“Very, and it startled me. He came over to my desk and looked down at me, very solemn, frowning. ‘How are you and Marley getting along?’ he asked. I didn’t understand where he was heading, and I said something like ‘Just fine.’
“‘I’ll bet it’s just fine,’ he said with a terribly nasty tone to his voice. ‘Poor, poor Sam.’
“Then, of course, I got his drift — sometimes I’m a little slow — and I stood up and asked him, loudly, what he was talking about. I was shaking and trying to keep from crying. He just smiled — smirked — and walked out. It was awful.”
“For the record, what is your relationship with Marley Wilkenson?”
She nodded grimly. “A fair question. Marley’s a wonderful choir director — tough, but excellent. He really knows his stuff. And our relationship is strictly director to singer, that’s all. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but he was delighted to have me in the choir. First off, I’m good, and second, he has never had to pay me, which is great for his budget. The Spire Choir has a lot of paid soloists, but not me. I’m Mrs. Sam Reese, which is all I really want to be now, and I’m happy to sing — and solo — as a volunteer.”
“Did you tell your husband what Meade said?”
Carola looked away from me. “No... never. Like I said, I don’t handle confrontation well, and I didn’t want to upset him. And I’d do anything to keep from hurting him in any way.”
“Would he have believed you?”
She held her cup with both hands and allowed her eyes to meet mine. “Yes, I’m... almost positive that he would have,” she said quietly. “And I did think about bringing it up, but I took an indirect tack instead. I asked several times if he thought I was spending too much time with the choir, and he always said something like, ‘No, no, not unless you feel stressed out.’ He loves my being in the choir. He’s very proud of me and my contribution.”
“Did Meade ever say anything to Wilkenson similar to what he told you?”
“Not that I know of. If so, I can’t imagine Marley keeping as quiet about it as I did. He probably would have read Roy the riot act, then gone straight to Barney to complain about him.”
“And nobody else ever knew about what Meade said to you?”
“I don’t think so, although I was always worried about it getting out — even though there was really nothing to get out.”
“Why do you feel Meade said what he did?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, except that he really wasn’t a very nice person, and...”
The sentence trailed off as her glance went over my shoulder. I turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered guy with a forest of curly black hair lumber into the grill. He looked as if he’d been overserved, and he blinked twice as he noticed Carola. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he slurred. “If it’s not the ol’ torch singer herself. God, I haven’t laid eyes on you in years, honey. You look great.”
“Hello, Derek,” she replied listlessly.
“You don’t sound real happy to see an old friend,” he told her, leaning on the table and grinning, then tossing a look my way. The atmosphere around the booth had quickly turned eighty-six-proof.
“Derek, this is Archie Goodwin. Archie, Derek MacKay,” she said.
“Don’t bother gettin’ up, pal,” MacKay said, slapping a beefy palm on my shoulder. He turned back to Carola. “So, I heard someplace that you went and got hitched up to a preacher-type over on Staten Island. This him?”
Carola cringed and obviously wanted to crawl under the table. “No, Archie is a friend,” she murmured.
MacKay guffawed. “He don’t look to me like a preacher. Oh, I get it, baby. You got yourself both a husband and a friend now. Pretty nice deal.”
I shot him my best scowl. “Tell you what, Derek, why don’t you go back outside and get some air? Mrs. Reese and I have some things to discuss.”
Another guffaw. “Oh, so her name’s Reese now, eh? And I’ll just bet you two have got stuff to talk about. Good stuff. How’d you get so lucky, pal?”
“Pal, you started in on the joy juice pretty early today. It’s time for you to leave,” I told him, standing up. He had two inches in height on me, and probably at least that much in reach. But he was tanked, and that gave me a false sense of security. When his right came, I wasn’t fast enough, and the fist caught me on the left cheek, knocking me backward. A couple at the next booth and an old guy on a stool got up and moved to the rear of the room, while the waitress stared from behind the counter, her mouth open.
I grabbed MacKay’s right arm and in one quick twist had him in a hammerlock, just like the book says to do. He howled and called me a couple of colorful endearments, and I pushed him toward the door. “We’re going out to see what the weather’s like,” I said, moving him ahead of me as the filth kept spewing out of his mouth.
“I can either see how far your arm will go before it breaks,” I told him when we were outside, “or I can let loose of it and you can walk away, just like nothing happened. But if I do let go and you try something stupid, you’ll be lying on the sidewalk faster than you can say your favorite naughty word. What’s the choice?” I gave his arm another upward yank, just in case he needed reminding.
“God, all right, I’ll go, I’ll go!” I dropped his arm, and damned if the lumbering oaf didn’t come at me with another right, a roundhouse. This time I was ready. I blocked it easily and caught him on the chin with a right, following it with another right to the stomach, which doubled him over. I was ready for more, but he just clutched his gut with both hands, groaning. Our one-round bout had drawn a small but noisy crowd. Give New Yorkers something they want to see, and they’ll turn out for it.
“I know, you’re going to tell me that if you’d been sober, you would have put me away with three punches, four at the most,” I said. “I’m willing to admit that’s a possibility, but unlikely.”
He swore again and straightened up, gritting his teeth and glaring. Whatever effect he was trying for didn’t exactly come off, and he staggered off down Third Avenue, still swearing.
Carola was on her feet when I went back into the grill. “Are you all right?” she asked tightly. “Oh, you’re not — look at your face!” She dipped a napkin into her water glass and touched it to my cheek.
I flinched and smiled. “Hey, this is part of the reason Mr. Wolfe pays me so much.” I noticed that the other customers had left the place, and the waitress was staring at me like I had German measles.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Carola said, pulling the napkin away gently and grimacing at the small red blot on it as we sat down again. “He — Derek — is one of those people I told you about before, from my old life. I hadn’t seen him in years; I didn’t even know he lived in New York. It just shows that you can’t run away from your past mistakes. They’ll always catch up with you somehow.”
“I don’t buy that, and neither should you. I seem to recall something from my Sunday-school days about forgiveness for sins. How do you know MacKay?”
“He was a bartender at one of the places up in the Catskills where I used to sing. He was always asking me to go out, but I never had much use for him. Even then, and that was close to ten years ago, he was a bad drunk.”
“Yeah. Well, he hasn’t gotten any better. Ever see anybody else from your old life?”
“Never — this was the first time since I’ve been married, and I hope the last.”
I dabbed my cheek with another napkin. It was tender, but the bleeding had stopped. “Getting back to Meade, why do you think he said what he did to you?”
“I honestly don’t know. Before Derek walked in, I started to say that Roy really wasn’t a nice person, but then, you already know what I thought about him from when you talked to Sam and me.”