“Perfect record,” he insisted. “You could check with Vivian Cabrera, she’s my parole—”
“I’ve talked with her,” Gwen said. “On the phone, before I came here.”
“Then she can tell you,” he said, pointing at the notebook as though wanting her to write all the good reports down in there. “Not one black mark, no unacceptable associates, got a legitimate job, I learned my lesson, that’s all over. And it was only the one mistake anyway. Over.”
“So,” she said, “you have no idea who would take a shot at you.”
The way his face went, for just a second there, told a different story. His eyes shifted, his mouth skewed as though searching for some safe expression, and the whole countenance seemed to go slack with wariness, as though he’d just heard a dangerous noise. Then it was all swept off his face; he turned, round-eyed with innocence, and said, “I been lying here, I been thinking about it, I mean, I got nothing else to think about, and I just don’t get it. Maybe it was mistaken identity, because the guy was behind me, or just a wild shot, or I don’t know what.”
He knows who did it, Gwen thought, or he thinks he does. The worst thing to do now, she knew, was confront him directly, push him, because then he’d just close up forever. She said, “Well, we’ll hope to find out from the shooter himself what he had in mind.”
“That’s the way to go,” he agreed.
She tapped the notebook again. “So who do you pal around with these days?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, and he was just a little too casual. “There’s some people at work I hang out with sometimes, that’s about it. You know, the position I’m in, I gotta be very careful these days, I don’t wanna mess things up after I built all this good record.”
“No, I can see that,” she said. “You’re smart to think that way. Any lady friends at the moment?”
“Nah.” He was being boyish again. “You meet somebody, you know, you say you’re on parole, it isn’t a turn-on.”
Laughing, she said, “For some women, it is. I’ve seen them.”
“Well, those are the ones,” he said, “I shouldn’t hang out with anyway.”
“You’re right. Elaine Langen? See much of her any more?”
“Oh, my God, you even know about that! You sure checked me out, Det— What is it?”
“Reversa. Just Detective is fine.”
“Okay. Anyway, you know everything about me, you know more’n I do, you don’t need to ask me nothing.”
“Well, just in case,” she said. “Elaine Langen, for instance.”
“That was a long time ago, Detective,” he said, and when he was being solemn like that, as though talking about a religious subject, he was more boyish than ever. “That ended when I did the crime and I did the time.”
“You don’t see her any more.”
“Not like that. We live, I don’t know, seven, eight miles apart, I see her on the street, that’s about it.”
“And her husband? Jack Langen, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Jack.” There was something dismissive in the way he said the name.
“Do you see much of him these days?”
“What, Jack Langen? I don’t think I’ve seen him since I got out. Well, since I went in.”
“Do you think he holds a grudge?”
“Against me? After all this time? I—” Then his face lit up with amusement. “What, you think he did it? Shot me? Jack Langen? He isn’t gonna shoot anybody.”
“You’re sure of him,” Gwen said.
Beckham was sure. There was no faking now. He said, “Jack Langen got even with me when he pressed charges and got me put away. The old man wanted to give me a pass. No, if anybody was gonna shoot anybody, and I’m not going to— No, I won’t even say it.”
“But since you’re not seeing her any more, there’s no reason to.”
“Exactly.”
She tapped the notebook some more, looking at the history recorded there in her small, neat printing. There was too much emptiness in this life; there was something missing. She said, “So you aren’t close to anybody right now? You won’t be having any visitors while you’re in here?”
“Well, my sister,” he said, and suddenly lit up with triumphant amusement. Pointing at the notebook, he crowed, “You didn’t know about her!”
“That’s true,” Gwen admitted. “Tell me about your sister.”
“She’s been living over in Buffalo,” he said. “To tell you the truth, we haven’t been so close for a while. Long time, really. But she got divorced last year, and one of her kids is in college and the other works for IBM, so when I called her to tell her about this she said she’d come help out while I’m laid up. You know, water the plants in my house and like that. In fact, she’s gonna stay in my house while I’m in here, she’s driving over from Buffalo today, she might even be in the place by now. Well, not yet, she’ll phone when she gets there.”
“Well, that’s good,” Gwen said. “You’ll have family close by. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Wendy Rodgers.”
“So she’s a Wendy,” Gwen said.
“Yeah. Wendy Rodgers. If she’s keeping the husband’s name.” Then he laughed and said, “Well, she kept everything, the house, the kids.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Gwen said, and got to her feet. Picking up her shoulder bag, putting the notebooks and pen away, she said, “If I think of anything else to talk about, I’ll drop back.”
“Any time,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
She handed him her card. “And if you think of anything that might be of some help to me, give me a call.”
“Will do.” He held the card as though it were precious.
“Bye for now,” she said, and as she waited for the elevator out in the hall, she thought, he lied twice, about not knowing who might have shot him and about his current relationship with Elaine Langen. But he doesn’t think those two things are connected, he doesn’t think the husband shot him.
There’s somebody else in this story, she thought. Jake Beckham’s life can’t be that unpopulated. He’s concealing something, and whatever it is, that’s what shot him.
Maybe the sister, Wendy, knows. Be interesting to talk to her. But first, it would be very interesting to talk with Elaine Langen.
2
When the duty nurse told Dr. Myron Madchen that a police detective was in with Jake Beckham, the doctor, in the first instant, thought everything must have come undone, that the detective must be here to arrest Jake and that everybody’s plans were now destroyed, his not least of all, plus those of Jake himself and those two tough-looking fellows Jake had met with in his examining room. But then, on a moment’s reflection, he realized that the detective must be here to investigate the shooting, that in this instance Jake was the victim, not the perpetrator.
“I’ll wait till the detective’s finished,” he told the duty nurse. “Call me, I’ll be in the staff lounge.”
She looked doubtful, but raised no objections. “Certainly, Doctor.”
The fact was, as he knew full well, he had no real right to the staff lounge here, not being attached to this hospital or, at the moment, having a patient checked in here. Jake couldn’t be considered his patient under these circumstances. Myron Madchen was Jake’s primary care provider, but in this hospital it was the specialists who mattered, not the GPs.
Still, Jake was his patient in the normal course of events, and there was a certain professional courtesy to be expected in the circumstances, and no one would really expect him to go sit out in the regular waiting room with the civilians, so through the unmarked door he went and back to the area of peace and privilege of the staff lounge, a place rather like an airline’s club members’ lounge, but without the alcohol.