“Get your head around this, Bry. She isn’t talking to me, to the cops, to anyone but her mouthpiece, Silent Shawn Hamilton. And he ain’t talking to me, the schemer. Call him. Good luck.”
Silent Shawn will give him zip. A weird one, the mouthpiece who won’t talk, you can’t do a deal with him.
“I’ve subpoenaed Florenza, but we’re flying blind.”
“What’s she hiding?” Her debauch with Cud, for sure. Maybe worse.
Abigail leaned toward him. “I know it’s hard in your unbalanced state, but try to focus on what I’m saying. If Florenza LeGrand is complicit in her husband’s death, she becomes a rich target. Of far more interest than some country Joe in red braces.” She let it hang there, smiling.
“What would you want for that?”
“If he rolls all the way, manslaughter.”
“No fank you. I’ll cop him to drunk driving though.”
Abigail looked pissed, but he wasn’t going to explain how Cud stormed off when he mentioned manslaughter. He fumbled for his A’s, he was having a nic fit. He looked back, Dr. Epstein was gone, presumably to the ladies. Her associate was waving a credit card at the waiter.
“I need some fresh air.”
“Enjoy. I don’t partake of the filthy habit any more.”
“Anyway, I’ve got to run.”
“Not interested in extending the evening? Dessert? One for the road? A hump for old times’ sake? A visit to a mental health clinic?”
“I have a…an emergency.” He wanted to get out of here before his shrink came back.
“I’ll drive you.”
He shook his head, rose. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll call you.”
He retrieved his case, clutched it to his chest, made his way out the back entrance, where the smokers gather, where one of the kitchen staff, chef-hatted, was taking a last drag before butting out. And here was Alison Epstein, staring at nothing, darkness. He was about to turn on his heels when she turned on hers, toward him, with a smiled “Hello.”
“I didn’t know you smoked,” he said.
“I don’t. I was hoping we could catch up. Briefly.”
He lit up. Now she would want explanations, she’d want to know why he was hiding out, and where, why he’d quit Xanax. “Who’s the man you’re with?”
“My husband.”
She could be lying, but he thought not. Maybe she hadn’t lured him here after all. One of life’s coincidences. They happen. Maybe he could trust her, maybe he could take that chance.
“Seems like a…nice fellow.” His voice stilted. “I was with a friend. A prosecutor. A business date.”
“I see. And how have you been coping?”
“No complaints.” He struggled to invent a plausible lie. But Dr. Epstein had X-ray vision, she saw through him like glass. That was the problem, that’s why he strived so hard to avoid her; she saw past his mask.
“Are you still hearing voices?” The voices of dead judges, he’d told her that. And Lance Valentine, his cut-glass accent. And Widgeon, telling him what to do, like God. Like God telling Gilbert F. Gilbert to kill the chief justice. Brian had gone back through that file, the psychiatric reports, seeking symptoms, clues, answers to his own problems.
He lied. “The voices don’t bother me.”
“Have you decided to terminate therapy?”
“I wasn’t handling it very well. I needed a break.”
A long pause, one of those significant pauses where she waits for elaboration, confession, expects to reel the truth out of him like a fish from the sea. He felt sudden, overwhelming defeat. He was imploding under the pressure, all the followers, the conspirators, the plots and subplots; he could no longer tell who was real, who fictitious, who was with him, who against him. He opened his case and thrust his manuscript at her.
“I want you to have this.”
“Brian, I can help you.”
“They’re after me. I know too much. I know who killed the judges. All the clues are in here.”
She took the manuscript, stared for a few moments at the title, then looked hard at him, penetratingly. “Brian, you’ve stopped the Xanax.”
“Sort of.”
“What are you on right now? Cocaine?”
Panic. “How can you tell?”
“It’s the worst thing you can do in your present state.”
He made for the alley. “I’ll call you. I promise.”
11
Arthur has soared too close to the sun, and his feathers are melting. Fire above, fire below, engulfing the hall, and he’s falling toward those blue flames, totally doomed, totally doomed…
He opened his eyes before the impact and lay still, staring at the rough cedar ceiling, feeling no relief to have survived those flames. No interpreter of dreams needed. A telling metaphor for last night’s disaster.
Margaret’s side of the bed was distressingly unrumpled, denying him any flickering hopes she’d found a tiny corner of forgiveness in her heart. “Come in,” he’d told Stoney, Dog, and McCoy, “meet some friends.” This grossly negligent invitation was, to Margaret, further proof of his secret plot to abort her political career.
It may have taken a while for her Greens to realize that the tumultuous invasion of Bob Stonewell and the two dwarfs was not some picaresque after-dinner entertainment. Reactions ranged from puzzlement to barely suppressed dread.
McCoy sang bawdy songs, Dog threw up, and Stoney passed out business cards: Loco Motion. Ride in style in our fleet of heritage limousines. “One of them’s a cherry 197 °Chrysler New Yorker,” he announced proudly. “Gulps the gas, you only get eight to the gallon, but where you gonna go on a small island anyway? The fun is just laying some rubber on the roadways, man.” The three of them polished off the leftovers, washing them down with the remaining organic wine and beer.
The champion worst episode involved a venerable, now broken, leaded-glass window in the parlour. The runner-up: a burning butt in a paper recycling bin. Third place went to Dog vomiting on shoes left by the veranda door.
The woofers, embarrassed, left early, though the noise was loud enough to draw Nick from his room, complete with iPod and headphones. Margaret skipped about with a fixed, ferocious smile until her friends and patrons sped off to the late ferry. Whereupon she wordlessly fetched her night gear and slammed the guestroom door behind her.
He’d slept poorly but late, Aurora had long ago rolled up the curtain of night. He dragged himself up, looked out the window-the family pickup was gone. He lashed himself with an ugly scenario, Margaret speeding off to the city to start a divorce. Petitioner further alleges mental cruelty rendering intolerable the continued cohabitation of the spouses.
The flatbed was still parked below, though Icarus had mysteriously disappeared. The driver’s door was open, Stoney lying there under a dirty blanket. Somehow, despite having got awe-inspiringly drunk, he’d had the sense not to drive. Also in the driveway was the rust-scarred van of Mop’n’Chop (“We do it all, no task too small”), so Felicity Jones and Bobbi Rosekeeper must be downstairs, cleaning up.
There was Nick, standing by the pond, idly tossing pebbles, making ripples in the reeds. Looking down upon this sad, thin figure, Arthur felt devastated. He’d promised to take him fishing before breakfast. This skipped-generation relationship was being badly mishandled by the Baron of Blunder Bay. Lord Stumblebum.
He hurriedly washed, dressed, crept down to the living room. Beneath the staircase, the cat was sniffing at the stubby figure of Stoney’s pal, Dog, who was face down on the cat’s pillow. Where had Hamish McCoy disappeared to? Icarus had either been spirited away or regained the power of flight.
The girls had already done the living room, except for Dog’s redoubt under the stairs, which they’d vacuumed around. They were in the kitchen now, dishwasher and washer-dryer going, the ninety-year-old house jiggling and rumbling.