“Good riddance to bad rubbish was how my mother used to put it,” he told me. His eyes were sad, maybe from remembering his sainted mother.
I got home in a taxi and checked my messages. Rachel had returned my call and there was a message from Laura asking me to call her. Laura wasn’t home and I was too played out to banter with Rachel, so I grabbed a can of beer and climbed into the rack. I hadn’t even finished the beer before I was out.
When I woke, the clock said six-thirty, but I wasn’t sure if it was AM or PM. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass. All I wanted was a hot shower and a rare steak. The shower was hot, but I had to settle for a couple of franks instead.
While I ate, I turned on the TV. The local news was on, so I knew it was the evening. I was beginning to feel relatively close to an approximation of a human being again. The doc had put my left arm in a sling and the shoulder still throbbed. My right side gave me a twinge every time I moved the wrong way.
Laura called about eight and, when I filled her in on what happened, she said she was coming right over. She rang the bell a half hour later. When I opened the door, she was standing there like an angel of mercy with a pot of soup in her hands. She was wearing a short flowered cotton dress and she had a white crochet shawl draped over her shoulders.
She made me go back to bed while she put the soup in a bowl. At least she didn’t insist on feeding me. But she did sit on the edge of the bed watching me with troubled eyes as I wolfed it down. She didn’t say a word. It was some kind of home-made vegetable soup. I had always felt that home-made soup was somehow magical. I didn’t know anyone who actually made soup.
When I looked into those eyes, I understood how some men who needed mothering could be attracted to her. There was the kind of warmth of the eternal feminine.
But when she leaned over me to get the bowl, I caught the sweet smell of her perfume. It was Shalimar. It ticked off a distant memory of a fragrance. A remembered scent. And the possibility of a girl who wasn’t telling me everything she knew.
I caught her off guard.
“Why didn’t you tell me you screwed Chisolm in Alicia’s sofa bed?”
Her eyes gave her away. She was incapable of guile.
“Oh my God. He told you,” was her reflex response.
I nodded. “He told me everything.”
“Oh my God,” she repeated.
“Why did you do it?”
She covered her face with her hands. “I’ve never done anything like that before. It was so bizarre.”
The next guess was easier. “It was the coke, wasn’t it?”
She wanted to find something to blame. “Yes,” she said. “I’d never taken cocaine before then… or since. I can barely remember what happened. It was Alicia’s fault. She said he wasn’t satisfied with her alone. That he wanted someone new to stimulate him, so she made me get into bed and do it with them.”
I almost repeated the word, “Them.” I caught myself in time. I was almost surprised. But, hell, I stopped being surprised a long time ago at the meaning and variety of peoples’ sexual habits-about the time I stopped wetting my drawers.
“Go on,” I said.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said as she tried to look at me and failed. I believed her. I put my hand on her arm. She didn’t shrug it off.
“It was the cocaine,” she insisted. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I did it for her.”
“Sure you did.” Was I a cynical, unfeeling son of a bitch? “You got into bed and did it with them, after you sniffed some coke.”
She nodded. “First he did it to Alicia, then he did it to me, then he did it to Alicia, and then he did it to me…”
I was truly impressed. “That must have been an outstanding brand of coke. The guy’s prowess amazes me.”
She shook her head in confusion. “Oh no, no. You misunderstood me.” Her face flushed. “He didn’t finish with Alicia and then finish with me.” She seemed to want to set the record straight.
“What do you mean?”
She studied the empty bowl. “Well, I mean, he did a few strokes with me, then a few strokes with Alicia, and so on. I mean, he didn’t actually…you know…”
“I see.” This was a new color in my paint box. “You mean, sort of, like musical chairs?”
She flushed. “He said he couldn’t decide which one to…you know…so he…you know, by himself.”
“Oh really?” I raised one eyebrow. What the hell else could I say?
I think that was about all the truth or consequences she could handle. She got up and retreated to the kitchen. I could hear the water running as she washed the bowl.
It took her ten minutes to wash out one bowl. Then she reappeared and stood in the doorway and stared down at me. But she didn’t move from where she stood.
“Come over here,” I said to her in the most supportive brother-in-law voice I could muster.
She hesitated, then finally did come over.
“Sit down.”
She did.
“Listen. I don’t blame you for what happened. And I don’t judge you.” I tried to assuage her, what? guilt. “But you have to tell me everything you can. It’s the only way I can find the killer.”
She considered that. “You think that what I just told you will help?”
I was honest with her. I didn’t know what that little tidbit of perversion meant.
“Who knows? Every piece helps. My job is to ask questions. Asking questions, getting answers, finding the ones that don’t fit…”
“Are you going to ask Chisolm more questions?”
“You bet. Him and his wife.” I examined her face, but all I saw were eyes that trusted me. “What’s her name?”
“Constance…it’s Constance, I think. She’s from Greenwich. I know she was married before.”
“So was Chisolm. This is the second marriage for both of them.” I grinned at her. “You know what Samuel Johnson called a second marriage?”
She looked at me carefully. “No,” she said. I wasn’t sure she knew who Samuel Johnson was.
“He called it the triumph of hope over experience.”
She laughed. “I like that.” Then her tone turned serious. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”
I hadn’t anticipated the question. I was going to say, “If I had a girl like you…” but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to tease her.
I’d been alone so long I didn’t know if I could handle another marriage. I was coming around to the point of view that women were creatures from another universe, someplace with a methane-based ecosystem. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t think I’m right for marriage. Too much of a lone wolf, I guess.”
There was disappointment in her gaze. “That’s a shame. A real catch like you.”
“Yeah. Catch of the day. Fresh from the bay to your table in one day-skinned, de-boned, and split wide open.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Rachel said Dr. Pasternak left New York every weekend, so I waited until late Friday night to make an unsolicited visit to review his files. It was a bitch climbing in the window with my bad arm. But at least there was a toehold to ease my way up to the ledge. And all the while I kept thinking this used to be a lot easier in Parris Island when I was a green youth, full of energy and innocent enthusiasm. Then I had the same flashback I always got of clawing my way up an incline in the Au Shau valley while we took enfilading fire, scrambling for a crevasse to squeeze into, shaking like a madman with palsy, dirt in my face, cursing Charlie, smelling acrid napalm from the treeline, half-deaf from incoming, wishing, just wishing we were home, warm and safe. Every time I climbed, that same godforsaken scene came back to me.