“How much did you have to pay?”
He became cognizant of the gun. He looked at it, at me, put it back in his pocket. Then he put his hands over his face and started shaking his head. Anybody else I would have suspected of crying quietly. But not him.
He looked up at me and shrugged. “When I was young I always thought that at sixty-five I’d lose interest in sex. But it’s just the opposite. Now it’s assumed a monumental importance in my life. I’ve retired from my aviation company except for the board work I do and— Sex is still very, very important. That’s why I liked Jackie so much. She was patient and kind and very good for me.”
“Yes.”
None of this made sense. Jane part of a blackmail ring?
“How much did you pay?” I asked again.
“Three thousand a month.”
I whistled.
“But you never found out who was sending them?”
“No,” he said, “and it’s a good thing I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I would have killed them.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t the money, it was the potential harm it could have done my wife if she’d ever opened the envelope by mistake.” He sighed. “And now — if I’m implicated in all this—”
He sounded very different from the man who’d earlier bragged about how important he was in this city.
The knock almost got lost in the wind. A tiny knock.
Davies swung his large head around and stood up instantly, putting a finger to his lips for silence.
He opened the door and a frail, once handsome woman came delicately inside.
He put an arm around her, and it was easy to see in this gesture how much he cared about her.
“I heard all the noise, honey,” she said, “the voices at the front door downstairs and—”
Then she saw me and I was afraid she was going to faint.
The angles of her face drew even tighter and she looked nervously to her husband for an explanation of my presence.
“This is an old friend of mine, darling,” he said. “His car happened to stall a few blocks from here and so he decided to walk over and phone a garage from here.”
His eyes begged me to leave.
I stood up, walked over, took the lady’s hand. “A little piece of bad luck. Sorry I had to disturb you.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve become an expert where bad luck’s concerned, I’m afraid.” She was so drawn and gaunt I didn’t mind her self-pity.
“Well,” I said, clapping Davies manfully on the shoulder, “the garage truck will probably be there by now. I’ll walk back.”
“Good luck,” he said.
I looked at his wife and then at him. Somehow I didn’t hate him the way I had when he’d only been a man in a picture with Jane.
“Good luck to you,” I said. I think I was being sincere.
18
“I shouldn’t have done it,” I said.
“Sssh.”
“You don’t deserve me inflicting myself—”
“Please, Dwyer. Don’t talk, all right?”
We sat in Donna Harris’s living room and watched rain slide down the front window. A streetlight gave the sight a silver beauty.
I had come here after leaving Davies’s. After seeing the picture of Jane, after the death of the prostitute, I felt unclean in some way I didn’t know I’d ever recover from.
Like a homing pigeon, I had a sense that Donna could help me with her kind of neurotic strength.
I told her everything, and she listened patiently, and afterward she turned out the light and we sat on the sofa, where we were now, watching the rain.
“It’s all getting crazy,” I said. “None of it makes sense.”
“Sssh.”
She held me for a long time and after a while a kind of rocking motion set in between us and through the depression I felt myself responding to her again. This time she let me put my hands on her breasts and her tongue found mine.
When she stopped me I understood.
“We should wait for a better time.”
I couldn’t disagree.
In the silence, in the darkness, she lit two cigarettes and dispensed them.
“I found out one thing about the older woman,” she said.
“What?”
“She and the Baxter woman you told me about got into a violent argument in the Conquistador one night.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“From the parking-lot attendant. Apparently the older woman was waiting by Elliot’s car. The Baxter woman pulled in and they got into an argument.”
But right now that information didn’t interest me half as much as holding Donna did.
This time it was my turn to help her. She started to cry; I wasn’t sure why, though she talked about her husband a bit and how life seems to let you down sometimes, so I put her on my lap and she curled against my chest and finally went to sleep.
I got a blanket from the bedroom and put it over her there on the couch and left.
19
I didn’t sleep until nearly dawn. Which was when the phone rang. I was groggy enough that the call could have been part of a dream.
But I took what the voice said seriously and got up and got dressed and headed for the hospital after shaving, brushing my teeth, and taking what my parents always called a “sponge bath.” Maybe I would have saved time showering.
Edelman, who had involved himself only to help me deal with the Branigans, waited for me in the lobby. We rode up silently to Jane’s floor and got off. In the dim light of the elevator I watched my old friend, good cop, good husband, good father, good man. He was getting older. It was like a flu — getting older seemed to be going around these days.
Malachie, the detective officially in charge and the man who’d directed the cleanup at Stephen Elliot’s house, stood above the Branigans, who sat on a couch in the waiting area.
Obviously he had just given them the news. The ballistics report was in on the gun I’d taken from Jane that day in the park.
Maybe it was the earliness of the hour, maybe it was because the past few days had drained them, maybe it was because they’d expected it — whatever, the Branigans had taken the news with a kind of bitter quiet. Their expressions were angry, but they said nothing, simply watched Malachie as if he were some kind of rodent.
Edelman touched my arm before we got over there. “I only called because they look like they could use a friend. I know her father’s a big-shot lawyer, but—” He shrugged. “I kinda feel sorry for them is all.”
“Yeah. I appreciate the call.”
We started across the room to them. On my way I saw a story in the morning paper that made me wonder if I wasn’t hallucinating. I reached for the paper tossed on the empty chair just as Mrs. Branigan began sobbing.
The sounds were horrible, animal noises and froze everybody in position.
Then Mr. Branigan took her and brought her into his arms, and Edelman and I finished our walk over to them.
“Please, would you mind leaving us alone?” Mr. Branigan said to the officers.
They nodded, proceeded to withdraw. I turned away too. Mr. Branigan said, “Would you mind staying?”
I wanted to see the paper, make sure that I hadn’t imagined what I’d seen. But I could hardly refuse him.
I watched as he sat his wife down and put her hands together and fluffed a pillow and put it behind her head for her to lean back against. Apparently the hospital put feather pillows out in case you had an overnight vigil.
Mrs. Branigan, now obviously in bad condition mentally, shut her eyes and began to weep silently and convulsively. Her whole body moved to some ancient rhythm. She was mourning a daughter who was, in many respects, already dead.