Laugher Read online

  I started losing it, but took a breath and went on. Charlotte’s knuckles were white and shaking, she was holding the phone so tight.

  “I woke up to her screaming. Loud. I don’t remember what I thought, or how I got to the bedroom. All of a sudden I was in there. The floor and the sheets were red. Her hands and her face were red. And Benjy’s crib was red.”

  “Marshall. You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “I ran to the crib and saw him, lying there in it. I picked him up, believing it wasn’t true, that she hadn’t done something even the Devil couldn’t dream up. But she did. She had. The knife was still in her hand. Before I could take it from her, she ran out of the room and did it to herself too.”

  Charlotte didn’t look like an Egyptian princess anymore. More like she had been caught in the rain.

  “Marshall, I’m so sorry—“

  “You deserve everything you’ve asked from me. You deserve a husband and a family. And I--I wish that I could be the man to give that to you. But I can’t, Charlotte. I’ll never be able to give that life to you.”

  Neither of us could find anything to say after that. When the guard called my name and said my time was up, we didn’t even say goodbye. I just hung up and stood. She touched her fingers to her lips and held them to the glass. I touched them and then my own lips.

  Back in my cell, I cried until it was dark. Then I cried some more.

  Chapter 24

  I’d been there almost a week and my hearing would take place in three days, but I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to make it that long. My tolerance for boredom had already been stretched far beyond its limits. But at least I was being kept separate from the rest of the prison. I didn’t have to deal with mess hall interaction or wars in the exercise yard. It wasn’t the isolation that got me, it was the uncertainty. Had Grayson followed through? Was he getting anywhere?

  I was flipping through my People magazine for what felt like the millionth time (I could trace Lady GaGa’s face on the wall from memory) when the door opened. Another visitor, I assumed. I wasn’t taken to the visiting room, this time, however. I was taken to the Captain’s office.

  “Mr. Santone. You’re free to go,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Judge sent this over this morning.” He handed me a release form. “New evidence has arisen regarding your case and proven you innocent. As soon as you sign this, you’ll be escorted out and all your belongings will be returned to you.”

  I had questions to ask, but not for him. I simply said “Thank you” and signed the form so fast I almost ripped the paper.

  Outside, a small swarm of reporters and cameras were waiting for me. Past the chain-link hallway and beyond the fence, Detective Marber was waiting for me beside a black sedan.

  The reporters crowded my way, asking me “Are you relieved to be acquitted?” and “How did the police find out you were framed?” and “Do you know who the real killer is?” I replied “Yes” to the first question. “No comment” to all the others.

  I reached Marber. “Santone,” he said.

  “This is a surprise.”

  “Well, I’m here on assignment,” he said with the slightest trace of a smile, but still more than I had seen from him.

  “I see.”

  “Get in. Let’s get away from these bastards.”

  ------------------------

  We were on the 101 merging onto I-10 when I finally decided to break the silence.

  “Where’s Grayson? You two are usually joined at the hip.”

  “We’re on our way to meet him.”

  “What for?”

  “He’s been working his ass off for you the last week and a half, trying to track down that bitch Massey. He wants you to thank him in person.”

  And I sure would. “He found her, I assume.”

  “Yeah. Had to swim through a river of shit to do it too. Fucking bureaucrats. But he found her.”

  We arrived at the Hollywood precinct. Grayson was at his station eating a burrito. He continued eating and talked to me with a mouthful of beef and onion and rice while the three of us moseyed down the corridor.

  “London police arrived at the address you provided,” he said to me. “She wasn’t there, but they staked it. Few hours later, Nora Massey was spotted at a pub around the corner. Police approached and confronted her. She confessed.”

  “Confessed to what?” I asked.

  “Everything. Roscoe’s murder. Denny. They didn’t even ask her about Denny. She just spewed it out, screaming and ranting. Probably the alcohol.”

  More likely the guilt.

  “And according to what they heard, Denny wasn’t even her client. Not even with her agency.”

  “Really?” I found that nearly impossible. Perhaps she was drunk and just trying to confuse everybody, just like she tried to confuse me. That’s how she operated. She didn’t care about making sense, just causing enough confusion until she could get away.

  “So I followed it up. Checked her agency’s client list. Talent International. It’s true. Denny Granger has never been a client of theirs.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I hated myself for not even thinking about checking the legitimacy of Nora’s affiliation with Denny.

  But it made more sense that way. It was a very convenient coincidence that Nora just happened to be Denny’s manager at the time Roscoe decided to have him killed. Nora must have contacted Jack Slavas first, pretending to represent Denny, who may not have known about the booking at all. His show at the Chuckle Hut was a phantom from the beginning.

  “Where is she now?” I asked. “Nora.”

  Grayson stopped. He had swallowed the last bite of his burrito and thrown the paper into a waste basket. Then he looked at me with a look in his eye like he was about to deliver some very bad news.

  “We don’t have her,” he said.

  “What do you mean? She escaped?”

  “In a way. After her little tirade she ran outside, ducked the cops for a couple blocks and then...threw herself into the Thames River. Drowned herself.”

  I had no response. My emotions stirred with a mixture of satisfaction that she was finally gone, and disdain that she would never receive the punishment she deserved; unless there is such a thing as Hell, which was no comfort to an agnostic lawyer.

  I also felt a pinch of empathy and sadness. Nora was a misanthrope, one must be in order to commit the crimes she had, but also had a genuine, human side. She had one. She had shown it to me in San Diego.

  “What about Grossman? Have you found him?”

  “We’re getting close. Idiot charged his credit card somewhere in Oregon. Probably on his way to Canada. Feds will nab him soon enough. I guess he really was on vacation.”

  I smirked.

  “Come on,” said Grayson. “Your car’s in the lot.”

  He showed me to it. I signed some forms and took the keys. Before leaving, I offered my hand. “You saved my ass.” Grayson shook it.

  There was no sappy smile or heartfelt farewell. I just got in the car and drove away, and that was good enough for both of us.

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  The first place I went was Cedar-Sinai to check on Samantha. The nurse said she was stable now, and eating regularly. She was being flown back to Chicago to Northwestern Memorial for further recovery and physical therapy. Never learned who it was that hit her with the car, however. Nurse said she doesn’t remember the accident at all. I suspected her father had something to do with it, but there was no way to tell. That question would forever be speculation.

  Whether she was aware of the news about her parents was unknown to me, but I thought it best to leave that to the authorities. I also thought it best not to see her; to put her and the memory of the Roscoe family behind me. I’m sure she would understand.

  The sky was turning orange as the sun dipped behind the Hollywood hills. I was on my way back to my house in Culver City and could already taste the scotch in my mout
h and the smoke in my lungs as I enjoyed a stressless night with a clear mind and conscience. But that would be postponed. Because at that moment I decided I could use a laugh.

  I had driven by The Comedy Store countless times before, but this was the only time I felt compelled to go in.

  The walls were rough and black. Scrawled all over it in cursive white letters were names like Louis Anderson, Bud Cort, George Carlin, and Bill Hicks. Just like the first time I’d entered The Chuckle Hut, I had no idea who those people were.

  I bought a ticket at the box office. The guy said it was a showcase night. Comedian after comedian would get up and perform until who knows how late into the night. I grabbed a small table in the back and ordered two scotches.

  Most of the show I spent without so much as a smirk on my face. I’m not much of a laugher, never was, not even when I’m drunk. But I noticed something very curious to me.

  There was a comic on stage telling a story about losing his kids in a custody battle, and how he uses it as a way to pick up women. After that, another guy talked about getting sober from heroin and making fun of everybody in his group therapy sessions. And the audience was rolling.

  It was amazing to me that these people could go on stage and not only talk about these terrible and embarrassing things about themselves to strangers, but make it funny too. What compelled them to do it? I suppose it was something about the laughter. Somehow, laughing healed it, or at least made it bearable. It was how they dealt with the pain, how they fought off the demons. I’d tasted it before, at the show in San Diego.

  Around twelve-thirty, I was spent. I paid my tab and left. The night was chill and misty. Street lamps dripped cones of orange light from their rims and I headed home, thinking of Charlotte the whole way. I wanted to see her face again, without tears in it. I wanted to kiss the indent at the edge of her eye and run my thumb over her lips while she squeezed my lower back and tangled her legs up in mine. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. All of that was over. I was alone.

  I don’t necessarily believe in God or fate, or destiny. But sometimes I wonder if we do have a purpose. And I wonder if my purpose is to be alone. Maybe the world needs people who are alone.

  The light inside Ned’s front room was on when I pulled into my driveway. He was sitting where he sat with me, but this time with a young man in his early twenties. He was big and muscular. His son, I figured. They were talking, and laughing, just like everyone else in the world that night. Except me.

  As I approached my front door I gave him a friendly wave and went inside. He didn’t return it. Even if he had, I wouldn’t have noticed.