Suspicions
When Jack Turnack, a self-proclaimed former FBI agent, starts spying on Tricia and Rachel’s neighbors for the cops, Rachel becomes increasingly suspicious, though her roommate likes him. Is she being paranoid or does Jack have a secret agenda?
When Jack Turnack first showed up it was a regular week-night, during a summer that was hot, even for Alabama. Tricia was fixing dinner—I can still see her, bent over the sink, cutting up carrots for a salad, heating a pot of basil sauce on our dirty, white stove. I was fiddling with a shortwave radio our friend Brady had lent us, seeing if I could pick up Canada, New York, Mexico but I was getting only static. Our building was from the ‘60s, with white walls, thin carpeting, and rooms laid together shot-gun style. The windows were like those in a motel, long and revealing. We kept the shades open during the day and often carelessly forgot to close them at night. I think I saw Jack passing out of the corner of my eye. I remember having a sudden uneasy sensation, as though I had been startled by a tap on the back, a cockroach suddenly visible in the corner. Then, he knocked at the door.
Tricia looked up.
I stood.
Through the peep-hole I could see a tanned man with small eyes. They squinted back at me through the skewed reflection.
I often think, If I had not answered the door…
I opened the door a crack.
“Can I help you?”
“Sorry to trouble you m’am, but my name’s Jack Turnack and I’m with the Birmingham Police.” He flashed a badge. My stomach seized up.
“I’m former FBI,” he continued. “I’m helping the department with an investigation…drugs. It’s a house down on 17th Avenue. I was wondering if I could use the area outside your apartment for observation.”
He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a vinyl rain-parka. I guessed that he was about 50 but observing the clear features beneath the lined face, I realized he might just be a weathered 35.
Tricia had put down her cooking and walked to the door. She was wearing a yellow dress and her hair was unkempt.
“Observation?” she asked, her neat brow creasing.
“Yes…I was just explaining to your friend here…” He glanced down awkwardly at the door and I opened it a bit wider.
“I was just explaining to your friend, I’m working with the Police on some investigations. We think there might be some suspicious activity going on at a house just below you, down the hill here…I was asking your roommate if you’d mind if I used your patio to observe.”
“You’ll have to ask the landlord,” I said coolly.
“But it’s fine with us,” Tricia added.
“Thank you both very much—I already okayed it with Mr. Sylvie.”
“When did you—”
“Would you like a glass of water? Or lemonade?” Tricia smiled. I imagined her starched, pretty mother telling her when she was a little girl, “Always offer a glass of water to the plumber when he comes to the house.”
“Lemonade would be great.”
He smiled straight at her.
While she was getting it, I gestured towards the railing which separated our patio from the hillside. “Which house is it?”
We walked out towards the railing’s edge. Our apartment was near the top of Red Mountain at the southern edge of Birmingham. Behind a few trees the downtown skyline was just visible. Jack motioned down. “See? The one with the big windows, with the blinds drawn?”
He pointed to a light green house at the bottom of the slope beneath our deck.
“That green one?”
He nodded carefully, without removing his gaze from the house.
Tricia came out with the lemonade.
“I hope I didn’t put in too much ice,” she said, flashing her wide smile.
We saw Jack intermittently in the following weeks. He carried a bulky canvas satchel with him but the only things I ever saw him take from it were a thin notebook, small binoculars and a black box that looked like a compass with extra dials. I mostly ignored him, tersely saying hello and walking by. I always kept the blinds drawn now, though Tricia often opened them. Usually if I looked through the peephole I would observe nothing more than him fiddling clumsily with the black box. Occasionally he plugged earphones into it and seemed to be listening to something.
At the time, I was working as an editorial assistant for a medical publishing house. I was tasked with copy-editing the instructions for bio-hazard disposal units and briefings on drug trials. Changing “Within an hour of being given the drug Patient A reacts with convulsive spasms in the right knee” to “Patient A’s right knee convulses within an hour of drug administration.” It was dull, dull work.
One afternoon after a particularly draining day, I felt like talking to someone. My curiosity about Jack was rising and when I walked up to the apartment, he was there. By then I knew his habits. He didn’t come on recurring days, but if I or Tricia hadn’t seen him in three days, we knew he was due for reappearance. Tricia worked the evening shift at a restaurant in the suburbs and he usually showed up a few hours before she left. (“We’re spying on the spy,” she once joked, when we analyzed his habits.) Sometimes he stayed until a little bit after dusk, but usually not for very long. He said that night-time surveillance crews took over. We became used to having him there. Tricia treated him as though he was just an eccentric neighbor who watched birds and often stopped to chat but he made me uncomfortable.
When I stopped to talk to him, he had the earphones stuck into the little black box and was intently jotting into the notebook, though I couldn’t make out any of the writing. He glanced briefly over his shoulder and then went back to the writing. I leaned against the railing, looking out among the treetops, waiting for him to finish. My gaze fell on the green house. Your typical Southside residence—a gracious porch, some warped sideboards and chipping paint but just enough to make the place look used, not ramshackle. The blinds were drawn; there was a rust-colored Volvo station-wagon in the gravel drive. I felt some sort of annoyance, even sadness, that my eyes were drawn away from the view to the house. Looking out over our railing had once given me so much peace…
I could see that he had taken one earphone out and slowed his writing.
“What were you listening to?”
He awkwardly craned his head over his shoulder.
“Phone conversations. This picks them up.”
He turned back, but after a moment motioned me to sit down on the plastic chair in front of him.
“What do they talk about?”
He jotted a little more before he answered.
“Well it depends…sometimes it’s clearly operations. We’re pretty sure they’ve got bases in Fountain Heights and Ensley. Sometimes it’s petty stuff, the wife, what to pick up at the supermarket. More often, it’s hard to tell which it is, what’s code and what isn’t.”
I nodded, but I suppose my skepticism was evident.
“How did y'all get tipped off to them,” I asked, my voice tight.
“That’s the department’s business, not mine…but, let’s just say there’d been some suspicious activity.”
“Like what?”
“Look, I can’t really say.”
“How often do you do this kind of stuff?”
“How do you mean?”
“For the police.”
“Well, I’ve been working for them on and off for about four years. I—”
Suddenly, he stuck his hand up. He still had one ear-phone plugged in. He looked ahead intently.
“I’ve got something…we’ll have to talk later.”
I shrugged and went inside.
But there was nothing I wanted to do there. I put water on for tea in the kitchen but I realized I didn’t want to stay and drink it in the living room because I didn’t like knowing he was on the other side of the glass.
I went into my room and flipped through magazines, rearranging piles of books and papers that had accumulated but still, I felt trapped, as though I’d been sent to my bedroom by my mother.
I decided to take a walk. As I exited I half-waved at Jack, who was still making notes. It had been awhile since I’d taken a long, aimless walk through the Southside. I walked down the crest of 18th Avenue and wandered down the angled streets. The Southside always feels old and well-used, the trees are green and street corner supermarkets and Laundromats are scattered among the pretty, slightly weather-worn houses. Within about half an hour my stressed, pent-up feeling had departed. I stopped at a little square where there were metal chairs bolted to metal tables and read the Alt-weekly, which I’d picked up from a barbeque joint.
I made my way back at dusk, taking 17th Avenue up the hillside. I walked by the light green house that Jack was monitoring. A stout black woman was taking full plastic laundry baskets out to the Volvo. I thought, “Christ, it’s just some black family…the police have to be out of their minds. Maybe they’ve got a nephew who’s onto something in Ensley but for goodness sake…”
I muttered, “Fucking cops.”
But the words hung uneasily.
That night when Tricia got home from work I said, “I think there’s something fishy about Jack.”
“Like what?” Tricia said, impatiently. She was getting ready to go out again, with a man I hadn’t met—Bruce, a customer who even she admitted she didn’t know well. She walked back and forth across the carpet searching for lip-gloss, her cell-phone, a hair clip.
“I don’t like how often he’s here…I walked by the house he’s ‘watching’—it was just a black woman getting together a load of laundry.”
“So? Mobsters have wives.”
“Yeah...but why should we believe him?”
“Oh, why shouldn’t we Rachel? He’s nice.”
She looked annoyed, her bright mascaraed eyes were focused on me.
I shrugged and looked down.
“Listen, he just gives me the creeps.”
I thought about saying, “Well, he’s nice to you.”
But it didn’t seem worth it.
Little changed. Tricia and I weren’t as close as we’d been when we first moved in. There was no more dancing to the classic rock station in the living room, very little cooking together. Part of me thought, this is what always happens. They begin as your friend and become your roommate.
Part of me thought that Jack had somehow wrecked the privacy of our house.
About two weeks later, I came home from a movie to find the same scene unfolding. It was mid-evening and Tricia was about to go out. She was looking for an earring, pacing back and forth…But now she was with Jack.
There were a couple of drained beer bottles on the counter. I wondered how long they’d been there. Tricia had a penchant for unlikely one-night stands but I wondered, Was this a sort of thumb in the eye for saying he was fishy? I wondered, How old is he?
“Hey guys…” I said.
“Oh hey,” Tricia said, beaming. She always changed around a man. “We’re going to see a show at the Nick.”
“Cool. Who’s playing?”
“The H’waite Trip. They’re this prog-rock band from Tuscaloosa,” Jack said. “It should be pretty cool.”
I couldn’t think of a time Tricia had ever gone to the Nick, a dive bar near the interstate crossing.
“Found it!” Tricia was kneeling, groping under sofa cushions. “Always the most unlikely place, right? See you later Rach.”
Jack already had his hand on the door.
“Bye Rachel.”
I didn’t sleep well. Early in the morning when I got up to go to the bathroom, I lay in bed trying to find rest again and had a sudden, terrible thought. I told myself to calm down, that I was being paranoid. I focused on my breaths and eventually slipped over into sleep. I got up late but when I woke, Tricia wasn’t there. The terrible thought came back with more urgency.
I got out the yellow pages and called the police switchboard.
“Hi, may I speak to Officer Jack Turnack?”
“Just a moment please.”
Slimy hold music.
“I’m sorry, what was the last name?”
“Turnack…” I realized I didn’t know how to spell it. “I think it’s T-u-r-n-a-c-k. And he may not be an officer,” I stammered. “But he is on staff.”
A pause.
“I’m trying all the T-u’s…we haven’t got a Jack or John or a Jonathan…”
“How about t-o?”
Another pause.
“I’m sorry…”
I hung up abruptly. Then I called Tricia. Her phone rang and then went to the message—“Hey y’all, it’s Tricia!”
I imagined how paranoid any message I left would seem. I hung up.
But a feeling of panic seemed to press down on me.
I called again, twice. The third time I left a message.
“Hey Tricia,” I said, trying to sound as cool-headed as I could. “It’s Rachel…look, I called the police department about Jack…He isn’t a cop, he isn’t on even on staff, his name wasn’t there. I…I don’t know, I felt like I should call and tell you in case you’re still with him. Just…call me back and tell me you’re okay.”
I was imagining Tricia being tortured in a strange motel, any number of things. And I realized there was no way to trace them. Tricia’s car was still at the apartment, I didn’t even know what Jack drove. I didn’t even know his real name.
Don’t be crazy, I told myself. Wait a few more hours. If she isn’t back by night-time, call and file a report but wait.
Wait.
It was Saturday, I didn’t have to go into work. I thought about running errands but I didn’t want to abandon the apartment. I watched T.V., haphazardly flipping through the channels. Eventually I fell asleep during a show about ESP on the Sci-Fi channel.
I woke up when I heard someone unlatching the door and sat there, back straight against the sofa. It was late afternoon, harsh gold sunlight was streaming in through the blinds, illuminating the dust in the air. I reached for the phone, scared it was Jack.
But Tricia came in through the door, wearing the purple skirt from the night before.
I stood.
“Tricia, I—”
She looked at me, eyes burning, and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Our lease was going up at the end of the summer and I’d been waiting for the right time to bring it up, when things between us felt normal again. But as she looked at me with such contempt I realized we weren’t going to renew the lease, we weren’t going to be friends again.
A knot was welling up in my throat.
“I’m sorry—” I said as she went into the bathroom and shut the door.
She never mentioned the message and we never saw Jack again.
