"She was trying to help her friend get free from a bad situation, and the son of a bitch wouldn't get out of the way."
Katie hadn't seen the expression on Anna's face: the self-righteous glint in her eye, but with some doubts surfacing even after all these years. "Still . . ."
"Still nothing. I think it was wonderfully brave of her, and you should be proud of what she did. You know what it was like back then, women terrified to leave their husbands, the stigma that went along with divorce."
I could picture the scene clearly, each detail properly placed as my grandmother had told me.
Diane Cruthers seeking help from Anna, knocking frantically at an embarrassingly early hour when only a milkman like my grandfather wouldn't be in bed sleeping. Anna, a newlywed herself, unsure of almost everything at the sudden shift of her own life, in a new house not yet a home, married to a virtual stranger she'd known only a few months, startled before sunrise as she stood at the sink cleaning breakfast dishes. My grandfather always had five sausages but never ate the tips, leaving the ten crispy black ends lined in the center of his plate. Diane Cruthers, on the verge of enraged hysterics, had come for help . . . but what could Anna do? Only nineteen, Anna understood insecurity well enough.
Without knowing the reasons behind her friend's panic, she could only think of flight as her distraught friend badgered her for some kind of support, never explaining what had happened. Not a mark on her, and Diane Cruthers wasn't even crying. Perhaps Anna understood Harnes' capabilities already, or merely gave him the benefit of the doubt. Theodore Harnes, only a teenager himself, without much presence even then though not quite as tranquil as today, void of some necessary part of the human essence, but with a potential for reaping so much, was capable of real evil, and they knew it. They got into the car-a lumbering ten-year-old Airflow DeSoto haphazardly washed because my grandfather refused glasses and could never quite get the entire roof or hood done. Where were they going? She had no idea.
Was she only aiding Diane Cruthers, or had Anna decided her marriage had been a mistake? But they got in, my grandmother a poor driver at best back then, having just learned only a couple of weeks earlier, fumbling with the starter and crowding the clutch, stalling time and again while Diane let out raspy, bitter breaths beside her.
Harnes had found them, of course, and pulled up carefully to the curb, taking the time to lock his car door before moving up the walk to stand nonchalantly at the end of the driveway. He waited calmly without a word. Finally the DeSoto squealed to life, and Anna worked the clutch correctly to get into first, and they began to slowly roll forward. Harnes didn't move, and didn't seem to mind. Anna wouldn't stomp the gas but she also wouldn't stop. Not even after Diane gripped her by the arm and growled for Anna to step on the brake, she didn't stop.
So it had all come down to this: Diane caving in at the last moment while Anna, without understanding why, continued the struggle. Harnes smiled as the car barreled toward him.
No wonder they could talk like old friends. The mutual respect, regard, admiration, and hate they must've felt at that moment would have been memorable for a lifetime, neither altering their course, as the grille loomed closer to him and he stared contentedly ahead. The DeSoto hit him flush and Harnes piled over the hood, bouncing across the front yard as the engine sputtered and died. He hadn't even left a dent.
Diane Cruthers went to him then, and doomed herself.
Alice Conway had explained Theodore Harnes simply and efficiently: a man who enjoys a standoff.
"But after all that," I said, "she went back to him."
"He had the money and she had nothing. No job, maybe no family. She was pregnant, right?"
"I don't know about then. She was pregnant when she died." What pregnant woman commits suicide?
"And Anna thinks Harnes killed her friend?"
"She said she was certain."
The phone rang, and Katie answered and handed it to me. "It's Lowell. He sounds displeased."
"He usually does."
I took the phone and Lowell said, "Change your battery, that sucker's drained already."
I checked, and found there was only a static-filled buzz. "My walkie-talkies would have lasted longer."
"Frost died a couple hours ago," he said.
"Shit."
"You remember what the cute EMT mentioned about kids and steroids? Remember how they used to bleed on the field?”
“Yeah."
"Besides shriveling your nads and giving you hard-ons in math class that won't settle, there's a risk of heart attack, stroke, and liver disease, among other wonders. This guy was probably strong as a bull but a real mess on the inside."
"Shanks didn't exactly help him on the road to recovery."
"I put a little pressure on Dr. Brennan Brent today. He knows I have no legal right, but he's a nervous pissant. Shanks' death has him rattled."
"Maybe he thinks Harnes will send him into the fray next."
"Or knows the fray is coming after him."
The fray came after us all. "I wonder if we look hard enough in Panecraft … maybe we'll find out what really happened to Teddy."
"You leave that to me," Lowell said. "You keep looking into things on your own and you're going to wind up without a face too, Jonny Kendrick, and won't that be a damn shame?"
"I kinda think so."
He hung up and I racked the phone, knocking aside two books I'd given Katie last month that had been lying open on her nightstand with a paperweight slapped on top, the dust jackets already crumpled. Nobody seemed to care much about the condition of books. I thought again of Teddy having once been in my store, the way he'd worked on the books with his tiny print about paints and colors, and the folded pieces of artwork hidden behind the inner flaps. I tried recalling the young man I'd seen in the photo standing between Alice Conway and Brian Frost. Had he come down to the city just on a book-buying excursion or had he led another life that no one had known about, a kid far different from this phantom with no real persona? More likely he'd visited Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, the Guggenheim, Museum of Natural History, and wandered downtown to the Village to peruse the shops and Soho galleries. Or maybe he was a pervert hooked on the peep shows who ran around with the prostitutes who had gone to the east side after Times Square was taken over by Disney.
"You don't have to keep going on with this," Katie said.
"Crummler might be safe from Harnes at the moment, but he's still in an asylum for something he didn't do."
"We hope. So what happens next?"
"I need to go back to the city."
"When? Today?"
''Yes.''
"Why? What do you expect to find there?"
"I just had a thought."
"Oh." Her jade eyes filled with that irritated glow again, and I sucked in my breath. The pink in her cheeks faded and the thick drops of sweat formed on her upper lip. "Oh, you had one of those. And no doubt you intend to keep having more of them, too. Well, while you're having your thoughts, I have to go find out what your friend has been doing to my shop. You wouldn't happen to know the number of a good window repairman, would you?" Her lips turned the color of ashes. "Oh God, watch it … move, let me get to the bathroom."
THIRTEEN
The cab ride from JFK to the midtown tunnel took nearly an hour due to a closed center lane, traffic bottlenecking for over a mile at the toll booths. A water main had burst at 33rd and Park Avenue, and the cops had closed both directions. The staccato of blaring horns did nothing to make anybody more pleasant or move any faster through the gridlock. The entire time I had to listen to the Russian immigrant driver badmouthing the Pakistanis for taking over the city, telling me in broken English how they all ought to go the hell back home. I hopped out and took the 6 downtown, and when I came up out of the heat I noticed that another Barnes amp; Noble had gone up seemingly overnight only four blocks from my place.