“I didn’t until this afternoon, when Grover filled me in.”
I tried to put the chronology together Grover had been home waving an electric gun at me at eleven in the morning—and by the time I got to Cranberry Street, Pansy Greenleaf was already alone in the house nodding out on Blanketrol.
That meant Testafer could claim Celeste as an alibi for the killing of the sheep. It also meant Celeste had been out somewhere, doing something else, before her lunch date with Testafer.
My train of thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. I said it was open, and a human pizza-boy came in with the white cardboard slab and laid it on the desk. He was gangly and pimpled and kept glancing furtively at Celeste Stanhunt while I dug in my pocket for something smaller than Angwine’s hundreds. I paid and tipped him, and he left. The pizza was hot, but it was the second time around for the crust, and the mushrooms weren’t embedded in the cheese, just thrown on top. I took a couple of bites off the end of a slice, then fit it back into its place in the pie, unable to sustain my interest.
“What’s next for you?” I asked. “The case is closed.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “I … I want to hire you.”
“In connection with what?”
“I don’t think Pansy’s brother killed Maynard. I’m frightened.” She stretched the last word out so it included all sorts of cozy erotic promises. “I need your protection.”
“Have you told the Office?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Angwine’s been set up from just about every angle. If you told the Office you didn’t think he was guilty, it might pull some weight. You’re the wife.”
“I’m the widow.” She smiled, but it wasn’t coy.
“The widow,” I repeated. “And you need protection. Who from?”
“From whoever killed Maynard. You’re the only one who seems interested in finding out.”
“I might be losing interest. The returns are diminishing.” I was playing hard to get. I was interested in her money and possibly more, and she knew it as well as I did.
She put the quaver back in her voice—it was obviously available when she needed it. “If you won’t help…”
“First you have to level with me, tell me everything. Answer my questions. Think of it as an audition. If you pass, we’ll talk terms.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I’ll try not to laugh at that. Just answer my questions. What did Pansy Greenleaf do to get rewarded with the house on Cranberry Street?”
Celeste blinked at me, but I wouldn’t blink back She swallowed hard and said: “She was working for Danny Phoneblum. He bought the house. He likes to take care of people.”
“What did she do for him?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Does he supply her with drugs?”
“I don’t mean to appear stupid, Mr. Metcalf, but I thought drugs were free. You get them at the makery.”
“Not the kind Pansy uses. Come on, Celeste. She leaves the needles lying out.”
This time she stared without blinking, and her voice was completely lacking in affect. “He gives them to her. He’d kill me if he knew I told you that.”
“I already pretty much knew.”
“With Danny it doesn’t matter. Just the principle of my telling you something—”
“Is that where his money comes from?”
“I—I don’t know that much about Danny’s business. It’s better not to.”
I picked a mushroom off the top of the pizza and put it in my mouth. “Let’s change the subject. You married Stanhunt and Phoneblum bought Pansy the house and Dr. Testafer retired from his practice all at the same time. What happened two and a half years ago?”
She thought about it. “When Maynard and I made the decision to stay and get married, Grover decided he could retire and turn over the practice—he’d wanted to for some time. Maynard wouldn’t say yes or no until he settled down, with me.”
“What about Pansy?”
“You’re making too much of the coincidence. There’s no connection.” She said it straight, but she looked uncomfortable.
“What did you do before you met Maynard?”
“I … I was on the East Coast.”
“What’s it like there?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said what’s it like there? You don’t have to say if you can’t think of anything.”
She looked up wonderingly. I got up out of my seat and went to the door and held it open. “Go home, Celeste. You’re lying through your teeth. It’s a waste of my time.”
She stood up, but it wasn’t to leave. She applied herself to the front of my body like a full-length decal, seeking points of pressure all the way up and down, and working them until they responded. Her mouth drove into mine, and her scent filled my nostrils. She wrapped her arms around my neck and stood up on her toes to nuzzle at my face, making the most of the friction between our bodies as she rose. There were two or three layers of cloth between us, but I swear I felt her nipples grazing my ribs to rise and burn against my chest. My hands came out of my pocket and off the doorknob and went around the back of her to grip her snug buttocks and hoist her thighs even higher against my own, to bring her tongue even farther down my throat.
I felt something hard between our stomachs, like a sausage or screwdriver trapped absurdly between our bodies, and for a brief moment I thought she was carrying a gun. Then I realized it was my penis, insensate but still physically present and fully aroused. All I felt was the usual feminine tickle, like a meshing of soft, long-inactive gears. I was probably capable of making love to her if I wanted to, but I wouldn’t be feeling what she would think I was feeling. The contemplation of it must have stopped me in my tracks, because she rolled her tongue back in and stepped away to look at me quizzically.
“Conrad…”
I didn’t say anything. The kiss had affected me more than I wanted to admit. It had sent me spinning back to a time that was gone, when someone completely different wore my hat and coat and name. Celeste had filled me with desire, but it wasn’t really Celeste I wanted. With Celeste I wouldn’t recapture the thing I needed. It might be beyond recapture, or it might not, but Celeste wasn’t the one.
She could only reawaken the frustrations, the anger. For Celeste, I knew as surely as our hips had ground together, danger was the intoxicant, and if there wasn’t danger there would have to be something else, some other malign aphrodisiac. I wanted to hit her as much as I wanted to fuck her, and she probably wanted to be hit as much as she wanted anything.
So I hit her. I was certainly more equipped to do that than the other thing. I backhanded her across the teeth the way I’d been hit so many times, and she stumbled backwards in panic until she fell into the dusty chair in the corner. I went back to my desk and sat down and held my head in my hands.
After a minute she got up and came to the desk I thought she was going to hit me, but she pulled out some money instead and threw it in front of me. I looked between my fingers. It was two thousand dollars, in four bills.
“That was good,” she said. “I understand now. You’re tough. You’ll protect me, I know you will.”
“I’m not tough,” I said. “You don’t understand.”
“Take the money.”
“I’m not for hire,” I said. “I’m still working out the remainder of Angwine’s fee. Until then I’m booked up.”
She didn’t say anything. I opened up my drawer and got out the cigarettes, put one in my mouth and offered her the pack. She refused. I lit mine and took a big drag. The building around us was quiet, deathly quiet, and outside my window the night was like a dark nullification of the existence of the city. But underneath night’s skirts the city lived on. Disconnected creatures passed through the blackness, towards solitary destinations, lonely hotel rooms, appointments with death. Nobody ever stopped the creatures to ask them where they were going—no one wanted to know. No one but me, the creature who asked questions, the lowest creature of them all. I was stupid enough to think there was something wrong with the silence that had fallen like a gloved hand onto the bare throat of the city.