“Beautiful,” said Number Two. “Wish I saw more like this.”
I restrained my urge to comment.
“You got papers for the car?” said Number One.
“Rental,” I said. The receipt was in the glove compartment and I got it out.
He glanced at it and handed it back.
“Where you headed?” he said.
I shrugged. “Taking a look at the old neighborhood.”
“Got plans?”
I thought about it. I wondered how hard they’d laugh if I told them I was a private inquisitor on a case six years old. “I’m still getting my bearings,” I said.
It made him smile. He turned to Number Two. “Hear that? He’s getting his bearings.”
Number Two smiled and stepped up to my car. “What did you do, Metcalf?”
“Nothing, really,” I said. “Stepped on some toes. It’s ancient history.”
“Who sent you up?”
I thought fast. In all likelihood these were Kornfeld’s boys. “Morgenlander,” I said.
They traded a look.
“That’s a tough break,” said Number Two, and there was honest sympathy in his voice. He handed me back my card. I’d said the right thing.
“Damn shame,” said Number One. “They should have sprung the last of his guys years ago.”
I put my card in my back pocket and kept my mouth shut. I was suddenly okay in their book, which didn’t mean good things for Morgenlander. It gave me a sinking feeling, one I wouldn’t have expected to feel. I shouldn’t have been surprised; Morgenlander’s days were obviously numbered even six years ago. But I guess some stupid optimistic part of me had been hoping he’d squeak through.
“Okay,” said Number Two. “Just don’t use up all your money driving around in a rental car and reminiscing. You’re a young guy. Get a job.”
I thanked them and said so long. They went back to their roadblock, and I rolled up my window and drove away.
I thought about Kornfeld, and decided I didn’t mind if a rematch occurred. I had a lot less to lose this time. I owed the guy a punch in the stomach if nothing else, and if his underbelly turned out to be six years softer, all the better.
Yes, Kornfeld had earned a spot in my mental appointment book, but Dr. Testafer came first. I wanted Grover’s help, voluntary or not, with a couple of missing pieces. I found his street and parked in the clearing at the end of the driveway. Standing in the clearing brought back memories. I’d snorted make here three days or six years ago, depending on how you counted, and it made my nose itch to think of it. I tried to put make out of my mind as I walked up to Testafer’s house, but it was tough. The issue was like a jack-in-the-box with an overanxious spring; it jumped out at the slightest prompting.
The house looked pretty much the same—the main house, that is. The little house on the left didn’t look occupied. I guess Testafer had sworn off sheep after Dulcie. I rang the bell, and after a minute Testafer came to the door.
He’d always looked to me like he’d been fifty years old since adolescence, and six more years didn’t really make him look any older. He was still red in the face, as if he’d been running up stairs, and there might have been fewer of the wisps of white that were trying to pass for hair, but given what little he was working with, he looked good, surprisingly good. Last I’d seen him, he was hiding between two parked cars, dodging bullets, a fish out of water. Up here in the doorway of his house, he looked more comfortable.
“Hello, Grover,” I said.
He looked at me blankly.
I felt a fist of sudden anger curl in my stomach. He was going to pull a Pansy on me.
“Inside,” I said, growling it. I put my hands on his chest and pushed him backwards into the house, and kicked the door shut behind me. “Get the memory.”
His eyebrows arched incredulously. “Go,” I said. I pushed him, and he stumbled ahead of me into the living room. The whole thing stank to me all of a sudden, stank terribly. I wanted to hit him, but he was too old to hit, so I reached down and swept my arm across a table covered with glass and ceramic baubles, and they crashed into a thousand pieces on the floor. Testafer just kept backing up until he fell into the couch. I turned to pull down the shelf of old magazines, but it wasn’t there anymore.
“Where’s the memory?” I said. “Get it out.”
The door to the kitchen swung open and a guy came out with a drink in each hand—gin and tonic, if Pansy’s memory had it right. He was about as old as Testafer, but he was as thin and white as Grover was fat and red. It didn’t take me any time to figure it out. Testafer had a boyfriend. It wasn’t a surprise. After he quit the practice, he must have missed handling penises. In a funny way I understood.
I stepped up and took the drinks. “Take a walk,” I said.
The guy let go of the drinks like he’d made them for me. Grover spoke, and it came out a whisper.
“You’d better go, David,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
David picked hi? way quietly through the broken glass and pottery strewn across the doorway and obediently disappeared. Grover had switched from sheep that walked like men to men that walked like sheep.
When I turned back to him, he had his memory out on the couch beside him, the mike cord in his hand. I’d learned fast to despise the sight of the things. He looked at me with desperate eyes, and for an odd moment my anger abated and I felt sorry for him, but it didn’t last.
“Metcalf,” I said.
He knew what I wanted. He said it into the memory. His voice came back out quiet and slow, as if he’d spent a lot of time on this particular entry.
“The detective,” it went. “A dangerous, impulsive man. Maynard made the mistake of bringing him in, and he wouldn’t go away. Danny Phoneblum’s oppositional double, and a fundamentally undesirable presence.”
Testafer looked up at me blankly, his mouth tight, while his voice poured out of the machine. I found myself smiling. I sort of liked the description. At the very least it was reassuring to find some trace of my work left somewhere. I handed Testafer one of the drinks, and he sipped at it nervously while we waited to see if the entry was exhausted. It was.
“That’s a very old memory,” he said softly, his eyes full of fear. I studied him for some sign of genuine recollection, some hint of hostility or guilt, but it wasn’t there.
“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s up to date.”
He didn’t get it, or maybe he did and it scared him. Either way the effect was the same: he sat staring at me, blankly astonished, like a baby when you make faces at it. I sat down in the chair across from him and took a pull at the drink in my hand. Gin and tonic, all right. I was running out of steam, and the liquor tasted awfully good. I couldn’t feel my anger anymore, and I wasn’t particularly trying. It seemed too much to stay angry at a guy who didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about. I felt the weight of the past like bal-last, something only I was stupid enough to keep carrying, and I began to wonder if it was time to cut loose. Testafer made it look sort of good. For a moment I envied him, and began patting the pockets of my coat to locate the little envelope of make.
For a moment. Then I thought about what I was thinking, and took a deep breath and put the drink on the floor and licked my Lips clean of the taste of alcohol and forgot about the make. I carefully curled the fingers of the fist of my anger, got up from the chair, and went over and picked up Testafer’s memory. The cord to the mike stretched out between us. Testafer looked up at me, eyes wide, his mouth a little open. I felt my anger now, felt it clear and cold, and I wanted him to feel it too. I hoped it made him feel vulnerable to see his memory in the palm of my hand.