I Is for Innocent

little strip tests to check his urine for glucose and protein. He keeps up a running account of all his body functions. Every minor itch and pain. If his stomach gurgles, it's a symptom. If he breaks wind, he issues a bulletin. Like I didn't notice already. The man is the most self-obsessed, tedious, totally boring human being I've ever met and he's only been here one day. I can't believe it. My own brother."
    "You want a drink?"
    "I don't dare. I couldn't stop. They'd have to check me into detox."
    "Has he always been like that?"
    Henry nodded bleakly. "I never really saw it till now. Or maybe in his dotage he's become decidedly worse. I remember, as a kid, he had all these accidents. He tumbled out of trees and fell off swings. He broke his arm once. He broke a wrist. He stuck a pencil in his eye and nearly blinded himself. And the cuts. Oh my God, you couldn't let him near a knife. He had all kinds of allergies and weird things going wrong with him. He had a spastic salivary gland... he really did. Later, he went through a ten-year period when he had all his internal organs taken out. Tonsils and adenoids, appendix, his gallbladder, one kidney, two and a half feet from his upper intestine. The man even managed to rupture his spleen. Out it came. We could have constructed an entire human being out of the parts he gave up."
    I glanced up to find Rosie standing at my shoulder, taking in Henry's outburst with a placid expression. "He's having a breakdown?"
    "His brother's visiting from Michigan."
    "He don' like the guy?"
    "The man is driving him nuts. He's a hypochondriac."
    She turned to Henry with interest. "What's the matter with him? Is he sick?"
    "No, he's not sick. He's neurotic as hell."
    "Bring him in. I fix. Nothing to it."
    "I don't think you quite understand the magnitude of the problem," I said.
    "Is no problem. I can handle it. What's the fellow's name, this brother?"
    "His name is William."
    Rosie said "William" as she wrote it in her little notebook. "Is done. I fix. Not to worry."
    She moved away from the table, her muumuu billowing out around her like a witch's cape.
    "Is it my imagination or has her English gotten worse lately?" I asked.
    Henry looked up at me with a wan smile.
    I gave his hand a maternal pat. "Cheer up. Is done. Not to worry. She'll fix."
    I was home by 10:00, but I didn't feel like continuing my cleaning campaign. I took my shoes off and used my dirty socks to do a halfhearted dusting of the spiral staircase as I went up to bed. Works for me, I thought.
    I was awakened in the wee hours with a telegram from my subconscious. "Pickup," the message read. Pickup what? My eyes came open and I stared at the skylight above my bed. The loft was very dark. The stars were blocked out by clouds, but the glass dome seemed to glow with light pollution from town. The message had to be related to Tippy's presence at the intersection. I'd been brooding about the subject since David Barney first brought it up. If he was inventing, why attach her name to the story? She might have had a ready explanation for where she was that night. If he was lying about the incident, why take the chance? The repair crew had seen her, too... well, not really her, but the pickup. Where else had I come across mention of a pickup truck? I sat up in bed, pushed the covers back, and flipped on the light, wincing at the sudden glare. In lieu of a bathrobe, I pulled on my sweats. Barefoot, I padded down my spiral staircase, turned on the table lamp, and hunted up my briefcase, sorting through the stack of folders I'd brought home from the office. I found the file I was looking for and carried it over to the sofa, where I sat, feet tucked up under me, leafing through old photocopies of the Santa Teresa Dispatch. For the third time in two days, I scanned column after column of smudgy print. Nothing for the twenty-fifth. Ah. On the front page of the local news for December 26 was the little article I'd seen about the hit-and-run fatality of an elderly man, who'd wandered away from a convalescent hospital in the neighborhood. He'd been struck by a pickup truck on upper State Street and had died at the scene. The name of the victim was being withheld, pending notification of his next of kin. Unfortunately, I hadn't made copies of the newspapers for the week after that so I couldn't read the follow-up.
    I pulled out the telephone book and checked the yellow pages under Convalescent Homes & Hospitals. The sublistings were Homes,