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“Course not,” Granpop says. He wipes tears from his granddaughter’s face and hugs her against him. It hurts, but he does it.

“Granpop,” she says. “You left Aunt Nan’s special baseball bat.”

“That’s all right,” Granpop says, stroking her hair. It’s all sweaty and tangled. “Maybe we’ll get it later.”

Frank finally speaks. “We passed a little store on 196 just before we turned off. I’ll call the police from there.” He turns and looks at the old man. There’s a red mark on his cheek from the slap. “This is your fault, Dad. It’s all on you. We had to bring your fucking car, didn’t we? If we’d had the Volvo—”

“Shut up, Frank,” Corinne says. “Please. Just this once.”

And Frank does.

Thinking of Flannery O’Connor

RED SCREEN

Wilson is having a bad morning. He cuts himself shaving and is using a Kleenex to clean away a rill of blood on his chin when Sandi pops her head in to admonish him about leaving the toilet seat up and the cap off the toothpaste. He spills juice on his tie and has to change it. Before he can escape to work, there are several more admonishments: she found beer bottles in the trash instead of the recycling, and he forgot to rinse his ice cream bowl before putting it in the dishwasher. There’s another one, but it goes in one ear and out the other without catching on anything in between. Kind of a bummer, all in all. Has he become forgetful and a little slipshod lately, or has she gotten more prickly in the last six or eight months? He doesn’t know and it’s too early for such questions.

Yet once in the car and backing down the driveway, he has an idea that elevates his mood. If there’s such a thing as bad karma, he may have frontloaded his for the day and from here on…

“Clear sailing!” he exclaims, and treats himself to a cigarette out of the pack in the glove compartment.

This optimistic idea holds for fifteen minutes. Then he gets a call redirecting him to 34th Avenue in Queens. He is told to see the officers, which is never good karma.

Five hours later, when he should be thinking about lunch, Wilson is instead looking through oneway glass into a small interview room. There’s a table and two chairs. In one of the chairs sits a man named Leonard Crocker. He’s handcuffed to a ringbolt on his side of the table. He’s wearing a strap-style undershirt on top of khaki work pants. His outer shirt is now in a tagged plastic bag and bound for forensics. When its turn comes (it will be awhile because there’s always a backlog), the bloodstains on it will be typed and DNA-matched. This is a formality. Crocker has already confessed to the murder. Soon his undershirt and khakis will be swapped for jailhouse tans.

Wilson puts on his ID lanyard. When he goes into the room, he also puts on a smile. “Hi, Mr. Crocker. Remember me?”

Leonard Crocker seems perfectly at ease, handcuffs and all. “You’re the detective.”

“Right!” Wilson sits down. “Do you answer to Len, Lennie, or Leonard?”

“Lennie, mostly. That’s what the guys down at the plumbing shop call me.”

“Lennie it is, then. What we’re having here—if you agree—is just sort of a preliminary conversation. You were given your rights, correct?”

Lennie smiles as a man does when seeing through a trick question. “First by the officers at the scene, then by you. I called them, you know. The officers.”

“Great! Just to recap, anything you say—”

“Can be used against me.”

Wilson’s smile widens into a grin. “Bingo! What about legal representation? How’s your memory on that? Because we’re being recorded, you know.”

“I can have a lawyer at any time. If I can’t afford one, you’ll get me one. It’s the law.”

“Correctamundo. So do you want one? Just say the word.” And I can get some lunch, Wilson thinks.

“I’m happy to talk to you, Detective, but I’ll need a lawyer at the trial, right?”

“Unless you want to defend yourself. But a man who defends himself—”

Lennie raises a finger and cocks his head, more the gesture of a scholar than a plumber. “—has a fool for a client.”

Wilson laughs and nods. “Give the man a Kewpie doll.” Then he grows more serious, folding his hands under his chin and looking straight at Lennie. “Why don’t we get right to the point? You killed your wife this morning, didn’t you? Stabbed her three times in the stomach, after which she bled out. That’s what you told the officers, right? And me.”

Lennie shakes his head. “If you’ll recall, what I actually said was I did it.”

“Meaning you killed your wife. Arlene Crocker.”