“I will.”
She wrote out a little appointment card for me. I took it and put it in my purse with my gun.
“We’ve been divorced five years,” I said. “We’ve both had other relationships. Why is this so hard?”
“We’ll see if we can find out,” Dr. Silverman said and stood and walked me to the door.
9
I was feeling a little less disintegrated as I went out to Taft to talk with Sarah. It wasn’t that Dr. Silverman had done anything much but listen and say noncommittal things. But I felt, somehow, a little safer.
Sarah was wearing multicolored tights today with a short tank top and a lot of bare belly. She was slim enough to get away with it. But even though it was flat, her belly looked soft, and so did her spandex-squeezed butt. We sat on a stone bench outside the main entrance to the library, so Sarah could smoke.
“So tell me your earliest memory.” I said.
Sarah shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “Everyone has an early memory.”
“But how do you know it’s your earliest?”
I took in some of the fall air, trying not to get cigarette smoke in there with it.
“Good point,” I said. “Let me rephrase. Tell me something you remember from when you were very young.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember anything before you moved to Andover?”
“No.”
“Do you remember ever living anywhere else but the house where your parents live now.”
“Adopted parents,” Sarah said.
“Well, if we’re going to be exact,” I said, “they would be your adoptive parents, you would be their adopted child.”
“Whatever,” Sarah said.
“So what do you remember?” I was positively perky.
“Nothing much,” Sarah said.
My perkiness slipped a little.
“Oh, fuck you,” I said.
She actually rocked back a little on the bench.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said. “You hire me to do a tough job, and you won’t help me do it.”
“I’m not getting paid.”
“No, you idiot,” I said. “You’re paying me to find out something that you’re preventing me from finding out.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t want to work or think. You want to sit there like a lump and wait for me to hand you the solution.”
“Lump?”
“Lump,” I said. “If I’m going to help you, you have to pitch in.”
“You’re supposed to be the fucking detective,” she said.
“Well, at least we speak the same language,” I said. “The only place I have to start is you and your possibly adoptive parents. And they’re much more helpful than you are.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“But you said... oh, I get it.”
“Dynamite,” I said. “Tell me the name of one of your friends when you were little.”
“You don’t have to get all pissed off about it.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t. I choose to. Tell me something or I quit.”
She started to speak and stopped and took a long, movieish drag on her cigarette.
“I used to hang around with Bobby O’Brien,” she said.
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“You know where he lives now?”
“No.”
“Did you go to school together.”
“Yes.”
“Did you remain friends.”
“Until high school,” she said.
“What happened?”
“He got a girlfriend.”
“And you couldn’t remain friends?”
Sarah shrugged. She dropped her cigarette on the ground and rubbed it out with her foot. There was a sand bucket for cigarette butts next to her.
“But he graduated in your class?”
“I guess.”
She took out another cigarette and tried to light it in the faint breeze. It took four matches. My father, when he had smoked, used to be able to cup the match in his hand and light the cigarette on the first try. None of the few women I knew who smoked could get one going in any outdoor setting. I wondered why. I was pretty sure if I smoked cigarettes I’d learn how to get one lit even in the wind. I was pretty sure it didn’t have to be a guy thing.
“Parents still live in your neighborhood?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Anyone else you used to play with as a kid?”
“Judy Boudreau.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
“No.”
“Graduate from high school with you?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else?”
We went through this exercise for about twenty minutes, and I ended with a list of maybe twelve names. All of them racked out of her as though they were sworn secrets.
“So,” Sarah said. “You happy now?”
“It’s a start,” I said.
“So why do you want those names?”
“Because I want to talk with them.”
“Why?”
“In hopes it will help me find out who your biological parents are,” I said.
“How would they know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Being a detective is mostly about not knowing, and asking and looking until you do know, at least something.”
“You got a gun?” Sarah said.
“Yes.”
“You got it with you?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“No.”
“I bet you don’t really have one,” Sarah said.
I nodded.
“Who was your pediatrician?” I said.
“See, you’re changing the subject.”
“No, I’m getting back to it. Pediatrician?”
“Dr. Marks,” she said.
“As in Karl?” I said.
“Who?”
“How do you spell it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he in Andover?”
“Yes. I’ll bet you don’t have a gun.”
There was no real reason not to show it to her, except that she had no need to see it, and I’d had a bad week, and expected to have a bad month, and I didn’t feel like showing it to her.
“Anything else you can remember that might be useful?”
“If you had it you’d show it,” Sarah said. “You don’t have one.”
I stood.
“Do you know what your father does for a living?”
“Stepfather.”
“How does he make money?” I said.
“He buys and sells stocks and stuff.”
“Where’d the original investment come from?”
“I dunno.”
“Of course you don’t,” I said.
“Well, you don’t have to give me attitude about it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “If you think of anything, call me.”
“Sure.”
“Have a nice day,” I said.
I walked down the center of the library quadrangle and across the street to the lot where I’d parked. When I drove out of the lot I could see her up there, where I’d left her. Sitting on the bench, hunched a little against the coolness. Smoking.
10
“You’ve heard me speak of Tony Gault,” I said to Dr. Silverman.
“Yes.”
“He was in town again last week.”
Dr. Silverman nodded.
“We weren’t intimate.”
“Though you have been in the past?”
“Yes. Several times.”
Dr. Silverman nodded.
“In the past, did you enjoy intimacy?”
“Yes.”
“But not this time.”
“This time I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
Dr. Silverman smiled and waited.
“I don’t,” I said.
“What has changed?”
“Changed? For God’s sake, Doctor, you know what has changed. Richie got married.”