“I’ve already done a lot of work,” Rebecca added, “particularly with one of the men who investigated the case.” She stepped back slightly, as if to get a better view of me, or the room, or something else she might later want to describe. “You probably remember him,” she said. “He remembers that you sat in the back seat of the car and that it was raining.”
I could see the silver bird as the rain crashed down upon its outstretched wings.
“His name is Swenson,” Rebecca went on, “and he remembers turning around and saying something to you.”
At that instant, I remembered everything exactly as it had happened that day. I saw the black arms of the windshield wipers as they floated rhythmically over the rain-swept glass, the curling smoke that came from the other one’s cigar, the big, white face as it turned toward me, Swenson’s pudgy pink thumb gently rubbing the lenses beneath a slightly soiled white handkerchief, his voice low, wheezy: One day you’ll be all right again.
“He had red hair,” I blurted suddenly.
“It’s more of an orange-white now,” Rebecca said. “His health is not very good.”
She described him briefly. Despite his illness, he was still large, she said, with very intense green eyes. He had a gentle manner, but she had sensed great reserves of fortitude and courage. She said that he’d looked long and hard for my father, had followed scores of leads, but that finally, after several years, he’d been told to let it drop, that there was no more money to pursue an unsolvable case. He’d retired not long after that, his health failing steadily, so that during her interview with him, he’d sat near an oxygen tank, taking quick breaths through a plastic mask. It was a condition that reminded me of Quentin’s final days.
“My uncle died like that,” I told her. “Some sort of respiratory thing.”
“That would be Quentin Coleman, the man you lived with in Maine?”
That’s right.”
Rebecca said, “I know it’s sudden, the way I’ve just shown up here at your office, but I hope you don’t mind.” She paused, then added, “I’d like to talk to you for a longer time. It’s up to you, of course.”
“To tell you the truth, Miss Soltero,” I said, “I don’t know if I could be of much help to you. I was only nine years old when it happened.”
“But you remember your father, don’t you?”
“No, not much.”
She looked at me very intently. “Are you sure?” she asked.
It was more than a question, and even at that moment I recognized that part of it was a challenge, and part an accusation, the notion that if I didn’t help her unearth my father’s crime, then I was, to some degree, a partner in it, his cowardly accomplice.
“Would you be willing to meet me again, Mr. Farris?” Rebecca asked directly.
She had drawn the line in the dust. Now it was up to me either to cross it or drift back, draw away from her, but even more critically, to draw away from my father, to close the door forever in his ghostly face. There was something in such a grave finality that I couldn’t do.
“Well, I guess we could talk,” I replied, “but I still don’t think I’ll be able to remember much.”
Rebecca smiled quietly and put out her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll call you.”
She left directly after that, and I went back to my desk and began working up a preliminary design for a small library in neighboring Massachusetts.
Within an hour the clouds had broken. From my desk I watched the morning air steadily brighten until it reached a kind of sparkling purity at midday.
I ate my lunch in the park, watching the swans drift along the edges of the pond, until Wally suddenly plopped down beside me, stretched out his thick, stubby legs, and released a soft belch.
“Oops. Sorry, Stevie,” he said. “It’s the spaghetti. It always repeats on me.” He patted his stomach and went on about other foods that had the same effect upon him—popcorn, melon, a vast assortment—until, near the end of a long list, he stopped, his eyes fixed on a figure he saw moving along the far edges of the pond. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said wonderingly. “Christ, that’s her, Steve.”
“Who?”
“Hell, it’s been ten years. I don’t know her name right off.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“That woman, there.”
He nodded, and I glanced over in the direction he indicated. I could see a tall, thin woman as she strolled beside the water. She was wearing a plain, dark blue dress. Her hair had once been very dark, but was now streaked with gray. Her skin looked very pale, almost powdery, as if she were slowly disintegrating.
“Yolanda, that’s it,” Wally blurted. “Yolanda Dawes.”
“Who is she?”
“You kidding me, Steve?” Wally asked unbelievingly. “Hell, man, she’s the evil home-wrecker, the menace on the road.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s the broad that killed Marty Harmon.”
I turned toward her as if she were a creature out of myth, the scarlet woman of immemorial renown. She’d reached the far end of the pond by then, the bright midday light throwing a dazzling haze around her as she strolled along its smooth, rounded edge.
Wally had returned to deeper interests, plucking at his nails with a tiny clipper. “Even way back then, she never struck me as something to get all that worked up about,” he said absently. “But she sure killed old Marty Harmon, just as sure as if she’d put a bullet in his head.”
I hadn’t thought of Marty in years, but it was not hard to conjure him up again. We’d come to work for Simpson and Lowe at nearly the same time, and although he was older than I, we’d both been novices at the firm. Because of that we’d socialized together, usually going out for an hour or so after work on Fridays, a custom that neither Marie nor Marty’s wife had ever seemed to mind.
Marty’s wife was named LeAnn. Before marrying Marty, she’d spent most of her life in Richmond, Virginia. They’d met while Marty was in the navy, married, then moved north, where Marty felt more comfortable. By the time he joined Simpson and Lowe, they’d had two children, a boy of eleven and a girl of nine. I don’t recall their names, but only that they were both strikingly blond. By now their hair has darkened. In all likelihood, they have married, and have children of their own. Perhaps, had I kept in touch, I might have been of some assistance to them, since, like me, they were destined to grow up without a father.
As a fellow-worker and, to some extent, a friend, Marty was self-effacing, witty, and very kind. He was not a terribly ambitious man, and he might never have become a partner. But he was highly competent, great with detail, organizational and otherwise, and socially adept enough never to embarrass himself or anyone else by his behavior at office parties or other business functions.
Our favorite place was Harbor Lights, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of town. The interior was decked out like the inside of an old whaling boat, complete with oars, coils of thick gray rope, and a few rusty harpoons. For almost two years, we went there at least two Friday evenings out of each month. We talked business and office gossip, the usual end-of-the-week banality. Marty seemed to enjoy the time we spent together, loosening his tie, and sometimes even kicking off his black, perfectly polished shoes. We talked about sports a great deal, and sometimes about our families. Marie was pregnant by then, a child we later lost to miscarriage in its second month, and Marty sometimes fell into the role of the older, more experienced man, warning me of the changes that would inevitably come with fatherhood.
“But all the changes are worth it,” he told me cheerfully, “because being a father, it’s a different kind of love.”