Mr. Branigan walked me several yards down the hall and around a corner.
“You know what the police just told us — that Jane is being formally charged with murder.” His Spencer Tracy stature, boozed out though it was, bore the dignity of righteousness just then. He was professionally angry. “They’re charging her with murder in the first degree, if you can believe that.”
I didn’t know what to say, do.
“I hope you’ve been looking into this,” he said.
“Yes. I have.”
“Have you learned anything?”
“Nothing I should talk about right now.”
He kept his eyes on me. “What do you think?”
He had confused me. “About what?”
“Now that my wife’s not here, be honest. Do you think Jane killed him?”
“No.”
“You don’t sound as sure as you once did.”
About that I couldn’t argue. The more confusing things got, the more anything seemed possible. Even Jane’s complicity in murder.
He said, “Do you need money?”
I didn’t want anything from him. I felt sorry for the Branigans, but we’d never been close, so why should we start now? I shook my head.
“I’m not impressed with either of those cops. Malachie or Edelman.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Lord spare me from Jewish policemen.” I’m sure the line would have gone over very well at his country club.
“Edelman’s a good man.”
“I’m sure he is, ‘good’ that is. I’m not so sure about his competence.”
I sighed. “Look, I realize she’s your daughter, but think of it from their point of view. She calls me hysterical, I meet her, she has the murder weapon in her hand, and then she slides into shock. That would seem to indicate guilt, or at least a very heavy involvement.”
He wanted to change the subject. “What do we really know about this Elliot? I met him once. He struck me as a little — faggy. I can’t quite explain it. But there was something about him—”
“That seems to be the consensus. Not gay — just strange in some way.” I nodded to an orderly who was walking by. “The other thing we seem to know is that nobody is sure about his background. I’ve asked Bryce Hammond for his résumé, which he’s supposed to get me. And one more thing — Elliot lived way beyond his means.”
“That was the impression I got when my wife and I visited them in his house. My God, I could hardly afford a place like that. I didn’t see how he could, no matter how ‘creative’ he was.”
“I’ll keep working.”
He offered me his hand. “You know, we were talking about you last night.”
I knew what he was going to say and I wished he wouldn’t.
A common goal was making us friends, and I always distrust friendships that aren’t more spontaneous in some way.
“We’ve decided,” he said, “that we were very wrong about you and we’re very sorry.”
“Well, thank you,” I said, “thank you very much.”
We walked back. A nurse was giving Mrs. Branigan a glass of water, helping her drink it.
Edelman came over. “The DA thinks he’s got this one wrapped good and tight,” he said after I’d waved good-bye to the Branigans and was walking to the elevator.
“He’s wrong.”
There was pity in his eyes. “Shit, man, you gotta be kidding. I know what she means to you, but—”
I got on board the elevator, tilted my head good-bye, watched as the doors closed.
Then I opened the newspaper I’d picked up.
Larry the clerk had been wrong about one thing. He said his life was just as screwed up as his old man’s had been. It sounded as if, right at the last, he’d managed to make his even worse.
20
Do you ever drive around to think things through? There’s something about motion that inspires concentration, even if it doesn’t exactly make you into a wonderful driver.
God knew I had enough to think about. In my cop days I used to make a simple list of all the people involved in a homicide investigation. That was on the right margin. On the left I made another list, their possible reasons for wanting the victim dead. I could see it was time that I do that.
On top of Stephen Elliot’s murder — and now the deaths of the motel clerk and the prostitute, which had been disguised by somebody very clever as the murder-suicide the press was reporting — there was my growing confusion about Donna Harris. Last night had been a downer of sorts and I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t just because I’d dropped in unannounced and she’d been sleepy. I felt a sense of her holding back. Maybe it was simply because I was rushing things out of my own needs. Or maybe there was something going on...
When I got back to my apartment, the hour-long drive having made me think through things to the point of quiet madness, I found a message from Donna with my answering service.
“She left an address,” the operator said. “Would you like it?”
I wrote it down, a terrible feeling starting to form like a weight in my stomach. Maybe Donna was taking this detective thing seriously. Maybe she’d started to investigate on her own and gotten into some trouble.
“No phone number?” I asked.
“No, just the address.”
“Thanks.”
Fifteen minutes later, having violated more than a few traffic laws, I wheeled into the parking lot of 2605 Kelvin Avenue.
The large brick complex had originally been designed for swank office space. But the city built an expressway and bypassed the place, and now the offices were anything but swank. The owner spent minimal dollars on upkeep, and the space that had been designed for suites now housed a myriad of tiny, struggling businesses. Half the insurance agents in the state seemed to be here, along with a number of firms with totally baffling names such as “Omega Corp.” Maybe the obscurity was intended.
I took an elevator to Room 402, as Donna’s message had instructed, to find myself in a hallway with carpeting that was shaggy from wear, not by design. Everything looked chipped and scratched and dented. It was unlikely the Getty family would consider leasing space.
There was a hand-stenciled sign on 402 that said AD WORLD. WALK IN.
Which was what I made the mistake of doing.
The first thing I noticed was the couple holding hands. Right then I didn’t know who the guy was, only that he had Donna’s hand cupped in his and was staring fondly into her eyes. He was a tribute to razor-cut hair and camel’s-hair topcoats and the kind of bearing meant to intimidate. His Gregory Peck head turned slowly and irritably to take note of me.
Donna flushed, pulling her hand from his more quickly than he probably liked.
“Gee, Dwyer, hi.”
She was redefining the word strained for our generation.
“Gee. Hi.” I wasn’t doing much better.
“This,” she said, “is Chad.”
Then she nervously jumped to her feet and came around the desk and sort of clapped me on the shoulder. “Chad. The former Mr. Harris.”
By now he had walked around the desk too. Unlike Donna and me, he seemed to be feeding off this moment of general embarrassment.
He put out a hard, dry hand politician-style and I shook it.
“So you’re Dwyer.” He shook his head. “Donna’s told me all about you. You sound like quite a character. Part-time actor, part-time private eye. Quite a character.”
Why did I feel that I was standing for inspection before Donna’s father instead of her ex-husband?
And he was making it clear that I had failed inspection. Quite a character is one of those phrases that could fit anybody from Howard Cosell to Jack the Ripper.