Noah's Turn (21 page)

“Okay,” I say and start to eat while my mom clears the table and puts dishes into the dishwasher.

“If I was suddenly real old, like twenty-one, and walking down the street, do you think you'd recognize me?”

“Of course,” she says.

“How do you know?”

“Because you're my baby.”

“I wouldn't be a baby at twenty-one.”

“To me you would.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“What if one morning I woke up and you didn't recognize me, like something weird had happened to me in the middle of the night and I didn't look like me and you came in to wake me up and there was a different-looking person in my bed?”

“I'd know it was you in disguise. Mothers always know their children.”

“But what if I said I'm not your son?”

“I'd still recognize you.”

“No matter what I looked like? What if I looked like a horse?”

“I love horses and I'd put a saddle on you and ride you off into the sunset.”

“And what if I bucked you off and ran away and you never saw me again?”

“Then I'd be very unhappy for the rest of my life.”

“Well, I'm not a horse so you don't have to worry about that.”

“Good.”

“But I want to tell you something.”

“I have to take a shower. I'm picking up Mrs. Graham to go shopping.” His mother went into the other room.

“You don't look like my mother anymore.”

“Put your dishes in the sink when you're finished,” she yelled back as she hurried up the stairs to change.

N
oah poured himself a glass of vodka and stood under a hot shower while the first satisfying buzz from the drink kicked in. He shaved and dressed and dug through a drawer for the memory stick he used to transport script drafts from his laptop at home to the cop show's production secretary. He erased everything on it, then used it to back up the story he had started to write and put it into his pocket. He phoned Hopwood and asked if they could meet at Buena Bean for a coffee and said that he had some information that might influence the case against the student in the McEwen killing.

They met an hour later and both ordered cappuccinos. When Hopwood joked that his department doesn't reimburse them for this kind of expense, Noah picked up the tab and they sat down. After a few pleasantries about the weather and the crumbling economy, Noah took the memory stick from his pocket and put it on the table.

“I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you what I know about the case if you ensure that I will be able to keep this, and that when I'm finished we walk out of here together like two normal people who have just stopped for a coffee.”

Hopwood was an old pro and knew how to go along when he had nothing to lose. He sipped his coffee. “I don't have a problem with any of that.”

“I killed McEwen. Your student had nothing to do with it.”

Hopwood showed no surprise and again sipped his coffee.

Noah wondered if Hopwood was consciously playing it cool or if this was the real guy.

Noah decided that whatever act Hopwood was playing it was part of his job. His act wouldn't get him more money or more respect; it was just a tool of the trade and he chose the cool tool rather than the hammer, and Noah liked him for it.

“Can I ask why you did it?”

“Why I killed him, or why I confessed?”

“Both. Either. It's up to you.”

“I killed him because he was an arrogant, selfish, phony prick.”

“That was the only reason?”

“Yes.”

Hopwood grinned and sipped his coffee. “That explanation just might give you a shot at an insanity plea.”

“Unfortunately, it's one of the sanest things I've ever said.”

“And the reason for your confession?”

“I discovered that the act wasn't complete without the confession. I think we should go. Did you drive?”

“Yeah.”

Noah put the memory stick into his pocket and they got up and left. Hopwood kept his word. There were no handcuffs or any other police procedures. As they stepped outside, Noah bumped into a writer he had worked with on the TV cop show.

“Noah, how are you doing?”

“Good, good, and you?”

“I quit the show at the end of last season because I had a half-hour pilot picked up, a kids' show but I think
it's pretty good. They can be a fucking cash cow if they connect. What are you up to?”

“Oh, sorry. This is Detective Hopwood from the Homicide Squad, 52 Division. This is Howard Frank. We worked together.” The writer and Hopwood exchanged a short greeting as Noah continued in a relaxed and sociable manner. “You remember the professor who was killed with a machete.”

“Yeah, crazy.”

“I did it. I just confessed, and I guess we're off to the police station.” He turned to Hopwood. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

Noah turned back to the writer. “I think it would be disingenuous of me to say, ‘Let's get together for a coffee some time.'”

Noah and Hopwood left the writer standing there, clearly not sure whether or not he had been had, as they crossed the street to Hopwood's car.

“You liked that,” Hopwood said.

“Of course. How many times in life does an opportunity like that come up?”

They approached the drab detective sedan.

“Where are you guys going to find cars this ugly when Detroit stops making these?”

“It won't be easy.”

“Front or back?”

“Front.”

They got in. As they drove away in silence, Noah thought that no one would ever again ask him what he was up to.

N
oah's conviction was front-page news. The gruesome and inexplicable nature of his crime had the TV pundits and columnists swarming like piranhas. Noah's only public statement was that he had committed this heinous act because his victim was a “jerk.” He used the word “asshole,” but most of the media who gorged themselves on the bloodthirsty details of the “slaughter” were loath to use this obscenity. And this left the question wide open. Why had he done it? Why had he confessed when it looked like he might never be caught? How could someone from his background commit this act? The “experts” had the answers, each with his or her own narrative, while life's ambiguities were left behind, the skeletal remains of the feeding frenzy.

Noah dressed for sentencing in his good suit, a kerchief in his breast pocket, school tie and Oxford-cloth white button-down shirt. When he stood to make his final statement in the stuffy courtroom, not a single drop of sweat dribbled down his side. “I doubt that you are able to understand my reasons for my actions since I do not fully understand them myself,” he said to the judge. “The victim is dead, and whatever those reasons may have been are now irrelevant. The only certainty I can see in this horrific act is that there is life and there is death and these are irreconcilable.” That was it. Noah was cuffed and taken away.

Noah's Turn
Copyright © 2010 by 837453 Ontario Limited.

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The author would like to acknowledge the poem “The Black Swan” by James Merrill, which inspired the description of the swans on page 7.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Finkleman, Ken
Noah's turn / Ken Finkleman.

ISBN 978-1-55468-752-7

I. Title.
PS8611.I64N62 2010      C813'.6        C2010-900508-2

RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1