Nick, even though he was still wincing from time to time, started toward me. But my words had cooled Bill off at least temporarily.
“What are you doing on my property?”
“Investigating. I’m licensed, you’ll remember.”
“Damned Esme.” He shook his sleek gray head. “Investigating what, may I ask?”
“Trying to find out if your son was involved in the murders of the two men last night.”
“That colored boy? My God, McCain, what the hell would my son have to do with that?”
“He has a history of harassing Leeds.”
“You’re a liar. And besides, I was with my girlfriend Nancy Adams last night.” Nick started at me again. Bill put a formidable restraining arm across his son’s chest.
“Be quiet, Nick. What’re you talking about, McCain?”
I told him what Lucy had told me, about how his son and Rob Anderson had treated Leeds on several occasions.
“He’s lying, Dad.”
“There’s a witness,” I said.
“Nick wouldn’t do anything like that. He’s got a temper but—”
“Tell that to Lucy Williams. She knows better.”
“That bitch,” Nick said.
Bill Hannity’s expression changed. He seemed to consider the possibility, for the first time, that maybe something was going on here.
“Go in the house, Nick.”
“Dad, this little jerk kicked me in the crotch.”
“In the house, Nick. Now.”
His quiet authority impressed me. He’d handled himself pretty well, considering that he’d found his son writhing on the driveway.
Nick gave me the big bad glare and muttered all the usual curses just loudly enough that I could hear them. But then he turned and hobbled his way back to the house. I hadn’t meant to kick him that hard but I probably wasn’t going to cry myself to sleep about it.
Bill Hannity took a cigarette from the pack of Camels in his blue sport shirt, flamed it with a golden shaft of expensive lighter, and said, “Is he really in trouble?”
“Right now it’s hard to say.”
He made a face. “That damned temper of his. I suppose I was just as bad when I was his age. But you didn’t have to kick him that hard.”
“He didn’t have to charge me, either.”
He took a drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the clean nuggets of stars. This was the air of privilege up here, the warmth and safety of the lights in the wide windows of the ranch house, the expensive cars on the drive, and again the swagger of rich-people laughter fluttering up into the sky like sleek golden birds.
“I’ll talk to him. Do I need a lawyer yet?”
“See what Nick says first.”
He arced his cigarette into the air with all the finesse of a street-corner punk. A meteor shower erupted when cigarette met lawn.
He put his hand to his head and sighed. “A white girl who comes from a good family going out with a colored boy. It had to be trouble. It had to be.”
He didn’t shake my hand but he chucked me on the arm and said, “Thanks for being honest with me, McCain.”
Then he went back inside with his own class of people.
9
There’s a small cafe half a block from the courthouse that, at night anyway, resembles the cafe made famous by Edward Hopper. You rarely see more than two people at the counter and I don’t recall ever seeing anybody occupy any of the four booths. The man in the white T-shirt and apron behind the counter speaks a language nobody’s ever quite been able to identify. And the faded posters on the walls advertise obscure singers from the ’30s who appeared at a dance hall closed down in the late ’40s.
I go there sometimes when I can’t sleep and I can’t even tell you why. The old songs on the jukebox, the silent people sipping coffee at the counter, the counterman talking angrily on the phone in that strange language — it’s our own little corner of the Twilight Zone.
Tonight, though, I got a surprise. Not only were there at least six people at the counter, there was also somebody occupying one of the booths. And that was the second surprise. The occupant was none other than the new district attorney, Jane Sykes.
She wore a white silk blouse and a navy blue suit. With her golden hair swept back into a chignon and a cigarette burning in the ashtray, she had a certain chic that didn’t get in the way of her melancholy aura.
And there was yet another surprise. When I got to her booth, carrying the cup of coffee I’d bought, I saw the title of the book she was reading: The Stranger by Albert Camus.
“Miss Sykes.”
An expression of irritation drew her chic face tight. She’d been engrossed in the book.
“Yes?” Then: “Oh.” Then a long and silken hand angled up toward me. I took it and we shook. “You’re Sam McCain.”
“Yes.”
“Please. Sit down.”
“Looks as if I’ve dragged you away from your reading.”
“You did.” The smile was a beam that brought peace and wisdom to the entire universe. “But sit down and we’ll talk lawyer stuff.”
“You always work this late?” I said as I sat down.
“My first eight years were in the Cook County office. You’ve heard of Chicago? Seven days of twelve hours a day sometimes. This is nice so far. Only a couple of those twelve-hour days.” She raised her cup as if in a toast. “Plus the coffee’s better here.”
“You actually like this place?”
“You know who Edward Hopper is?”
I laughed. “That’s who I think of every time I walk in here.”
“I don’t know much about art but I had a husband who did. And there was a traveling Hopper show at the Art Institute for a month. I went every day. It was like a religious experience.”
“Same way here.”
“He explained something to me — about myself.” She smiled that smile again. “The trouble is I can’t articulate it, what he explained to me. Not even to myself.”
I must have looked transfixed. I sure felt that way.
“Want me to read your mind, Sam?”
“My mind?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure you have one.” She tapped a long, red-tipped finger against her perfect forehead. “Want me to read it?”
“Uh, sure.”
“You’re thinking how could anybody with the name Sykes know anything about Edward Hopper.”
“Hey, c’mon.” But I knew I was flushing. Of course I’d had that thought two or three times since sitting down here. “Why would I think anything like that?”
“Because my family has its share of dim bulbs, as I’ll admit. Not to mention criminals. But they’re not stupid, they’re just uneducated. And they’re uneducated because they’re too lazy to learn. They look at ‘book learning,’ as they call it, as effete and dull. The women as well as the men, unfortunately.” She stubbed out a Viceroy and tamped another one from her pack. “So let’s be clear about this. I’m well aware of my family’s faults. That’s why my dad fled to Chicago as soon as he could. He wanted to be educated. But the big war got in his way and he got wounded in such a way that he has these terrible memory lapses. But he made sure that I did everything he couldn’t do.”
“You must be something in court. You just spoke everything in perfect sentences.”
“I wasn’t trying to dazzle you, Sam. I was trying to make a point. You and I will be bumping up against each other in a lot of different situations. I know you work for the judge and you know I’m a Sykes, but that’s no reason we can’t be friends. You know, in Chicago, lawyers for the prosecution and lawyers for the defense can actually be friends.” She had an easy touch with wry comments.