"Yeah, Sarah. He is nice. Damned nice."
She finished her coffee, set it down. "So yesterday, anyway, Ron had me help him look for a box. He said it was about the size of a shoe box. He wouldn't tell me what was in it. At the time I was still wrapped up enough in our sleazy little affair that helping him out sounded like the natural thing to do. Right now, all I want to do is get things back to where they were with my husband."
"Does he know?"
The tears were back. "I think he does, yes. I think he has known the past several months. But whenever he looks at me what I see in his eyes is a kind of pity-not anger or hatred or betrayal. Just pity-as if I don't know what I'm doing and managing to hurt both of us in the process. It's kind of the way he looked at me the night I had our first child-the pity, I mean, the love in that kind of pity. It's understanding, really, not just feeling sorry for somebody. Oh, Christ-" Now she broke down a bit more and gasped a couple times, gasped the dry, clutching reach for tears that won't quite come. There was something ancient in her voice and the way her body bent just now-a middle-aged woman resenting the girl she'd let herself foolishly be. "You got a damn hankie, Michael?" she said when she was finished.
I handed her my handkerchief.
Then I handed her the newspaper clipping.
"What's this?"
"I don't know," I said. "I was hoping maybe you could tell me."
She read it. Shrugged. "I don't have a clue."
"Neither do I." Then I explained how, after she and Gettig had left Denny's office yesterday, I'd found it in a drawer. "I don't know," she said.
I glanced at my watch. Smiled. "Don't you think it's time you got back to work?"
"But I told you-" she said.
"All you told me is that you're uncomfortable working around Gettig. And I've already told you that problem is about to be taken care of." I pointed to the door. "Now get back out there before I have to start acting like a boss."
Now it was her turn to smile. "I always was a sucker for taking orders." At the door she turned and said, "Thanks, Michael."
THIRTEEN
I spent the next hour feeling a tad of respect for my much-maligned dead partner.
In advertising agencies, it seems, almost nobody gets along. Bosses and supervisors spend nearly as much time refereeing petty squabbles as they do trying to politic their way up the executive ladder. Rivalries are almost as commonplace as adultery. Almost.
For the next sixty minutes, a dozen people, some in couples, some individually, trooped through my office voicing complaints about co-workers. Usually the complaints had to do with turf. One art director didn't like copywriters who went directly to artists without consulting him first. One copywriter wanted to be taken off an account because it wasn't "creative" anymore what with the money-oriented new account exec running it-God forbid we make money. Then there was the paste-up person who wanted to know why he couldn't jog for two hours over his lunch hour-the extra time bound to make him a better worker. Right.
So it went-and that's why I felt some respect for my ex-partner.
Denny Harris had always relieved me of this pain-in-the-executive-butt part of the job. Denny was famous for listening to everybody's complaint, then promptly and forever doing nothing about it. Denny, out of laziness maybe, or maybe even out of real wisdom, believed that if you let things slide along enough they somehow took care of themselves.
I didn't have the stomach for that. My taint was to be combative, as several disappointed-looking people this morning would tell you.
During the last few complaints, my mind started to wander to the manila envelope I had in my car.
I was still in shock that the private detective I'd hired had turned out to be a blackmailer. Stokes made me feel naive- as if, for all my romantic disillusionment and bitterness, I were some kind of kid. Denny's murder had been shattering enough, but the idea that Stokes was going to feed on Denny vampire-like was even more mind-boggling than the murder.
Which, of course, turned the whole situation right back on me.
Despite the fact that I could tell the police that both the Traynors had been at the murder scene, I did nothing. I was going to save the account-run it up the flagpole and salute my ass off. Which is not the kind of self-image a guy-at least this guy-likes to have of himself. But it was the only way to keep on feeding my family.
The only hope I could see was the newspaper clipping I'd taken from Denny's desk. But I had no idea why he'd kept it-the chances were good that it had absolutely nothing to do with the murder.
This time Sarah Anders didn't scream. All Sarah managed to do, on hearing, was faint.
This time it was one of the women from the copy department who told me. A curt knock on my door moments after my last interviewee of the morning, then: "Mr. Ketchum."
"Yes?"
"You, uh, you better go to the screening room, Mr. Ketchum."
"What's wrong?"
"It's Mr. Gettig."
"What about him?"
"He's dead, Mr. Ketchum. He's dead.”
Gettig had been sitting in the darkened screening room looking at outtakes on a videotape machine. Because it was video instead of motion picture, he hadn't needed a projectionist. He'd been alone. Somebody had come in. Down the dark aisle. Apparently very quietly. Put something around his neck and pulled. Very, very hard. In the ugly harsh overhead light, Gettig's neck was a mess, black, blue, yellow, almost amber where blood had bruised along tendons.
He was also a mess in other ways. When you strangle somebody, you not only kill them, you make sure you've humiliated them for whoever has the misfortune to find them. The bowels, you know.
Somebody called the police and somebody else called an ambulance. I wanted to call my travel agent and go someplace. Fast. Far.
Ab Levin put a hand on my shoulder as I turned away from the corpse. He said, "Somebody must hate us, Michael."
At that moment, I didn't understand the significance of what he said. I only nodded dumb agreement. I would have nodded similarly if he'd said that Richard Nixon was a great guy. I'd become a stunned, docile animal.
Around the entrance of the screening room a small crowd had gathered, standing on tippy-toes to peer in, like scared children at a circus tent promising sinister doings inside.
Ab Levin was close on my heels, joining me as I moved down the corridor toward my office.
"You got any idea what's going on, Michael?"
"None. Not a goddamned clue."
He put a fatherly hand on my shoulder. "I shouldn't have bothered you earlier this morning."
"Bothered me?" I said, not understanding what he was talking about.
"You know, about the security-our jobs now that Denny is dead."
"Hell," I said, "that's a natural human reaction."
He shrugged, veered off for his own corridor. "Yeah, I suppose. Take care, Michael.”
He must have been waiting around the corner for the call, because by the time I crossed my threshold and started for my desk, he was there.
He wore his trench coat again-apparently not bothered by the slight melodramatic flourish it gave to his job as a detective-and exuded the same working-class energy that said he'd probably be happier unloading trucks than all gussied up in a suit and tie. He had his faults, Detective Bonnell did, but there was something straightforward about him that I liked. Or would have liked, if necessity hadn't made me see him as the enemy.
"You're having a bad week, Mr. Ketchum," he said.
"I'm not," I said. "But Denny Harris and Ron Gettig are."