marriage, whatever you do, that’s your own business.
The younger one says: “No, go a little farther.” Night has fallen, thick and fast, and we get out our flashlights. I’m trying to make them feel better: “You’d be surprised how often people make this kind of mistake”—and then Paul’s light catches a flash of something and there she is. Tessie Fine, her neck snapped like a chicken’s. You don’t need to be a coroner to figure that out.
We call it in. Paul offers to walk the women back up to the arboretum parking lot, but they say they don’t have a car up there, they walked here from the synagogue.
“We can call you a cab,” I say.
The older one protests. “No, no. I—I have to stay. I’m a mother. If something happened to my boy and another mother found him, I’d want her to stay.” I don’t get this, but I have to respect it. I bet Sophia would do the same.
With the sun down, the cold begins creeping into our bones, that March dampness that’s worse than dead-of-winter in some ways. I feel bad, not having something to drape over the ladies’ shoulders, but if I take off my jacket, I’ll be in shirtsleeves, and they’ve both got coats. The homicide detectives show up, but Paul and I have to keep the street clear and the women won’t go, not until that little body is taken away, the head hanging at that horrible angle. You don’t have to be strong to do that to a little girl. You do have to be awfully angry. Who could be that angry at a little girl? I hope it’s not a sex crime. I think that would drive me crazy, if a child of mine died that way.
I can tell it hits her hard, the dark-haired one. It’s more personal to her somehow because she has a kid. Or because it was her idea to search here. How did you know to look here? we ask her, but she doesn’t say anything, just hugs herself.
The news people finally get wind of it. We’ve been careful on the radios, but we are less than a mile from Television Hill and the road has been blocked. On a clear late-winter night like this, the red-and-blues can be seen for miles. Some concerned citizen probably began making calls. The reporters are kept at the end of the street, sometimes yelling out questions, but mostly quiet. At some point, I see the Star’s cop reporter, Jack Diller, walking down the street. Diller has been covering the beat so long he’s more cop than reporter and when we tell him to get back, he’s amiable. “But is it Tessie Fine? Just tell me that,” he says. Somehow, he gets confirmation, but not from me.
We drive the women home, of course. Never occurred to me that they live in opposite directions. I wonder how they know each other, how they ended up paired off for the search. The older one gets in the front seat and we let it go. Paul takes the backseat and talks a blue streak. He’s flirting, the bum. We drive up to Pikesville, which I expected, it’s where all the Jews live. But then the other one, the lady with the lawyer husband, tells us: “I live downtown. I’m sorry—I know it’s pretty far out of your way.”