Character Exercise: Bobby Cuaron

Not until he came upon the small bright glacier of broken glass swept into a corner behind the sofa did Bobby Cuaron suspect that the death of Estelle Wiseman was anything other than the successful suicide attempt it looked.

He knelt, still uncomfortable in his new stiff wool suit, each knee cracking like a snapped twig, and stirred through the mound of glass fragments with his silver graduation pencil. Tiny specks glittered like stars in the black carpet fibres. On hands and knees, Bobby followed the sparkling constellation across the length of the room to the tall book shelves over by the window. Although the Wiseman house appeared spotless – even the air smelled like it had been vacuumed – Bobby noticed a thin skin of dust on the bottom shelf in the middle of which glowed a perfect circle of clean, sun-illuminated beech wood. Until very recently something, a big blue glass vase maybe, had stood on that shelf.

He stepped back into the bedroom. Tony and Mel were still out back fooling around in the drained pool, Tony practising his breast stroke; Mel egging him on, his arms whirling like rotor blades. They’d raided the Wiseman’s ice-box. A battalion of Schlitz bottles fired tracers of sunlight across the strip of fried lawn and into the bedroom.

The lilac bottom sheet was still in place, Pollocked with Estelle Wiseman’s blood; shoals of blood spots on the blue walls. The body and the .44 had gone to the morgue and the lab. The print of Estelle’s body was still there on the sheet. Bobby could even make out where her hands had rested, the fine cotton pleated into tiny peaks by her fingers.

The fact of her nakedness had troubled him until Morty pointed out at the day had been a hot one, the temperature at the estimated time of death being just over ninety degrees.

– Sidewalk was like a fuckin’ griddle. I could feel my Nikes meltin’. Tell me, Bobby, don’t you ever walk around your own apartment in the raw during the summer?’.

– Not if I’m planning to put a gun to my head.

– Yeah, well, you’re not the suicidal type, but let me tell ya that women in particular, they like to leave the world as they entered it – and no dame comes into this life looking like she’s been shoppin’ at Susanne’s first. The number of female nudie suicides I’ve seen you wouldn’t believe.

– Any sign of sexual activity?

– Nothin’ recent. I can give you the full story once she’s downtown. She’s had a kid at some point.

– You sure?

– See those milky striations on the skin there – and there? Stretch marks. She been married before?

– Not according to Wiseman. I heard him telling Sol that she was a bona fide virgin when they met.

– Asshole. She would have wanted for men friends. Am I right? Real cute lookin’ if the pictures on the dresser are anything to go by. A lot like Debbie Reynolds.

– Debbie who?

– Cathy Seldon. Singin’ in the fuckin’ Rain. Ahh, get your no nothin’ college boy ass outta here, Cuaron.

Morty left Bobby alone with Estelle’s body while he went to pour himself another refill of coffee. What had once been Estelle’s head was now just a smashed-up piece of fruit, a cantaloupe melon perhaps. Pits of skull bone had carried as far as the TV. A sliver of scalp squeaked under his shoe. The rusty metal smell of Estelle’s waxy blood pricked his sinuses. Why were her legs thrown apart, the left crooked slightly? Her dark thatch of public hair was clean and springy and gave off the odour of pine needles, a scent which still hung around in the shower, although the towels and walls were dry. Bobby noticed a line of faint red stitch marks around Estelle’s left nipple where she’d been recently bitten. He called Morty in from the kitchen to take a look.

Morty bent over the body, slopping coffee onto the bed. It pooled behind a dam of Estelle’s dried blood and brains. ‘You want a fuckin’ biology lesson, Bobby? Most women love to get their diddies sucked. Reminds ‘em what it was like when they had their kid plugged in. Breast feedin’, it’s like a main line straight to the pussy. Ask Karen., or don’t you two have that kind of relationship?’

– You’ve got a real dirty mouth, Morty.

– And a mind to match. I got me the full set, Bobby boy.

Bobby had spoken to Estelle Wiseman less than seventy-two hours previously at a party given by the Sharfsteins to celebrate their moving in to their new Bay Village home. He’d been ordered by Nagel to attend, mingle, press the right flesh - the department’s tame, strokeable pet cop. Gone on, he won’t bite. ‘Oh, you’re the guy with the PhD’, was usually the first thing people said to him on being introduced. A cop with a little learning, like a dog with an interest in quantum physics. Something of a freak. He’d learned to live with it, keep a low profile intellectually for fear of having his ego shot off.

The party was the suit’s first real outing and it made the back of his knees sore. The material had come from his cousin Luis. ‘The very finest cloth, Mister Bobby. Wool, but if feel jus’ like silk. Let you breathe – and softer than a young lady’s chichi. This I guarantee. Midnight blue. The prefec’ colour for you. You look so fucking handsome in a suit made from this. Maybe even I kiss you. You be real dangerous to the ladies, Mister Bobby. You have to take special care.’

Bobby kept himself away from the crocodile of low leather chairs around the room’s perimeter. He kept himself moving, not standing in one place long enough for anyone to strike up a conversation. He’d just bumped into Harvey Wiseman upstairs, volleying the contents of his stomach into the china bath and being fussed and cooed over by some young woman half out of her dress, one big porcelain tit swinging free. She wiped his sticky, stringy mouth with her hands, laughing the whole time and swaying against Bobby like the room was afloat. ‘Oo, he’s not a well man. Not a well man at all. Speak to me Harvey honey. Say something nice.’ She scooped her tit back inside the dress and smoothed Harvey’s hair down over his pale baby head.

Jacobi had pointed Estelle out to him, standing behind the Amazonian ferns with her over-weight lady friend penning her in. He watched her for a while, raising her glass to her glossy lips, never quite taking a sip. Occasionally she laughed at something the lady friend said and she showed two rows of perfect white teeth. Bobby Cuaron had a thing for women’s teeth. Before he could get really interested in a girl he had to make her smile or, better still, laugh out loud. The smallest irregularity, the tiniest discolouration and he lost interest fast. Bobby’s own mouth being pretty much a war zone of orthodontic casualties meant he smiled rarely and only laughed in the company of those he had gotten to know well and to trust to keep their comments to themselves.

The large lady friend squeezed Estelle’s arm, leaving the ghost of her fat fingers on the skin, and waddled off to powder her nose. Estelle stood alone with just the ferns for company. Bobby polished his four good front teeth with his tongue and strode into her line of vision.

– Me Tarzan, you Estelle.

She laughed (just as he’d planned), and he was again treated to the dazzling flashbulb of those flawless teeth.

– Is there something wrong with your mouth?

The glass played patty-cake with her lower lip.

– Jaw muscles a little tight. Had it ever since I was a kid.

– Bummer. I thought maybe you’d had a stroke, or something. My older brother, Lyle, had a major stroke. A real big motherfucker of a stroke. Half his face is still frozen solid. He was on the john at time. Covered with his own crap. Can you imagine it, happening to you on the john? Marcie threw a tarp over him before dialling 911. ‘Scuse me. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this real personal stuff. I’m a little pippy I guess.

– That puts you a least a quart behind everyone else here.

– You’re not pippy.

– I would be if my liver’d stop fighting with me the whole time.

– How d’you know my name? You a cop or something?

– Or something. Lieutenant Robert Cuaron. You want to step outside?

– Whatever for? I’ve done nothing illegal, officer.

– Just pushed my heart-rate up to over eighty-five. That’s one hell of a violation.

Her took her arm. Her elbow fitted neatly into his palm. Outside everything still smelled stale from the day’s lingering heat. A light smoky breeze set the heavy, luminous flowers genuflecting. The bruised moon hung low in the sky, yellow as sulphur. A shooting star spat passed overhead. The syncopated rapping of two dogs in the neighbour’s yard helped Bobby relax. He stood just behind Estelle, easing the sticky shirt from his back and watching the fluttering curls at the base of her neck, a soft gold chain of hair he found himself wanting to touch.

– I wouldn’t have expected to find a cop here. You know Nathan and Millie?

– Only professionally. Lake Industries had a little problem last year.

– I read about it. In the Globe. The Sunday edition had this big article. I don’t recall
seeing your name.

– I have a no publicity clause in my contact.

– Is that a fact? I think it’s so important to read, to know what’s going on with the world.

She blew on her bare arms to cool them then dipped her finger into her drink and shook it so that the drops scattered between her breasts.

– I feel naked without a book. I’m going to MIT in the fall.

She flicked open her bag. There amongst all the girlie junk was a mauled, dime-store copy of Virginia Woof’s, ‘The Waves’.

– She killed herself.

The bag snapped shut, exhaling the scent of violets.

– So I heard.

– Sometimes it’s the only thing left to do. The only thing that makes any sense. Would you take me home please.

– What about your husband?

– You could take him home too - if you can prise him off the arm of that Santilli bitch.