ride the Raines case into the governor‟s mansion.”
I winked at her as she scurried by and headed for the booking desk:
71
NANCE SHOWS HIS STRIPE
The Breezes reeked of money. The conservative, two-story townhouses were Williamsburg gray with
scarlet trim, and the walkways wound through ferns and flowering bushes that looked almost too good
to be real. Some intelligent contractor had left a lot of old oaks and pines on the development and
there wasn‟t a car in sight; the garages were obviously built facing away from the street. The lawn
looked like it had been hand-trimmed with cuticle scissors.
There was a combined exit and entrance in the high iron-spike fence that enclosed the compound. It
was divided by an island with a guardhouse and around-the-clock guards. The one on duty, a tall
black weightlifter type, was starched into his tan uniform, and his black boots glistened like a
showroom Ferrari.
He looked at me through no-shit eyes and shifted his chewing gum from one cheek to the other. He
didn‟t say anything.
“My name‟s Kilmer, to see Mrs. Raines,” I said.
He checked over his clipboard, leafing through several sheets of paper, and shook his head.
“Not on the list,” he said.
“Would you give her a call? She probably forgot. It‟s been a rough day for her.”
“I got a „no disturb‟ on that unit,” he said.
“She‟s expecting me,” I said, trying not to lose my temper.
“There‟s no Kilmer on the list and I got a „no disturb‟ on that unit,” he said, politely but firmly. “Why
don‟t you go someplace and call her, tell her to call the gate and clear you.”
I showed him my card and his eyes stuck on the first line— “Agent—U.S. Government”—.--and
stayed there until he looked back up.
“My brother‟s a city cop,” he said, looking out the window at nothing in particular. “He‟s taking the
Bureau exams in the fall.”
“Fantastic. You know what‟s going on tip there at Mrs. Raines‟ place, don‟t you?”
“You mean about Mr. Raines?”
“Yeah.”
“Terrible thing.” He looked back at the buzzer and asked, “This official?”
“What else?” I said in my official voice.
“They got tough rules here, buddy. Nobody, not nobody, goes in without a call from the gate first. It‟s
in the lease.”
“Like I said, she‟s expecting me; probably forgot to give you the name with everything else that‟s
going on. Why don‟t I ride through?”
“Hell, I‟ll just call her,” he said. “Guest parking is to the right, behind those palmettos.”
I pulled in and parked in the guest lot, which was so clean and neat it looked sterilized. When I got
back, the guard had his grin
“A-okay,” he said, making a circle with thumb and forefinger. “You were right, she forgot. First walk
on the left, second unit down, 3-C.”
I thanked him and headed for 3-C. The place was as quiet as the bottom of a lake. No night birds, no
wind, no nothing. Pebbles crunched under my feet when I reached the cul-de-sac. It was a class
operation, all right. Each condo had its own pool. There wasn‟t a speck of trash anywhere. Soft bugrepellent lights shed a flat, shadowless glow over the ground s.
Three-C stood back from the gravel road at the end of two rows of azaleas. It seemed like a cathedral
on Christmas Eve. I pressed the doorbell and chimes played a melody under my thumb. Chains
rattled, dead bolts clattered, the door swung open, and she was standing there.
The events of the last twenty-four hours had taken their toll. Her eyes were puffed, her face drawn and
sallow. Grief had erased her tan and replaced it with a gray mirror of death. She closed the door
behind me and retreated to a neutral corner of the room, as though she were afraid I had some
contagious disorder.
“I‟m glad you‟re here,” she said, in a voice that had lost its youth.
“Glad to help,” I said.
“Nobody can help,” she said.
“You want to talk it out?” I suggested. “It helps, I‟m told.”
“But not for you, is that it?”
I thought about what she‟d said. It was true, there were few people in the world I could talk to. A
hazard of the profession.
“I guess not,” I said. “Nobody trusts a cop.”
“It‟s hard to realize that‟s what you do.”
I looked around the place. It was a man‟s room, no frills, no bright colours. The colour scheme was
tan and black and the antique furniture was heavy and oppressive. The walls were jammed with
photographs, plaques, awards, all the paraphernalia of success, squeezed into narrow, shiny brass
frames. The room said a lot about Harry Raines; there was a sense of monotonous order about it, an
almost urgent herald of accomplishment. A single flower would have helped immensely.
Oddly, Doe was in only one of the pictures, a group shot obviously taken the day the track opened.
The rest were all business, mostly the business of politics or racing: Raines in the winner‟s circle with
a jockey and racehorse; Raines looking ill-at-ease beside a Little League ball club; Rains with the
Capitol dome in Washington soaring up behind him; Raines posing with senators, congressmen,
governors, generals, mayors, kids, and at least one president.
“Didn‟t he ever smile?” I asked, looking at his stern, almost relentless stare.
“Harry wasn‟t much for smiling. He thought it a sign of weakness,” Doe said.
“What a shame,” I said. “He looks so unhappy in these photographs.”
“Dissatisfied,” she said. Resentment crept into her tone. “He was never satisfied. Even winning didn‟t
satisfy him. All he thought about was the next challenge, the next victory, another plaque for his wall.
This was his place, not mine. I‟m only here because it‟s convenient. As soon as this is all over, I‟m
getting rid of it. I‟m sick to death of memorials, and that‟s all this house is now.”
“How about you, did you satisfy him?”
“In what way?” she asked, her brow gathering up in a frown.
“I mean, were you happy together?”
She shrugged.
“We had all the happiness money can buy,” she said ruefully. “And none of the fun that goes with it.”
“I‟m sorry,” I said, feeling impotent to deal with her grief. “I‟m sorry things have turned so bad for
you.”
She sat down primly, her hands clasped in her lap, and stared at the floor.
“Oh, Jake, what happened to it all?” she said, without looking up. “Why did it shrivel up and die like
that? Why were we betrayed so? You, Teddy, Chief, all the things that had meaning for me were
ripped out of my life.”
“We all took a beating,” I said. “Poor old Teddy got the worst of it.”
“Teddy,” she said. “Dear, sweet Teddy. He didn‟t give a damn for the Findley tradition. In one of his
letters from Vietnam he said that when you two got back, he was going to buy a piece of land out on
Oceanby and the two of you were going to become beach bums. He said he was tired of being a
Findley. It was all just a big joke to him.”
“We talked about that a lot,” I said. “Sometimes I think he was halfway serious.”
“He was serious,” she said, sitting up for a moment. “Can‟t you just see it? The three of us out there
telling the world to drop dead?” She looked up at me and tried to bend the corners of her mouth into a
smile. “You see, I always knew you‟d come back here, Jake. Sooner or later Teddy would get you
back for me. Only what I thought was, it was a glorious fantasy, not a nightmare. Then Teddy died
and the nightmare started and it never ended and it keeps getting worse.”