I had not expected a cute younger guy. What had I expected? Ross’s words,I don’t have to pay for it, bannered across my brain. This story got more curious by the moment.
“Can I help you,” he said, not a question.
“I’m looking for Finn Vogel?”
“You found him.” He looked me over, head to toe, and leaned into the doorframe.
Though his hair was feathered and his body gym trim, his diction came from a generation decades past. When this young man spoke, I could hear my grandfather, my mother’s dad, telling me stories about his college years when he worked summers as a roughneck for the last of the great train-show carnivals, rolling and rattling through the night from one small rural townto the next, playing poker with a woman and her husband who were each only three feet tall. This guy had an accent too. He was... maybe Canadian. Or something.
“If you have a few minutes, I need to talk to you.”
“Honey,” this man said. Honey? Honey? Who did he think he was? “I am a card-carrying member of the Republican Party in good standing, and I’ve got all the magazine subscriptions and life insurance a man could ever need. So can you tell me what brings you here today?”
I fumbled with my bag as I extracted my business card, culminating in a messy drop that sent my lipstick, pens, comb, and my carefully wrapped cheese-and-pickle sandwich tumbling into the shrub next to his steps. I lunged to recover them and nearly slipped on a patch of black ice, but finally recovered my balance and my card.
“I’m Felicity Wild, fromFuchsiamagazine,” I said.
“You’re not Felicity Wild.”
Great opening! “Yes, you’re right, I’m not,” I said. “I’m Reenie Bigelow fromFuchsiamagazine. Felicity Wild is... I want to talk to you about Felicity Wild. For a story that I’m doing.”
“Who’s Felicity Wild?”
I stared at him, raising my eyebrows.
“Okay, fine. Well, I’m not going to talk to you about Felicity Wild.”
“You had a relationship with Felicity...”
The man huffed at the wordrelationship, drawing in his chin as if I’d slapped him. “What relationship? That’s my own business.”
“Maybe it was once, but what if you’re called to testify by the prosecution in her murder trial?” I could see from the chase of expressions across his face that he had already been contacted. “And they would just drill down on why you were a client, even though you have a beautiful wife and three little children, andhow much you spent on Felicity, and if you ever felt threatened by her, and since mine is going to be an in-depth story, really mostly about Felicity, not as much about what she did for a living, this is really going to be your only chance to share your side of this, whatever that is, to get it right.”
“Okay,” he said.
It always worked. It worked like a key in a lock, the your-side-of-the-story thing, along with the your-take-on-all-this thing. It was like a magic trick.
“Could I come in?”
Finn Vogel looked me up and down again. I tried to keep my face neutral. I added, “It’s ten degrees out here.”
Finally, he moved to one side, sweeping his arm in another courtly gesture, and I stepped into the foyer. We sat down by a fireplace bigger than my bed. He brought me some very good coffee. I brought out my little digital tape recorder; the old this-is-for-your-own-protection-from-any-mistakes thing worked as well as the your-side-of-the-story thing. Finn Vogel sighed gustily, the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
“My wife is taking our children to a kids’ literature class she teaches with the other mothers. This never should have happened,” he began.
You can say that again,I wanted to add. Instead, I only nodded, which a person could interpret as anything he wanted, including understanding. As I recalled, people can’t bear silence for long,
“Felicity, she called me that day,” Finn said. “I’m not a criminal lawyer but most people, even very bright people, think this is all the same. I guess she thought that too. She told me an old man who was her guest had died of a heart attack and she was afraid and what should she do? I told her to call the police. But she said her mother was coming over, and I assumed that she didn’t want her mother to know... what she did.”
“So you didn’t go to her place.”
“It was right after Christmas. My whole house was filled with family, my brothers and their kids. My grandparents were here from Amsterdam. I had not seen them in years. I couldn’t just walk out of our party and drive an hour. I repeated to her, call the police. But she just started to cry and said that was not a possibility for her.” He sighed again. I almost felt sorry for him, although he was a de facto piece of shit, philander, and (I could hear my father’s voice) a Republican on top of that. I definitely felt sorry for his wife and little boys; if his marriage had been withering, now it would turn to dust. He could end up alone, which he deserved, except for the fact of the children, who were only innocent.
“Your kids are sweet,” I said, gesturing at one of the silver-framed photos on the piano.
“They are terrific. They are scamps,” he said. “I wonder if girls are gentler. I will never have a little girl now.”
I didn’t know if this regret stemmed from a decision not to have more children or the presumptive end of the marriage. Of course, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t have another family, given how forgiving women seemed to be of men and their pasts.
