He paused and looked at me. ‘You left a message?’
‘Yes.’
He actually did mull this one over for a moment and then said, ‘The sensitive type, huh?’
I didn’t respond, although I certainly wanted to – wanted to hit him. But at the same time I could see his point. Even from the remove of a mere thirty or forty minutes, what I’d done by leaving that message now seemed truly awful. I shook my head and turned away towards the window. The news itself was bad enough, obviously – but how much worse was it going to be for her hearing it from me, and on an answering machine? I sighed in frustration, and noticed that I was still shaking a little.
I eventually looked back at Foley, expecting some more questions, but there weren’t any. He had taken the plastic lid from the regular coffee and was opening the foil wrapper on the toasted English muffin. He shrugged his shoulders again and threw me a look that said, What can I tell you? I’m hungry.
After another twenty minutes or so, I was led out of the apartment and taken in a car to the local precinct to make an official statement. No one spoke to me on the way, and with different thoughts vying for space in my mind, I paid very little attention to my immediate surroundings. When I next had to speak I was in a large, busy office, sitting across a desk from another overweight detective with an Irish name.
Brogan.
He went over the same ground as Foley had, asked the same questions and showed about as much interest in the answers. I then had to sit on a wooden bench for about half an hour while the statement was being typed up and printed out. There was a lot of activity in the room, all sorts of people coming and going, and I found it hard to think.
I was eventually called back over to Brogan’s desk and asked to read and sign the statement. As I went through it, he sat in silence, playing with a paper clip. Just before I got to the end of it, his telephone rang and he answered it with a yeah. He paused for a few seconds, said yeah once or twice more and then proceeded to give a brief account of what had happened. I was very tired at this point and didn’t really bother to listen, so it wasn’t until I heard him utter the words Yes, Ms Gant that I jolted up and started paying attention.
Brogan’s matter-of-fact report went on for a another few moments, but then all of a sudden he was saying, ‘Yeah, sure, he’s right here. I’ll put him on to you.’ He held the phone out and signalled me to take it. I reached over, and in the two or three seconds it took to position the handset at my ear, I felt what I imagined to be untold quantities of adrenalin entering my bloodstream.
‘Hi… Melissa?’
‘Yeah, Eddie. I got your message.’
Silence.
‘Listen, I’m really sorry about that, I was in a panic – I…’
‘Don’t worry. That’s what answering machines are for.’
‘Well… yeah… OK.’ I looked over at Brogan, nervously. ‘And I’m really sorry about Vernon.’
‘Yeah. Me too. Jesus.’ Her voice was slow and tired-sounding. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Eddie, it didn’t surprise me that much. It was a long time coming.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
‘I know it sounds hard, but he was involved in some…’ She paused here, and then went on, ‘… some stuff. But I suppose I’d better keep my mouth shut on this line, right?’
‘Probably be a good idea.’
Brogan was still playing with the paper clip, and looked like he was listening to an episode of his favourite serial on the radio.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard your voice, though,’ Melissa went on, ‘and I almost didn’t get the message. I had to replay it twice.’ She paused, and for a couple of beats longer than seemed natural. ‘So… what were you doing at Vernon’s?’
‘I ran into him on Twelfth Street yesterday afternoon,’ I said, practically reading from the statement in front of me, ‘and we agreed to meet earlier today at his apartment.’
‘This is all so weird.’
‘Is there any chance we could meet up? I’d like to-’
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Like to what?
She let the silence hang there between us.
Eventually, she said, ‘I reckon I’m going to be very busy over the next while, Eddie. I’m going to have to arrange the funeral and God knows what else.’
‘Well, can I help you with any of that? I feel-’
‘Don’t. You don’t have to feel anything. Just let me give you a call when… when I have some time. And we can have a proper conversation then. How about that?’
‘Sure.’
I wanted to say more, ask her how she was, keep her talking, but that was it. She said, ‘OK… goodbye,’ and then we both hung up.
Brogan flicked the paper clip away, leant forward in his chair and nodded down at the statement.
I signed it and gave it back to him.
‘That it?’ I said.
‘For the moment. If we need you again, we’ll call you.’
Then he opened a drawer in his desk and started looking for something.
I stood up and left.
Down on the street I lit a cigarette and took a few deep pulls on it.
I looked at my watch. It was just after three-thirty.
This time yesterday none of this had started yet.
Pretty soon I wasn’t going to be able to entertain that thought any more. Which I was glad about in a way, because every time I did entertain it I fell into the annoying trap of thinking that there might be some kind of a reprieve available, almost as if there were a period of grace in these matters during which you could go back and undo stuff, get a moral refund on your mistakes.
I walked aimlessly for a few blocks and then hailed a cab. Sitting in the back seat, and going towards mid-town, I rewound the conversation with Melissa in my head and played it over a few times. Despite what we’d been talking about, the tone of the conversation had at least felt normal – which pleased me inordinately. But there was something different in the timbre of her voice, something I’d also detected earlier when I listened to the message on her answering machine. It was a thickness, or a heaviness – but from what? Disappointment? Cigarettes? Kids?
What did I know?
I glanced out of the back-seat window. The numbers on the cross-streets – the Fifties, Forties, Thirties – were flitting past again, as though levels of pressure were being reduced to allow me to re-enter the atmosphere. The further we got from Linden Tower, in fact, the better I felt – but then something struck me.
Vernon had been into some stuff, Melissa had said. I think I knew what that meant – and presumably as a direct consequence of this stuff he had been beaten up and later murdered. For my part, while Vernon lay dead on a couch, I had searched his bedroom, found a roll of bills, a notebook and five hundred tablets. I had hidden these items and then lied to the police. Surely that meant I was now into some stuff, too.
And could also be in danger.
Had anyone seen me? I didn’t think so. When I got back up from the diner to Vernon’s apartment the intruder had been in the bedroom and had fled immediately. All he could have seen was my back, or at most caught a glimpse of me when I turned around, as I had of him – but that had just been a dark blur.
He or anyone, however, could have been watching from outside Linden Tower. They could have spotted me coming down with the police, followed me to the precinct – be following me now.
I told the driver to stop.
He pulled over on the corner of Twenty-ninth and Second. I paid him and got out. I looked around. No other car – or cars – appeared to have stopped at the same time as we had, although I suppose I could have missed something. In any case, I walked briskly in the direction of Third Avenue, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. I made my way to the subway station on Twenty-eighth and Lexington and took a 6 train down to Union Square and then an L train west as far as Eighth Avenue. I got out there and caught a cross-town bus back over to First.