Abruptly she stopped, face flushed with the passion of her words, her gray eyes flashing and silvery with what may have been tears. Then she turned and ran over to the closet and got her coat out. I struggled up onto my feet, but before I could reach her she had the door open and I could hear her shoes clicking on the stairs going down. A moment later the front door slammed and there was only silence.
I stood listening to the echo of her words in my ears, the cutting sting of them. No, I thought, no, she’s wrong, she’s all the way wrong, that’s not the way it is, Jesus, that’s just not the way it is!
I went back to the couch and sat there with the pain hot and sharp now in my stomach, staring over at the door. I said aloud, to break the deepening silence, “She’ll be back. She didn’t mean any of it, not that way.”
The words sounded uncertain, supplicating, in the suddenly cold and shabby room.
* * * *
11
The next morning I awoke feeling stiff and sore. There was a dull throbbing in my temples, and a sharp ache at the center of the lump on my forehead. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror; the face that stared back at me was an unhealthy gray and etched with too many lines and crags, like a contour map of an arid and desolate terrain. The whites of my eyes had a rheumy look to them-dull green agates floating in partially curdled milk-and my lips were puffed and dry. The beard stubble on my chin and patterned thickly across my cheeks was the color of old pewter.
I took four aspirins out of the bottle in the medicine cabinet and swallowed a little water with them, and shaved, and passed the toothbrush over the smoke stains on my teeth, and combed my gray-streaked hair, and studied myself again, critically, in the mirror. I did not look or feel much better. I walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed and stared at the backs of my hands. They were deeply veined and faintly gray. You and Martinetti, I thought. A couple of sick, tired old men-but he would recover after a while, because that was the kind of man he was; nothing would ever completely destroy his vitality, his vigor, his youth. But what about you, tiger? Yeah, what about you?
I stripped off my pajamas and looked at the bandages to see if there was any trouble with the wound. They were clean and dry. I began to dress, slowly and carefully, in one of my two remaining suits-a charcoal worsted that was four years old and had a faint shine along the seat of the trousers. I put on the white shirt Erika had bought, and tied a knitted green tie and fastened it to the shirt with a gold bar clasp. I had just gotten that accomplished when the telephone rang.
I thought it might be Martinetti, but it was, instead, Allan Channing. I frowned a little as he identified himself; his voice was cold and angry and precise.
He said, “I’m calling to let you know that I think Lou Martinetti made a very grave error in judgment in hiring you as an investigator after what happened the other night. You’ve caused enough trouble as it is.”
You supercilious son of a bitch, I thought. I said, “Is that supposed to be some kind of warning, Mr. Channing?”
“Call it what you like,” he said. “I hold you personally responsible for what happened to my money, and if it isn’t recovered, I fully intend to take steps to see that you don’t have the opportunity to inflict similar damages on other individuals. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Lou Martinetti is a very good friend of mine, even if he is prone to irrational ideas and decisions at times, and I don’t want any further fumblings in his behalf. I suggest you call him immediately and resign from his employ.”
“It must be hell to be a man like you, Channing,” I said. “It must be pure hell to value a sum of money more than the life of a nine-year-old boy.”
“Listen here-” Channing began.
“Nuts to you, brother,” I said, and I slammed the phone down in his ear.
I stood there shaking a little. The bastard, the soulless bastard. I went over and sat down on the bed again and after a while the trembling subsided and I was all right. I got up, and the telephone bell sounded again.
It was Dana Eberhardt this time, wanting to know how I felt and if I needed anything. She was one of the most maternal women I had ever known, and she had been fussing over me for twenty years. She had tried to marry me off to half of her eligible female relatives at one time or another, and it was a great source of frustration for her that she had never even come close to succeeding. A running joke between Eberhardt and me was that if she ever found out I had spent a weekend with her cousin Jeannie in Carmel six years ago, she would bring out a shotgun and march Jeannie and me to the nearest altar.
I assured Dana that I was all right, and that I would take care of myself and that I would come up to see them the first chance I got. I wished she had not found out what had happened, because the chances were that I would never hear the end of it. She and Eberhardt were as bad as Erika, in their own way, when it came to my profession.
Erika. I looked at the phone, thinking that I wanted to talk to her-and yet I did not want to talk to her. I could still feel the unfair bite of her words last night. But I would be needing the use of a car today, and she kept hers in a lot on Mission Street, not far from my office.
I dialed the number of her firm in the financial district, and the switchboard there put me through to her. “Well,” she said, “how nice.” Her voice was cool. “You sound very fit this morning. Did you sleep well?”
“I slept fine,” I lied. “Listen, Erika, I called to ask if I could borrow your car today.”
Silence. I counted mutely to eleven, and then she said, “Is that all you wanted?”
“For now, yes.”
“I’ll call the garage for you, then,” she said flatly. “You won’t get any blood on the upholstery, will you? If you’re stabbed again, or shot, I mean.”
“That’s not funny, Erika.”
“It wasn’t intended to be,” she said, and she broke the connection with a soft click.
* * * *
I took a taxi down to the parking garage on Mission and picked up the Valiant and drove it over to Taylor Street. My office was in the Kores Building, a couple of blocks off Market, and I parked perversely in a yellow loading zone a half-block away. The sun was out by then — it was after ten-but there was a chill autumn wind blowing through the concrete-and-steel canyons of the city. I walked as quickly as I thought it wise to be walking, my hands shoved down in the pockets of the heavy tweed topcoat I had put on before leaving my apartment.
The entrance to the Kores Building was nothing more than a narrow doorway wedged between a dealer in old coins and a luncheonette. I went inside, and the lobby was as it always was: cold and dark and still. I checked the row of tenants’ mailboxes, found mine empty, and then took the elevator up to the third floor.