Just then, a guttural grinding noise started up nearby. I glanced in the direction of the sound. I saw the door of one of the garage bays grinding upward, opening slowly.
"So let me get this straight," said Curtis. And as he spoke, there was another noise to go with the rumble of the rising door: a high, piercing tone repeating rhythmically. It was a truck-a small panel truck. It was backing toward the opening bay. The repeated blast of its warning signal stabbed into my brain like a baby's cry. Curtis had to raise his voice to speak over it. "You happened to show up at Anne Smith's apartment right around the time she was murdered. You went upstairs to bang her, but your conscience or whatever bothered you, and you ran away without even seeing her."
"My conscience or whatever-that's right," I nearly shouted back.
"That's what you're telling me: your story."
"That's right, that's what happened."
The truck stopped. Its signal stopped. The bay door came fully open and its throaty rumble stopped. The roar and rush of traffic on the avenue seemed like a whispering quiet after that.
"Or maybe you saw something," Curtis suggested helpfully. "Maybe you got there and you saw she was already dead. You saw her body and got scared and ran away. I could understand that."
He could understand that. The old confessor's ploy. Get it off your chest, son. I can understand. oh, and by the way: You're under arrest for murder.
"That didn't happen," I said firmly. "I never reached her apartment. I just left."
"I don't know, man," Curtis said dryly. "You must have a lot of willpower. To come all that way for some action, then just go back down the stairs. You must have a lot of strength of character."
"Not enough, obviously, or I wouldn't have been there in the first place."
He shrugged. "Ah. Pretty girl. Guy on his own… These things happen."
His voice was sympathetic, but his stare was relentless and mocking. I turned away from it. I saw the truck backed up to the garage bay. A pair of men in white overalls were bringing a wooden box out of the garage. They carried it between them toward the rear of the truck. The truck driver was climbing out of the cab. He came back to open the truck's rear door so the men could put the box inside. The box was a coffin. It was a cheap wooden coffin made of naked pine boards sloppily nailed together. I could see more boxes piled up in stacks of three waiting just within the bay.
I turned back to Curtis. He went on in his sympathetic man-of-the-world voice. Making a face as much as to say: Hey, we're both guys here, it's the modern world, no one's passing judgment on anyone. "What I understand, this girl was into some very interesting stuff, sexually speaking."
"I wouldn't know." The lie came out automatically before I could stop it. I had to force myself to go back, to say: "No. That's not true. I did know. The last time I saw her, she was wearing an O-ring. I noticed it."
"An O-ring. What's that?"
My eyes locked on his, met the mocking humor in them. "I expect you know what it is," I said.
"No, no, go ahead. Enlighten me."
"It's a piece of jewelry people wear to show they're into sexual submission."
"Really? I'll be damned. An O-ring, huh? Funny you knowing something like that. A straight-arrow family man like you. I guess you must be into some interesting sexual stuff yourself."
"I was," I said flatly. "It was a long time ago."
His jaw worked. He studied me. I think he understood what I was doing now. I think he understood that I was forcing myself to tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant. I think he thought it was a good strategy: You know, telling one truth to hide another. Being honest about everything except the one thing, the murder. I think he admired the cleverness of it.
I glanced at the garage. The two men in white overalls walked back from the truck to the bay, chatting between themselves, laughing. They lifted another coffin and carried it out.
"You know, in my experience," Curtis said after a moment, "people don't really change that much in this area. When you're into something you're into it, that's pretty much it. Nothing wrong with it, as long as no one gets hurt. I'm just saying-"
"Who are those dead?" I asked him.
"What?" He glanced over his shoulder, following my gaze.
The men in overalls put the next coffin into the truck, then went back into the garage for yet another. This time, one of the men came out alone. The coffin in his hands was so small, he could carry it himself. A child's coffin.
"They're John Does," Curtis said. "They're taking them out to Hart Island, to Potter's Field."
"Hup," said the man in the white overalls as he hoisted the little coffin easily onto the stack in the truck.
For the love of Christ, I thought. What a horrible place this was.
"So how about it, Mr. Harrow?" Curtis said.
Just then, an idea began to take shape in my mind. Something about the coffins being loaded on the truck, and the fractals I'd seen earlier on the computer screen. And Patrick Piersall. I thought of Patrick Piersall-the ruin of Augustus Kane-hunkered over his beer and shot in the old Ale House downtown. Something he had said to me…
"Mr. Harrow?" said Curtis.
I faced him. Whatever the idea was, it flitted away, out of reach. "What? I'm sorry-what were you saying?"
"I'm saying I don't think people really change what they want sexually-not really, not where it counts." He tapped the side of his forehead with an index finger, right at the spot where Anne had that ragged hole. "In their fantasy life, you know. That stays pretty much the same."
This, I thought, was the sort of thing he lived for. He loved to find the squirrelly little man inside the man before him, to shine a light on the low humpbacked creature of the sewer-mind who a man pretends is not himself. I don't think it excited him to expose that scuttling Igor in me. I don't think it made him feel justified or superior or anything like that. I think he was long past that sort of motivation. It just entertained him, that's all. It amused him, satisfied that curiosity of his about the particular nature of each person's corruption.
I may have actually sneered at him then. "You want to know about my fantasy life?" I said. "In my fantasy life, I think of balling two teenaged girls at once. I think of doing my neighbor's wife from behind while my wife watches. I think of raping one of the local cheerleaders at gunpoint. And yeah, I still get into a little S amp;M from time to time. I also have one fantasy where I rescue the Queen of England from a burning building, and she makes me a knight of the realm. But I don't know: Somehow I don't think that's gonna happen, do you?"
The mockery died in his eyes. His gaze went hard and angry. His lips went thin. "I'm just saying, Mr. Harrow. It doesn't make sense to me. The kind of guy you are, the kind of twisted shit you're into. Pretty young girl comes along who's into the same shit. Gives you her number, her address, says 'Call me.' It doesn't make sense to me you go over there, then just run away like that without even seeing her."
"That doesn't make sense to you?"
"No. No, it doesn't. Scenario that would be more logical to me: The girl invites you to drop by. You're on your own, away from home. You go up there to see her-that's natural. The two of you start going at it. Maybe you get into a little of the rough stuff you like and it's feeling real good. Then-what?-maybe it gets out of hand. That can happen. Or maybe suddenly she's all, like: I don't want it. Forget the whole thing. Look, I mean, let's face it. Something like that: That's not your fault. Girl's a cocktease, gets you worked up, then suddenly she pulls a Virgin Mary on you, going no, no, no. Lot of women, they don't understand what that does to a guy-'specially if maybe it's something he's wanted real bad for a real long time, something maybe his wife won't do for him. And now this young girl says come and get it, gets him all turned on, and then, last minute, pulls the rug out from under him. Hey, there's not a guy in the world wouldn't lose it after something like that."