“I’m from the News-Tribune” Fletch said. The woman who opened the door of the ground-floor apartment at 45447 Twig Street was in a wheelchair. “Are you Therese Gabais?”
Her eyes were black, her face gray, her hair unwashed, uncombed. “We can’t afford a daily newspaper. I don’t like them, anyway.”
“Has anyone else from the News-Tribune been here?”
She shook her head no.
The car dealership at the corner of Twig Street seemed to be offering special sale prices on rusty, six-passenger sedans. Fletch had parked near the dealership and walked the half-block, scuffing through the waste-paper and empty tins on the sidewalk. He almost stumbled over the legs of a woman asleep in a doorway.
He was watching for a police car, or Biffs car. While he breakfasted, talked with Barbara, shaved and showered, his doorbell had not rung. If it had rung, he planned to go through a back window and down the fire escape. Being falsely arrested as Alexander Liddicoat for more than twenty robberies was slightly amusing. Having Wilson and Gomez contrive real charges against I.M. Fletcher for drug dealing was totally alarming. The police had not appeared at Fletch’s apartment. They were not now visible in the street.
But Wilson and Gomez had every reason to believe Fletch would show up at the Gabais apartment.
“Has anyone been here?” Fletch asked. “The police?”
Again the woman shook her head no. Her eyes were dull.
She wheeled her chair aside. Perhaps she next would close the door in his face.
Holding the door open, Fletch stepped into the foul odor of the apartment. “I’m looking for Felix Gabais.”
Expression briefly came into her eyes as she looked up at him. She was surprised he was still there. “He doesn’t want a newspaper, either.”
Fletch pushed the door closed. “Need to talk to him.”
There was a bed, a mattress and some blankets on a box, in the room.
Moving no further, the woman’s attention went to a television tuned to a quiz-prize show on a dark, heavy bureau.
Fletch stepped through the only door into another room, a kitchen, of sorts. There was a small refrigerator, a stove top, a sink. Everything was filthy. Empty food cans overflowed the sink. The smell of garbage and excrement was stinging. Against the wall on the floor was a double-sized mattress without pillows or blankets.
There was a massive, brown upholstered chair between the mattress and the refrigerator.
And in the massive chair was a massive man. His gaze remained on the corner of the walls behind the stove top. A half-finished quart bottle of beer was in one hand on the chair arm. Slobbered food and drink were on his shirt and prison-issue black suit.
Fletch sat on the edge of the mattress. “What have you done since You’ve been out of prison?”
“Bought this chair.” Felix Gabais’s free hand raised and lowered on the chair arm. “Bought that mattress.” Felix looked at the mattress. “Bought beer.” The counter in the corner beyond the refrigerator had more than twenty empty quart beer bottles. “Beer’s the only thing that fills me up now.” The fat creases on Felix’s neck rearranged themselves as Felix turned his head and looked down at Fletch. “I’m doin’ okay, first week out.”
“Looks like you got enough to eat in prison anyway.”
“Yeah. But she suffered.” Felix tipped the bottle toward the other room. “No one took care of my sister in eleven, twelve years. Scrounging food stamps. Sends kids out for cat food. Eating cat food off scrounged food stamps, you got it?” Fletch nodded. “Look at this place. Landlord took the living room and the other bedroom away from her. Only ’cause he couldn’t throw her out. See that wall he put up?” From the layers of filth on it, Fletch supposed the wall had been there for most of the eleven years. “You call that legal?” Fletch didn’t opine. “What are you going to do about it? She didn’t do anything wrong. Why should she suffer?”
“Did you do something wrong?”
Instantly, there were tears in Felix’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have been put in prison. I was sick. What would you call someone who bothers small children?”
“Sick.”
“Sure. They had to put me away. Couldn’t let me be loose. Had to keep me in prison until I was no good anymore. Had to wreck me. I don’t know about prison, though. That’s an awful insult to a sick person.”
“At your trial, you didn’t plead insanity.”
“At my trial, I didn’t say nothin’!” Felix made no effort to control his tears. “You know what a defendant feels like at a trial?” Fletch shook his head. “He’s in a daze. He’s shocked this could be happenin’ to him. He’s shocked by what he’s hearin’ about himself, about the things he did. All these people are talkin’, talkin’, talkin’ about you and about the things you did. What they’re sayin’ has nothin’ to do with what you’ve always thought about yourself. All the time they’re talkin’, you’re sick. You’re struck dumb, you know what I mean?”
“Your lawyer was Donald Habeck, right?” “Mr. Habeck. Yeah. I could have said a lot, if he didn’t talk so much. See, I had my reasons. I had my own idea of things. I could’ve explained.”
“You could explain molesting children?” “I had things to say. I was just tryin’ to make it up to them.”
“How did you pay Habeck? How could you afford him?”
“I never paid Mr. Habeck. Not a dime.”
“I don’t get it. Why did he take your case?”
“I don’t know. One day he walks into the jail and says, ‘I’m your lawyer.’ He never asked me nothin’. He never let me explain. I could have explained, from my perspective, why I was such a bad guy. He never let the judge ask me nothin’. Day after day after day I sat there in the courtroom while all these people came out, one after another, and said they saw me do this, they saw me do that, the two dogs, this, that, this, that.” Felix put the bottle of beer to his mouth, but didn’t swallow much. “Every day the television and newspapers made a big thing of it. They hounded my sister. They hounded my sister crazy. Showed where we lived. Drew maps. Showed the playgrounds, the schoolyards where I used to walk the dogs and meet the children.” Felix was crying copiously. “The newspapers were lousy! Drove her stupid!”
“I’m beginning to understand.”
“You ever hear of trial by newspaper?”
“You were the case Habeck lost. Lost big. Why not? A child molester…”
“Why did he do it? Why did he let it drag on so long? Why did he tell ’em everything? Why didn’t he let me tell ’em anything?”
“He used you for publicity. Through you, he proved that Habeck could lose a case, big. And get his name in the newspaper every day while he was doing so. What I don’t understand is, how come you served only eleven years?”
“That’s the point! After all this punishment of my sister in the newspaper, after wreckin’ her, one day this Mr. Habeck stands up in court and says, Tour Honor, my client changes his plea to guilty on all counts.’ ”
“Wow. And he never told you he was going to do that?”
“Never! He never said a word to me. And I had things to say. I didn’t mean to bother the children! I was just lovin’ ’em up!”
“You were ‘lovin’ ’em up’ with two dogs on them.”
“Sure! They loved the dogs. The children always came to the dogs!”
“You’d corner the children with the dogs.”
“Listen! Have you ever seen a schoolyard? The little kids are always in the corners! The dogs didn’t put ’em there! The dogs would go see ’em. They’d call the dogs!” Fletch made a gesture of impatience at himself. “I don’t mean to harass you.”
“I understand all about it! I had things to say. See, there was this psychiatrist who spent a lot of time with me when I first went to prison. I felt guilty about my sister. When we were little kids I pushed her behind my father’s car when he was backing out of the driveway. She got crippled from that. My father got mad. He went away. Never heard from him. See? I was tryin’ to make it up to little kids. I was just lovin’ ’em up. Tryin’ to love ’em up.”
“A psychiatrist told you all that?”
“Helped me to realize it, he said. I was sick. I had things to say at that trial. Habeck just fucked me over, and threw me to the pits.”
Fletch shook his head. “How did you get so fat in prison?”
“None of the crews wanted me on ’em. None of the work crews. I was sent to the prison farm. I’d go in a corner. They all knew all these terrible things about me, from the newspapers.” Felix Gabais was sobbing. “If Mr. Habeck was going to tell the court I was guilty of everything, why did he let the newspapers wreck my sister so long?”
“So you killed Habeck.”
“I didn’t kill nobody!” Felix’s angry, reddened eyes blazed at Fletch. “I needed to be gotten off the streets. The dogs were dead! I had to be wrecked!”
“But not your sister.”
Felix pointed at himself with both hands. “I’m going to go out in the streets and kill somebody? I’m a wreck!”
“You’re pretty angry at Habeck.”
“I don’t want to go in the streets for nothin’! The mattress, this chair, I had to have. What day is this?”
“Wednesday.”
“Thursday. Tomorrow. I have to go to the parole office. You’ll come with me?”
“What? No.”
“My sister can’t come. It’s way downtown.”
Fletch stood up. “I think you’d better check in with your parole officer.”
“You won’t come with me?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do about my sister?”
“Have I heard that question somewhere before?”
“Now that you finally show up, you just wanted to sit and hear the story of my life?”
“I wanted to hear you say you murdered Donald Habeck.”
“Who are you?”
“I.M. Fletcher.”
“You’re not from the public agency?”
“I said I’m from a newspaper.” Fletch was standing at the door of the room. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Felix Gabais’s eyes grew huge. He tried to get up from the big chair.
Fletch said, “The News-Tribune.”
Felix fell back into the chair. He switched the beer bottle to his right hand.
Fletch ducked through the door. In the dark outer room he bumped into Therese Gabais’s wheelchair.
The beer bottle smashed against the doorframe.
Therese Gabais said, “My brother doesn’t like the newspapers.”
“I understand.”
“Blames ’em for everything,” Therese Gabais said.
Down Twig Street, Fletch ducked into his car quickly.
Opening the door of his car, Fletch had seen the car Biff Wilson used, lights, antennae, and NEWS-TRIBUNE all over it, stop in front of number 45447.