“Nice signal, fuckhead!”
Mars Bahr glanced down at the small, curly-haired boy next to him in the car’s front passenger seat. Chris’s eight-year-old face was screwed into an expression of self-righteous indignation, his attention riveted on the Ford Tempo directly in front of them.
The Tempo’s driver had committed a cardinal error in the Bahr family book of driving etiquette. The driver had failed to turn on his left-turn signal until after the light had turned green, leaving Mars and Chris locked behind the Tempo while traffic to their right flowed smoothly through the intersection.
Mars frowned. Chris had a litany of passenger-side impatience he’d begun chanting at age four. His phrasing and inflection were precise copies of what Mars said and how Mars said it since Mars had gotten his driver’s license twenty years earlier. The “fuckhead” stuff was something else. Chris’s language was getting as bad as the Minneapolis Police Department squad room. Mars made a mental note to add a discussion of language to their breakfast agenda.
Saturday morning breakfasts—and garage sales May through September—were routine for the two of them. They’d started by going to restaurants. Al’s in Dinkytown,
the Modern in Northeast Minneapolis, or the Perkins on Riverside. When Chris had turned five, he’d started Cub Scouts, where he’s he’d learned to make baking powder biscuits. Mars ate maybe two hundred biscuits after the first batch came out of the oven. When Chris learned how to make scrambled eggs, they usually skipped restaurants and Chris made breakfast at Mars’s apartment.
Mars would pick Chris up around nine at Denise’s. Chris would come out to the car carrying a big paper bag full of his own cooking gear, most of which had been bought at garage sales. If they needed groceries, they’d stop on the way to the apartment. Mars had offered early on to get groceries in advance, but Chris got as interested in grocery shopping as he was in cooking.
“So. What’s for breakfast?”
“Cheese omelettes. You want sautéed onions in yours?” Chris said, saw-teed.
“Saw-taid onions would be good.” Mars said saw-taid carelessly, as if that’s how he’d heard Chris say it. “Where do we stand on groceries?”
Chris narrowed his eyes in deep concentration. As he thought, he bounced his head back and forth off the seat. “We need cheese, of course. And onion—you got any onions?”
“I’ve got nothing except Coca-Cola and ice cubes. Maybe half a dozen eggs left over from last week. I’ve got a quart of milk left from … Well, we probably need milk, too.”
“Okay,” Chris said. “Then we need milk, cheese, and onions. Half a dozen eggs should be enough, but I’d like some good bread, too. You know how when you make an omelette and the butter and the juice from the omelette is still on the plate? I’d like some French bread to mop that up with.” Chris’s head flopped sideways to look up at Mars. “Could we get to Surdyk’s to get cheese and bread? And go to Cub for
the other stuff? If we go to Cub we could get extra eggs for next time. And oranges. I know I used all the oranges last week, so we’ll need oranges. And Cub’s the best place to get oranges.”
Mars swung the big, standard-issue Pontiac into the Cub parking lot and got the best spot in the lot, a piece of luck that brought a big grin to Chris’s face. It was the kind of thing Chris cared about.
“Dad? ’Cause you’re a cop, could you park in a handicap spot and not get a ticket?”
Mars gave a push down on Chris’s head. “Yes, I could, but no, I wouldn’t. Come on, let’s shop.”
Chris was a serious shopper. His mother’s genes. He smelled and squeezed produce. Counted pieces of fruit when it was sold by the bag. Took out the pocket calculator Mars had given him and figured unit costs. Checked expiration dates. He saved all their grocery receipts and compared prices of what they’d spent with the Sunday paper ads, a task that involved a mix of moans and cries of triumph.
This Saturday he spent a long time with the oranges. “Four bucks!” he said, holding up a bag in disgust. He looked at Mars for approval.
Mars shrugged. “Wouldn’t be breakfast without fresh orange juice. Maybe cut down from four oranges apiece to three.”
In the dairy section, Chris found a milk carton in the back with an expiration date that was almost a week later than the ones in the front. This was the equivalent of getting the best parking space in the lot. On their way out and back to the best parking space in the lot, Chris said with satisfaction, “Next stop, Surdyk’s.”
The counter staff at Surdyk’s looked like art students, and they took cheese seriously. Mars wouldn’t have known where
to start with them. But Chris, after pulling a wheat-and-herb baguette from a basket and sliding it into a narrow white bag, grabbed a number and began an undaunted consideration of the yards of cheese.
“Number thirty-six?” A pale young woman with blue-black hair and a stud in her nose walked toward the number Chris held up. Chris didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes on the cheese. “I need some cheese for omelettes. Cheddar, I think.”
“I’ve got a Wisconsin white cheddar on special that would be nice.”
Chris followed her to the far end of the refrigerated cheese case. With a gesture graceful enough to be part of a dance, she swiped a stainless tool across a block of white cheese and dropped it on a piece of cracker. Chris chewed it slowly, nodding only slightly.
“It’s okay. On the cracker. You got a yellow cheddar?”
She smiled at him. A smile of respect, not condescension. “Let’s try an aged Vermont cheddar. A bit pricey, but I think it’s going to be what you want.” Another artful swipe, dropped on a cracker and barely in Chris’s mouth before his nod was decisively affirmative.
“How much is it?”
She turned the card, which was stuck in the cheese. “Five ninety-eight a pound. I think you’ll like the texture of this cheese in the omelette. It holds up well under heat.” Mars made a slight face, but nodded his agreement.
“We’ll take half a pound,” Chris said, clearly pleased.
To call where Mars lived home was to suggest a degree of domesticity that exceeded reality. Mars had a single standard for a place to live after the divorce: cheap. He found what he was looking for in a three-story red-brick walk-up on the outskirts of downtown. The apartment was a studio plus-bath.
The kitchen was laid out against one wall, single bed under the windows, futon rolled on the floor for Chris. A row of steel frame shelves lined the wall opposite the kitchen. Mars’s clothes were folded on the shelves. The only other furniture was a table with four chairs. The only decoration was a movie poster for The Usual Suspects. Chris had bought the poster at a garage sale because he thought Mars looked like Kevin Spacey.
In the four years he’d lived there, Mars never had a rent raise. He understood why. First, he paid his rent on time, which wasn’t the neighborhood standard. Second, it was clear the caretaker liked having a cop living in the building. For Mars, keeping his rent low meant he’d been able to maintain Chris and Denise’s lifestyle at the same standard as when Mars and Denise had been married.
Chris began preparations for breakfast with precision. Their mutual roles were firmly established. Mars set the table with the odd bits of tableware he kept at the apartment and took directions from Chris.
Chris pulled a yellow onion out of the bag. “You can slice the onion. Real thin is best.” Chris dug around in the bag and pulled out a knife and a cutting board. He’d asked to get pieces of Trident cutlery for Christmas last year, after the previous summer’s garage sale expeditions had failed to produce anything up to his standard. The cutting board he’d made in Scouts.
Mars was aware as he started on the onion that Chris was glancing over now and again to be sure the onion was getting sliced thin. Without turning around, Chris said, “You know what those Salad Shooter things are really good for?”
“Making salad?”
“Making shredded cheese.” Chris stopped whisking to extract a complicated-looking hunk of white plastic from his bag. He assembled some funnel pieces, and placing the Salad
Shooter over an empty plate, pressed their pricey cheese through one end. It took less than seconds, after which Chris held up a plate of perfectly shredded aged Vermont cheddar. Mars had enough experience with Chris’s newfound enthusiasms to be fairly sure their menus for the foreseeable future would be dominated by entrees that used shredded cheese.
“Carl gave it to to Mom for Valentine’s, and I used it to shred cheese for some tacos I made for dinner Thursday night.”
Chris had looked over his shoulder at Mars as he said Carl. Mars made it a point not to react. What he thought was that Carl was lucky to have found maybe the one woman alive who’d be pleased to get a Salad Shooter for Valentine’s Day.
As the omelette sizzled in the cast-iron pan Chris had bought at a garage sale and seasoned himself, Chris squeezed orange juice. “You know how you always say, ‘The sweeter the juice, the less juice you get’?”
“How’re we doing this morning with those overpriced suckers?”
Chris handed Mars his glass of juice. Mars tossed back half a glass in a single gulp.
“I got almost twelve ounces out of three oranges. Just about a record. And it’s sweet, right?”
Mars nodded with genuine appreciation. “Sweetest so far this year.”
Chris brought the omelettes to the table. They were perfect. Crisply browned skin, light and fluffy inside, a first-class cheddar cheese, and delicious wisps of saw-taid onions.
Chris’s attention was evenly divided between his pleasure in eating and watching Mars for his reactions. “How’s your omelette?”
“Outstanding. Just the way I like it. Crisp on the outside. Great cheese.”
“What do you think about the onions? Maybe we shoulda had them across the top, instead of inside?”
Mars shook his head. “No, they’re fine inside. Of course, nothing to say next time we can’t have the onions in the cheese and across the top. How’d I do on the onions? Thin enough?”
“Perfect.”
Mars tore off a hunk of French bread and dabbed at his empty plate. “We should get some business done. You need to be Scouts when?”
“Eleven-thirty. We’re leaving from Grace Lutheran Church.”
“We’d better get going on our agenda, then. Whatcha got?”
Chris pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and folded it open. Across the table, Mars could see the carefully block-printed list.
“Mom says we gotta talk about summer vacation. Soccer camp’s in July. It costs a lot. And if I go to soccer camp, and go to the Black Hills with Mom, plus going camping with you, it doesn’t leave much time to do stuff with James.”
A sharp, thin pain shot through Mars. A kid shouldn’t have to feel guilty about arranging a summer schedule to accommodate divorced parents. “Look. In my book, hanging out is what summer vacation is all about. Why don’t we plan on taking a couple of short trips during the school year—like out to Blue Mounds State Park or do some hiking on the Lake Superior Trail. How would that be?”
Chris smiled with pleasure. And relief. “That’d be good. How about the money for soccer camp? Mom says she’ll try and come up with half. She’s making some stuff for Aunt Gwen, but she’s not going to get paid till later, so you’d have to pay the whole thing, then she’d pay you … .”
Mars shook his head. “Tell your mom, to let me know
how much, and I’ll pay. I appreciate knowing in advance so I can plan to get it together.”
Chris smiled again, and, looking a little shy, said, “Mom says you don’t leave enough money for yourself. Brent Rice’s dad, who’s a big shithead anyway, yells at Brent all the time about the support money he’s gotta give Brent’s mom, and Brent’s dad doesn’t give Brent’s mom even half as much money as you give Mom. Brent says so.”
“Your mom and I have a deal. She gives you time, I give money. We talked about it when we got divorced. Your mom wanted to be able to stay home, and I wanted her to be able to keep the house. With my job, I can’t count on being around when you need me. It’s what we agreed on a long time ago, and I think it works pretty good. What else on your list?”
“Know what my health science teacher said about smoking and taking drugs?”
Mars shook his head and waited.
“He said that if you haven’t started smoking or taking drugs by the time you graduate from high school, chances are something like ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine you never will.”
“I think that’s probably right.”
“I was really glad to hear that. I thought, like, I was going to have to worry my whole life that I might be a junkie or something.”
“I’d say that’s a teacher who knows what he’s talking about.”
“Dad?” Chris was looking at the tattered box of Camels next to Mars’s plate. “Tell me again about when you quit smoking.”
“I quit the day your mom told me she was pregnant with you.”
“Because …”
“Because I knew that if I smoked, you’d be at a higher risk for smoking.”
“And …”
“And because I didn’t want Mom breathing smoke when she was pregnant with you.”
“Tell the part about why you still buy cigarettes.”
“Well, when I stopped smoking, I felt sort of lonely. Like I’d lost a good friend. I’d go in to pay for gas, or whatever, and I’d see all those cigarettes, and I just missed having that pack. So then I thought, what’s to say I can’t buy a pack of cigarettes and carry it around with me? Put it on the table in the morning when I’m having my first can of Coke, which is when I really missed smoking. So I’ve been buying a pack and carrying it around ever since. It helped.”
“How long you had that pack?”
Mars picked up the pack and rotated it in his left hand. “Well, let’s see. I bought this pack in … February. I bought it the day Latisha Williams’s body was found in the trunk of Duwayne Turner’s car. So that was February eighth, and this is April fifth—just about two months.” Mars changed the subject. “That it for you?”
“Yup.” Chris slapped his notebook shut and straightened up. “What’s on your ’genda?”
Mars looked at him directly. “Language. Fuckhead. Shithead. I think we need to think about some guidelines for using swear words.”
“Mom says it’s against the Ten Commandments to say goddamn.”
Thin ice, here. “Okay, for some people that would be one reason not to swear. For me, it’s not that simple.” Mars sat back and thought about it. “I know one thing I don’t like about swearing is that a lot of people use swear words because they’re too lazy to think of a better word to use. Being lazy
when you talk makes you sound stupid. So that’s rule number one: Think before you talk.”
Chris said, “Y’know what Dennis Engstrom does? He makes lists of all the swear words he knows. He’s got two hundred seventy-three words so far. Then he sees how many he can say without taking a breath. On the bus Tuesday he got to forty-seven.”
Mars held up two fingers. “Rule number two: Don’t use swear words to try and gross other guys out. People who are impressed because you’ve got a foul mouth aren’t the people you want to impress, anyway.”
“What else?”
“Well, in my book, using any word too much, swear word or not, is bad, so that would be rule number three. A guy I work with begins every other sentence with, ‘The way I see it …’ Second or third time in the space of five minutes you hear ‘the way I see it,’ you’re ready to grab the guy by the throat.”
“You say ‘in my book’ a lot.”
The kid was quick. “Point taken.”
“So it’s okay to swear sometimes.”
“For me, there’re times when a good, hard, flat damn hits the spot.”
“Dad? Know what we could do? If I swear, you say, like, ‘Number one’ if you think I’m being lazy. Or, ‘Number three’ if you think I’m using a word too much. Okay? Then if you don’t say anything, I’ll know you think it was okay that time. You wanna do that?”
Mars smiled at Chris. “Sure. Let’s try it. Keep us both on our toes.”
They were doing dishes when Mars’s beeper went off. Chris’s face glowed. More than good parking spots, Chris liked police action.
Mars handed Chris the towel. “You finish up, and I’ll catch my beeper.” He walked over to the wall phone and punched the Homicide Division number.
The assistant division chief answered. “Mars? A girl’s body’s been found down on the Father Hennepin Bluffs, just below the A Mill. Chief says he’d like you to have a look.”
Mars glanced at his watch. “I was just about to take Chris to Scouts. I could get down there in a half hour. Maybe less. Who’s down there now?”
“Some guys from the Second Precinct who took the call when the body was found. I think they’ve called the ME, but I don’t know if he’s there yet.”
“Tell them I’m on my way.”
Chris’s eyes were fixed on Mars’s face. “Somebody dead?” The question contained no remorse.
“Yup.”
“Can I come?”
“Nope. You get to go to Scouts.”
“Shit.”
They looked at each other. Mars said nothing. He dumped Chris’s jacket hood over his head, gave the kid a quick, affectionate butt slap, and said, “I’ll call you later and let you know what’s up. Now let’s get our shows on the road.”