Red, White & Dead. Laura Caldwell
few weeks, whenever I was really missing him, and I read it again, marveling at the words he had written, the words that made it seem as if he had somehow sensed his approaching death, although no one could ever have predicted a helicopter crash.
After a few years, I put the card away. It was too sharp, caused too many knife slits in the still delicate skin of my psyche. But now, I looked at the card and examined it from more of an emotional distance. Had he told anyone about this sense of foreboding? Or did he carry it around by himself, thinking it too morbid, maybe embarrassed to be having such thoughts. He wasn’t sick. So why that wording, as if he were reassuring himself that I would be okay without him when he was gone?
I thought back to my phone call with the owner of the airport, and then I thought about my dad’s profession as a psychologist and a profiler. The pilot thing was something I understood he did on the side, a hobby. But then why the government instructor? Was he working for the federal government? Did that mean the crash had something to do with his job? Maybe he’d been working on a case when he died; maybe it had to do with a helicopter? And … and … then what? It all seemed so vague.
I flipped through some of the other cards and letters I’d taken out of the box and found those from my aunt Elena, my father’s only sibling. Most were postmarked from Rome. They all bore her small, pristine handwriting. In the left corners, she’d written her married name, Elena Traviata.
When I was younger, she had sent me a card every year for my birthday, beautiful cards with Italian words that she would translate in her tiny penmanship, as if she hoped that from afar she could teach me Italian, that I could share her passion for the country and the language.
There were other cards from her, too—some for graduations and other big life events. The last one I’d received was for my law school graduation. It was hard to believe we hadn’t shared any contact since then, but the years had slipped away, and I hadn’t been good about keeping up my end of things, either.
I stood from the floor, groaning a little at the stiffness in my legs. Holding one of her cards, I moved to my desk and switched on the small light against the encroaching darkness outside. I looked for my date planner. Most of my friends, and nearly all the lawyers I knew, kept their calendars on their BlackBerrys or computers, but I liked the old-fashioned hard copy, liked seeing my days laid out in front of me. Those pages used to be chock-full of meetings, depositions and conference calls. Now there were only a few tragically mundane things. Take Vespa to get headlight changed. Buy tampons. Teeth cleaning.
I found the date book—thin with a maroon cover embossed in gold—which my former client, Forester Pickett, had given me before he died. I kept some contacts written in the back. Flipping there, I found Aunt Elena’s phone number in Rome. Hoping it was still the same, I began to dial, but then I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. Which meant it was three-thirty in the morning Rome time.
I hung up the phone and sat back, disappointed.
My cell phone rang. Mayburn.
“Meet me for a beer?” he asked.
I looked at my office floor, strewn with cards. “Don’t think so, but thanks.”
“C’mon. Just one. I just need to get out. I’ll come to your hood. Meet me at Marge’s. Half an hour. One beer. Please.”
I’d never heard him say please. He must be in a bad way. “All right. Just one.”
Twenty minutes later, I walked down Sedgwick to Marge’s, a bar that had been in the hood for years and years, but had undergone a recent renovation. Inside, it was clean, the tin ceiling sparkling. Being a lover of dive bars, I missed the atmosphere it used to have.
Mayburn was sitting at the bar. He turned when I came in and gave me a little wave.
Mayburn was in his early forties, although he looked younger and acted older. He was cynical and sarcastic in that way people are when they’re using such traits as a shield. The only person I’d seen penetrate that defense of his was Lucy DeSanto, and now that she was back with her husband, Michael, it was as if Mayburn’s shield had been ripped away, leaving him a little colorless, a little flat.
“Hey,” he said, when I reached him. “Thanks for coming.” His sandy-brown hair, which was usually styled well, was slightly messy. During the week he wore suits and jackets, but on nights and weekends he wore cooler clothes—great jeans, beat-up brown boots, stuff like that. At Marge’s now, he wore old jeans and a black T-shirt that had a skull and crossbones on it.
I pointed at his shirt. “Feeling chipper today?”
“Yeah. Really fucking chipper.”
I sat and ordered a Blue Moon beer with an orange. It was what Sam used to drink, and recently—maybe I was missing Sam—I’d adopted Blue Moon as my beer of choice.
Mayburn turned toward me on his stool. “So. Any other problems?”
He meant the debacle at Gibsons, about being chased. “No.”
“No one lingering around you? No cars tailing you?”
“I don’t think so. I walked around all day and—”
“You walked around all day?” His face was irritated. “Jesus, Izzy, I told you—”
“You told me to keep it low-key, keep a low profile, whatever. But how am I supposed to do that? I’m looking for a job.” I thought of my day, which had consisted of lunch, sitting by a pond and drinking with my family. “Sort of. I mean, I can’t hang out in my condo all day, just because you got me into trouble last night.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. But you have to be careful.”
“I am. I kept my eyes open. Believe me, I don’t want those guys finding me any more than you do.”
“But you’re hoping someone will find you,” Mayburn said. “You’re hoping your dad will step out of the shadows and introduce himself.”
I hated that I was so transparent, but the tone of Mayburn’s words was kind.
I took a sip of my beer. “I guess you can understand wanting someone to come back to you,” I said softly.
A pause, a pained one. Mayburn turned back to his own beer. “I do understand. But, hey, let’s not lose sight of the fact that my someone is alive.”
I said nothing.
“Izzy, don’t get your hopes up here.”
“Hopes? I have no hopes. Hell, if anything, I hope I’m wrong. Because if he’s really alive, what does that mean? What would that say about him?”
He certainly wouldn’t be the man I knew, the father I thought I’d had. And somehow that would be worse than having him dead for all those years.
“Did you talk to Lucy today?” I asked, changing the subject.
He groaned a little. “Yeah. She isn’t real pleased with me. Michael came home last night, yelling about the friend she brought into the house, the one who sent him away to prison. She knows I sent you to investigate them.”
“Does Michael know that you and Lucy had a relationship while he was in jail?”
“She told him she dated someone when he was inside, but she wouldn’t tell him who. She wants me to back off now. She wants to give her marriage a shot.”
“Even if Michael still seems pretty tight with Dez Romano?”
“He tells her he’s not. Says he just went to see Dez to clean up some stuff, to tell him he’s out for good. I don’t believe that, but she does. Or at least she wants to.”
I patted his hand, and surprisingly he let me. “You have to let her do whatever she thinks is best for herself and her family. If you don’t, you could lose her.”
“She could get trapped again. She could get trapped with this guy forever.”
“It’s