Twenty-Three

I LOOKED AROUND. NOT ANOTHER SIGN OF LIFE ON THE ENTIRE FLOOR. NO ONE below. The merry shoppers were using the gym’s outside exit.

“Clifford made me do it, call you up here. I feel awful, but I didn’t know what else to do,” Neil said. “The gun and all…”

Clifford. Clifford Schmidt. The Sneeze. The surviving partner. “You’re the one,” I said before I censored myself.

“I am?”

I’d meant the one Sasha had seen. The one whose cuffs I’d glimpsed ascending the staircase—the better to wait and entrap me. He probably had his gun at Neil’s back all along. The one who’d stood Sasha up Wednesday night. The night Wynn Teller was murdered.

“Why’d he want me up here?” I whispered to Neil.

“Enough!” Clifford said. “You two don’t have anything left to talk over. No more lawsuit, no more anything except a tragic end to the entire mess.” I didn’t understand much, except that it didn’t sound healthy for me, and I suddenly remembered our brief conversation the other afternoon and how he’d complained of loose ends he had to clean up.

I tried to remember what else had been said in Schmidt’s office, but it seemed vague and insubstantial. Something about Neil and practicality?

Clifford waved his gun like a traffic policeman’s baton, directing us into Neil’s classroom, a fit setting, I feared, in which to become a footnote to history. Stay tuned. Story at eleven.

I wondered if Cliff appreciated the symbolism of the event. I wondered, had my own room been unlocked, whether I would have found literary overtones to this ambush. And then I wondered if I were showing early signs of dementia.

“Listen,” I said, “you’re making—”

“—a big mistake. I know. I saw those movies, too,” Clifford Schmidt said. “But this isn’t a mistake. It’s unfortunate, but you have no one to blame but yourselves. You stir things up, wake up sleeping dogs, and you can’t complain about what happens next.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

“Of course not.” He closed the classroom door. Neil and I stood awkwardly, like gangly students on the first day of school. “Okay,” Cliff said. “You, Quigley—over here.” He indicated the desk closest to the door. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, and then a clean sheet. “Copy this,” he said. “Word for word. Make it look nice, it’s your confession.”

“I’m not going to—” Neil began.

“If you aren’t writing by the time I finish this sentence, I’ll shoot her, and my typed note will have to do. Your call.”

“They’ll trace the typewriter,” I said. “They always do.”

Cliff looked mildly amused. “Did. It’s harder to trace a laser printer. I’ll take the chance.”

With an imploring glance at me, Neil started writing.

“You, over there!” Cliff pointed to the window wall. I sat where he indicated, in the front row, and hoped that if I barely moved or breathed or made noise, he might forget about me.

He was one of the people Wynn Teller had told his son he could no longer trust. His partner, but what had been going on?

“I’m sorry about this.” Cliff rubbed a palm over the barrel of the gun. I could have almost believed he was holding a toy, or a very fancy cigarette lighter. It was lovely in its own way, with the silver design, the sort of thing the cowboy in the white hat carried.

Even I could understand why guns like that one would be passed on to Lydia, and how any friend of the family or business partner would be apt to know about such a collection.

“Nothing personal,” Clifford said. “Merely survival.”

“We aren’t referring to my survival by any chance, are we?” I muttered.

He had a mean, dry chuckle.

If I lived, I vowed to have a serious talk with Sasha. How could she have accepted a date with him in the first place?

“A man works a lifetime to build something up,” Schmidt said. “He can’t sit by while people ruin it, can he?”

“It hasn’t been a lifetime. You’re barely forty, I’ll bet.” Actually, he looked closer to fifty, but flattery never hurt anybody, especially a man with thinning hair. “You have years and years—”

“I’m not interested,” he snapped. Maybe he was only thirty-five and I’d insulted him.

“What good do you think this’ll do you, Cliff?” Neil asked. There was a desperate quaver in his voice, and I was embarrassed by his attempt to ingratiate himself. You don’t call the man trying to murder you by his nickname.

“A whole lot. I’ll have an income, to mention one fairly basic item. Without your interference, TLC will go on, thank you. You don’t have much muscle left, do you?”

I thought he was referring to Neil’s physique.

“It burned,” Neil said softly.

“Oddly enough,” Cliff said, “my books look just fine. I wouldn’t have done this, but you won’t give up. You should have stopped once the place burned down. It’s really too bad.”

He relaxed, almost strutted, relocated nearer to Neil, the better to intimidate him.

“Been a lot of pressure on you. I’m sure your coworkers will remember how disturbed you seemed this week. And then, alas, your wires sprung and you killed the man you had wanted to sue when you didn’t have a case anymore. And now, filled with remorse, and maybe still a little of the crazies, you shoot your partner over there—”

“His what?” I said. “Me? Are you talking about me?”

“Be quiet. You don’t think I understood why you were suddenly appearing at the office every single day?” He didn’t even look at me when he said it. “You shoot her,” he said to Neil. “And yourself. End of one very sad story. When we rebuild, we may name the place the Neil Quigley Memorial Learning Center. How would that be?”

“Why did you kill him?” Neil asked. “At least tell me that. You must have known all along what was going on. You’re the one with the business background.”

It was okay for Neil to act like this was a talk show, but I was afraid that in lieu of a commercial break, I was going to be blown away, so I listened with half an ear and searched for an escape with all the rest of me.

I stretched. Clifford watched with a little manly interest, then must have remembered I was a short-timer, as he ignored me again. “I was never for his style,” he said. “He wasted money left and right—splashy TV ads, a PR firm on retainer, bills for business entertaining that would choke a horse, the clothing, the car. Even crazy gifts for his wife every so often—fur coats, trips.”

Lydia. I’d thought this was all about her, and it wasn’t. Even in this drama so central to her life, she was a bit player.

Schmidt was enjoying his diatribe against Teller. He puffed up and orated to the two of us. “He acted like this was Hollywood. We were on the verge of bankruptcy. I said cut back, cut out, but the showman insisted we’d be dead without the image. It was too easy an idea to copy—he had to be the symbol of quality and prestige. I was trapped. If I sued him for his stupidity and stubbornness, I’d destroy the business.”

That sounded more ethical than destroying him and saving the business, but I kept that to myself. I was already afraid I was about to become a bad odor they tracked down on Monday morning.

“I went along—what choice did I have? And then your wife got sick and you got antsy.” He glared at Neil as if every single thing that had happened was because of Angela’s environmental allergies. “And then, when I got you under control—”

“The fire? You burned down my center and you call that getting me under control?” It was a breakthrough in assertiveness for Neil, even if his forehead was beading with sweat.

“And then that woman flounces in!” Cliff’s face was flushed, his temper up. “Another goddamn wife!”

Of course. Another wife, another claim, would mean the books were going to be inspected and challenged by all sorts of lawyers. The game was up.

“And Wynn says it’s lucky we’re not making a fortune now because maybe, when you get right down to it, she really did think of the idea.” Clifford looked apoplectic, cheeks red and veins bulging. “Then,” he said, “two more of them pop up—his kids, they say. Like a circus car pouring out people!” He looked at both of us as if he expected sympathy.

I stopped stretching, stomped my foot, and stood up.

“Hey! What’re you doing?” Clifford asked.

“Foot’s asleep.” He shrugged, so I rocked on it, forward, backward, until he stopped paying attention once again, and I sidled toward the windowsill. I don’t know what I expected—perhaps a conveniently placed fire escape? But Neil’s side of the building faced an airshaft. There was nothing below but debris and cement. I wondered how many really unfixable parts broke on impact if you fell from the equivalent of the third story. Damn that double high first floor.

I sat on the edge of the windowsill, looking around. Shame on Neil not to have a broadax or cannon or rifle. What else was history all about?

But there was only the same tan squatty desk I had in my room; the same standard-issue four-drawer green file cabinet; several maps of the world; pictures of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy; and articles pro and con gun control. Unfortunate choice of bulletin boards at the moment, I thought. It was more pleasant to contemplate a nearby picture of a crusader and a knight in full regalia and a display, WHAT IS NEWS? comparing the front pages of The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and USA Today for the week of February 4. An insufficiently lethal room.

“He was cracking,” Clifford said. “Drinking more. I was afraid what he’d say to reporters. The signs were everywhere. I didn’t have much of a choice, did I? If you’d seen him the last time I did, you’d know how far gone he was.”

“It won’t work, Cliff,” I said. “You’re forgetting something.”

Neil looked heartened and interested. I wanted him also to look at our positions. We flanked Cliff, more or less, I behind and to his right, Neil in front and to his left. If we could coordinate a rush, if Neil would take the dare, we had a chance.

“Well?” Cliff said.

“Fay,” I replied. “She’s his widow now and entitled to half the business.”

Clifford shrugged.

“If you set up Neil as the murderer and kill him, how will you get rid of Fay? Because you want to, don’t you? Shouldn’t you save us—at least Neil, and certainly the gun—until after everybody else is gone?” I wasn’t sure what I was talking about, noise was all it was, although I aimed for a semblance of logic. Mostly, whenever Clifford looked away, I goggled my eyes and tried to put Neil on alert.

He was as peppy as disintegrating compost, sweating and scribbling his stupid confession. Whatever happened to old-fashioned heroes? Was it an absolute requisite of liberation to be forbidden irrationally brave maiden-rescuers when you truly needed them?

“Stop making goo-goo eyes at him,” Clifford said. “You should be ashamed. Him, with a pregnant wife and all. I knew you were in cahoots first time I saw you together. I knew why he was bringing you into the operation, why you came back the day after the fire, too. You two weren’t giving up. I saw him in your house, too.” He looked proud of his achievements. I could imagine him back in high school, the belligerent little foundling boy, unpopular, ungifted, and terrified he’d be that way forever. He was right, except that TLC had been his fairy godmother, his path out. Until Wynn began bleeding it, endangering him. Until Neil caught on and Fay bopped in to compound his problems.

It was always the same, except for a few details. Neil had been correct. It was all about self-defense. Somebody’s life was in danger—the fill-in-the-blank part was how life was defined. All the rest was justification.

“Nice gray car you have,” I said. “Did you follow me home from your office yesterday?”

“I didn’t have to. Your address was on the résumé you left.”

I looked up at the classroom clock. Somewhere in this very building—if he hadn’t already left—a man was being stood up by me. “I have a date!” I shouted, jumping off the windowsill. “And I keep my dates, unlike you!”

“What?” Cliff wheeled toward me, his back to Neil. I raised my hand, palm up—the universal teacher sign, I thought, to stand, but Neil blinked and trembled and gulped like a flounder.

“Only date you have is with me.” Cliff turned away. I gritted my teeth behind him, waved expansively this time for Neil to stand up, made two fists and brought them in together, suggesting, I hoped, Cliff’s unfortunate self in between us.

Neil looked like he might weep. I resigned myself to finding other options. Running across the room in front of Cliff or out the window were suicidal choices. That left attacking and hiding with no visible places to do either. One of the above, none of the above.

All of the above.

I relaxed my arms, shoved my hands into my skirt pockets, and touched something more solid than my hips.

We had reached a point where any idea was worth a try. Cliff was monitoring the suicide letter, which seemed so long, it must have begun with how failures in toilet training accounted for Neil’s murderous turn. Or maybe Cliff was planning to sell the note later, as a novel.

“Stick ’em up!” I screamed, pulling the gun out of my pocket and pointing it. I jumped sideways, meaning to imitate old Errol Flynn swashbuckler movies, but looking more like a nervous crab. Nonetheless, with a little additional scuttling, I was shielded by the file cabinet.

“A gun?” Neil whispered when he could speak.

“I always pack a…pack a…” I couldn’t remember whether it was really heater or not. “A woman can never be too safe. Her most precious possession and all that. Do they teach you to shoot straight in business school, Clifford?” I snarled from behind my bunker.

Oh, please, I silently begged Neil. You got me into this. He thinks I’m your partner. Act like one. Get me out of this. Do something. Anything. Bore him to death, but don’t leave me to clown myself to oblivion.

Clifford glanced at Neil, who began writing again. Then at me, then back. Every time he looked away, I screamed.

“Don’t get hysterical,” he said.

“Why the hell not?” I’d be any cliché I damn well pleased. Maybe I’d do Mae West next. It wasn’t his call.

Neil sat, quiet as algae.

“I’m gonna blow you to smithereens,” I shouted.

I’d missed all this, growing up as a girlchild without a toy gun. It was kind of fun, actually—as long as I pretended that Clifford’s gun also shot words, not bullets.

“It’s over, dumbo.” My throat hurt from screaming, but if shrill female sounds unnerved him, I’d scream until I stripped the entire system in my throat. “You’re losing everything. You were seen entering the house that night. There was a witness.”

Neil looked heartened by the news. I didn’t break his happy mood by adding that witness Patsy had seen only umbrellas.

The news galvanized Clifford, however. He advanced. “No reason to wait,” he said. I pulled my weapon closer. Another step, and then another; he approached me from the other side of the file cabinet and we both did a funny sideways shuffle in order to aim our guns. Clifford lifted his and cocked it. “Neil!” I screamed. “The door!” Clifford was near me, his back to Neil.

“What about it?” Neil asked.

Perhaps he only moved in epochs and dynasties.

Clifford’s gun, lovely ivory handle and silver chasing notwithstanding, made its way around the file cabinet until no matter how hard I contorted or pressed against the wall, the barrel aimed at one of my favorite parts. I could see Schmidt’s trigger finger pale at the edge as it exerted pressure. I had perhaps a second or two.

All right, I told myself. Go for it. If the mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed could pretend it had. “No!” I screamed. “Neil, don’t! Don’t! Oh, my God, my God, watch out!” Even I couldn’t imagine what Neil might have been doing to provoke me that way, given the preexisting situation. Neither could Clifford, whose finger didn’t change direction as quickly as the rest of him did. His shot boomed, blasted, deafened, but the bullet hit and fragmented the blackboard, then ricocheted through a windowpane and out, presumably into the rough stucco side of the next building.

“Yay!” I screamed. “Helga, do you hear that? Property damage! Property damage!”

“What?” Clifford looked more than a little confused, turning back from an even more bewildered Neil. “What?” he shouted again. “What?”

It’s too easy flustering a rigid jerk like Clifford Schmidt. Simply remove the laws of logic as he knows them. React when nothing’s happened. Laugh, like now, when nothing’s funny.

My giggling nearly started him foaming at the mouth. “Stop that!” he shouted. “I’m going to kill you.”

I did my best banshee imitation. “Not if I get you first!” I raised my trusty pistol and aimed it directly between his eyes. He ducked behind the file cabinet, as I had hoped he would, and I pushed with everything I had. Pushed once and forever and hard, wishing I had joined the gym as promised on New Year’s Day. Wishing I’d worked out, built my pecs, could push harder.

But I pushed hard enough. Cliff shouted, scrambled, but not in time. A great metal oblong tottered, drawers sliding first, a sharp edge gouging his jaw—years of history papers, curriculum materials, and, it appeared, old bologna sandwiches tumbling onto him along with a five foot column of metal.

“My legs!” he shouted. "God, my legs.” He was trapped, half under it, half out.

And now, now, Neil’s system activated. He stood up and took a step forward. “We’re going to live, aren’t we?” He sounded dazed.

And the classroom door opened and in came Mackenzie, sideways, whipping around the molding, arm straight out, holding a gun. What a week for weaponry. “Drop it,” he said.

“I already did. On him.” I held up my gun, pulled the trigger, and said “Bang, bang” as a cap exploded. Schmidt groaned even more.

“Oh, my!” Helga squeaked from the doorway. “The blackboard!”

“It was all Mandy,” Neil said. I thought he was turning me in for destruction of property, but he was praising me. “She teased him and distracted him and got him to fire into the air. You planned that, didn’t you?”

I nodded. It’s lovely having somebody else brag about you now and then, while you remain becomingly modest, doing an “aw shucks.” I forgave Neil a whole lot of wimpiness for this gesture.

“Get me out,” Clifford said. “My legs are crushed.”

“Talk about a restraining device,” Mackenzie murmured.

“Idle hands are the devil’s work.” I put his laser-printer page on the floor, clean side up. “Should I dictate?” I asked. “Or can you remember everything—all the way back to the crooked business, the fire, the murder, the attempted murder of yours truly.” I looked at Mackenzie. “Meet Mr. Random Violence,” I said. And to Clifford, I added, “And tonight. Tonight was really annoying. And why. And whatever else I left out.”

Helga examined the broken window and the toppled and messy file cabinet with great anguish.

“I’ll call an ambulance.” Neil was suddenly a take-charge kind of guy. “I’ll call a glazier. I’ll call Angela.” And he was gone.

Mackenzie read Clifford his rights. Clifford’s clamped mouth emphasized his right to remain silent, but his hand was willing to communicate, moving the felt pen over the page. I walked away with Mackenzie—out into the hallway where the air was less charged and didn’t smell of gunpowder.

“Was this in the book your mother sent you?” Mackenzie asked. “Catch a killer, get a date?”

I didn’t get to answer. “ Yo!” I heard from below. I looked over the railing, the way Neil had a short while ago. Or had it been hours? I couldn’t tell.

“We met your friend,” Rita said. “He’s looking for you.” She put up a thumb. Mackenzie could live, I suppose.” Alllll riiight!” she shouted up.

Colleen, next to her, nodded agreement. Of course.

“The kids have taste,” Mackenzie said.

“It isn’t Clifford, is it?” I asked softly.

“What isn’t?”

“Your name.”

He looked pained.

“Okay, then, one more try.” Might as well take advantage of his tolerant and benign mood. “C.K., do you sometimes put on a red cape and become S?”

“Do I seem mild-mannered? Or the kind to strip in a phone booth?”

“I guess I knew that. Superman would have arrived way earlier.”

“What I am is hungry,” he said.

What I was was exhausted. Maybe hunger was in there, too, but I’d get to it after all my systems—muscular, skeletal, and nervous—returned to normal. “This week has been the most—”

“—boring five days of my life,” Mackenzie said. “Might have to give up on Southern hospitality. But the night is young, this is a big city, and anything’s possible. How about a little excitement?”

“Of all the unobservant, unempathetic ideas you have ever… !” The words that followed did not reflect well on my education or profession, but I think they made my stance on redundant excitement pretty clear.

“Good,” he said.

“Good?”

“I just wanted to offer options. I hoped you’d choose the two pizzas I have in the car, plus the bottle of fine red wine and a tape—Joan Crawford at her worst. That’s what I call really exciting.”

Halfway to the car, he stopped and said, “And I’m sorry for not listenin’ to you better. For too many knee-jerk reactions. I was way wrong.”

So when all was said and done, even the things said and done this particular week, it was evident that there were still a few good men around.

Now that’s what I call really exciting.