The phone on Kling’s desk began ringing just as he and Brown were leaving the squadroom. He leaned over the slatted rail divider and picked up the receiver.
“Kling,” he said.
“Bert, it’s Eileen.”
“Oh, hi,” he said. “I was going to call you later today.”
“Did you find it?”
“Just where you said it was. Backseat of the car.”
“You know how many earrings I’ve lost in the backseats of cars?” Eileen said.
Kling said nothing.
“Years ago, of course,” she said.
Kling still said nothing.
“When I was a teenager,” she said.
The silence lengthened.
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad you found it.”
“What do you want me to do with it?” Kling asked.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be coming down this way for anything, will you?”
“Well…”
“Court? Or the lab? D.A.’s office? Anything like that?”
“No, but…”
She waited.
“Actually, I live down near the bridge,” Kling said.
“The Calm’s Point Bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, good! Do you know A View From the Bridge?”
“What?”
“It’s under the bridge, actually, right on the Dix. A little wine bar.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just… I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“Well…”
“Does five sound okay?” Eileen asked.
“I was just leaving the office, I don’t know what time—”
“It’s just at the end of Lamb Street, under the bridge, right on the river, you can’t miss it. Five o’clock, okay? My treat, it’ll be a reward, sort of.”
“Well…”
“Or have you made other plans?” Eileen asked.
“No. No other plans.”
“Five o’clock, then?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and hung up.
Kling had a bewildered look on his face.
“What was that?” Brown asked.
“Eileen’s earring,” Kling said.
“What?” Brown said.
“Forget it,” Kling said.
The ceiling of A View From the Bridge was adorned with wineglasses, the foot of each glass captured between narrow wooden slats, the stem and bowl hanging downward to create an overall impression of a vast, wall-to-wall chandelier glistening with reflected light from the fireplace on one wall of the room. The fireplace wall was made of brick, and the surrounding walls were wood-paneled except for the one lacing the river, a wide expanse of glass through which Kling could see the water beyond and the tugboats moving slowly through the rapidly gathering dusk. It was five-thirty by the clock over the bar facing the entrance doorway.
The wine bar, at this hour, was crowded with men and women who, presumably, worked in the myriad courthouses, municipal buildings, law offices, and brokerage firms that housed the judicial, economic, legal, and governmental power structure in this oldest part of the city. There was a pleasant conversational hum in the place, punctuated by relaxed laughter, a coziness encouraged by the blazing fire and the flickering glow of candles in ruby-red holders on each of the round tables. Kling had never been to England, but he suspected that a pub in London might have looked and sounded exactly like this at the end of a long working day. He recognized an assistant D.A. he knew, said hello to him, and then looked for Eileen.
She was sitting at a table by the window, staring out over the river. The candle in its ruby holder cast flickering highlights into her hair, red reflecting red. Her chin was resting on the cupped palm of her hand. She looked pensive and contained, and for a moment he debated intruding on whatever mood she was sharing with the dark waters of the river beyond. He took off his coat, hung it on a wall rack just inside the door, and then moved across the room to where she was sitting. She turned away from the river as he moved toward her, as though sensing his approach.
“Hi,” he said, “I’m sorry I’m late, we ran into something.”
“I just got here myself,” she said.
He pulled out the chair opposite her.
“So,” she said. “You found it.”
“Right where you said it’d be.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Let me give it to you before it gets lost again,” he said, and placed the shining circle of gold on the table between them. He noticed all at once that she was wearing the mate to it on her right ear. He watched as she lifted the earring from the table, reached up with her left hand to pull down the lobe of her left ear, and crossed her right hand over her body to fasten the earring. The gesture reminded him suddenly and painfully of the numberless times he had watched Augusta putting on or taking off earrings, the peculiarly female tilt of her head, her hair falling in an auburn cascade. Augusta had pierced ears; Eileen’s earrings were clip-ons.
“So,” she said, and smiled, and then suddenly looked at him with something like embarrassment on her face, as though she’d been caught in an intimate act when she thought she’d been unobserved. The smile faltered for an instant. She looked quickly across the room to where the waiter was taking an order at another table. “What do you prefer?” she asked. “White or red?”
“White’ll be fine,” he said. “But listen, I want to pay for this. There’s no need—”
“Absolutely out of the question,” she said. “After all the trouble I put you to?”
“It was no trouble at—”
“No way,” she said, and signaled to the waiter.
Kling fell silent. She looked across at him, studying his face, a policewoman suddenly alerted to something odd.
“This really does bother you, doesn’t it?” she said.
“No, no.”
“My paying, I mean.”
“Well… no,” he said, but he meant yes. One of the things that had been most troubling about his marriage was the fact that Augusta’s exorbitant salary had paid for most of the luxuries they’d enjoyed.
The waiter was standing by the table now, the wine list in his hand, Clued by the fact that she was the one who’d signaled him, and no longer surprised by women who did the ordering and picked up the tab, he extended the leather-covered folder to her. “Yes, miss?” he said.
“I believe the gentleman would like to do the ordering,” Eileen said. Kling looked at her. “He’ll want the check, too,” she added.
“Whatever turns you on,” the waiter said, and handed the list to Kling.
“I’m not so good at this,” he said.
“Neither am I,” she said.
“Where you thinking of a white or a red?” the waiter asked.
“A white,” Kling said.
“A dry white?”
“Well… sure.”
“May I suggest the Pouilly-Fume, sir? It’s a nice dry white with a somewhat smoky taste.”
“Eileen?”
“Yes, that sounds fine,” she said.
“Yes, the… uh… Pooey Foo May, please,” Kling said, and handed the wine list back as if it had caught fire in his hands. “Sounds like a Chinese dish,” he said to Eileen as the waiter walked off.
“Did you see the French movie, it’s a classic,” she said. “I forget the title. With Gerard Philippe and… Michele Morgan, I think. She’s an older woman and he’s a very young man, and he takes her to a fancy French restaurant—”
“No, I don’t think so,” Kling said.
“Anyway, he’s trying to impress her, you know, and when the wine steward brings the wine he ordered, and pours a little into his glass to taste it, he lakes a little sip — she’s watching him all the while, and the steward is watching him, too — and he rolls it around on his tongue, and says, ‘This wine tastes of cork.’ The wine steward looks at him — they’re all supposed to be such bastards, you know, French waiters — and he pours a little of the wine into his little silver tasting cup, whatever they call it, and he takes a sip, and rolls it around in his mouth, and everybody in the place is watching them because they know they’re lovers, and there’s nothing in the world a Frenchman likes better than a lover. And finally, the steward nods very solemnly, and says, ‘Monsieur is correct, this wine does taste of cork,’ and he goes away to get a fresh bottle, and Gerard Philippe smiles, and Michele Morgan smiles, and everybody in the entire place smiles.”