“…that he’ll recover without permanent brain damage.” Lillian finished the sentence for him. She averted her eyes from his, looked into the fire. “Does he know who did this to him?”
O’Connor shook his head. “No, and I’m hoping you might help me find out.”
“Me?” She looked back at him, surprised.
“Did you see Jack leave-the people who took him?”
“I’m afraid I was a little distracted at that moment. It was just as Katy and Todd were getting ready to leave with Thelma and Barrett. I tried one last time to talk Katy into staying. Useless. I blame Thelma. Thelma, damn her, enjoys spiting me, so she was going to make sure my party for Katy ended early. Thelma put pressure on Todd, Todd put pressure on Katy.” She looked away for a moment, then said, “I only caught a glimpse of Jack being carried out. I didn’t realize there had been a fight. Frankly, I thought he was drunk.”
“Who invited the men who carried him off?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t invite them. Harold claims they weren’t invited at all. However, Hastings tells me otherwise.”
“Oh?”
“Hastings said he wanted to shut the door in their faces, but that the big blond man had an invitation card, probably one of the ones we gave the Ducanes. Thelma insisted on having three dozen or so to extend to their friends.”
“Did Hastings recall his name?”
She hesitated, looking toward the library door, then said softly, “I worry that he may be getting a little deaf. It’s such a ridiculous name, he can’t have heard it correctly: Bob Gherkin. Like the pickle.”
O’Connor rubbed his chin.
“Do you know that name?” Lillian asked.
“No. But it makes sense that I wouldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t had time to really do any digging, but the way I figure it, what happened to Jack probably came about because one of the stories he’s written in the last few months has angered someone. Jack works the crime beat, and he makes plenty of enemies. At the same time, because he works that beat, he’s aware of almost every small-time hood in Las Piernas-sooner or later, most of them have been in a jail or a courtroom, if not both. Those are people I’d probably know, too, given the number of stories we work on together. But the networks these fellows establish can reach beyond the city limits, so if someone wanted to set Jack up, they’d use people he’s never seen before-otherwise he’d know who to connect them to, or smell a setup from the start.”
“But how could it be a setup? Jack wasn’t invited.”
“Yes, he was.”
“By whom?”
“Katy.”
Lily fell silent.
“Was something troubling her?” O’Connor asked.
“Many things,” Lily said. “She told me she wanted to divorce Todd.” In a bitter voice, she added, “Jack’s advice. I told her to try to work it out, for the baby’s sake. If she had divorced Todd, they never would have gone sailing…”
“Lily…you can’t blame yourself.”
“You’re wrong, Conn,” she said. “Indeed I can. Not just for this, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
She picked up her scotch and began sipping it. He thought she might not answer him, but then she said, “How much do you know about Jack’s car accident? The one in ’thirty-six.”
“I was just a kid. I didn’t know much.”
She laughed at that. “Right. You were the smartest little kid I had ever been around. You scared me. But I scared easily in those days, too easily.”
“You never acted scared.”
“Maybe a young boy couldn’t see that kind of scared for what it was. Jack could. But that’s not the point.”
“You were in the car, I know that much. I don’t think he would have told me you were, but I was such a shadow to him in those days, I suspected he was going to get together with you. So I came out here and waited over in your neighbor’s yard and saw you leave the house and get in the car with him.”
She smiled. “You were born to this business, weren’t you?”
“That or a job in espionage. Jack didn’t like my spying, but he also knew I wouldn’t talk about his personal life to anyone else. He told me I was never to mention that you were with him that night. He felt terrible, and knows you’ve never really forgiven him for getting in that wreck-that much I know.”
“Forgiven him? Conn…I caused the accident.”
He frowned.
“Not the way Jack tells the story?” she asked.
“No. He said he had been drinking.”
“A safe claim to make, I suppose. No, it was my fault. I threw a temper tantrum, grabbed the wheel, and we crashed into a tree. Jack couldn’t walk, was bleeding and in pain, but did I stay to help him? No.”
“He said you were hurt, too.”
“Treated at home. Discreetly.” She stared into the fire for a long moment, then said, “No injuries I couldn’t survive, obviously. I was young and stupid and so afraid that the report would leak out that the relatively new Mrs. Harold Linworth-whose husband had just gone to Europe, preparing to make more money out of the war-was involved in an automobile accident. The driver a single man, former lover-I think you see what I mean. I got out of the car and left him there. Went to a pay phone and called Hastings. He, at least, had the good sense to report the accident, so that Jack got help before he bled to death.”
“Jack has never held anything about that night against you, you know.”
“Of course I do. That’s part of what makes it so unbearable. His damned forgiveness.”
She went back to staring at the fire.
After a moment, O’Connor said, “ ‘If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether each person likes it or not…’”
She looked back at him and smiled softly. “Another of your quotations? Whose is it?”
“James Hilton.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Chips?”
He shook his head. “Time and Time Again.”
“Ah. I’ve not read that one yet. Let me guess-Jack told you to memorize passages of books that struck your fancy, to have these quotations handy for stories.”
“Maureen. To have them handy for life, I suppose.”
“Maureen. Your sister. I wish I had met her.”
He didn’t say anything. Maureen had been gone from his life for over ten years now, and still he missed her. Missing, he thought, meant exactly that- gone like a piece of you, carved right out of you, missing from you.
“I hope they find both of them,” he said suddenly. “All of them, I mean, but for your sake, I hope they find Katy and Max.”
“I so want to believe they will…” she said in a hoarse voice, then waited until she had control of herself again. “I so want to believe it, I can’t let myself think that they won’t find them.”
“Norton, the detective who’s in charge of the kidnapping case?”
She nodded. He could see the strain showing again, her struggle to keep back tears.
“The best there is. Trust him.”
She nodded again, then suddenly stood up and moved toward one of the windows.
O’Connor stood, too, watching her roughly pull back the heavy draperies, clutching the velvet material in one hand.
“Damn this rain,” she said.
14
D AWN WAS A LITTLE MORE THAN AN HOUR AWAY WHEN LORENZO Albettini, the captain of the fishing vessel Nomadic Maiden, told his crew of four to haul in the nets. His younger brother Giovanni was one of those four, and Lorenzo watched him with pride. Gio already had his captain’s papers, and soon they would buy a second boat and catch more fish for the booming population that now lived along this coast.
The rain had let up over the last few hours, giving way to mist an hour or so ago, and the swells were not nearly as heavy as they had been. Lorenzo was still using fog signals to let any other vessels that might be passing this way know of the Maiden’s presence.
Gio and the others had just pulled the last of the haul aboard when Lorenzo saw the other boat come out of the mist, drifting straight toward the Maiden’s bow. A large pleasure boat, dead in the water: no lights, no motor, not making way. Crabbing a bit with the current. Lorenzo cursed, sure this was a matter of the storm setting some rich man’s expensive new toy adrift. He called to Gio to rig the fenders and picked up his megaphone. He hailed the pleasure craft, which he could now see was a beauty-teak decks and a sleek white hull. A Chris-Craft-fifty-footer, he would guess.