I inclined my head a little, wanting to see him up close; I saw the muscles tense in his upper body. I supposed he thought I was going to hit him, but I was wrong; he rabbit-punched a quick jab and popped my nose.
I’m sure I looked surprised. I’ve been punched in the face numerous times, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. Henry had had the best shot when he popped me one in grade school but, other than that, a blow to my face has never been anything more than an irritation and a nuisance. Whatever it was that he had been expecting, it wasn’t me leaning in closer and whispering. “You do that again, and I’m going to pinch your head off.”
Physical force having failed, he went back to negotiation. “Your daughter’s crazy.”
“Bad conversation.” I could feel wetness on my face, and I guessed my nose was bleeding. “I haven’t really touched you, yet. You and I are going to have a chat, and we’re going to keep it civil so I won’t have to. Clear?”
Some of the smirk came back. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I took a breath to clear the urge to grab him by the throat. “Tell me about last night.”
“I don’t have to…” He was probably used to having his way, of simply changing his tone to obtain the upper hand, but he was in a different league now. He lurched from the wall in an attempt to get clear. I stuck my left arm out to stop him and watched his left retract for another shot at my face. I grabbed his wrist with my right and brought my left up and around his throat, effectively blocking his right arm against the wall with my side. He was almost as tall as me, but the extra seventy pounds I had on him flattened him against the tile. He tried to kick me, but I had prepared for that by turning my body a little away.
“Don’t move.” He struggled some more and started to yell, but I closed my grip on his windpipe and the only thing that came out was a wheezy yelp. His eyes bulged, and I thought about how the thumb fits so well over the larynx, and with one good squeeze…I could feel the nausea in the back of my throat, rising up to tell me that what I was doing was wrong. I stood there swallowing the bile that kept reminding me who I was and of what I could forgive myself. It took a few seconds, but I lessened my grip and allowed him a little more air. His eyes stayed wide, but they didn’t bug quite as much as before. “Tell me about last night.”
“Look, I didn’t do anything!”
“Anything like what?”
I let him swallow. “Anything to her.”
“I don’t believe you.” He looked around wildly, thinking there must be some way out. “Tell me the truth.”
His eyes began to well. “Look…”
“The truth.”
The first tears fell down his well-structured face, and I was feeling worse and worse. “It was an accident…We had a fight.”
“Tell me about it.”
He looked directly at me, and in some frantic, twisted way, I think he believed what he said next. “I love her.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
He started to move his arm, probably to wipe away the tears, but I wouldn’t let him move. “She fell! We were having an argument, and I tried to grab her arm…” I watched him as he took a breath. “She yanked her arm away…And then she fell.” I tried to concentrate on what he was saying. “I haven’t even been home! I’ve been wearing the same clothes for two days now.”
My head was starting to hurt. “Why didn’t you stay with her.”
He half howled. “I was scared!”
I felt tired all over, and I released my grip, but he started to slide down the wall. He was openly weeping. I was too weak to hold him up, so I allowed him to slide to the floor where I joined him and sat down, my hands dropping to my lap. We sat there looking at each other.
“Didn’t you care what happened to her?”
He could hardly speak, he was crying so hard. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do…I mean, she was just lying there.”
“Did you even check to see if she was alive?”
He wiped his face with a sleeve and stared at the floor. “I heard somebody coming, another guy, so I just ran.” He looked back up at me, and I wasn’t so sure I believed him. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I was scared.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. My head hurt, and I was tired of talking, especially of talking to Devon Conliffe. I rolled to my side and stood up slowly; my left leg was still worrying me from a gunshot wound that I had gotten over four months earlier. I put my hand out and against the toilet partition, steadied myself, and took another breath. “Tell the police.”
It took a second for him to respond. “What?”
I looked at him. “Tell the police.” I watched him, not so sure he would, especially once he was out of the restroom. “You call the police and you tell them everything you told me. Understand?” He looked back at the floor, and I waited for a response. “Did you hear me?”
He inhaled. “Yes.” He glanced up at me again, and there was a strange look to his face. “That’s it?”
I nodded. “That’s it.”
I pushed off the partition and stood there. “You call the police and you tell them everything that was said between us.” I started to walk out but paused for a moment. “You tell them…Or you’ll see me again. You’ll see me again just out of the corner of your eye, and I will be the last thing you ever see.”
The Bear appropriated a bar towel from the waitress as she passed. She stopped and peered at my face. “He didn’ like the beer?”
I shrugged as I wiped my nose. “Some guys just can’t hold their liquor.”
As Henry and I walked toward the escalators, he put a hand out and pulled the towel away. He tilted my head back and looked up my nostrils. “So, what does the other guy look like?”
“I punched him in the fist with my nose, but I think he’ll live.” I pinched the towel over my nose and leaned against the escalator’s moving rubber railing, glad that something else was providing the locomotion. I looked back up at Henry. “I didn’t kill him.”
The wide face nodded, inscrutable to the end. “Good.”
As we were riding down, two men were riding up. The one in the front was silver-haired and was sharply dressed in a charcoal suit with a maroon tie and a black trench coat; behind him was a man with a tightly cropped haircut and a suit, tie, and overcoat all the same shade of dark tan. It was difficult to see where the clothes began and the man stopped. They stared at us as we rode closer; by the time we passed each other, I could see that the first man’s designer glasses had small, red dots on the frames that emphasized his large brown eyes. The second man smiled a very becoming smile, and I noticed the bulge of a shoulder holster at his left armpit. “Foul ball?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded.
We quickly made our way from the ballpark and walked toward Broad and the subway. Henry didn’t say anything, which gave me plenty of time to think, mostly about whether I believed Devon Conliffe.
At some level, just about everybody lies to you when you’re a cop, whether they have a reason to or not-some little portion of the truth that they feel would be best omitted in their dealings with you. The only good thing about it is that you start being able to tell when people are doing it, and I was sure that Devon was. The kid obviously had a lot of emotional and mental issues to deal with, but I was having a hard time working up any empathy.
I watched Henry pull out his cell phone before we got to the subway entrance and call Lena Moretti. I looked south at the big highway overpass that with a few right turns would take me back to Wyoming. I wondered when that would be, if ever. When I looked back, he was closing the phone. “No change.”
I nodded, and we continued down the stairwell toward the thundering clatter of the Broad Street SEPTA line. We chose an almost empty car and sat across from each other on the orange fiberglass seats at the end. I finished with the bar towel and carefully folded it on my knee. My head was still pounding, and it was good to sit down.