“How about Maurice Lessard,” I said. “Her momentary husband?”
“I really saw very little of him or of them together,” Maggie said.
I nodded.
“She close to her mother?”
Maggie almost sniffed in disdain.
“Heidi never showed much mothering instinct,” she said.
“How about spousal instinct?” I said.
“I saw very little,” Maggie said. “It was mostly about sex and money.”
“Her, too,” I said.
“I think Mr. Bradshaw tried to be a good father to Adelaide and a good husband to Heidi.”
“And to you?” I said.
Her face, which had gotten pinkish at the mention of intimacy between Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, began to glow brightly.
“He was a very kind employer,” she said.
“I’m sure he was,” I said. “How about intimacy?”
She didn’t know what to do with her face.
“I beg your pardon?”
I smiled at her.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t make you say it out loud. We both know there was intimacy. We both know you were taken with him. We both know it’s why you didn’t say anything until he was gone.”
She put her head down into her hands.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Most of us have thought with our pelvis at one time or another.”
61
We were in my office. It was overcast outside, and raining tentatively with the promise of more vigor as the day wore on. Hawk was making coffee. I was gazing alertly out the window, assessing the rainwear of the women on the street.
“You know what I can’t figure out,” I said.
“Almost everything?” Hawk said.
“There’s that,” I said. “But more specifically, I can’t figure out why women can look sexy in few clothes, and equally so in ankle-length yellow slickers.”
“Maybe got to do with the woman more than it got to do with the outfit,” Hawk said.
“That’s a possibility,” I said.
“Or maybe it got to do with the observer,” Hawk said.
“You are a deep bastard,” I said.
“I am,” Hawk said. “And I’m glad you focused on the big issues.”
“Like why Heidi and Harden were pretending to be estranged?”
“No, I know we can’t figure that out,” Hawk said. “I was wondering why Bradshaw was boppin’ Miss Maggie.”
“Because he could?” I said.
“You and me could,” Hawk said.
“But you and me wouldn’t,” I said.
“So the question remains,” Hawk said.
“Supply and demand?” I said.
“Supply no issue in my life,” Hawk said.
“Nor mine,” I said.
“Not much variety,” Hawk said. “But very high quality.”
“So what else could it be,” I said.
“Taste,” Hawk said.
My phone rang and I answered.
“Do you know who this is?” the caller said.
Even his voice sounded gray.
“I do,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”
“This is the cell phone equivalent,” Rugar said, “of a white flag. I am perhaps five minutes from your office. I have a young woman with me. I want no trouble.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to come to your office with the young woman and talk with you.”
“Hawk is here,” I said.
“I assumed he would be.”
“Come ahead,” I said.
“No one else,” Rugar said.
“Nobody but me and Hawk,” I said.
“Your word,” Rugar said.
“My word,” I said.
“Five minutes,” Rugar said.
I hung up. Hawk looked at me.
“Rugar,” I said, “five minutes. Under a flag of truce. He has a young woman with him.”
Hawk nodded.
“Curiouser,” Hawk said, “and fucking curiouser.”
62
When Rugar came in, Hawk was standing against the wall to my far left with his gun out. In honor of the truce, he let it hang at his side, pointing at the floor. I was behind my desk with my right-hand drawer open so I could reach a gun easily. Trust, but verify.
Rugar was wearing a gray trench coat and a gray snap-brim hat. With him was a young woman in jeans and a white sweater. She wore a black down vest over the sweater. Her hair was in a ponytail tucked out through the opening in an adjustable Detroit Tigers cap. She wore very little makeup. She looked to be about twenty-one.
“ Adelaide?” I said.
She nodded without saying anything. I looked at Rugar.
“The truce does not extend to us letting you walk out of here with her,” I said.
“She can do what she wishes,” Rugar said. “I am not her captor.”
He took off his trench coat and folded it neatly over the arm of Pearl ’s couch. He put his hat on top of it. As always, he was in gray, featuring a gray tweed jacket. His cuff links were sapphire. He took Adelaide ’s down vest and placed it next to his coat. Then he nodded at a chair in front of my desk. Adelaide sat in it. He turned toward Hawk.
“Hawk,” he said.
Hawk nodded. Rugar sat down beside Adelaide. He looked at me.
“You’re hard to kill,” he said.
“So far,” I said.
“You know I sent the ones who failed,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “I figure you knew Leonard from Marshport, and when you wanted me aced you got hold of him, and he tried to do you a favor, which got him killed. What I don’t get is why you didn’t do it yourself. It’s not your style to send someone.”
Rugar nodded.
“I assume you killed Bradshaw,” I said.
Rugar nodded.
“And now,” I said, “conscience-stricken, you’ve come to give yourself up.”
Rugar smiled faintly.
“I have a rather long story to tell you,” Rugar said, “at the conclusion of which we will discuss options.”
Hawk was motionless against the far wall. He could stand perfectly still for hours if there was reason to. He didn’t get restless. He didn’t get tired. The gun didn’t get heavy. His attention didn’t waver. Adelaide sat with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap. She looked different from how she had looked. Her color was better. She looked as if she might be working out. She glanced frequently at Rugar. Otherwise, she was still. I left the drawer in my desk open.
“In the early 1980s,” Rugar said, “I was working for the American government in Bucharest, doing the kind of work I do.”
“I know that,” I said.
Rugar tipped his head forward a little.
“I’ve never doubted that you’re smart,” Rugar said.
“Industrious,” I said.
Rugar smiled again without any humor.
“Both,” he said. “During that period I ran across an American named Harden Bradshaw. He was working for the embassy in some sort of propaganda capacity, and having an affair with a woman named Heidi Van Meer, who’d followed him to Romania, though she was still married to Peter Van Meer and remained so for six more years.”
I nodded.
“You knew that?” Rugar said.
I nodded again.
“You are industrious,” he said. “During the time when she was in Bucharest with Bradshaw, I met Heidi, and we had a brief sexual relationship.”
“Excuse me, Adelaide, but Heidi has probably had a sexual relationship with Namu the killer whale,” I said.
This time Rugar’s smile hinted at actual amusement.
“I was hoping that she might be more selective, but I don’t think the exaggeration is misplaced.”
“I think it was sort of how she got to be Heidi,” I said.
Rugar nodded.
“Have I told you anything new?” he said.
“I figured you knew Bradshaw and probably Heidi. It was too big a coincidence that you and she and her third husband were all in Bucharest at the same time and twentysomething years later you appear and shoot up a wedding.”
“That was not quite the plan,” Rugar said. “But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”
“No rush,” I said.
Adelaide kept a check on Rugar as the story spooled out, but more and more she was watching me, too.
“We did not have a very long run, Heidi and I,” Rugar said. “My income fluctuates. But it never constituted great wealth. Heidi was adroit and very much enjoyed physical sensation. I don’t believe she ever felt very much else.”