TWENTY-SIX

I STOPPED AT A hardware store for a can of putty and a pane of glass cut to fit my front window, the one the bullet had gone crashing through. Across the street from the store was a park with four softball diamonds, all of them idle. My friends and I used to play softball. We were pretty good, too; won a few tournaments, won a few league championships. Most of us had known each other since we were five years old and playing T-ball at Linwood Park. The game kept us together for nearly thirty years and while we played there was always time for dinners and parties and just hanging out; always time to have a few beers and talk it over. But families and jobs and the responsibilities of age eventually took their toll and one day there simply weren’t enough of us left to field a team. Soon after that there wasn’t enough time for anything. Now we get together once a year, at Christmas. I drove home depressed.

I stood on the aluminum ladder outside my front window, fumbling helplessly with the glass, trying mightily—and unsuccessfully—to seal it securely in the frame without smudging it with putty. As I worked I reflected on the identity of the person responsible for the shattered window and realized that if anyone wanted to shoot me in the back, now would be a good time.

“Hi, Taylor,” a voice called.

I dropped the glass and putty knife and dived into the hedge that ran under the front windows.

“Did you fall?” the voice asked, concerned. It belonged to twelve-year-old Tammy Mandt.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again,” I yelled at her.

“Do what?” she yelled back. Tammy was tough; she didn’t like to be pushed around. Yet she also was insecure; she looked down, away and over my head, but never directly at me.

I gave her a hug. “I’m sorry. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and hugged back.

“No, I’m sorry,” I insisted.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

By the seventh “sorry” she was laughing.

“May I take Ogilvy for a walk?” she asked.

“Help yourself. His harness is on …” She didn’t wait for my directions but scampered into my house. I went back to the window. The job took twenty minutes more—constantly looking over my shoulder slowed me down—and when I was finished I wondered why I had even bothered; the glass was so badly smudged you could barely see through it. Still, it kept out the rain and cold. I stood under it, admiring my handiwork, as Cynthia Grey drove up. She was wearing a high-neck blouse with a lace-trimmed collar under my sweatshirt; a pretty woman dressed in lace can sell me anything she wants. I walked toward her and she walked toward me, but before we met, Tammy came out of the house calling my name.

“Taylor, I’m going to take … Oh, hi,” she said to Cynthia.

“Hi,” Cynthia replied.

“I’m taking Ogilvy for a walk in the park now,” Tammy informed us.

“Really? You can take rabbits for walks?” Cynthia asked with incredulity.

“Well, yeah,” Tammy answered, apparently wondering why adults were so dense. She set Ogilvy on the grass and attached a fifteen-foot-long red leash to his harness. Cynthia knelt next to the rabbit and scratched his nose. Tammy regarded her suspiciously for a moment and then asked, “Are you Taylor’s new girlfriend?” Kids say the darnedest things.

Cynthia blushed. She glanced at me and then back to the young girl. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay,” Tammy said. “C’mon, Ogilvy,” she told the rabbit and gave his leash a tug. Ogilvy bounded off toward the street, Tammy hanging onto the red ribbon. They didn’t get far. Kids have a radar for this sort of thing and before Tammy and Ogilvy had made it to the boulevard, a half-dozen urchins appeared out of thin air and crowded around, petting the rabbit, asking questions, allowing as to how they always wanted a rabbit, too, and conspiring to get one from their parents.

Cynthia watched with intense interest. She was smiling broadly when she came to me and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tight.

We played miniature golf and Cynthia beat me three games straight, but the sun was in my eyes and my head still hurt and besides, I let her win. We roamed the shops on Grand Avenue and she bought me a bookmark that said: BE ALERT; THE WORLD NEEDS ALL THE LERTS IT CAN GET. I bought her a double-scoop French-vanilla ice cream cone. She bought me a sixteen-ounce T-bone at a pretty good steakhouse on West Seventh Street. I paid for the drinks at a jazz joint near Como Park where they know me; the woman fronting the house quartet dedicated a song to us from the stage, Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”

It was past one when we pulled into my driveway. I invited Cynthia inside. She declined, saying she had to get up early. So, we necked in the front seat for about fifteen minutes. I invited her inside again, she wavered, but finally pushed me out of the car and drove off. Damn. Maybe I should have hired someone to shoot at us.

The digital display of my AM/FM clock radio with snooze alarm read 5:11 when the sound of my ringing telephone woke me from a Technicolor dream in which Cynthia and I were … Well, never mind that. The phone rang. It was Detective Martin McGaney.

“Meet me,” he said.