Ellen nodded. “Before you. He said he had some important appointments running through until well into the evening, that he’d get over if he could. I guess he couldn’t. This new job is pretty demanding … worrying.…”
“I just can’t believe this! I just can’t believe I’m hearing this—” Jill Mailed to protest, but O’Farrell took over, careless of interrupting his wife and careless, too, of the fury he was supposed never to feel.
“Billy was pretty worried today, too, holding my hand and pleading not to be hurt. You’re more than a damned fool. Don’t you realize you’ve actually neglected Billy, letting Patrick off the hook like you have?”
There was a listless shoulder movement from their daughter. “I guess,” she said.
O’Farrell was gripped by a feeling of helplessness, helplessness and impotence. Abruptly he -stood and announced, “I’m going out for a while. A walk.”
“But …” Jill started.
“I need to get out.”
There was a chill coming off the lake and O’Farrell set out toward it, knowing there was a lakeside walk through a park but thinking after two blocks that in the darkness he didn’t know how to find it. He turned back toward the township, knowing he could really have found the park if he’d wanted, knowing, too, why he’d changed his mind. Evanston wasn’t big; sprawled awkwardly, with a mall he knew he couldn’t reach tonight on foot, but definitely not big. Boxer was an identifiable enough name, if it were how the man was normally known. Foreign accent and a broken nose and a red-flower tattoo on his left hand. And a racing bicycle, although O’Farrell guessed that was reserved for pickups, not nighttime cruising. Sufficient to go on: to look at least.
O’Farrell reached the main highway, running parallel with the railway line, and began to walk its full length, taking in the side roads when he came to them. At restaurants he checked through windows, on the pretext of reading the menus, and he went into every bar he came to, for the first time in months using a drink to justify his presence rather than because he needed it. Drink in hand, he walked around them all, looking, and at one tavern—one of the ones he thought most likely because there was live music and everyone was young, far younger than himself—there were some sniggers and someone behind the bar asked if he needed any help. O’Farrell chanced asking for a man called Boxer and got headshaking blank-ness in reply.
What in the name of Christ did he imagine he was doing! The question came in a bar just beyond the railway bridge over the Chicago road, a shabby place where the regulars examined him like the intruder he was, resenting his examination of them. What would he have done if there’d been someone here—or anywhere else—matching Billy’s description? The tattoo was pretty distinctive but not unique, and the broken nose certainly wasn’t. Was it enough evidence to justify killing a man, which is what he’d set out to do? What about the usual, professional criteria? Personal vengeance and vigilante stuff are for the movies. Was that what he would have done, dragged the man into some darkened parking lot and beat a confession from him, just like they did in the movies? And then killed him? Killed someone? Hadn’t that been the agony, over the last few months, not wanting to kill anyone? Hadn’t that been what he’d told Lambert? The demands flurried like snow through his mind and like snow blocked up, so that he couldn’t separate question from answer and more often couldn’t find answers to the questions.
O’Farrell left his drink and hurried from the bar, as if he had something to be guilty about, which he supposed he had in thought if not actually in deed. The apartment was in darkness when he got back. He groped his way through it without putting on the light, not wanting to awaken anyone. He undressed in the dark, but as he was lowering himself cautiously beside Jill, she said, “I’m not asleep.”
“I didn’t mean to be so long.”
“Did you find him, the supplier who got Billy to carry the stuff?”
“No.” O’Farrell detected the movement and then Jill’s hand took his.
“Would you have tried to kill him, if you’d found him?”
“I wanted to,” O’Farrell said.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Jill said. “These people are very vicious. You’d have probably gotten hurt yourself.”
It was the nearest she’d come openly to questioning his manhood. She wouldn’t have believed him capable, of course.
TWENTY-SEVEN
RIVERA DECIDED it was time he emerged from his period of mourning. He accepted that there were some who might consider it premature but he was unconcerned; he was an ambassador, a public servant and such people were expected to cope with grief better than ordinary people. Conversely there were others who might consider him brave, trying to rebuild something of an existence after the shattering experience.
Objectively Rivera recognized that he had taken a chance going to the Gavroche with Henrietta so soon after it happened, but they’d gotten away with it; there had been no recognition and therefore no resulting newspaper comment.
Tonight was different. A thoroughly acceptable public-affair: how better to emerge gently from a period of grief than at a charity premiere at Covent Garden? Then a diplomatic function or two, more public appearances. Followed by the acceptance of some private social invitations to which he’d delayed replying.
From his customary vantage point Rivera saw the arrival of the diplomatic delivery and turned back into the room to receive it, hoping after the care with which he had planned the evening that no personal communication would delay him. He was at once alarmed by the size of the wallet but just as quickly relaxed: the Foreign-Ministry material could as easily have been enclosed in the general pouch to be processed first by secretaries. It was all the accreditation and documentation for the international assignment of which the Foreign Ministry had already advised him in the promised letter, a conference in Madrid to reinforce trade links with Latin America, despite Spain’s presence within the European Community.
There was nothing else, so he was actually ahead of time now, because the arrangement was for him to go direct to the opera house from High Holborn. Idly Rivera flicked through the instructions. There was a general policy document to guide him, from Havana, and two other, more detailed guidance papers from the Trade Ministry. Arrangements had been made for him to stay at the official residence of the ambassador to Spain, whom he remembered as a tiresome man constantly boasting of a close friendship the Che Guevara that only he seemed able to remember. Rivera was expected two days before the commencement of the conference and particularly to attend every official Spanish ceremony, because Cuba wanted to strengthen its ties with the Spanish-speaking country that formed part of Europe.
Rivera descended to his new car and his escorts, nodding absentmindedly at the assembled men, his mind remaining occupied by what he’d just read.
He’d go to the conference, of course, but certainly not allow the promotional recall to progress any further. Now was an excellent moment to announce his diplomatic resignation, in fact, with Estelle’s death providing a fortunate coincidence. He could plead that he was distraught by her loss, unable from the shock of being the intended victim to function as he properly should, how they would expect him to function. Quit with sympathy and understanding. And then Paris! Vibrant, sophisticated Paris. It was all simple and straightforward but for one thing. Henrietta. He didn’t want to be without her, wouldn’t be without her. It was time to talk it all through with her. There were things she would have to sort out and settle. The divorce, for instance.