‘So there’s no word on her?’ He says this in a different tone. This time I can’t mistake the subject of his inquiry. He’s talking about Laurel. Harry knows that I am in a family way on this thing. I called Harry early this morning. Got him out of bed and told him about my all-night stand at Vega’s house and the attempt at inquisition by Jimmy Lama.
‘No word,’ I say.
‘You can always hope,’ he says. ‘Who knows? Maybe they’ve given her up. Found another suspect.’
‘I might feel better if I knew what the the cops had.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t,’ he says. ‘Maybe she did it.’ This is Harry, soothing you with his blarney one instant and honing the knife’s edge on your open wounds the next.
I give him a look, like thanks for the comforting thoughts.
‘Well, hey, it does happen,’ he says. ‘Crime of passion, the tangled triangle,’ says Harry. ‘Two women doing battle over the same man. Jealous ex and the beautiful younger wife.’ He gives me arched eyebrows over the press-cut edges of the morning paper.
‘Vega would love you for the thought,’ I tell him. ‘The women in his life ready to kill for Jack. It’s a premise to fatten his ego.’
The Capitol dome will float ten feet higher if this notion were to find public expression. But Harry is right. It’s a theory not likely to be lost on an eager prosecutor.
‘And where did she go?’ Harry’s talking about Laurel.
‘You think it’s just coincidence?’ he says. ‘She happens to vanish the night her ex’s latest squeeze buys it. Doesn’t tell the kids where she’s going. Just takes off for parts unknown.’ Harry’s playing kibitzer for the devil, musing behind the paper, foraging for something more to raise the level of his bile.
‘Irrespective of your feelings,’ he says, ‘I think you gotta admit, the cops might have good reason for suspicions.’
‘Joining the force, are you?’
‘My feet aren’t flat enough,’ he says.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ I tell him. ‘Lama must have thought he was having a wet dream the minute he found out Laurel and I were related. Blood, marriage, it wouldn’t matter. It’s any way to drive the sword with that one.’
‘I can imagine,’ says Harry. ‘How’s it feel?’ He wiggles his ass a little deeper into the chair, as if to reveal where Lama might have buried this thing in me.
‘From what I hear,’ he says, ‘whenever Jimmy is in pain, it is your name he takes in vain.’
I don’t answer him.
The phone rings on my desk.
‘Hello.’
‘Clem here.’
‘That didn’t take you long,’ I say.
‘Heyyyy, the Wolfman don’t disappoint.’ A voice like somebody sandblasted his vocal cords. ‘You must be clairbuoyant.’ Clem’s understanding of the language does not come from reading it.
‘Like you said, APB went out at oh-two-twenty today,’ he says. ‘Issued for one Laurel Jane Vega, age thirty-six, height…’
‘That’s all I need.’ I cut him off.
‘And a bad actor at that,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Listed as possibly armed and dangerous.’
This means that Laurel, if she is found, would be taken at the point of a loaded pistol. Some foolish gesture, a wave of a loose hand through her hair, and I could be minus one more family member. More stark than this is the thought that Clem’s superiors have allowed this information to come my way. Whatever they have linking Laurel to murder, they see as solid.
Chapter 4
Like clockwork I do the gym every Thursday at noon, the place Laurel used to work before she disappeared.
It’s a dozen blocks from my office to the Capital Gymnasium and Athletic Club. At twelve-fifteen I get an urgent message delivered on the squash court. I take my leave, to one of the white telephones lined in cloistered booths in the foyer.
‘Hello.’
‘Paul.’ She is breathless.
When I hear the voice I have a single question: ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘I don’t have much time. Where’s Julie and Danny?’ Laurel’s voice is strained and tired. What I would expect from someone who has been on the lam for nearly two days now.
‘Half the county is looking for you.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘Then where are you? Why did you run?’
‘I can’t talk.’
‘Come in, give yourself up,’ I tell her. ‘They’re calling you armed and dangerous.’
She laughs at this. A nervous titter.
‘It’s no joke. Cops with an adrenaline rush have a habit of shooting,’ I tell her.
‘I’ll be okay. Do you have the kids?’ Laurel’s mind at this moment is a monorail, single track and rolling with her children on board.
‘I did until yesterday. Jack had ’em picked up from school by one of his AAs.’ These are gofers who do menial tasks for legislators — lackeys-in-waiting.
‘Damn it.’ Silence on the phone while she thinks. I can smell it like burning neoprene coming over the line, the machinations of panic on the run. Still, Laurel has not completely lost her mind. She has found me in the one place where Lama is not likely to be eavesdropping. With Jimmy you can’t take much comfort in the formalities of magistrates and judicially ordered wiretaps. I’ve suspected for days now that my phone has suddenly become a party line.
‘Can you get a message to them?’ she says. Her kids.
‘Why?’
‘I want them out of there.’
I think her brain is scrambled. ‘You want them on the run with you?’
‘No. No. A friend,’ she says. ‘In Michigan.’
‘That’s not my biggest concern at this moment,’ I say.
‘Oh, shit,’ and she’s gone from the phone — a receding voice, sound vanishing like fog on a warming day.
‘Hello. Are you there?’ I get mental images — Laurel swinging around some corner, enough tension on the phone cord to break it. Then I hear her breathing closer again.
‘What happened?’
‘Police just swung by in the parking lot,’ she says. ‘It’s okay. They’re gone now. Probably just a coffee break,’ she tells me. ‘My picture is everywhere,’ she says. ‘Even up here.’
I could get a map and play with little pins, my twenty best guesses on where ‘up’ is.
‘Use your head,’ I tell her. ‘You’re no good to your kids dead or in prison. Come in and we’ll deal with it.’ I try to engage her in conversation. I ask her where she was the night of Melanie’s death, hoping for an alibi, something I can bootstrap into an argument for our side, to induce her in.
‘Can you get a message to them?’ she says. She’s back to her children.
‘They’re fine. You’re the one in trouble,’ I tell her. ‘Come in, I’ll meet you, pick you up. I’ll make arrangements with the DA to surrender,’ I say. ‘It’ll go much better at trial. We’ll have a shot at bail,’ I tell her. I’ve got more closers than a used-car salesman. None of them working.
‘Not till the kids are gone,’ she says. ‘Out-of-town. Then I’ll surrender.
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘I have a friend in Michigan. Went to college together. She’s willing to take the kids, keep them there quietly until this is over.’
‘Your kids can handle it,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll take care of them, keep them out of it.’
‘No.’ Her tone tells me she’s maybe half an inch from hanging up. I take another tack to keep her talking.
‘This friend,’ I say. ‘Does she know your situation?’
‘I told her. It makes no difference. Like I said, she’s a friend.’
The way Laurel says this it makes me think perhaps at this moment I am not qualifying for inclusion in this group.
‘I can’t talk,’ she says. ‘I gotta run. Gotta hang up now.’ All of a sudden frenetic noise on the line. ‘Call you later,’ she says.
‘Laurel. Hello. Hello.’ What I hear is a melodic noise, like scrape-and-thump, scrape-and-thump. I listen for several seconds until I sense what this is — the pendulum of the receiver on the other end, left to dangle against a wall by its cord as Laurel walked away.
When I return to my office, there’s a small pile of messages on my desk. I paw through them quickly. There is one from Gail Hemple, others are the usual, calls on cases, except for the one on the bottom which catches my eye. A pink slip with Jack Vega’s name and number on it.