The Highly Effective Detective Plays the Fool Page 3

  “No,” I said. “Human.”

  SCENE FOUR

  The Whittle Building

  The Next Day

  Springtime in Knoxville stinks, at least if you’re within ten feet of a blooming Bradford pear tree. The delicate white blossoms, thousands per tree, floated against the backdrop of dark boughs and bright green leaves in a kind of mockery of winter, emitting a stench on a stomach-churning scale somewhere between BO and rotting flesh. I had a theory that the evolutionary purpose was to drive away predatory insects. The smell didn’t seem to bother the bees; they danced from bloom to bloom in a highly coordinated waltz, never so much as brushing another’s wing tip. Humans are often clumsy, but nature on its surface never seems to be. Of course, that was nineteenth-century thinking, which put me a good two hundred years behind the times, but I was a romantic at heart. The alternative was just so damned depressing.

  Felicia and I ducked our heads beneath the noxious blooms that hung above the sidewalk on Main Street. Later in the month, the walkway would be slick with fallen, rotting petals. We were on our way to lunch at the cafeteria in the federal building on the corner of Main and Gay Street, where on Tuesdays the special was roast beef and gravy.

  I held my breath until we cleared the canopy, and the sunlight felt like a warm hand on the back of my neck.

  “I’m not sure you’re being entirely honest with yourself, Ruzak,” Felicia said. She leaned slightly toward me as she talked, which put the top of her head about three inches from my nose. I smelled peaches.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Maybe you didn’t call Tom Bates to show him truth’s door. Maybe you called him to avoid having to catch him in the act.”

  “Meaning I’m not as noble as I think I am?”

  “Meaning you’re not so different from everyone else.”

  “Lazy?”

  “Expert rationalizer.”

  “Maybe I’m just a romantic.”

  “You considered that a likely outcome? He comes home, confesses everything, then falls to his knees and begs for forgiveness?”

  “He’s got a lot to lose.”

  “And you call yourself a romantic.”

  I put a hand on her elbow as we jaywalked across Main. The entrance to the complex was in the middle of the block.

  “It’s not a quality you usually find in a gumshoe,” I admitted. “Though it always held this medieval kind of appeal for me. You know, the knight in shining armor, the chivalric code and all that.”

  “Well, Sir Theodore,” she said, “I guess I know who’s buying lunch.”

  “I always buy lunch,” I said.

  She pulled from my grasp when we reached the opposite sidewalk.

  The Howard Baker Jr. Federal Building hadn’t always been a federal building. It had been built by a man named Whittle, who named it after himself, the Whittle Building. Old-timers still called it that. Whittle had gone broke and sold it to the government, which of course was broke, too, but that didn’t matter; it was the government.

  We carried our trays out of the crowded cafeteria to dine al fresco in the center courtyard, were small metal tables were placed strategically in the shade on the north side of the building, far from the pungent pear trees that grew in the middle. Felicia drizzled a quarter-size dab of balsamic vinaigrette onto her salad. Felicia always took her dressing on the side. She spread its webby looking tendrils across the shards of Boston lettuce with the tines of her plastic fork.

  “So maybe I was a little uncomfortable with the role,” I said. “You know, the instrument of another man’s destruction.”

  “Ruzak, that instrument is located inside Tom Bates’s pants.”

  “And I had no idea until last night that the goal even was destruction.”

  “What the hell did you think it was?”

  I shrugged. Was I just a naïve, immature human being, deficient in those life experiences that make us cynical and world-weary? Or was it a congenital defect, a flaw in my character that doomed me to a lifetime of ingenuousness? And which would be worse?

  “I should drop this case,” I said. “Should I drop this case? Say I get the proof and she uses it to destroy him professionally and personally. What does that make me?”

  “How many executives of Smith & Wesson go on trial for murder, Ruzak?”

  “Maybe that’s the wrong analogy. Maybe it’s more like the tobacco companies. Anyway, like I said before, I like the knight-in-shining-armor metaphor better than the hired gun one.”

  “Well then, you should drop it.”

  “Should I?”

  “People with a lot to lose do desperate things, Teddy. And now he knows, thanks to you, that she suspects something and that there’s some stranger out there asking questions. What if he catches you attempting to catch him?”

  It struck me she was worried about me.

  “Careful is my middle name,” I said.

  She smiled, and the center of her nose crinkled.

  “What is your middle name? I never knew.”

  “Alan.”

  “Theodore Alan Ruzak. T.A.R.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  At the table next to us, an elderly man was sitting with a woman at least half his age. Probably one of the judges with his clerk or secretary. He was handsome in a distinguished kind of way; she was mousy, with a pinched face; and I was irrationally proud: My secretary was prettier than his secretary.

  “Still, if you decide to keep on it, take your gun,” Felicia advised. “You never know.”

  “He’s an egghead,” I said. “Ostrich-sized. A mathematics professor at UT.”

  “Lemme guess. The other woman is a student.”

  I nodded. “That’s what Katrina suspects. One of his.”

  “Naughty.”

  “You would think somebody that smart would have a little more self-control.”

  “Love makes us stupid, Ruzak.”

  “Well,” I said. “There goes that excuse. I don’t know why, but after she chewed me out last night, she asked me out for drinks.”

  “She hit on you?”

  “It was weird.”

  “Maybe not. She’s what, pushing forty-five? Plus, her husband’s screwing around with a twenty-something coed.”

  “She didn’t strike me as insecure.”

  “Okay. Maybe she just found you incredibly hot.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s okay.”

  “Seriously, though, you find her attractive.”

  I stirred my pile of green beans. The cafeteria cooked them with bacon. Roast beef, gravy, white bread, and bacon. What was I doing to myself? My adoration of fat and carbs overrode my basic survival instinct. Love makes us stupid.

  “For some reason, ever since she hired me, I’ve been thinking about my old girlfriend Tiffany. Did I ever tell you about her?”

  “She dumped you for a guy named Bill.”

  “Bill Hill,” I said. “He was a salesman, like my dad. Do you think I remember his name because it rhymes or because he was a salesman like my dad?”

  “Why are you changing the subject, Ruzak? You find Katrina Bates attractive. It’s okay to say yes, you know.”

  “I’m a professional, Felicia,” I said. “And the first rule is never get personally involved with your clients.”

  “You wanna know how I met Bob?” Bob was Felicia’s boyfriend. “My old boss at the diner made all of us take a CPR class, in case a customer had a coronary trying to eat the slop he passed off as food. Bob taught the class. I took one look at him giving that dummy mouth-to-mouth, and that was it for me.”

  “Well, your old boss was technically the client in that scenario,” I said. The image of Felicia’s boyfriend sucking on the face of a blow-up doll disturbed me in a way that it obviously hadn’t Felicia.

  “You always miss the point, Ruzak. She won’t always be your client.”

  “Why are you pushing Katrina Bates on me?”

  “I worry about you.”

&
nbsp; “Why?”

  “Because being alone is no damn good.”

  “I have Archie.” Though maybe not for long. I told her about Whittaker and the thirty-day letter.

  “Looks like you’re moving.”

  “That’s one option.”

  “You’re thinking of getting rid of him?”

  “We can’t seem to bond. You know, I’ve had that dog for what, five months now, and there’s absolutely no sense of connection. He avoids me. I open his crate and he drags himself out with this look like ‘Oh, there he is again,’ like maybe he was hoping somebody different would show up. So I’ve been buying him all these treats, chewies and bones and dried pigs’ ears, coming home every night like a rejected suitor with another gift, another bauble to induce his affection, and nothing works. He finds the spot farthest away from me, drops the goody between his paws, doesn’t touch it, just stares at me, while I’m slowly going broke trying to buy his love. It’s psychologically devastating, Felicia. Dogs don’t normally behave this way, or they wouldn’t be dogs. Dogs are easy. Dogs are whores when it comes to affection. You know it’s bad when you can’t even buy a dog’s love.”

  “You could be looking at it from the wrong angle,” she said.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “It could be the dog and not you. Maybe that’s why he ended up in the pound in the first place.”

  “I’d rather find a good home for him before doing that.”

  “I told you, Ruzak,” she said, knowing exactly where this was leading. “Bob’s allergic.”

  “I guess I could put an ad in the paper.”

  “This dog is the least of your worries,” she said.

  “Or find someone like that guy on TV who speaks their language. You know they have animal shrinks now? Maybe Archie is bipolar or depressed or suffering from post-traumatic stress. Maybe it’s not a pig’s ear he needs, but a pill. I took him to the vet, you know, to rule out any physical cause, and he checked out fine. She suggested I spend more time with him, take him to the office with me, outings at the doggy park, long car rides through the countryside, maybe a picnic by a mountain stream.”

  “She wants you to date your dog?”

  “Maybe I should borrow someone else’s dog and take it home. Love it up all night to make him jealous.”

  “This conversation is getting very weird,” Felicia said. “You’re going to stage a one-night stand with another dog to make your dog jealous?”

  “But that wouldn’t solve my Whittaker problem.”

  “No, that would be a reflection of something much more disturbing.”

  “Ruzak’s so unlovable, even a dog won’t have him?”

  “It might not be entirely altruistic,” she said, tiptoeing.

  “Because even love has an agenda?”

  “Especially love,” she said.

  SCENE FIVE

  Knoxville Riverwalk

  Ten Days Later

  We bought Italian ices from a Hispanic vendor—lemon for me, cherry for her—and strolled along the promenade, between the steep hill cutting off the view of downtown and the murky waters of the Tennessee River, above us the sky cloudless and brilliant blue after an early-morning spring shower that had polished the new leaves to that particularly aggressive tone of bright green and left the dirt that was yet untouched by concrete, our busy human touch, as moist and pliant as a young girl’s skin. “What’s your dog’s name?” asked Katrina Bates, watching Archie strain at the leash. Despite hours of practice and having all the proper techniques fully memorized, I still hadn’t been able to get this dog to heel. A thirty-minute walk always made me feel like the victim of some kind of medieval torture.

  “Archie.”

  “He doesn’t look like an Archie to me.”

  “I didn’t name him.”

  “You could rename him.”

  “I would, but he’s got enough problems.”

  I pulled him off the hill and edged closer to the water. He froze; a mother duck and her brood paddling in the slight chop a dozen yards out had caught his eye. I took advantage of the break and shoveled a couple of spoonfuls of flavored ice into my mouth.

  “I never come down here,” she said. “It’s nice.”

  “That’s Baptist Hospital over there,” I said, pointing to the bluff across the river, upon which the hospital brooded. “Where my mother died.”

  “Recently?”

  “It’s all relative,” I replied.

  “You were close to your mom.”

  “I take her fresh flowers every week. Stand there and talk to her headstone.”

  “It must make you feel better.”

  “And worse. I mean, wouldn’t it have meant more if I’d taken her flowers every week when she was alive? I didn’t. It isn’t for the dead, all this ritual; it’s for us.”

  “Isn’t everything?”

  We sat on a bench to finish our treats. Once he’d thoroughly vetted the area with his busy nose, Archie planted himself beside Katrina and laid his head on her thigh. I pulled on his leash. She said it was okay, that she didn’t mind, and scratched him gently just above his eyes, which were turned soulfully upon her face.

  “What a sweet dog,” she said.

  “You bet,” I said, albeit with a sour taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t from the lemon.

  “They say dogs take on the personalities of their owners,” she said.

  “Well, he’s always been kind of aloof … at least with me.”

  “Is that what you meant by ‘problems’?”

  “Right. The problem could be from my end.”

  “I’ve heard dogs prefer one gender over another. Some dogs like women; some like men.”

  “Well, he likes you.”

  “Tom’s dog hates me. He urinates on my clothes.”

  “Could be a territorial response.”

  “It usually is when it comes to males.”

  “I meant not personal.”

  “I know what you meant,” she said, with a slight emphasis on the word you. She looked up from Archie to me. Or I assumed she was looking at me. Her face was turned toward me, but her eyes were hidden behind oversized Chanel sunglasses.

  “What have you found out?” she asked.

  “I still don’t have any proof, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Then why did you want to see me?”

  “I’ve been following her for almost two weeks now. Apartment to class to work to bar to gym to a concert in Market Square, then back to the apartment, and not a single Tom sighting. Not one.”

  “You’ve been following … who?”

  “Kinsey Brock. The girl. Woman. The other woman. She is the one, right?”

  “Right. But why were you following her?”

  “To catch her with Tom.”

  “No, why were you following her? Why weren’t you following Tom?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t follow Tom.”

  “Why wouldn’t you follow Tom?”

  “Because Tom knows me. Or knows about me.”

  “How could he possibly know that?”

  “I called him,” I reminded her.

  “So?”

  “So he knows you’re onto him and knows you’ve told somebody and he’s going to be hypervigilant.”

  “Funny, that’s what I thought I hired you to be.”

  “Plus, I didn’t think either one of them would ever suspect I’d follow her.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t. Isn’t it possible that your call would make both of them hypervigilant? And the fact that you didn’t catch them together might be proof of that and not the other?”

  “Proof of what?”

  “Of their hypervigilance.”

  “I’m just in the data-gathering phase of the investigation,” I said. “Research, then analysis.” That sounded condescending, so to soften it, I added, “It’ll be okay,” which sounded even more condescending, so I added, “You gotta have faith.”

  “Faith in
what? In men?”

  “In the future. That everything will turn out okay. Like the world’s running out of gas, but gas was never good for the world to begin with. Plus, we’re pretty smart, as species go, a lot smarter than the dinosaurs were, and maybe if an asteroid doesn’t hit us, we’ll figure our way out of this mess.”

  “Gas … dinosaurs? I’m confused, Mr. Ruzak.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “It’s a little overwhelming when you think about it. But you can’t be afraid of change.”

  “What’s any of that have to do with my husband dipping his wick in a coed?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “Probably nothing at all. I have this tendency to go off on philosophical tangents.” I was somewhat taken aback. Katrina Bates was an upper-class, well-educated woman, a graduate of Dartmouth, she told me, and here she was saying something like “dipping his wick.”

  “It doesn’t strike me as being limited to philosophy,” she said.

  “Here’s my point—”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Maybe I haven’t proved they aren’t, but it raises a legitimate question about the major premise that they are. Are you sure he’s dip—uh, seeing her? Maybe I’m following the wrong person.”

  “It’s her,” she said firmly.

  “How do you know?”

  “How I know is my business, Mr. Ruzak.”

  “Mine, too,” I said, meaning it wasn’t entirely my fault I might have spent ten days following the wrong person. “You did hire me, Mrs. Bates.”

  “Katrina,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “Katrina. And I don’t pretend to know much about torrid affairs, seeing I’ve never actually been involved in one, but isn’t the inability to keep your hands off each other one of their chief characteristics?”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Mr. Ruzak.”

  I sighed. So many arguments begin with that. “Teddy,” I said, acquiescing.

  “Yes. Teddy. The issue is that since I hired you, you’ve alerted the target his secret is no longer secret and wasted your time spying on the wrong person, neither of which accomplished the thing I’m paying you to do. It’s enough to make me question my decision to hire you.”

  “Well, say I have this mysterious rattle in my car. I take it to the mechanic and he charges me five hundred bucks to fix it. Then after a few dozen miles, the rattle comes back. Do I take it back to the same shop? Give him a second chance or demand my money back? Or do I find another mechanic with a more thorough knowledge of the whys and wherefores of car rattles?”