Eddie knew the sound of those words. He'd heard that voice that said "Stupid Eddie" all his life. When he was a kid they lured him into the circle with the mock friendship just to steal his money or humiliate him for laughs. The women, the police, even Momma's preacher. Be nice to Eddie, then when his grip loosens, steal what he has. Eddie wasn't stupid.
"I do not know," he said to the doctor.
"Eddie, there's a problem," Marshack said, patting the big man's hand again. But the hand stayed.
"What? I did my job. I need my money," Eddie said. "I did what we said. I need what's mine."
The psychiatrist was quiet, thinking over the possibilities that might be running through his former patient's head.
"The woman's not dead, Eddie. She's still here. The old man's gone but Ms. Thompson is still alive. The police came, Eddie. She isn't dead."
Eddies first reaction was to think "liar." They always lied to him. But his second reaction was to replay the night in his head. The pillow on Ms. Thompson's face. The old man coming out of the bathroom. Eddie's hand on his throat, feeling the bones fold. He'd made sure, damn sure, that the old guy was gone and then laid him out on the bed. Ms. Thompson did not move. She was gone, too. He was trying to see it in his head. No one could lay that still, that quiet, specially the old ladies.
He could feel the doctor's eyes on him.
"I do not know," he finally said. "But I need my money, Mr. Harold."
The doctor could feel the pressure on his arm. The big man's grip tightening with tension.
"OK, Eddie, sure. It was a mistake. We're still friends, right?" He worked his free hand into his jacket pocket and came out with his wallet. He opened the fold and riffled the bills inside with his thumb. In the dim light Eddie could see the corners of twenties flashing.
"Hundreds," Eddie said, his tone gone flat. "I got to have hundreds."
The big man's hand tightened again when he said it. His blunt fingertips had found the artery running under Marshack's biceps. They cut off the flow of blood, and the doctor was losing feeling down in his hand.
"Sure, Eddie. Sure. What was I thinking? In the glove box, the envelope, like always."
Marshack tried to move his arm, to reach for the passenger side. Eddie let his grip loose and the doctor reached over and twisted the lock.
24
I found Richards's house, rolled slowly past and pulled a U-turn at the intersection and parked across the street. It was a quiet neighborhood of small bungalow-style homes built back in the '40s in what was then a small southern town growing up at the mouth of a river to the ocean. The older houses were mostly wood clapboard with enclosed screen porches and they all sat up on short pilings to get them up off the moist ground. I could smell the oleander in the air and could make out the shapes of live oak canopies backlit by moonlight.
It was almost eleven. I'd been here before. I'd convinced her I was a restaurant idiot and taken her to dinner, her choice. We'd gone to movies she suggested. There was the one with the kid who sees ghosts. The ending had made her quiet afterward. Finally, while we were sitting in a coffee shop afterward, she asked if I believed in such things. "Everybody's got ghosts," I'd said. Brilliant, Freeman. When I'd dropped her off her good-bye caught in her throat.
A few weeks after I'd been late making it in from the river and we'd missed the start of a show she had tickets for. But she didn't seem to mind and we ended up sitting here on the back porch, talking about the past. The cop stuff was inevitable, but she avoided the subject of her husband and I stayed away from my family. Part of the wall was mine. Part was hers.
I rapped lightly on the screen door and waited. Nothing. I knocked a bit harder but it sounded like a hammer in the quiet. Through a window I could see soft light in a back room, so I stepped off the porch and found the wooden gate to the yard. I flipped the metal latch to make some noise and followed a path of flagstones. I could see the glow of aqua light before rounding the corner, and then her silhouette against the light of the pool. She was running an aluminum pole with a net on the end over the surface and was wearing shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.
"A little late for maintenance," I said.
My voice made her jump, but only a little.
"I thought you'd stood me up, Freeman," she said, turning her head but keeping a grip on the pole. "Figured why waste a good wine buzz."
She made a final pass with the net, capturing a few more leaves that had dropped from the oak that dominated the yard, and then laid the pole aside.
"You're ahead of me," I said.
"I only offered coffee, Freeman. But I'll let you indulge."
She stepped up onto the wide, wood-planked porch and headed toward a set of French doors. When I started to follow she turned quickly and said, "I'll bring it out." I had still never been inside her house.
Her yard was thick with tropical plants, broad-leafed banana palms and white birds-of-paradise. The pool reflected up into some Spanish moss hanging from the closest oak limbs. Few of the plantings were native, but the effect was a soft, green, isolated place. The porch included a huge woven hammock stretched across one end.
In a few minutes she came out with a bottle and two wineglasses.
"Hey, it's not your wilderness," she said, reading my appreciation. "But it isn't bad for the city."
She filled the glasses and sat down on the top step, stretching her legs and putting the bottle next to her.
"Diaz doesn't think much of your theory, but he likes you," she said.
"Is that good?" I said, sitting down.
"Sure. It means he won't bring your name up to Hammonds for a while." She was looking into the pool.
"Hammonds approved the stepped-up patrol in the zone?"
"Yeah. But I'm not sure if he was shamed into it or if it was politics. The black city commissioner has been rattling the cages, and the newspapers are finally starting to run stories about 'A pattern of unsolved rapes and homicides in the minority community,' " she said with a pretty credible television news anchor's voice.
"I don't read the papers," I said.
"What? No delivery on the river?"
She was smiling and the space inside the circle it always created felt comfortable. I took another swallow of wine and leaned back, propped myself on my elbows and looked up through the oak. Night-blooming jasmine was on the air, mixed with a slightly sharp odor of chlorine.
"How's the leg wound?" she said, and I felt her hand on my thigh where a killer's bullet had caught me on a ricochet. She had been there when they found me bleeding in my shack.
"It'll hold up," I said, reaching up to curl a loose strand of her hair and letting the backs of my fingers brush her cheek.
She tilted her head into my hand and then leaned down and kissed me, the scent of wine and perfume spilling into my mouth and my breath catching in my chest.
The aqua glow caught just the edges of her hair and lit them. But her eyes were in shadow and I couldn't see their color.
25
An electronic warble pulled me out of a half sleep and Richards was up and out of the hammock before my eyes could clear. I just caught a slip of fabric and a flash of blonde hair going through the French doors as I lay there swinging, back and forth, with the force of her leaving.
It was still dark but there was a hint of dawn in the east. I could hear her voice, low and curt. Paged, I thought. A cop who is always on.
A light went on somewhere inside and a couple of minutes later she came out on the deck in a robe. Her hair was brushed and her eyelashes were wet from splashing water onto her face.
"They're calling detectives in on an overnight homicide," she said. "Some shrink who works in the jail was found with his throat cut."
Behind my eyes the dry sponge of a wine hangover was dulling both my eyesight and my brain synapses.
"He worked for you guys?"