Sunburn: A Novel(64)

He notices a patrol car parked across the street, unusual for this neighborhood. Maybe a burglary? He waves at the police. Even when he was up to his neck in all sorts of shady business, he never had a moment of guilt when he walked by a police officer. In his heart, he never did anything wrong, not on purpose. He made a mistake, starting that trash fire, that was all, and he was forced to pay for it. Even then, all he did was paperwork. The victims were not his, he knew them not, he wished them no ill. He was a good man surrounded by bad people. Left to his own devices, he would have never broken the law.

Even now, as he sees two dark-suited men get out of another car on the street, calling his name as he stands on his doorstep, he feels nothing more than an idle curiosity.

“Irving Lowenstein?”

“Yes,” he says. Mormons? They look too old to be going door-to-door to convert people.

“We have a warrant for your arrest. For murder.”

“Whose?” he says, honestly baffled.

Then he hears Pauline’s voice, back in his office. The fire on Eutaw. Paca, he had corrected. He had been smart enough not to give her Coupay’s name when she fished for it, but the street would have been enough. Easy to pin down a fatal fire, once you had the address and general time it happened. Easy to find out who had owned the building, who had carried the insurance, who had brokered the policy. They will subpoena his records, if they haven’t already. Serve a warrant on Susie, start going through his files.

He is on the doorstep of his house. The house he has just disowned in his thoughts, replacing it, in his imagination, with a condo downtown. Or maybe even Florida. He has enough money, he could retire. And do what? Marry again. He’s a catch, or would be in Florida. Naples, he thinks, somewhere on the Gulf side. That’s always been his preference. He doesn’t play golf, but maybe cards. His children would visit, on their way to or from Disney World. Five seconds ago, this was a reasonable dream for his future.

Now he doesn’t know if he will ever walk through his own front door again.

“When we get downtown,” he says to the detective, “I’d like to call my lawyer.”

“Oh, you don’t want to do that right away,” the detective says. “You know how it goes.” The game is afoot. They’re going to try to persuade him it’s better if he talks, just a little, that once lawyers get involved, they have no choice but to charge him.

It’s going to be a long night.

The cops take him to the car, not bothering with cuffs. They’re not worried about him trying to run or attack. But the detective, perhaps out of force of habit, still puts his hand on Irving’s head as he gets in the back seat of the patrol car. People are watching, although it’s no one Irving recognizes. He’s grateful for that. Grateful, too, that his children live far enough away that their newspapers will carry no photos of him. And maybe there will be no photos, no charges, no attention. If this is all the cops have—but, no, Pauline has talked to them, told them what she knows. Ditmars told her everything, over the years. He bragged about it, how scared she was to cross him because she knew the things he had done. And Paca is probably enough, on its own. That poor girl and her baby, the house was supposed to be empty. The trash can fire, the one he set, the one that brought Ditmars into his life—it was supposed to leave that family homeless, nothing more. He’s not a bad man, he’s a good man who made some bad decisions. It’s an important distinction.

“Amazing,” he mutters to himself. He threw a cigar into a trash can thirteen, fourteen years ago and now his life turns to ash.





39


Adam has decided to take a long weekend and go hunting, although he told Polly that he’s on a job in western Maryland. Why did he lie to her? Why does he feel obligated to justify taking a weekend for himself? He never promised to come to Belleville every weekend. Polly doesn’t hold him accountable in any way. She doesn’t even expect him to call on a regular schedule.

Yet he feels guilty the entire time he’s in the woods. Two days running, he takes his position in a tree just before sunrise, bow in hand. The old pleasures—the silence, the time alone, the stillness—no longer deliver. The forest is as silent as ever, but the loud thoughts echoing through his head ruin everything.

He doesn’t even get an opportunity to take aim. The only animal he sees is a bear, in the distance thankfully, lumbering past as if rushing to catch a bus. Adam had hoped to have venison to freeze for the winter, maybe make a stew. Two days, sitting in a tree, and nothing to show for it. He gives up on Saturday afternoon and heads home. He could make Belleville by evening, if he wanted to. But does he want to? Polly is not much for surprises.

All the more reason to surprise her now and then.

Of course, as soon as his journey becomes urgent to him, he finds himself in an inexplicable clog of traffic on I-70. He flips to WBAL, hoping to find out what’s going on, not that there’s an alternate route. He just misses the traffic report—of course—and hits the news on the top of the hour. He’ll have to wait another five, ten minutes to find out if it’s a notable backup.

“Police have arrested a sixty-three-year-old insurance broker from northwest Baltimore and charged him in a 1986 arson that killed a young woman and her child. Irving Lowenstein—”

No. He wants to talk back to the radio, argue with the dulcet-voiced reader. But he also needs to hear what she’s saying.