That was because it looked as if someone had taken a white-hot fireplace poker and had shoved it into his skull, straight through the center of his forehead.
The black moment had come for John so quickly that his eyes were wide open, seeing only those things dead men can see.
When I was through vomiting over the rail, Farrentino led me back downstairs to the beer garden. He sat me down at a picnic table out of sight from the balcony, gave me a handkerchief so I could dry my mouth, and left me alone for a couple of minutes; when he came back, he had a shot glass of bourbon in one hand and a beer chaser in the other. The dubious benefits of having a murder committed at a bar.
I belted back the shot of bourbon, ignoring the chaser. The liquor burned down my gullet and into my stomach; I gasped and for a moment my guts rebelled, but the booze stayed down, and after a moment there was quietude of a sort. I slumped back in the chair and tried not to think of the horror I had just seen.
“Ready to talk?” Farrentino asked, not unkindly. I nodded my head; he pulled out a palmtop and flipped it open. “Is that John Tiernan? Can you give me a positive identification?”
I slowly nodded my head. Farrentino waited patiently for a verbal reply. “Yeah … yeah, that’s John,” I said. “I’m sure that’s him.”
“Okay.” The homicide detective made an entry in his computer. “I know that was rough on you, Mr. Rosen, but we had to be sure. We’ve got to call his family next, and even though we got his driver’s license from his wallet, I wanted to have someone else identify him before I put out a call to his wife. You were convenient and … well, I hope you understand.”
I nodded. Poor Sandy. I was glad that she hadn’t seen him like this. “Thanks, Officer. Do you want me to call her?”
“No, I’d just as soon do it myself.” Farrentino pulled out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and offered it to me. I shook my head, he took the cigarette for himself, lighting it from the bottom of the pack. “I hate to say it, but I’ve gotten used to this part of the job,” he went on. “I think it’d be better if she got the news from me instead of you. Me, she can hate for the rest of her life and it won’t matter much, but if she hears it from you …”
“Yeah, okay. I understand.”
He shrugged as he exhaled blue smoke. “So … when was the last time you saw the deceased?”
I actually had to think about it; all of a sudden, it seemed as if days instead of hours had passed since I had last seen John alive. “Around six, six-thirty, I think. We were closing down the office for the day.”
“Uh-huh.” Farrentino typed another note in his PT. “Do you have any idea where he was going?”
I became wary. Sure, I knew where John was going, and why … but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to tell these things to Farrentino. “He said he was coming down here, but I’m not really sure what he was doing.”
Farrentino continued to make notes. “You knew he was coming here,” he said, “but you don’t know why? Maybe he was just going out for a few drinks. That’s what most people do when they go to a bar after work.”
“Uh … yeah. That’s what he was doing-”
“Except when I talked to the bartender, he told me that Mr. Tiernan hardly ordered anything the whole time he was here. He remembers him buying one beer when he arrived at …”
Farrentino checked his notes. “A quarter to eight, and he nursed it the entire time he was here. I suppose he must have gone somewhere for dinner before then.”
I picked up my beer and took a sip from it. The bottle was slippery in my hand. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “That would make sense.”
“Hmm. Maybe so.” The detective coughed, his eyes still on the miniature screen. “Do you know if he was … well, y’know, fooling around with anyone? Had a girlfriend on the side his wife didn’t know about?”
I felt a rush of anger but tried to keep it in check. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Officer.”
“Well? Did he?” He shrugged indifferently. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but still it’s something his wife might want to know when I call her-”
“Hell, no!” I snapped. “If he was meeting anyone here, it sure as hell wasn’t a …”
My voice trailed off as the realization hit me. Farrentino had skillfully led me into a trap, forcing me to contradict myself. His eyes slowly rose from the PT. “I didn’t ask if he was meeting anyone here, Mr. Rosen,” he said. “Maybe you do know something about what he was doing here, after all.”
From behind the garden wall, there was the wail of a siren approaching from down the street. I could hear the metallic clank from the balcony as the paramedics unfolded their stretcher. A couple of barmaids stood watching us from the back door, murmuring to each other.
Farrentino was about to say something else when a uniformed cop approached our table, carrying several plastic-bagged objects in his hands. “This is all we found in his pockets,” he said, holding them out for the detective to examine. “Do you want us to have ’em dusted?”
I recognized some of the items: his house keys, his car remote, his wallet, an old-fashioned fountain pen Sandy had given to him as a birthday present, some loose change, the ever-present pack of chewing gum …
And, in a bag of its own, Dingbat.
“Hmm?” Farrentino barely glanced at the collection. “Uhh … naw, I don’t think we need to do that. The only prints we’d find are his own. Just leave ’em with me. I’ll give them to his wife when I see her.”
The cop nodded his head and carefully laid them on the table between us before walking away. It occurred to me that John might have entered a few notes into Dingbat during his meeting with Beryl Hinckley. If there were any important clues as to why he had been killed, perhaps they might be stored on the PT’s floptical diskette.
“Okay, Rosen,” Farrentino said, breaking my train of thought, “let’s level with each other.”
“Sure.” I shrugged, trying not to stare covetously at Dingbat; it was just within hand’s reach. “Anything you want to know, Officer.” As I spoke, I picked up the beer and started to raise it to my mouth …
And then, at the last moment, I let my fingers slip from around the bottle.
It fell out of my grasp, bounced off the table, and fell between my legs, splattering beer across everything before the bottle broke on the concrete under the table. “Aw, shit!” I yelled, jumping up from my seat, staring down at the wet splotch that had spread across the crotch of my jeans. “Goddamn fucking …!”
When I want to screw up a conversation, I can outdo myself. Beer spilled off the table and onto the broken glass scattered across the ground. Farrentino stood up from his chair, alarmed and irritated at the same time. “What a fucking mess!” I whined. “I can’t believe I just … look, lemme go back to my place and get some dry pants on. It’ll just take a-”
“No, no, don’t do that,” Farrentino said, already moving away from the table. “Just stay here, okay? I’ll go get someone to clean all this stuff up …”
Then he turned his back to me and headed for the barroom’s back door; the two barmaids had already gone inside, presumably to get some towels and a broom and dustpan.
For a few precious moments, I was alone in the beer garden. I snatched up the evidence bag containing Dingbat. There was a red adhesive seal across the plastic zipper, but there was no time to worry about that now. I hastily unzipped the bag, breaking the seal, and shook the palmtop out into my hand, all the while keeping one eye on the door.
It took me only a second to eject the mini-disk from Dingbat’s floptical drive and stash it in the pocket of my jacket before I returned the PT to the bag and zipped it shut again. I had barely placed the bag back on the picnic table when Farrentino and one of the barmaids came out the door again.
We spent the next few minutes wiping up the spilled beer with paper towels and letting the barmaid sweep up the broken glass. I made a big deal out of sponging beer from my pants, although I kept one eye on the evidence bag. If you looked closely, you could see the split in the tape seal; someone would notice eventually, but I hoped to be long gone by then.