I turned around and looked at her. I tried to keep my eyes on her face and not her breasts, because it was an important moment in our relationship, but I couldn’t.
“I was planning on lying to you,” I said. “I’m not sure why I didn’t.”
“I think I know,” she said. “And that’s another reason I don’t want you to go. You care about me so much that it’s important to you that I know you as you really are. That kind of honesty isn’t easy. It was a very brave thing you did for me.”
Her words had a big impact on me, and I didn’t want to let her down. I wanted to continue to earn her respect, so I made another admission.
“I’m having a hard time not looking at your breasts.”
“So, look at them.”
“But we’re having an important conversation,” I said. “Doesn’t it piss you off that I can’t stop looking at them?”
“I’m naked; of course you’re looking at them,” she said. “I’m looking at your penis.”
I immediately got up and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. I wasn’t really thirsty, I just needed to hide behind the counter if we were going to continue talking. I’m funny about nudity and certain kinds of conversations. I used to hate it if my shirt happened to be off, or if I was in my underwear, when my parents scolded me about something or when I had an argument with a girlfriend. It embarrassed me. It made me feel more naked than actually being naked, if you can understand that.
Carol apparently had no such hang-ups. She sat there on the floor, showing me her breasts and her crotch as comfortably as if she were wearing clothes. I was envious of her casual indifference to her own nudity.
“You haven’t said anything yet about how I fucked-up the case,” I said.
“Because you didn’t,” she replied.
“Three people are dead and I didn’t bring anyone to justice for it.”
She laughed. “Who do you think you are? Batman?”
It was the second time someone had said that to me since this all started, but it was the first time it made me feel foolish. Of course, when Cyril Parkus said it to me, I wasn’t naked.
“I didn’t accomplish anything,” I said.
“You wanted to find out why Lauren killed herself and make the guy responsible pay for it. You did both.”
“And I let Cyril Parkus get away with murder.”
“So what? Arlo deserved it. To me, that’s justice.”
“Maybe there’s still a way to catch Cyril without getting myself thrown in jail with him.”
“Why would you even want to try?”
“Because Cyril Parkus murdered Arlo Pelz,” I said. “I can’t just let him walk.”
“Why not?”
Because Travis McGee wouldn’t.
Neither would Joe Mannix, Lew Archer, Kinsey Milhone, Dan Tana, or Spenser.
But that’s not what I said.
“Because it’s wrong,” I replied.
“That’s not why,” she said. “Don’t start lying to me now, Harvey.”
At that moment, I hated her for knowing me so well. I don’t know how she did, since I never really talked to her before. Maybe I said more over the years than I thought I did. Maybe I’m just transparent.
“Because a private eye is supposed to solve the crime and catch the bad guys,” I said. “I only did half the job. The bad guy is still out there.”
The truth was, I felt cheated. I solved the mystery but I didn’t get to be a hero. The only people alive who knew what I’d done were Cyril and Carol.
I was hoping for wider acclaim than that.
I was hoping to get a friend on the force.
“The bad guy was Arlo, and he’s dead,” Carol said. “Cyril did a bad thing, but that doesn’t make him the bad guy. He lost his wife once and his sister twice and his life is shit. I have a lot of sympathy for him.”
“This just doesn’t feel right to me,” I said. “It feels unsettled.”
“Welcome to real life,” she said. “You don’t get tidy resolutions. People fuck-up and do terrible things, and if we’re lucky, like we are now, things sort of work out. Not everyone has to feel good about it. In fact, maybe it’s better for everyone if they don’t.”
She was right. I was looking for the TV ending, where the whole case is wrapped up nice and neat, the bad guys are all behind bars, and the PI gets laid.
Well, at least one thing worked out the way it was supposed to.
I came around the counter and let her see me naked again, though I think I will always be naked in front of her.
“So, where do we go from here?” I asked her.
“Wherever you want.”
“You’re looking at my penis.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “And I think I have a pretty good idea where you’d like to go.”
It was a start.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I quit my job at Westland Security the next morning. I couldn’t go back to sitting in that guard shack, or any guard shack, again. I had a feeling if I did, it would always remind me of a cabin closet on Big Rock Lake.
I didn’t need the job anyway. If I added up my auto insurance settlement with what I had left from the Parkus job, I had about five thousand dollars. That would hold me for a few months, especially since I didn’t have to buy myself a car right away. Carol was letting me drive her Camry as long as I dropped her off at work promptly at nine a.m. and picked her up at six. I think she had an ulterior motive, since the arrangement almost guaranteed I’d be spending my nights with her.
She didn’t need to come up with the car arrangement for that, but I guess she was covering her bases.
The first few days I was back, I mostly lay around my apartment or hers, recuperating from my injuries, and getting used to the idea of being with Carol. I was the wounded bird in this story, though I didn’t have to scrub Carol’s floor or do her laundry.
I tried not to think about all the dead people. Lauren, Jolene, Arlo, even Esme. But they haunted me anyway. In my mind, they were all floating in the murky lake, all of them giving me the look that Lauren gave me before she jumped.
I can’t recall Spenser being haunted by anything except his own splendid competence.
I didn’t have the competence, I knew that. Still, I accomplished something, something more than writing courtesy tickets at Bel Vista Estates, even if I couldn’t point to exactly what it was. And I took some big risks to do it, too.
It pissed me off that I didn’t feel the euphoria and pride I felt I deserved for solving my first case and surviving.
The only thing I felt was different.
I know that’s not very specific, just saying different. But I knew I was not the same guy I was a couple weeks ago and that I never would be again.
So, who was I now? What was I going to do?
Those were questions I’d managed to avoid my entire life and I had a feeling that keeping Carol around, and continuing to enjoy all this sex I was getting, had a lot to do with not avoiding them now.
Although my experience as a detective wasn’t as much fun as I’d dreamed it would be, and I couldn’t exactly use Cyril Parkus as a reference for future work, I still thought I had a certain affinity for the job. It might even live up to my expectations next time, assuming I could snag another gig. So, I started looking into what it would take to go legit, to become a licensed private detective.
What I found out wasn’t encouraging.
In the state of California, you’ve got to take an extensive training course, log six thousand hours of investigative experience, and pass a two-hour written exam covering laws and regulations before you get a license. By my calculations, it would be about three years before I could set up shop as a private detective.
Legally, that is.
But there wasn’t any law saying I couldn’t go into business as an “investigative advisor” or “professional problem solver.” I knew it could be done. Travis McGee didn’t have a license, he just called himself a “salvage expert” and asked for half the value of whatever he recovered. I decided that could work for me, too, though I wasn’t sure how I’d figure out the salvage price for, as an example, following someone’s wife. I decided my task for the month would be to reread the books and make a detailed report of exactly how McGee computed his commissions.