Stanley Katz came toward me, dimly lit by the town’s residual glow, tramping through the deep snow, his breath escaping in powerful, rhythmic blasts-and yet all without a sound, as silently as a hologram.
He reached the tower’s rough, dark, curving wall-an incongruous shaft with no base visible in the snow and its top buried in the black sky overhead-and put his hand against it for stability, his thin, narrow frame bent over from the exertion of his climb.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, gasping, “what the hell is so goddamn important I got to kill myself coming up here in the middle of a fucking blizzard?”
“Just a storm, Stan. You should get in better shape.”
“Up yours, Gunther. How long did it take you to recover?”
I let him continue in that vein for a few minutes, both hands now on his knees, his breathing gradually returning to normal. Finally, he straightened, took in one last cleansing lungful of lightly powdered air, and fixed me with a baleful look. “All right. I’m here, I made sure I wasn’t followed, and I parked my car the hell-and-gone up the block. What do you want?”
I pulled a plain envelope from inside my coat and handed it to him. “That’s a detailed list of illegal-but maybe unprosecutable-activities that Tom Chambers has been engaged in for the past several years, all in the interests of gaining control of the convention center construction project.”
Katz held the envelope in his hand gingerly, not opening it, not even looking at it. His eyes were locked on to mine. “What’s going on?”
“Not a word about where you got this, Stan-not a name, not the usual ‘a confidential police source,’ not a murmur connecting us to what’s in that envelope, or I take it back and this conversation ends. Agreed?”
“How do I know what it’s worth?”
“You’ll read it-privately-then you’ll check its contents through your own sources. You’ll come to your own conclusions.”
The envelope moved to his coat pocket. “Agreed.”
I paused to collect my thoughts. What I wanted to give Katz was a simple, connect-the-dots story line linking together most of the headlines he’d been producing over the past week. Some of it would be conjecture, and some of it solid, but all of it was designed to whet his appetite.
“Shawna Davis met up with Mary Wallis at the same time Mary Wallis was protesting the project. For reasons I won’t go into, Wallis fell for Davis sentimentally, and when Davis disappeared, Wallis folded her tent. We think she was either physically pressured or blackmailed to back off and was finally grabbed or killed to guarantee her silence.
“Milo Douglas is connected to the project because he slept above Paul Hennessy’s office one night and possibly overheard something, shortly before dying of a disease to which he had no explainable exposure. We don’t know exactly how the two tie together, but we do know Milo was paid a bundle just before he died, and that he was cagey about its source.
“Adele Sawyer comes into it because she’s Hennessy’s aunt, and Hennessy’s been ripping off Carroll Construction for years, using her name on his dummy businesses to keep a low profile. But he took on a partner with this last project, and it was the partner who knocked off Sawyer to curb Hennessy’s runaway greed.”
“And this partner is NeverTom?” Katz’s voice was incredulous.
“We don’t know, nor is any of what I just said in that envelope. I only told you so you’d know what we’re facing. We do know Tom Chambers has engaged in bribery, blackmail, and illegal coercion, but while some of the people he pressured have admitted it to us, they also said all contact was made by phone or mail, so there’s no way in hell Jack Derby can do anything about it. That’s why I need your help.”
Katz pointed at the two of us. “Did Tony set this meeting up?”
“No one knows anything about it-this is just you and me.” The snow fell around us in utter silence as Stanley Katz pondered what I’d told him. My own thoughts were crowded with a dizzying uncertainty. As Gail had pointed out, what I was doing flew in the face of a lifetime of traditional reticence. It felt tantamount to treason.
“What about Ben Chambers?” he finally asked.
“So far, he seems to be Tom’s financial source only. But there again, we’re still looking.”
“Nothing new on Hennessy?”
“Nope, but his girlfriend spilled the beans. My own feeling is he’s still in the area.”
Katz let out a sigh. “Christ.”
I checked my watch. “It’s about eight-thirty. Read that over, make a few inquiries, call me at home if you want. You should have enough time to put something in tomorrow’s paper if you move fast enough.”
“Is that the deal?”
I took several steps away from the tower, heading back the way I’d come. “The Rutland Herald’s next on my list if you don’t. Have a nice evening.”
Arriving home later, expecting the dark and tomb-like silence I’d grown used to over the last few months, I instead found Gail ensconced on the living room sofa, surrounded by pillows like some romanticized pasha, a glass of milk in one hand, the TV remote in the other, and an open bag of chocolate-chip cookies on her stomach.
She gave me a broad smile as I entered the room and patted the sofa next to her, removing two pillows to make room. “Have a cookie?”
I glanced at the TV screen-a hysterically pitched sitcom with too many attractive people speaking loudly and moving fast. “Have we hit job meltdown?” I asked, settling in next to her.
She hit the remote, found a doctor show, gave me a chocolaty kiss, and pushed the cookie bag in my direction. I hadn’t had dinner yet, and this seemed an excellent substitute.
“A drop-the-books-and-screw-them-all mental health break,” she answered. “I intend to finish the contents of this bag-with your help if you’re interested-knock off that half-gallon of ice cream that’s been sitting in the freezer, and then go to bed at a reasonable hour, where-after about thirty minutes of satiating myself sexually at your expense-I plan to sleep the sleep of the nutritionally poisoned. How’s your head?”
I reached up to touch the bandage. “Fine-I’d forgotten I still had this thing. You sure you’re okay?”
She punched the remote again, found an old western, and placed her glass on the floor beside her. “Never better-and I have you to thank, twice over. Once because you got conked on the head, which made me realize how much we both give to our jobs and how little to each other, and the other because you twisted my arm into visiting Bernie at the nursing home-which I did again tonight, by the way-and which has reminded me how wrong-headed it is to take our time on this earth for granted. I have been so wired for so long, I could almost feel my brain leaving my body. I won’t say I’m sorry for the last few months, because I did what I had to, but I am going to do my damnedest to keep things a little more in perspective from now on.”
She stopped long enough to lean up against me, rubbing my body with hers, and gave me a long, deep, definitely energizing kiss. “I also plan to take more advantage of some of the household appliances I’ve been neglecting lately.”
She kissed me again, her hand roving across my shirt, undoing any buttons she happened across. Dropping my cookie, I fumbled with her blouse, and then pulled her up and along the length of the sofa, probably crushing our dinner beneath us. She paused to concentrate on my belt buckle. “Don’t think this lets you off the hook for later on, by the way.”
An hour later, still both on the couch but naked under a soft, thick blanket, we were watching the western, sprinkling cookie fragments over ice cream, and feeling better than we had in quite a while.
Until the phone rang.
With a one-word curse, I stretched out and fumbled for the receiver, located on a table behind the couch. “What?”