The Pardon Read online

  “Have you ever driven a car with your eyes closed?” Gina asked.

  “Can’t say I have,” said Cindy as she fiddled with the buttons on the car radio trying to find something she liked.

  “I have. Sometimes when I see there’s a car coming at me, I get this feeling that I want to hold the wheel steady, close my eyes, and wait for that whooooooosh sound as the car whizzes by.”

  Cindy rolled her eyes. “Just drive, Gina.”

  Gina made a face. “You’re in one hell of a mood.”

  “Sorry. I guess I don’t feel like I should be out partying tonight. I’m having second thoughts about telling Jack I want to break up.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times, Cindy—you’re getting out of that relationship.”

  Cindy blinked. “It’s just that we were so close. We were even talking about making it permanent.”

  “Which means that I rescued you without a moment to spare. Believe me, it’s no accident that the word married rhymes with buried,” she said, mashing the pronunciation. “Life’s no dress rehearsal, okay? Find some excitement without standing on the side-lines and living your life through me. You’ve got a great opportunity right in front of you. It’s not every twenty-five-year-old photographer who gets hired by the Italian Consulate to go traveling around Italy taking pictures for a trade brochure. Jump on it. If you don’t—if you stay behind because you think you’re gonna lose Jack—you’ll end up hating him for it someday.”

  “Maybe,” Cindy said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to dump him. I could just tell him that the time apart will give us both a chance to decide whether our relationship should be permanent or not.”

  “Just stop it, will you? You’ve been living with Jack for months. After that much time, you either know it’s right or it’s wrong. And if you’re still saying you’re trying to make up your mind—believe me, it ain’t right.”

  “It felt right at times.”

  “That was a long time ago. I know you, Cindy. And I know you’ve been unhappy with Jack for months. Here’s a guy who claims to be talking about ‘making things permanent,’ yet half the time he won’t even give you a hint of what’s really on his mind. And whatever the hell this big secret is that keeps him from talking to his big-shot father is too weird. I think he has a screw loose.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Jack,” Cindy said defensively. “I just think the way his mother died and how his family handled all these problems has him confused about a lot of things.”

  “Fine. So while he sorts it all out, you go have yourself a ball in Italy.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Well,” Gina huffed, “do what you want then. But it’s a moot point, anyway. Once Jack hears who your traveling companion will be, it’ll be over between you two anyway.”

  Cindy didn’t answer. Gina had a point, but she didn’t want to think about that right now. She just listened to the radio for a few minutes, until the early-morning jazz gave way to the local news at 2:00 A.M. The lead story was still Eddy Goss.

  “. . . the confessed killer,” said the newscaster, “who was acquitted by a jury Tuesday afternoon on first-degree murder charges.” This report was about Detective Lonzo Stafford’s diligent efforts to link Goss to at beast two other murders, to get him off the streets so that, according to Stafford, “Goss will never kill again.”

  Cindy and Gina both pretended not to listen, though neither had the other one fooled. Jack’s involvement in the Goss case had brought this killer a little too close to home. Cindy thought of Jack, probably by himself, back at the house. Gina thought of Eddy Goss. Out there. Somewhere.

  Gina steered her champagne-colored BMW, a gift from her latest disappointed suitor, into her private town house community, a collection of twenty lushly landscaped units facing the bay. Gina could never have afforded waterfront property on her salary as an interior designer, so she “leased” this place from an extremely wealthy and married Venezuelan businessman who, as Gina once kidded, “comes about three times a year, all in one night, to collect the rent.”

  Cindy’s car was parked in Gina’s garage, so Gina parked in a guest space across the lot. They stepped tentatively from the car with the disquieting newscast about Eddy Goss still fresh in their minds.

  “Nothing like a killer on the loose to make a marathon out of a two-minute walk to the front door,” Cindy half-joked as they briskly crossed the empty parking lot.

  “Yeah,” Gina replied, her nervous laughter ringing flat and hollow in the stillness of the dark night. She ran up the front steps two at a time. Cindy trailed behind, moving not quite as fast in heels as her long-legged friend. The porch light was on and the front door was locked, just the way they’d left it. Gina fumbled through her cosmetic-packed purse for her key and poked awkwardly at the lock. Finally, she found the slot and pushed the key home. With two quick turns she unlocked the dead bolt, then turned the knob and leaned into the door, opening it—but just a foot, as her body jerked to an unexpected halt. The door caught on the inside chain.

  They froze as they realized they couldn’t possibly have gotten out of the townhouse had they put the chain on the door.

  Gina glanced at the clay pot on the porch that hid her extra key—a spare only a few people knew about. The pot had been moved.

  Before Gina could back away, the door slammed shut, pushing her back and spilling the contents of her purse onto the porch.

  Panic gripped the two women as they grabbed for each other. When they heard the chain coming off the door, they screamed in unison as they raced down the stairs. Gina led the way, kicking off her shoes and negotiating the steps like a steeplechase racer. Cindy’s left heel caught on the bottom step, and she tumbled to the sidewalk.

  “Gina, help!” she cried, sprawled out on her hands and knees. But her friend never looked back.

  “Gina!”

  Chapter 10

  •

  “Hey!” Jack shouted as the door flew open at the top of the steps. “Hey! It’s me!”

  Gina kept running, but Cindy stopped and looked up from the foot of the stairs. “Jack?” she called out as she picked herself up from the sidewalk.

  Jack waved from the top of the stairs. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Gina shouted on her way back from the parking lot. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Good question, thought Jack. Back at the bar, he’d yielded to Mike’s urging and switched from beers to Bahama Mamas. And in no time flat he was feeling the effects of the grain alcohol. He rarely drank hard liquor, so when he did, it went straight to his head. Rather than kill someone trying to drive all the way home, he’d stopped at Gina’s, hoping to find Cindy.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said with a shrug, speaking to himself more than anyone else. Then he looked at Cindy. “Sorry, guess I had a little too much to drink. I just wanted to talk to you, find out what was going on with us.”

  “Jack,” Cindy sighed, “this is not the place—”

  “I just want to talk, Cindy. You owe me at least that.” As he spoke he wobbled slightly and used the railing to regain his balance.

  Cindy struggled. Seeing Jack made her regret the way she’d handled their problem. “I’m not sure I can talk—at least tonight. I honestly haven’t made up my—”

  “Her mind is made up,” Gina contradicted. “Forget it, Jack. She’s leaving you. Like it or not, she’s a better person without you. Just let her go.”

  Cindy shot an exasperated book at her friend.

  Jack was suddenly embarrassed by the spectacle he was making of himself.

  “Just forget it,” he said as he shook his head and then started down the stairs.

  Cindy hesitated a moment, then moved to stop him. “No, you’re right, we do need to talk. Let me get my car keys. We can talk at home.”

  He looked back at Gina, then turned to Cindy. “You’re sure?”

  She gave a quick
nod, avoiding his eyes. “Go ahead, get in your car. I’ll follow.”

  There is no line more palpable than the one that runs down the middle of the bed. The room may be dark. The eyes may be shut. But it is there, silent testament to the deep division that can separate a couple.

  The line between Jack and Cindy began to emerge as they drove from Gina’s in separate cars, parked in their driveway, and headed into the house single file. It became more pronounced as they undressed in silence, and by the time they tucked themselves into their respective corners of the king-size mattress, it was the Berlin Wall born again. Jack knew they had to talk, but after a night of drinking, he was afraid of what he might say. He played it safe. He flipped off the light, mumbled a clipped “night,” and pretended to be asleep, though it was actually hours before his troubled mind finally let his body rest.

  Cindy didn’t try to keep him up, but she couldn’t fall asleep either. She was thinking of how he’d asked her to move in with him, almost ten months ago. He’d covered her eyes with his hands and led her to his bedroom, and when he took his hands away she saw little yellow ribbons tied to the handles on half the dresser drawers, marking the empty ones. “Those are yours,” he’d told her. Now, lying in their bed, she closed her eyes and thought of yellow ribbons—ribbons and lace and streamers. As her thoughts melted into sleep, the last waking image was of a room decorated for a party. A lavish party with hundreds of guests. Instinctively, she knew that it was important Jack be there, but when she looked for him, when she called out his name, no one answered.

  “Jack,” she whispered barely three hours later as the heat from the morning sun warmed her forehead. The sound of her own voice speaking in a dream woke her, and she rolled over onto her side. “Jack,” she said, nudging his shoulder. “We need to talk.”

  “Huh?” Jack rubbed his eyes and turned to face her. He stole a look at the alarm clock and saw that it was just 7:00 A.M.

  “Be back in a second,” he said as he slid to the side of the bed, stood up, then sat right back down. “Whoa,” he groaned, feeling the first throb of a hangover so massive that had someone suggested amputation as the only cure, he might have considered it. He sighed, resigning himself to remaining seated. “Listen,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder at Cindy, “I’m sorry about last night, okay?”

  Cindy sat up, then hesitated, deciding whether to cross the line between them. It was strange, but after ten months of living with him, she suddenly felt uncomfortable about Jack, sitting there in his striped underwear, and about herself, wearing only an oversized T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry too,” she said as she slid tentatively across the bed. She sat on the edge, beside him, though she kept her distance. “But it’s not enough just to exchange apologies. We need to talk. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”

  “Giving what a lot of thought?”

  She grimaced. “I’ve been offered a photo shoot for the Italian Trade Consulate. In Italy.”

  He smiled, relieved it was good news. “That’s fantastic, absolutely terrific,” he said as he reached out and squeezed her hand. “That’s the kind of thing you’ve always dreamed about. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Because I’d have to leave right away—and it’ll take me away for three or four months.”

  He shrugged it off. “We can survive that.”

  “That’s just it,” she said, averting her eyes. “I’m not so sure we can.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his smile fading.

  She sighed. “What I mean is, we have problems, Jack. And the problem isn’t really us. It’s something inside you that for some reason you just won’t share.”

  He looked away. She was right. The problem was inside him.

  “We’ve been over this before,” he said. “I mope—get in these lousy moods. A lot of it’s work—the job I do” He thought for a second of telling her he’d quit the Freedom Institute, but decided that being jobless wouldn’t help his case. “But I’m dealing with it.”

  “There’s just something that makes you unable or unwilling to communicate and expose yourself emotionally. I can’t just dismiss it. As long as we’ve been together, you’ve been completely incapable of reaching out to your own father and solving whatever it is that keeps you two apart. It worries me that you handle relationship problems that way. It worries me so much that I took the Goss trial as an opportunity to get away from you for a few days. To think about us . . . whether we have a future. I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to leave it. Whether I’d say, ‘Let’s just go our separate ways’ or ‘I still love you, I’ll phone and write and see you when I get back from Europe.’ “

  “And you were going to make that decision by yourself?” he asked, now somewhat annoyed. “I was just supposed to go along with whatever you announced?”

  “No, I knew we had to talk, but it just wasn’t that easy. It gets a little more complicated.”

  “In what way?”

  She looked at her toes. “I’m not going alone,” she said sheepishly. “It’s me and Chet.”

  His mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t come. “Chet,” he finally uttered. Chet was Cindy’s old boss at Image Maker Studios, her first employer out of college—and the man in her life before Jack had come along. Jack felt sick.

  “It’s not what you think,” Cindy said. “It’s purely professional—”

  “Why are you doing it this way?” he asked, ignoring her explanation. “Do you think I’m gonna go over the edge if you just tell me the truth and dump me? I won’t, don’t worry. I’m stronger than that. For the past month, every time I turn on the nightly news or read a newspaper, it’s one story after another about confessed killer Eddy Goss and his lawyer, Jack Swyteck—always mentioned in the same sentence, always in the same disgusted tone. I walk down the street, and people I know avoid me. I walk down the other side of the street, and people I’ve never even seen spit at me. Lately, it’s been worse.” He thought of his near rundown just two days ago. “But you know what? I’m gonna come out of this okay. I’m gonna beat it. If I have to do it without you, that’s your choice. But doing it without your pity—that’s my choice.”

  “I’m not pitying you. And I’m not leaving you. Can’t you just accept what I’m telling you as my honest feelings and be honest with me about your own feelings?”

  “I’ve never lied to you about my feelings.”

  “But you never tell me anything, either. That bothers me. Sometimes I think it’s me. Maybe it’s my fault. I don’t know. Gina thinks it’s just the way you are, because of the way you and your father—”

  “What the hell does Gina know about my father?”

  She swallowed hard. She knew she’d slipped. He was shaking his head, and his fists were clenched. “Did you tell her the things I told you?”

  “Gina’s my best friend. We talk. We tell each other the important things in our lives.”

  “Damn it, Cindy!” he shouted as he sprung from the bed. “You don’t tell her anything I tell you about me and my father. How could you be so fucking insensitive!”

  Cindy’s hands trembled as her nails dug into the mattress. “Don’t talk to me that way,” she said firmly, “or I’m leaving right this second.”

  “You’re leaving anyway,” he said. “Don’t you think I can see that? You’re going to Italy with the boss you used to sleep with. You’re out with Gina till two in the morning checking out guys and prowling the nightclubs—”

  “That’s not what we were—”

  “Oh, bullshit!” His emotions had run away so completely that he’d forgotten his own whereabouts the night before. “You’re not hanging with Mother Teresa, you know. Hell, I’ve had more meaningful conversations with tollbooth attendants than Gina’s had with half the men she’s slept with.”

  “I’m not Gina. And besides, Gina’s not that way. Just stop it, Jack.”

  “Stop what?” he said, raising his voice another level. “Stop looking behind w
hat this is really all about? Stop taking the fun out of Cindy and Gina’s excellent adventure?”

  She sat rigidly on the side of the bed, too hurt to speak.

  He charged toward the bedroom door. “You want to go?” he asked sharply, flinging the door open. “Go.”

  She looked up, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Go on,” he ordered. “Get outta here!”

  She still didn’t move.

  He moved his head from side to side, looking frantically about the room for some way to release months or maybe even years of pent-up anger that Cindy hadn’t caused but was now the unfortunate recipient of. He darted toward the bureau and snatched the snapshots of them she’d tucked into the wood frame around the mirror—their memories.

  “Jack!”

  “There,” he said as he ripped one to pieces.

  “Don’t do that!”

  “You’re leaving,” he said as he took the picture of them taken in Freeport from his stack.

  She jumped up and dashed for the walk-in closet. He jumped in front of her.

  “I need to get some clothes!”

  “Nope,” he sad, holding another photo before her eyes. “You’re leaving right now. Go back to Gina—your confidante.”

  “Stop it!”

  He ripped the entire stack in half.

  “Jack!” She grabbed her car keys and headed for the door, wearing only her T-shirt. She stopped in the doorway and said tearfully, “I didn’t want it to turn out this way.”

  He scoffed. “Now you sound like the scum I defend.”

  Her face reddened, ready to burst with tears or erupt with anger. “You are the scum you defend!” she screamed, then raced out of the house.