“What?” I said.
Go on, the eyes said.
“Home fires,” I said.
Dr. Silverman’s head nodded maybe a quarter of an inch.
“I’m keeping the home fires burning with my father and his big gun,” I said.
Dr. Silverman nodded minutely.
“So why the dead-of-winter landscape?”
She moved her eyes. It was as if she had shrugged. How did she do that? I was quiet. She was quiet.
After a time she said, “Dead of winter.”
“Dead of winter?”
“Your phrase,” Dr. Silverman said.
“And in here there are no offhand comments,” I said.
She smiled and shifted in her chair in the way she did to indicate that time was up.
“Next time,” she said.
I stood and walked to the door. She walked with me, as she always did.
“Dead of winter,” I said.
She smiled and held the door open. I went out.
52
You spend your life never going to Moline, and all of a sudden you are there for the second time. I was at the bar in the cocktail lounge at the airport Holiday Inn and Convention Center, with Millie McNeeley. I was having my first glass of white wine. Millie was drinking her third Manhattan, and chain-smoking Chesterfield Kings.
“I need you to remember,” I said to Millie. “Two men are dead, two women are facing emotional destitution. It’s not about discretion anymore.”
Millie listened to me. She nodded as I spoke. When I stopped, she sipped a bit more of her Manhattan, took another long pull on her cigarette, and watched the smoke drift up in front of her face as she exhaled with her lower lip pushed out. She didn’t say anything. I waited. It was one of the things I had learned from my father about detective work. Silence pressures most people. Wait. Listen. Be quiet.
“That’s too bad about George,” Millie said finally.
I nodded. Millie drank some more and smoked some more.
“He was a lot of fun,” she said.
I nodded. A small nod, just enough to cue her that I was listening. I knew where I had learned that.
“We had a little thing for a while,” Millie said.
Nod.
“He was married at the time.”
Millie finished her Manhattan and gestured to the bartender for another one and grinned at me.
“But I wasn’t,” she said.
“When was this?” I said.
“Oh, lemme see.” The bartender brought her Manhattan. She drank some. I suppressed a shudder.
“It would have been right around 1979, 1980 — not too long after he got here. George was a ladies’ man.”
“Though married,” I said.
“His wife was a poop,” Millie said.
“Were you his only, ah, conquest?”
“I wasn’t conquested,” Millie said. “I liked sex as much as he did. Still do, just harder to come by.”
“Were you the only woman in his life,” I said, “other than his wife.”
Millie sipped her drink.
“Hell, no,” she said. “George was hot. And the options in Moline aren’t that great.”
“Who else was he with.”
“Every female at the station, I think.”
“Including Lolly Drake?”
“Absolutely,” Millie said.
For a moment, I felt like jumping off the bar stool and doing a little River Dance thing right there in the cocktail lounge. Instead, I remained calm.
“Were they a big item?” I said.
“No bigger than George and I,” Millie said. “Remember, she wasn’t Big-Deal Lolly then, just a kid with a call-in show in a small market.”
“Was George careful?” I said.
“About what?”
“Birth control?”
Millie laughed. It was a deep, smoke-cured whiskey-soaked laugh.
“George? George thought pregnancy was a woman’s problem.”
“So he didn’t use birth control.”
“No.”
“Did you get pregnant?” I asked.
“I thought it was a woman’s problem, too,” Millie said.
“So you were careful.”
“I was.”
“How about Lolly Drake?”
“How would I know?” Millie said.
“You never saw her pregnant?”
“No,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have, anyway. She got the big syndication break on Heartland Media and moved on, and I never saw her again. I read about her sometimes. The way you do someone you knew once. I never heard about a kid.”
“Did she and George stay in touch?”
“Not that I know of. When she left, he moved right on to the new girl that replaced her... and I do mean onto.”
“Did she ever get pregnant?”
“Yes, but with a guy she married the next year. They got three more kids since.”
“Did you know anyone besides Lolly that George slept with who moved on shortly afterwards?”
Millie finished her Manhattan while she thought back.
“No,” she said, and gestured to the bartender.
“How long was George here after Lolly?”
“Oh, maybe a year. Then he said he got a big job back East and he left.”
“Ever hear from him again?”
“No.”
“While they lived here, did his wife fool around?”
Millie laughed the deep mahogany laugh again.
“Maybe with herself,” she said.
“She didn’t have an affair.”
“God, no. I’m telling you. She was a prude. She showed no interest in any man I ever saw her with, and no man I know ever showed any interest in her. Including George.”
“Could they have adopted a child?” I said.
“Here? When I knew them? I doubt it. If they did, it was a big secret. Which is unlikely. The Quad Cities aren’t that big,” Millie said. “The local announcers are celebrities.”
“Are you a local celebrity?” I said.
“Hell, no, honey,” Millie said, and gestured at me with her fresh Manhattan. “I’m a local drunk.”
53
After I returned to Boston, I took the Acela express train to New York, and Corsetti met me in Penn Station. He took my bag and swaggered ahead of me, plowing through the crowded station as if he and I were the only ones there. His car was parked up on the sidewalk by the entrance, with its blue light flashing. He popped the trunk, put my bag in, and closed the trunk. I noticed that he had a Kevlar vest in there and a pump shotgun.
“How’d you find her,” I said in the car.
“July’s in the system,” Corsetti said. “She got into it with a parking enforcement woman giving her a ticket. Whacked her with her purse. Got booked for assault on a law enforcement officer.”
“How’d the parking woman make out?” I said.
“She was built like me, grew up in Bed-Stuy. Was kicking July’s ass by the time the local precinct guys arrived.”
“Surprised she didn’t charge meter-maid brutality,” I said.
“She did, that’s why they let her go. We won’t bust your chops for the assault charge, you forget us on the excessive-force complaint.”
We were going down Seventh Avenue with the light still turning and the siren going.
“Is there an emergency?” I said.
“Naw,” Corsetti said, “I hate poking along in traffic.”
“I gather July lives downtown?” I said.
“She lives in the Bronx,” Corsetti said, “but there’s less traffic in this direction.”
I smiled.
“Cute,” I said. “Where in fact does she live, Eugene?”
“West Village,” Corsetti said. “Twelfth Street.”
“Wherever will you park?” I said.
Corsetti glanced at me and smiled. When we got to the address, Corsetti slid his car up beside a two-zone sign on a corner near St. Vincent’s Hospital. We got out. Corsetti swaggered, and I walked, west.