“Why?”
“Come on, David,” Edgar said. “The way it looks. Grist for her mill.”
Corman glanced about the apartment, noting its disarray, and saw it as Lexie would, scattered, unkempt, collapsing at the center.
“She’ll come by around eight,” Edgar said.
“I’ll be here.”
“Make sure you are,” Edgar warned. “If you weren’t, she might take that in a very bad way.”
“I’ll be here,” Corman repeated coolly and started to hang up.
“David?” Edgar said quickly, stopping him.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“I’m busy, Edgar.”
“Developing?”
“Yeah, developing.”
“Well, listen,” Edgar said. “If anything happens. I mean, with money. It would be helpful if you could mention it to Lexie. Strictly in passing, of course.”
“Okay.”
“Technically, it’s not her business,” Edgar added. “But we’re dealing with a mood here.”
“I understand.”
“Just a passing mention, that’s all.”
“If I sell anything,” Corman assured him, “I’ll let her know.”
“All right,” Edgar said. “Get some sleep, for God’s sake.”
“I will,” Corman told him, then hung up and walked to the window. Outside, the city struck him with such broken beauty that after a while, he pulled his eyes away from it and let them drift downward until they caught on a little feather of dust which clung to the thigh of his trousers. He brushed at it softly, but the faint brownish mark only sank further into the cloth, so he slapped at it harder, then vehemently, with his fist, until suddenly he stopped and began to cry, gently at first, then in wrenching shudders until he finally stepped back from the window, raised his hand to cover his mouth, and waited for it to pass.
When it had, he returned very quietly to Lucy’s room. She’d turned over on her back, sleeping deeply, her arms spread wide apart, head arched slightly back, throat exposed, as if waiting to be sacrificed.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
“I’M READY,” Lucy said after she’d finished dressing the next morning.
Corman walked slowly to the door, opened it and ushered her into the corridor.
“Will you pick me up this afternoon?” Lucy asked.
Corman shook his head quickly, his mind concentrating on her with a sudden, biting pain, as if someone had slipped a needle into his brain. “Victor will,” he said, then added impulsively, “I’ll miss you tonight.”
She looked at him oddly, then moved down the hall to the elevator.
They rode down silently, Corman clutching his camera bag while he thought of Trang, the eviction, the way it would send Lexie over the edge. He could see her sitting coolly across the table from him, her dark eyes as piercingly accurate as ever. She would know, no matter how much he lied. She would see it in the little feints, shifts, coughs. He was desperate, she would know that. Her true perception had never failed her in regard to his deficiencies.
“Did you and Joanna have a good time last night?” Lucy asked, prying gently, as she always did.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look like it.”
“We had an argument.”
“Did you break up?”
“I think so.”
She tucked her hand in his arm. “Sorry.”
“It happens.
“Not to Mom and Jeffrey,” Lucy said. “They don’t ever fight.” Corman shrugged. “They’re great people, that’s why,” he said facetiously, before he could stop himself.
Lucy jerked at him slightly. “That’s not nice.”
Suddenly the sound of her voice, the glancing touch of her hand went through him like a searing charge. He stopped and knelt down to her. “I love you,” he said emphatically. “I will always love you.”
She stared at him, alarmed.
“You must know that,” Corman told her.
Her face tightened. “What’s the matter?”
Corman caught the panic in her eyes. “Nothing,” he said quickly, straightening himself, regaining control. “I just wanted you to know that I …”
She watched him fearfully, her eyes glistening. “Stop talking,” she said sternly. “Just stop talking.”
“I didn’t mean to …”
“Just stop talking,” Lucy repeated adamantly.
He reached for her hand, but she drew it away.
“I just wanted you to know that I love you,” he said again, this time more calmly, trying to contain himself.
At the school, he gave her a brief hug. “See you,” he said lightly, forcing a smile. In his arms, she was very stiff, a bundle of dry stalks. “I didn’t mean to get something started,” he explained. “Really, it’s nothing. I just … ”
“Yeah, okay,” Lucy told him. She turned away, then back to him in a quick, smoking whirl. “You’re lying,” she said sharply.
He started to lie again, then decided not to. Instead, he simply nodded and watched her eyes burn into him mercilessly before she spun around and disappeared into the moving crowd.
Corman found Lang on the second floor of Midtown North. He was sitting in the locker room munching a cheese Danish, a pair of handcuffs dangling from his one free hand. He looked brutish, and Corman realized that any photograph would only serve to make him look more so, moving the eye along the sloping belly, then up into the pudgy, featureless face, finally drawing it over to the chrome handcuffs, the way Lang’s elongated head seemed plastered onto their shiny curving surface.
“What’s up?” Lang asked as Corman walked up to him. “You working an EMS beat or something?”
Corman sat down beside him, his eyes moving up the long row of battered metal lockers. Several patrolmen were getting into uniform, struggling with their belts and citation pads, checking out the smudges on their brass buttons.
Lang offered a thin, reptilian smile. “I thought maybe you’d seen that guy I put in Saint Clare’s this morning,” he said. “Fucking skell. Tried to hoist an old lady off a roof on Forty-ninth Street.” He shook his head. “I got there just in time. They may give me a medal.” He laughed. “You should have been there. You could have taken my picture.”
Corman reached into his camera bag and took out the notebook.
Lang eyed it suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“For notes,” Corman explained. “Just in case.”
“Notes?” Lang said. His face tightened. “What kind of notes?”
“I’m still working on that woman,’ Corman said. “And I was wondering if you’d come up with any background on her.”
Lang shrugged. “I asked her father the routine stuff,” he said. “Why’d she do it? Bullshit questions like that.” He took a bite from his Danish and continued talking, his words slightly muffled. “They don’t ever know, the parents. It’s all a mystery to them. Shit, man, he didn’t even know where she was.”
“At the funeral, he was pretty upset,” Corman told him.
“You went to the funeral?”
Corman nodded. “No one there but Rosen.”
Lang washed the Danish down with a gulp of coffee. “Figures,” he said. “With a broad like that.”
“Like what?”
“A loner,” Lang explained. “Nobody in the whole fucking neighborhood knew who she was. All they’d done is, they’d seen her. That was it. As far as shooting the shit with her, passing the time of day? Nothing.”
Corman looked at him curiously. “So you did talk to a few people in the neighborhood?”
“That’s right.”
“Why? If it was a routine suicide.”
Lang smiled. “Because of you, shithead.”
“Me?”
“That fucking button,” Lang told him. “We had to cover our asses.” He shrugged. “So, we asked around a little.”