He was staring down into the swale. I didn’t say anything. It was as if he were a shattered cup, badly mended, with the shards of himself barely clinging together. I stayed very still. One of the dogs came back from ranging and sat on Pomeroy’s feet and looked down at the swale too.
“You don’t believe me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “I do.”
“I used to tell people, but they never believed me. Most people think I’m a little off anyway.”
He reached a hand down absently toward the dog. The dog lapped it industriously.
“I probably am a little off,” he said.
“Maybe nobody’s on,” I said. “Maybe there’s nothing to be off of.”
He glanced at me for a moment. I nearly lost him. Then he shook his head and shrugged. Spenser the philosopher king.
“Guy lives in the woods with three dogs,” he said. “Guy like that isn’t all with it, you know?”
“When were you married?” I said.
He paused a moment, a little startled, trying to remember what he’d been saying about marriage. “Nineteen sixty-eight,” he said. “I was in the Navy in San Diego, I met her in a bar.”
“Love at first sight?”
“For me.”
“How about her?”
“She was seventeen. She liked the uniform, maybe.”
The other two dogs came out of the woods and circled along the rim of the swale and sat down near us, their tongues out, and looked at us.
“How long did it last?” I said.
“She ran away in a month. I never saw her again.”
“Until?”
“Until she came to Boston.”
“So you did try to see her,” I said.
He didn’t answer. The dog at his feet rose suddenly and made off with its nose to the ground. The two others followed. They went over the hill on the far side and out of sight and in a minute we could hear them yelping.
“Rabbit,” Pomeroy said.
I waited. The yelping faded, then stopped.
“I wanted to see her. After all that time, I… the month I was with her was…” He shrugged, spread his hands. “It was my best month,” he said.
The dogs trotted back, single file, and sat and looked at us again.
“She wasn’t friendly,” I said.
“No. She… what the hell. She’s a big star and I’m… look at me, you know?”
I nodded.
“But you persisted.”
“Persisted,” he said, rolling the word around like a piece of strange candy. “I wanted to see her,” he said finally. “I’m not much, but I am married to her.”
“Still?” I said.
“I never divorced her. I never heard from her. Far as I know we’re still married.”
“Was Jill Joyce her name then?”
“No.” For the first time since I’d met him Pomeroy almost smiled. “It was Jillian Zabriskie.”
“She born in San Diego?”
He nodded. “I never met her parents,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure they were around there somewhere.”
“Why’d she run off?”
“She never said. One day I came home and she wasn’t there and she was never there again.”
“You look for her?”
“Sure. I told the police and stuff. Everyone who knew anything about her knew she was wild. Everyone assumed she run off with somebody.”
“You think so?”
“She always liked men,” he said.
“What was the name of the bar?” I said. “Pancho Doyle’s,” he said. I knew he’d remember.
“Still there?” I said.
“I don’t know. After I got discharged I never went back to San Diego. I just come home here. I was a radar man when I got out. I went to Worcester Tech for a semester, gonna be an engineer, but…” He shrugged.
“Honorable discharge?” I said.
“They kicked me out,” he said. “I was drinking.”
“Worcester Tech?”
He nodded. “I was drinking more. I dropped out.”
“Still drink?” I said.
He shook his head. “AA,” he said. “Been sober five years in March.”
“So you called Jill Joyce and she told you to take a hike, and you kept calling and finally a guy named Randall came to see you.”
“He was very scary,” Pomeroy said. He was staring down at the ground in front of him.
“What’d he say?”
“He shoved me around a little, and he said I was to stay away from Jill Joyce or I’d be sorry. He was kicking my dogs too.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I kicked him in the balls a few days ago.”
Pomeroy looked up at me, a little startled. “You did?”
“Thought you might like to know that.”
“I would. Ah, you… you must be pretty tough.”
“I think so,” I said. “You ever threaten Jill Joyce?”
“Me? No. I couldn’t…”
“You know anyone named Babe Loftus?” He shook his head.
“You work?” I said.
“A Iittle, lawns in the summer. Shovel some sidewalks. Mostly-mostly I get welfare.”
“Anything from Jill?” He shook his head.
“You got any idea why anyone would threaten Jill Joyce, want to kill her?”
“Somebody tried to kill her?”
“Somebody killed her stunt double. Whether it was a mistake or a warning, none of-us know.”
“I wouldn’t want her to get hurt,” Pomeroy said.
“Lot of people would, I think. I don’t know what she was in San Diego twenty-five years ago, but she’s turned into a high-octane pain in the ass since.”
Pomeroy didn’t say anything. We turned away from the swale and walked back through the woods, the dogs coursing ahead of us, one or another of them looking back over its shoulder now and then to be sure we were there.
“Took your damned sweet time,” Phillips said when we got there.
“Boy, that police training,” I said. “You don’t miss a trick.”
Chapter 18
HAWK sat in perfect repose on the wide window sill in Salzman’s office, with the winter landscape behind him. He had on a white shirt and black jeans and black cowboy boots and a black leather shoulder holster containing a pearl-handled, chrome-plated .44 mag, excellent against low-flying aircraft. Salzman was at his desk. Jill was on the couch, her legs tucked demurely under her, a bright plaid skirt tucked around her knees. I was pacing.
“You tell me you don’t know Rojack,” I said. “I go out there and find out you do. You tell me you never heard of Wilfred Pomeroy. I go out there and he tells me you’re married.”
“Man’s a liar,” Jill said serenely. “I never have heard of him.”
“He tells me that you never got a divorce.”
“I did too,” Jill said. “I told you he’s a liar.”
Hawk smiled from the window sill, like a man appreciating a funny remark.
“If you had told me the truth you’d have saved me a couple of days’ driving and talking.”
“Sandy,” Jill said, “are you going to let him treat me this way?”
“He’s trying to help you, Jilly, like we all are.”
“The hell he is,” Jill said. “He’s trying to dig up a lot of dirt from my past and make something out of it.”
“Like sense,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was really working for one of those shows,” she said. She glanced at Hawk.
“Geraldo Spenser,” Hawk said.
“Don’t be fooled,” I said, “by my good looks. I’m just a simple gumshoe.”
“Simple snoop,” Jill said. She was warming to her role. She’d decided her motivation and had a real handle on her character. “I hired you to protect me, not to snoop around looking for cruddy gossip.”
“That’s a tautology,” I said.
“Whaat?” Jill said. She cocked her head a little and her eyelashes nearly fluttered. Cute was what she did when she didn’t understand something.
“All gossip is cruddy,” Hawk said.
“I don’t care,” Jill said. “I don’t want him around; get rid of him. Hawk will protect me.”