“You think it might not be suicide, huh?” Necessary said and examined Lynch as if for the first time. He took in the tentlike suit and the ill-fitting white shirt and the stained tie and the big round face that wore its best smile, the one that didn’t show too many teeth. Necessary studied it all with his blue and brown eyes and nodded slightly, as if confirming some long-held suspicion.
“That’s right,” Lynch said, returning the stare. “I think that maybe it might not be suicide.”
Necessary cocked his head slightly to one side and nodded again, as if he were giving Lynch’s comment a great deal of serious thought. Finally he said, “And what makes you believe I give a goddamn what you think, mister?”
He said it loudly enough so that the reporters could make a note of it, turned and walked rapidly from the City Council chamber, still coming down hard on his heels, as the newly appointed assistant to the chief of police hurried after him.
Part 3
Chapter 33
Carol slept while I dressed, quickly as always, but more quietly than usual. I could dress quietly now because my clothing was hung neatly on hangers or the backs of chairs and I no longer had to make a muttering search for an odd sock or the missing tie. The neatly hung clothes indicated the stage that we had reached by the first week in October. We no longer left them on the floor in what Carol called rumpled piles of passion. Instead we undressed in stages, taking our time, talking and perhaps drinking a final Scotch and water, comfortable in our knowledge that passion would arrive on schedule, or perhaps a few minutes early, but that there was no hurry. In fact we enjoyed each other’s company and I’m still not sure which of us was more surprised at the discovery.
I was buttoning my button-down collar when Carol rolled over in the bed, opened her eyes, gazed at the ceiling, and said, “If I go out that door, Vincent, I’m never coming back. Never.”
“There was a woman here to see you this afternoon, Countess,” I said. “An old woman. She said that she was... your mother.”
“That medical degree doesn’t give you the right to play God, Doctor,” she said and then yawned as prettily as anyone can. “Okay, I’m awake. Where’s the coffee?”
“Roger should be knocking on the door any minute, which will make him only twenty minutes late.”
“He’s improving,” she said.
The knock came three minutes later and I opened the door for Roger, the defeated room waiter. He smiled grumpily, if that can be done, and said, “Right on time this morning, huh, Mr. Dye?”
“On the dot,” I said.
“How you, Miz Thackerty?”
“Fine, Roger.”
“Gonna be a nice day,” he said, pouring the coffee. “Shouldn’t get no more than ninety, maybe ninety-two.”
“In October,” I said.
“Nice day.”
I signed the check and added his usual dollar tip. He looked at it glumly and said, “Might rain later though.”
“Thanks, Roger,” I said.
“Might even storm,” he said, moving toward the door. “Even some talk about a hurricane, but that weatherman’s a liar.” He took another quick peek at Carol, but found nothing interesting, mumbled something else about the weather or the state of the world, and left.
I handed Carol her coffee. “You should walk around naked for him just once,” I said.
“Not really. If I did he’d have nothing to anticipate. An occasional glimpse of breast and thigh keeps him stimulated and interested.”
I finished my coffee and put the cup down. “Who am I this morning? It’s slipped my mind.”
“You’re Special Investigator Dye from nine until ten,” she said.
“Him, huh? He’s the one who always thinks he should have known what lay behind the sealed tomb’s door.”
“His reports are good, too,” she said. “They all begin, ‘Chief Homer Necessary and his faithful assistant, Lucifer Dye, moved cautiously through the fog-shrouded night.’ From ten-thirty this morning until eleven-thirty you’re back being Triple Agent Lucifer Dye. You meet Lynch at his place. At noon you revert to your original role as Orcutt’s number one skulk.”
“What’s a skulk?”
“It’s what Orcutt wants to meet with at noon in his suite.”
“He likes meetings,” I said.
“He needs his audience.”
I leaned over the bed and kissed her. “I’ll see you at noon.”
“After it was over — really over,” she said, “I never actually believed that I would come back here to Venice.”
“I’ve never once asked for your love, Myra,” I said. “Only for your respect.” It was a harmless enough way to say goodbye.
I only needed a glance to tell what he was and who had sent him. He stood in the center of my room, his hands carefully in sight, but well balanced on the balls of his feet in case I tried to throw him out before he said what he had come to say. I nodded at him and tossed my room key on the dresser.
“How’s Carmingler?” I said.
“Fine.”
I pointed at the bathroom door. “I’m going in there and shower and shave and probably take a shit. I’ll be fifteen minutes. You can make yourself useful in the meantime by ordering up some coffee. I’ve only had one cup this morning and I’d like some more. Okay?”
“All right,” he said.
He was still standing in the center of the room when I came out, but he now held a cup and saucer. I went over to the dresser and poured myself a cup. Then I sat in the room’s most comfortable chair and looked at him.
“You know what somebody else and I call you?” I said.
“What?”
“We call you ‘just a guy.’ ”
He nodded as if he didn’t care what I called him. He was young, probably around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, wore a sleepy expression and a faint smile, as if he thought I was just a little quaint or old-fashioned. Maybe I was.
“I’ll make two guesses,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You sent a couple of punks up here about a month ago to see how nervous I was. That’s one guess. The second one is that your name is Mugar and that you’re Section Two’s young man of the year.”
He walked to the dresser and put his cup down. He moved well and had a deft way of pouring a cup of coffee. He drank it black, I noticed. He turned and looked at me, taking his time. His ash blond hair fitted his head like a bathing cap except for a few curly locks that wandered partway down his forehead. It gave him a slightly tousled look that must have cost him fifteen minutes before the mirror each morning with comb and brush.
The rest of him was regular enough, about five-eleven, a hundred and sixty pounds, regular features except for his dark hazel eyes, which I thought were a little too confident for his age, but I may have been jealous.
“Carmingler wants you to pack it in,” he said. It was his first complete sentence and it came out Eastern Seaboard from somewhere south of Boston and north of Baltimore.
“All right,” I said and watched his reaction with pleasure. He started slightly, but recovered well enough.
“You’ll do it then?” he said.
“I’ll take the third flight out. If Carmingler had said, ‘please,’ I’d take the first one.”
“They told me to expect some smart answers.”
“Anything else?”
“He wants you out of here next week. Friday.”
“And you’re to see to it?”
“That’s right. I’m to see to it.”
“He wanted me out a month ago and you made a half-hearted attempt that didn’t work. Why wait till now to try again?”
“The first was just a precautionary move,” he said. “Now we’re certain.”