Nocturnes

Some clown in a bad suit waved at me from the street, and I gave him a noncommittal nod in return. It took me about three minutes to recall him as the real estate salesman who had once tried to convince Rachel and me that our lives would be improved by living in his sinkhole new development out Saco way. Since then, he had experienced some misfortune in his life. He had been screwing his secretary on the side, and when his wife found out she screwed him. His business went to the wall and he was threatened with jail when it emerged that he had been frugal with the information he had provided to the IRS. Both his wife and his secretary gave evidence against him, which says a lot about the kind of person that he was. A couple of the Saco houses had also subsided when a passing child sneezed too loudly, and all kinds of legal storms were now brewing on that front as well. But there he was, a shopping bag from Country Noel in one hand, waving to a man he barely knew but had once tried to rip off with a bad property deal.

Really, you had to love Exchange Street.

My client was now twenty minutes late and counting, but it still didn’t matter. There was life around me; life, and the promise of new life to come. Most of those on the streets were locals, reclaiming the Old Port from the tourists now that summer was gone and the leaf watchers had departed. I could see a group of skater kids dressed in hooded sweats and oversized jeans trying to pretend that the encroaching cold wasn’t bothering them. I guessed that about half of them would be receiving antibiotics and TLC from their moms before the week was out, but they wouldn’t share that fact with their buddies.

I had dropped some cash over at Bull Moose earlier, and now flicked idly through my purchases. Some of them would probably be okay with Rachel, I guessed: the Notwist, and maybe Thee More Shallows. I wasn’t too sure how she would feel about And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, but I’d heard some of their stuff on one of the more vibrant local radio stations and liked it a lot. It was also a cool name for a band, which counted for something. I figured that if I could find a T-shirt with the band’s name on it, I might be allowed to hang out with the slacker kids for a while, at least until the cops came by and decided to haul me in for my own safety.

My client arrived at 6.25 P.M. I knew him by his clothing. He had told me to expect a man in a gray suit with a gray-black tie, a black overcoat protecting him from the cold, and that was what I got. He looked younger than I expected, although I guessed that he was probably close to seventy by now. I decided not to share my Trail of Dead CD with him. I thought it might be pushing things a little on our first meeting. I raised a hand to let him know who I was, and he threaded his way through the computer stations to take a seat with me at the window, casting some suspicious glances at some of the, well, more “sheltered” patrons.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They won’t hurt you.”

He looked a little uncertain, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. “Frank Matheson,” he said, stretching out his hand. It was a big hand, scarred in places. A huge callus stretched across his palm from the base of his thumb. I could feel it as I shook his hand. Matheson owned a machine tool company over in Solon, and was a reasonably wealthy man, but he had clearly come by it through hard graft. I bought him a coffee-black, no sugar-and rejoined him at the window.

“I’m surprised that you don’t have an office,” he said.

“If I had an office I’d have to paint it, then buy chairs and a desk. I’d have to think about what to put on the walls. People would judge me on the quality of my furnishings.”

“And what do they judge you on now?”

“The quality of other people’s coffee. It’s pretty good in this place.”

“You meet all of your clients here?”

“Depends. If I’m not sure about them, I meet them in Star-bucks. If I’m really not sure about them, I meet them at a gas station, maybe offer them a couple of Milk Duds to break the ice.”

A look of confusion crossed his face, as though a small warning light had just tripped in his brain. I get that look a lot.

“You come highly recommended,” he said, apparently to reassure himself rather than to compliment me.

“Probably people I brought to this place.”

“Plus I’ve read about you in the newspapers.”

“Yet still you’re here.”

He made a wavering gesture with his right hand. “I’ll admit that not all of it was complimentary.”

“I believe it’s called ‘balanced reporting.’ ”

Matheson allowed himself a smile, although I still wasn’t certain that the little warning light had extinguished itself entirely. He sipped his coffee, lifting the cup with that callused right hand. It trembled slightly. His left had never ceased clutching the leather attaché case on his lap.

“I should tell you why I’m here,” he said. “I suppose I should start with my family. My-”

I interrupted him.

“Is this about your daughter, Mr. Matheson?”

He didn’t look too surprised. I guessed that it happened a lot. It probably took a little while for the name to register with some people, but they’d get there in the end. I imagined Frank Matheson, sitting in his office with a prospective customer, seeing the eyes narrow, the hands move awkwardly.

Was your daughter Louise Matheson? Jesus, I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing that happened. Death was too good for that guy, what was his name? Grady, yeah.

John Grady.

“In a way,” said Matheson.

He opened his case.

“I brought some material along, just in case you didn’t know about what happened, or needed some background.”

Inside, I could see a plastic folder. It contained copies of newspaper clippings and photographs. He didn’t remove it.

“I know about it,” I said.

“It was a long time ago. You must have been very young when it occurred.”

“It was a famous case, and people here don’t forget things like that too easily. They stay in the memory, and get passed along. Maybe it’s right that they should.”

He didn’t reply. I knew that his daughter was always in his memory, frozen in death at the age of ten. I wondered if he ever tried to picture what she might have been like had she lived, how she might have looked, what she might be doing with her life. I wondered if he ever saw other young women on the street, and in their faces caught glimpses of his own departed child, a faint trace of her, as though she were briefly inhabiting the body of another, trying to make contact with her family and the life denied her.

Because I saw my own dead child in the children of others, and I did not believe that I was alone in experiencing my loss in such a way.

“I know about you as well,” said Matheson. “That’s why I want to hire you. I believed you’d understand.”

“Understand what, Mr. Matheson?”

He reached into his case and withdrew a brown envelope. He slid the envelope toward me. It was unsealed. Inside was a single piece of unfolded paper, glossy on one side. I removed it and looked at the copy of the black-and-white photograph on the sheet. It showed a child, a little girl. The photo had been taken from a distance away, but the child’s face was clear. She was holding a softball bat, her attention focused on an unseen ball beyond the limits of the picture. The girl wasn’t wearing a helmet, and her brown hair hung loose around her shoulders. Even at a distance, and allowing for the relatively poor quality of the photo, she was a beautiful child.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I looked at the photograph again. There was nothing in it to indicate where it might have been taken. There was just the girl, the bat, and grass and dark trees in the distance. I turned the sheet over, but the reverse side was blank.

“Where’s the original?”