“And the old man who saw the license plate on the rented car…”
“One of the Vietnamese witnesses.”
“Yes. And also the investigator who learned what the number on that plate really was. He killed all five of them. He’s already made a statement to that effect.”
“I see. I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with… which investigator do you mean?”
“You didn’t see this morning’s newspaper?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“This was an investigator from the State Attorney’s office. A man named Frank Bannion.”
“And he learned… what was it he’d learned?”
“He figured out what the license plate was.”
“I see.”
“Which led him to Howell.”
“I see.”
“The same way it led me to Howell.”
“I see,” she said, and hesitated. “Did…?”
And hesitated again. Wondering quite how to put this.
“Did Kit say… why he’d committed these murders?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?” she said.
“For you,” he said.
“For me?”
She seemed almost amused.
“For me? I hardly know the man!”
“Mrs. Leeds…”
“That’s perfectly ridiculous,” she said. “For me? Is the man crazy?”
“Mrs. Leeds, outside of the…”
“He said he did it for me?”
“… various lawyers and law-enforcement people working on this case…”
“I can’t believe he…”
“… only two other people knew that license-plate number.”
She looked at him.
“The number Trinh thought he saw.”
She kept looking at him.
“You and your husband,” Matthew said.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” Matthew said. “I told your husband, and he told you.”
“I don’t remember hearing…”
“You and I talked about it later, Mrs. Leeds. You knew the number, and you…”
“I did not!”
“… gave it to Howell.”
“You’re mistaken. I don’t even know the man, except as…”
“He’s admitted it.”
She looked at him again.
“He said you gave it to him.”
She kept looking at him.
“He said he killed Trinh because of that number.”
And suddenly she was crying.
Tonight, she cannot get enough of him.
This is four days before Christmas, the twenty-first day of December, a Thursday. In the motel room, she is insatiable. She knows she will not be seeing him over the holidays; she and her husband are going up to New York on the twenty-sixth and will not return until the second of January. And so tonight’s lovemaking must hold her until then, a junkie’s last desperate fix before an anticipated shortage of supply, she cannot get enough of him.
She is dressed provocatively for him. She always dresses provocatively for him. Black bikini panties, lace-edged. A black garter belt. Black, seamed nylon stockings. No brassiere. Black, high-heeled patent-leather pumps. He tells her she looks like a hooker in the Combat Zone. That’s an area in Boston, he explains. Where all the hookers parade. She asks if he’s ever been to bed with a hooker. Only in Nam, he says. He tells her he killed seven people in Nam. This excites her. The idea that he has killed people. Her husband has killed people, too, in the same war, in the same place. But when Kit describes cutting off cocks, it excites her.
She has been seeing him for almost a year now, ever since he took the job at the club. A sun god. Walking out onto the court, his head bent, blond hair glowing, looking up suddenly, blue eyes flashing. Good morning, Mrs. Leeds, I’m Christopher Howell. They call me Kit.
Well, hello, Kit, she thinks.
Aren’t you lovely, Kit.
Are you ready for your lesson? he asks.
Oh yes, she thinks, I am ready for my lesson. Kit.
He has been giving her lessons for almost a year now, on and off the court. She cannot imagine what her life was like before he entered it. He is the same age as her husband, but by comparison Stephen seems far older. Stephen and his boat. Always the damn boat. Felicity. She hates the name of the boat. He comes in off the boat tasting of salt. Kisses her tasting of salt. She hates his kisses, they make her want to wash out her mouth. Stephen is a big man going to fat. Kit is the same age, they both fought in the same war, but Kit is lean and hard and savage, and she cannot get enough of him.
They talk a lot about her leaving Stephen. Divorcing him. But Florida’s courts aren’t quite as liberal with alimony as they are elsewhere in the United States. Most judges down here will grant alimony for a so-called period of adjustment and then you’re on your own, sink or swim. She is trying to figure out some way to get him to put the farm in her name. She has told him that if something happened to him, God forbid, the estate taxes would murder her, they’d be giving the government enough money to invade Grenada all over again. Over and over again, she hits on the Grenada theme. He’d hated Reagan when he was president, hated the invasion of Grenada, the bombing of Libya, a man who’d killed people himself, it was strange. Try to get the farm in her name. The farm was the fortune. Get him to put it in her name and then kiss him off, spend the rest of her life lying in the sun with Kit, making love to Kit. They talk about that tonight, too. They always talk about that. In each other’s arms, they talk about her leaving Stephen once the farm is in her name.
Their watches are on the dresser, lying side by side, hers tiny and gold with a slender black strap, his massive and steely, with digital readouts and stubby little studs.
Their watches toss seconds into the room.
Minutes.
More minutes.
On the bed across the room, they are making love again, lost in their need for each other, savoring these last passionate moments before their long separation, she cannot get enough of him. And at last they lie back on the pillows, her head close to his, his arm lying across her breasts, spent, content, silent. A fire engine races past on U.S. 41, its siren howling.
Fire someplace, she says.
Mmmm, he says.
They listen to the sound of the siren fading, and then it is gone, and the room is silent again save for the ticking of her watch on the dresser. She wonders aloud what time it is, and gets out of bed naked, and walks flatfooted across the room and picks up the watch and—
Jesus!
It’s a quarter past eleven!
This is when the nightmare begins.
Not later.
Now.
This instant.
It will take at least fifteen minutes to get back to the mall. This will put her in the Maserati at eleven-thirty, an hour and a half later than she’d planned. It’ll take another half hour to get back to the farm, she won’t be home till midnight! Never mind him putting the farm in her name, he’ll kick her out of the house if she walks in there at midnight! He’ll throw her out on the street! He’ll file for divorce tomorrow morning! How could they have been so stupid, wasn’t somebody watching the time? She is saying all this to Kit as she dresses, hastily putting on the garter belt and then the seamed nylon stockings, and fastening the stockings to the garters, He’ll kill me, she says, and stepping into the black lace-edged bikini panties, I can’t believe we let this happen, and then putting on the short black skirt and the sleeveless white silk blouse, and buttoning the little pearl buttons up the front. What can I tell him, she says, what can I possibly say to him?