The Lesson of Her Death

for raises. Not enough for a new man.”
    “Raises? Should I give the men raises?”
    Corde was making notes on his index cards. He said, “We’ve got about five thousand in travel and equipment left for the rest of the year.… Well, I’d like you to leave that alone. I’m going to need a good portion of it if not everything.”
    “Equipment? But I told you I was having trouble getting money for the walkie-talkies. And I was going to buy us all Glocks. They cost over four hundred each.”
    “Glocks? Jim, we don’t need fifteen-round automatics.”
    Slocum didn’t speak for a minute then he said quietly, “I’m the sheriff, Bill. I said I’d consider your request but I can’t promise anything.”
    Corde dropped the sheet on the desk. “Okay, Jim, there’s no nice way to say what I’m about to.” He paused while he honestly tried to think of one. “The only thing I’ll add to take the sting out of it is thatwhether it was you or Steve or Jack Treadle himself sitting where you are, I’d say exactly the same thing. Which is: You got yourself a plum job and you know it and I know it and I’m happy for you. But you got appointed because I turned it down. And the price for that is me getting the Gebben case and all of the travel and equipment budget, every penny of it. After this is over I’d be glad to help you with all this administrative stuff and I’ll even learn your radio codes but until then what I just said is the way it is.”
    Corde looked back at the shock on Slocum’s face, which froze slowly to a chill. Corde wondered if this talk might actually do some good, toughening the man’s flaccid way.
    “You don’t have to be like that, Bill.”
    The buffoonery was gone and Corde now saw in Slocum’s eyes the too-vivid knowledge that he had advanced by default and he saw too the man’s depleted hope, which could have very well been Corde’s own broken ambition had life moved just a little different. This stung him—for his own sake as well as Slocum’s—but he did not apologize. He stood and walked to the door. “I’m counting on you to leave that money just where it is until I need it.”
    What Wynton Kresge owed: $132.80 to GMAC. $78.00 to Visa. $892.30 to Union Bank and Trust (the mortgage). $156.90 to Union Bank and Trust (the bill consolidation loan). $98.13 to Consolidated Edison. $57.82 to Midwestern Bell. $122.78 to Duds ’n’ Things for Kids. $120.00 to Corissa Hanley Duke, the housekeeper. $245.47 to American Express. $88.91 to Mobil
(goddamn Texans, goddamn Arabs)
. $34.70 to Sears.
    And that was just for the month of May.
    He didn’t have the heart to tally the numbers up for the year and he didn’t dare calculate the brood’s budget for makeup, burgers, ninja outfits, skateboards, airpump Nikes, gloves, basketballs, piano lessons, potato chips, Apple software, Spike Lee and Bart Simpson T-shirts, Run DMC tapes Ice-T tapes Janet Jackson Paula Abdul The Winnans tapes gummy bears white cheddar popcorn Diet Pepsi and whatever else got sucked into the black hole of childhood capitalism.
    Darla came to the door of his den and told him the plumber had just finished.
    “Oh, good,” Kresge said. “How much?” He opened the checkbook and tore off a check. He left it blank and handed it to her.
    “It’s a hundred twenty-four, doll.”
    “How
much?”
    “You can’t take a bath in cold water.” She was gone.
    He marked down:
Check 2025. Amount $124. For SOB, MF’ing Plumber
. Why, he wondered, was it that the more you get the more you spend? When he and Darla had first been married they’d lived in a trailer park south of the Business Loop in Columbia, Missouri. He’d been an assistant security director for the university, making nineteen thousand dollars a year. They’d had a savings account. A real savings account that paid you interest—not very much, true, but something. You could look at the long line of entries and feel that you were getting somewhere in life. Now, zip. Now, debt.
    This was too much. Thinking about the bills, about hungry children, about a wife, about his lack of employment, his palms began to sweat and his stomach was doing 180s. He recalled the time he talked a failing student down from the Auden Chancellory Building. Sixty feet above a slate walk. Kresge, calm as could be. No rope. Standing on a ledge fourteen inches wide. Like he was out looking for a couple buddies to shoot pool with. Talking the boy in by inches. Kresge had felt none