I came down from the bleachers, my hands still sticky from hot dogs, and went over and gave a guy a buck and took two Old Milwaukees from a cooler. Then I walked over to where Mike Perry and Bill Hanratty sat by the backstop. Hanratty recognized me first.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I replied.
By now Perry had recognized me, too. He scowled. I remembered how angry he’d gotten last night, blaming me for letting the killer into the building. But that was an unproved theory so far. The killer might easily have been inside the building. The killer might easily have been one of the Channel 3 newsteam.
“I wondered if I could talk to you,” I said.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Perry snapped.
“Asking questions.”
“On whose authority?”
“Basically I’m trying to save my job,” I said.
“I could give a rat’s ass what you’re trying to do,” Perry said.
“C’mon. Let’s at least give him a chance.”
“He’s some fucking security guard. Big deal.”
“C’mon now, Mike. C’mon.”
“Jesus,” Perry said. He got up and hurled his beer into the backstop. Golden water sprayed everywhere. “Cocksucker,” he said, and walked away.
It wasn’t real difficult to imagine Mike Perry getting angry enough to kill somebody.
“Boy, he can really be a hothead.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I don’t know how the hell either one of us could help you, though. For one thing we’re both still pretty much in shock. About Dave dying, I mean. Or being murdered, I guess you’d say.”
“Yeah.”
I just watched him as he talked. He had a fleshy handsome baby face, the world’s most successful altar boy maybe, but watching him closely demonstrated to me that he was all artifice. It was in the eyes. The eyes did not reflect the words being spoken. No matter what he said, the eyes remained the same, hard and assessing. In my years on the force I’d noticed this trait in professional criminals: they needed certain social skills to be good at their trade — they had to hoodwink everybody from their mates to their parole officers — and so they got very good at acting. Until you studied their eyes. Then they weren’t worth a damn and they scared the shit out of you.
I decided to jab him hard. “Today somebody told me that David Curtis didn’t trust you.”
He had been drinking his beer. He stopped. Looked at me over the edge of the can. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Then why ask me?”
“I wanted to see what you’d say.”
“I guess now you know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know anybody who drives a black XKE?”
For the first time I had said something that caused some shift in his eyes. I had no idea what I was looking at. All I knew was that something had changed.
“No, I don’t.”
We stared at each other. After a while I said, “All right.”
“Maybe I don’t like this. Maybe Mike’s right.”
“About what?”
“About you. Why would you go around asking us questions? You’re a security guard.”
“I need to know what happened — otherwise I’m going to be blamed for letting the killer in, and I can’t live with that. Besides, I need the job.” I wasn’t kidding him. I was going to be blamed, and I did need the job.
“Well, I’ve never said anything about blaming you, did I? It was that damn plumber.”
“Did you know that Perry’s girlfriend was sleeping with Curtis?”
He stared at me again. “Yes, I guess I did.”
“You seem to be a pretty good friend of Perry’s. How was he handling it?”
“Pretty good, I guess.”
“Pretty good? Could you be a little more specific?”
“You mean do I think he killed Curtis?”
“Yeah, that’s probably what I do mean.”
“No, he didn’t.”
I watched his eyes closely again. “And you don’t know anybody who drives a black XKE?”
He was a quick study. He’d been waiting for me. This time he said no and nothing changed in his gaze. Nothing at all.
I looked around. Perry was over in the bleachers.
“We brought separate cars,” Hanratty said. “I guess I’ll head back to the station.”
I nodded.
“One thing,” he said.
“What?”
He nodded over to the bleachers. “You fuck with him, he’ll tear your face off. I’ve seen him when he gets angry.”
“Yeah, I noticed that last night.”
“That wasn’t anything.”
“You’re not exactly helping his case. You should be trying to convince me what a sweet, gentle guy he is.”
“He didn’t kill Curtis. But he isn’t any sweet, gentle guy, believe me.”
“What about Curtis?”
“What about him?”
“Did you like him?” I asked.
“He was typical.”
“Of what?”
“Of the people you meet in this business. We tend to worry about our careers to the exclusion of everything else. We put in very long hours and we don’t get paid very well, all things considered, not on the local level anyway. So we tend to always be thinking about our careers and how we can improve them.”
“Mind if I try my question again?”
“Did I like him, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“He was too much of a glamor boy for my taste. Kind of dark and good-looking and not much else. He wasn’t what you’d call real deep.”
“He did well with the ladies?”
“Very well.”
“Anybody he was friendly with lately besides Marcie Grant?”
He frowned. “Kelly Ford.”
I nodded. “You know anything about the Stephen Chandler story, the kid who committed suicide?”
“Just that it bothered Curtis a lot, when the kid died, I mean.”
“He say anything to you about it?”
“He didn’t have to. The day the kid died, Curtis went kind of crazy in one of the editing rooms. Damn near demolished the place.”
“Guilt, maybe?”
“I suppose. I think he pushed those kids a little hard to get his story. Maybe he did blame himself.”
The car starting in the gloom surprised me. Mike Perry was leaving.
“Guess you’re going to have to catch him later,” Hanratty said.
We shook hands.
“Thanks for talking,” I said.
“I hope your job turns out all right.”
I smiled. “So do I.”
We went to our respective cars, got in and drove off.
I turned on the headlights. The spring night was chilly suddenly. I hit the heater. As we wound through the park, I felt snug with the Coltrane song on the jazz station and the womb of heat enveloping me. I just kept thinking about Hanratty’s eyes. He was a much nicer guy than anybody else at the station and five times scarier.
Maybe that’s why, as we drove between the birches that flanked the river, I decided to follow him.
By the time we reached the city, all the lights were on in the haze, red and yellow and blue neon against the gloom, the tall downtown buildings lit in the darkness. I had dropped back half a block. The easy way he drove told me that he didn’t suspect I was behind him.
He led us within several blocks of the station, and by now I had no idea why I’d decided to tail him. Maybe I’d been bored and it had sounded like a way to deal with the monotony. But then he turned right when he should have turned left. He pulled into the parking lot of a sleazy motel that had a discreet little bar where couples who did not want to be seen could meet for drinks before going upstairs.
A tryst? Smiling Bill Hanratty, the happy altar boy who seemed to embody all the virtues middle America professes to love — a tryst?