“He thought I was wasting my time too,” I said. “He thought I should have been a dental hygienist.”
Novotny laughed. “Good as they come, Frank was,” he said, although the anecdote I had just shared was not one of my father’s finer moments. Most of my anecdotes weren’t. “They got the guy, right? The guy who shot him?”
“Dead at the scene,” I said.
Novotny nodded. “Good, good. That has to be a relief.”
I nodded, though it wasn’t, not really. I didn’t like to think about it: the twenty-year-old kid my father had pursued across a housing-project playground, the kid who turned and fired three times before Frank could even unholster his gun. My father’s partner shot back, taking the kid down with a bullet to the chest. But it was too late. That bullet wasn’t a time machine. Nothing about any of it was a relief. “Thanks for the drink,” I said, giving him one of my cards. “Drinks.”
“Any time, doll. I hope you have more luck with Brad than I ever did.”
“Ten bucks I do,” I said.
We shook on it.
*
My father always had a drink in his hand. It was part of him, like his broad shoulders or his temper or his antifreeze-blue eyes. It was the catalyst to every good time and every bad time he ever had. It was a magnifying glass he put himself under, revealing the truth of him. It was the only thing we had in common, the only thing we ever agreed on.
The last time I saw him was three weeks before he died. We had dinner once a month, my brothers, my parents, and me. I don’t remember what we ate or what we talked about. Probably nothing of consequence, because despite the monthly get-togethers, we weren’t really close. I only remember the last thing my father said to me, grabbing my arm as I walked past his chair on my way out.
“You turned out okay,” he said as he gripped my arm. It didn’t sound affectionate. It sounded like an accusation. Frank had been a cop for thirty-eight years. Everything he said sounded like an accusation. “More like me. I was afraid you were going to turn out like your mother.”
Andrew and Matt, wisely, had already left. My mother was sitting on the couch. She didn’t look up from her magazine. “Let go,” I said.
“She’s nice, that’s what people would say about her, she’s nice. But you,” he said. He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot and whiskey-wild. He was still touching my arm. His other hand held a cut-crystal tumbler, empty except for an ice cube that barely had a chance to start melting. “You know, maybe you could stand to be a little nicer, actually. You’re a girl. You have to be nice. But not too fucking nice. That’s what you have to do. Be nice but not too fucking nice.”
I jerked my arm away from him. “Good night, Mom,” I said.
“Drive careful,” my mother said, ignoring the tension as usual.
I left without saying anything else and drove home too fast and called Andrew to tell him about it.
“You’re always so surprised, when he does something shitty,” he said. “But, Roxane, he’s Dad. He’s always going to do something shitty. That’s all.”
“Yeah,” I said. But I’d had a weird feeling that there was more to it somehow.
THREE
Be nice but not too fucking nice. I replayed that final conversation as I drove to see Kenny Brayfield. This was as close to fatherly wisdom as I was ever going to get. There were too many bad feelings between us, about my work, about his affairs, about the types of men and women I brought home. There wasn’t any peace. Neither of us ever apologized, and we wouldn’t have been interested in forgiving each other anyhow, not all the way, not then. But I thought that I didn’t have to decide about my father yet, that given enough time, the past would start to drop off the permanent record like a bad debt or a speeding ticket. I just wanted to wait. I thought there was time. But there wasn’t, and the part that bothered me most was how my father said I was like him, and how he was right.
I mentally tabled the matter as I parked my car. Next Level Promotions was in a square brick office building in the Brewery District on the south end of downtown. It was one of those cheaply modern spaces with glass walls, exposed ductwork, and fake Herman Miller furniture. Five young, beautiful employees were sprawled on a plush white area rug, folding T-shirts that bore the logo of a new vodka brand. A Radiohead song was blaring from a pair of iPhone speakers. I approved of the music choice, at least. One of the women looked up at me, twisting her red-lipsticked mouth. I guessed I didn’t resemble a potential client enough to merit a warm reception. “Can I … help you?” she said.
“Here to see Kenny Brayfield,” I told her, raising my voice over the bass line. I pulled out a card from the pocket of my leather jacket and handed it to her. “He knows I’m coming.”
“Let me see about that.” She took my card and stood up, stepping back into her patent-leather heels. I noticed then that the other four employees on the white rug had taken off their shoes as well.
“Am I allowed to walk on this or should I go around?” I said to the others as she clacked down the polished concrete hallway.
No one said anything. A beat later, the one-person welcome committee returned and pointed in the direction she had come from. “You can go back.” She sounded disappointed that she didn’t get to throw me out.
I didn’t bother to thank her as I stepped over the edge of the rug. I went around the corner, passing three empty offices and a small kitchen with a table stacked high with cases of vodka. At the end of the hallway, I found Kenny in a large office behind a conspicuously clean desk. He was skinny, dressed in a hoodie and dirty Chuck Taylors. His medium-brown hair was buzzed on the sides and slightly longer on top, and a diamond stud glittered from one earlobe. He looked like the type to get pegged by mall security as a shoplifting risk. But he owned this whole enterprise, so who was I to judge? When he saw me, he stood up and gave me a big smile.
“So you’re the detective.” He shook my hand with an overly firm grip. “Wow. I mean, wow. How crazy is that?”
“It’s pretty crazy,” I said as I sat down. There was a big window behind his desk, through which I could see the brownish-green Scioto River and the skyline of downtown Columbus beyond.
“Can I offer you a drink?” He sat and reached for a vodka bottle with the same label as the shirts. It was that kind with gold flakes floating in it like fish food. “They’re a client, in case you wondered.”
I shook my head. “Ingesting precious metals isn’t really my thing,” I said, and he laughed. “So, Sarah Cook.”
“Sarah Cook.” He leaned back in his chair and balanced there.
“Did you get a good look?” I said.
He took longer than he needed to answer. “Yeah, I got a good look.”
“And?”
“And.” He paused again. I had been about to take my notebook from my pocket, but I stopped to stare at him until he finally spoke. “I don’t want to mess with whatever Danielle’s up to here.”
That struck me as a strange thing to say. “Was it Sarah or not?”