The clock on my phone tells me that it’s a new day, but my body refuses to believe it. Trying to get back to my motel using public transit last night sapped most of my energy, and now I’m back on it. In the past I have maligned public transportation in Vancouver, which, I now see, was grossly unfair. When it comes to clusterfucks, getting around Detroit takes the prize. And the bureaucratic nightmare that is trying to report a stolen rental car in Detroit has defeated my fighting spirit. I am, for the moment, without wheels. After three buses and a heated argument with someone who appeared to be a transit official, I arrive back at the house.
It was a good thing that I started out before dawn, because I get there just in time to see the man and the adorable imp from yesterday walk down the street, heading in the direction opposite from mine. There is an elementary school about a ten-minute walk away, but the man doesn’t seem particularly light on his feet and the little girl has made me an implicit promise that I hope she keeps. On the outside, I have twenty minutes to half an hour to find what I’m looking for.
As I knock out the basement window with a hammer wrapped in a towel I have stolen from my motel, I hope that people on the street will be as unobservant as they were yesterday while my car was jacked. When the man of the house opened the door yesterday, I didn’t see an alarm panel by the doorway. Just because I didn’t see it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there somewhere, but there are certain risks I’m willing to take. It’s a long way down from the window to the ground and I know my bad ankle can’t take the pressure, so I lower myself as far as I can and drop down on my good leg. For the most part, the thick leather gloves I’m wearing have protected my hands from the broken glass edging the frame.
From a quick glance, the basement is full of junk and old sports equipment, so I try my luck up the stairs. On the dining room table I find a stack of bills addressed to Harvey Watts, but nothing in the way of personal correspondence. The little girl has invaded all rooms here with her artwork and her toys. There is no safe place on this floor for a man’s personal belongings, so up I go again. There are two bedrooms on the second floor and a third that has been converted to an office. Because I don’t have much time, I go straight to the office.
It could be dumb luck that I find what I’m looking for right on the floor by the desk, or it could be that, after I left yesterday, Harvey Watts took a trip down memory lane and didn’t bother to put the files away after he was done. Maybe he wanted to have his memories handy, the way that people sometimes do when the past comes knocking.
In any case, here in this battered briefcase are the documents of my father’s life. There are several photos of two boys growing up. I realize that the man who slammed the door in my face must be his adoptive brother. I only have enough time to do a cursory check on the briefcase before the door opens and closes downstairs. Outside the windows, the gutters are so rusted I don’t think they’ll hold my weight. I slip quietly into the hall and down the stairs, hoping that Harvey has missed his breakfast and that I can just head out the front door.
Unfortunately, my luck has never been that good.
As my foot hits the last step, I hear the soft click as the safety is flicked off a gun. In the narrow hallway, somewhere behind me.
My hands go up, the briefcase still in them.
“You know, people get the wrong idea about this neighborhood all the time. We still got a community here, girlie, and people know how to use cell phones when somebody knocks out a basement window.”
Well, it wasn’t a perfect plan. And it’s been a long time since I’ve had to sneak around like this.
I turn, careful to keep my movements slow and steady. Harvey Watts has a handgun pointed right at my heart. Michigan isn’t an open-carry state for nothing. I wonder if he had taken it with him to walk his granddaughter to school. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. “You lied to me about my father. You did know him. He was your brother.”
Watts snorts and the gun does a little dance. I try not to think about the fact that the safety is off. “Some brother.”
“I just came to take what belongs to me, that’s all.”
“That briefcase don’t belong to you. It’s been mine since he upped and left, telling me he’s off to find his real damn family. Like I weren’t nothing. Like we didn’t grow up together in this fucked-up house.”
“Aw,” I say in mock sympathy. If he wants to start in on difficult childhoods, we could be here all week.
His cheeks flush. “You know I’ve thought from time to time about what Sammy’s girls would be like. Never imagined you.”
If this was meant as a compliment it falls short of the mark. A compliment is all in the tone. His has all the warmth of a polar ice cap, one that is holding out against global warming. “Look, I just want to know about my dad. That’s all.”
“Yeah, well, after he left I didn’t hear nothing back from him. He said to forward all his mail to his place in Winnipeg, but he never spoke to me after that. Then your sister writes me years ago, telling me he died and could I please tell her his life story. All I got of him is in that briefcase there and good fucking riddance. Take it if you want. I ain’t sad at all that he’s gone. You tell your sister that. Lauren, or whatever her name is. Just leave me the hell alone.”
He puts his free hand on the wall and coughs into his sleeve. “B’fore you go, though, someone is paying for that window downstairs.”
He’s not joking. I look at the gun. And then I put the few bills of cash from my wallet on the stand in the front hall. I retreat with my hands up, pausing at the door. “Did he ever . . . did he ever say anything about Lebanon? About some trouble he had there?”
“Like he would tell me,” Harvey Watts says, his expression dark. “Haven’t had a thing to do with your dad in a long time, and that’s how I like to keep it. He took off when he was eighteen and didn’t come back until after he left the military. Then he was gone again. So I don’t owe you nothing.”
Maybe it’s pointless, but I have to try. “After the military, though. What did he say about that?”
Watts takes a step toward me and I am careful not to make any abrupt motions as I move back, maintaining the space we have created between us. A delicate dance, with a gun as the high school chaperone, keeping us apart. “We’re done here,” he says. “Get out. And don’t come back. Don’t be talking to my granddaughter, either. She told me how you gave her a lollipop. You stay the hell away from her.”
The little traitor. You can’t trust anybody in this world. She must have kept the bit about the ribbon to herself.
I leave, this time via the front door. Like a normal person visiting her long-lost uncle, with a briefcase full of keepsakes tucked under her arm.
A curtain twitches from the house opposite and I see a shadow by one of the upstairs windows. The concerned citizen, no doubt. Waiting to see how it all turns out.
Me, too, I suppose.