“I saw that.”
“You want to go?”
“Are you serious? With me?”
“Sure. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“That’s only three hours, McCain.”
“You’ll look beautiful; you always do.”
“I was going to tell you about Susan.”
“Tell me tonight.”
“I’d feel guilty going. With Susan dead and all.”
“It’s just what you need.”
“I guess it probably is.”
I could hear how happy I’d made her, and that made me happy. Maybe I couldn’t fall in love with her but I loved her.
“Seven o’clock then.”
I was just turning off the desk lamp when the knock came. A client. A small practice like mine, they just drop by when they need to. Most of the time it’s all right. But now I had things to do.
“C’mon in.”
I knew the moment I saw her what was going to happen. You don’t run into that many Gaelic goddesses. It’s probably the hair: a bloody mane of it, the color of red at the epicenter of a fire and reaching all the way down to the sleekly jutting hips. A white silk blouse and no bra, a pair of tight tan slacks resembling jodhpurs and tucked into a smashing pair of knee-length riding boots, and a face as erotic and innocent as those photography magazines with the young women of Paris. Maggie Yates. The twenty-eight-year-old would-be writer everyone in town loved to gossip about. No bra was bad enough, but she also wrote letters to the local paper defending communism, marijuana, and pornography. Every male in town over the age of ten lusted after her but she would tryst only with me, as she frequently said, “Because even though you’re no genius, McCain, you at least know who Isadora Duncan is.” She lived above a garage on an allowance and was finishing up a novel she said was a combination of Peyton Place and The Dubliners. She went to the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City for a semester and dropped out to write. She is being supported by a fashion-model sister in New York who sends her a check and cast-off clothes once a month (hence the expensive duds). Her parents died when she was young, and she has made mention of a trust fund that will someday be hers, the source of which is-mysterious. But then eastern money is always mysterious, you make money on money, on embossed sheets of paper. Out here you amass money through substantial and three-dimensional ways, with corn, cows, or ointments for pig hemorrhoids.
“I was just downtown,” she said, “and wanted to see if you were busy tonight.” Then: “God, I’ve got to get out of this town.”
“Why?”
“Why? Did you hear what I just said? I was just downtown? There isn’t any downtown here, McCain, just three or four blocks of really pathetic old stores. I’m starting to sound like I belong in this place.” She shook her head.
“God, as soon as I finish my novel, I’m heading straight back to New York.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry.”
She grinned. “How much of a hurry?”
She’d caught me staring at her breasts.
“Well, you know. A hurry.”
“You just wet your lips and gulped.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“That you’re horny.”
“Why does it mean that?”
“Because your crotch just moved too. That thing of yours is bouncing around in there.”
I sighed. “Well, can I tell you I like you?”
“Aw, McCain, we’ve talked and talked about that.”
“It just makes me feel better is all.”
“You’re so old-fashioned.”
“Yeah, I probably am.”
“Did you read that Fran@coise Sagan novel I gave you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, didn’t you notice how people’re always doing it and they never tell each other that they like each other? That’s a sign of true sophistication. Going all over the place and screwing people you hate.”
“They’re French.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” she said.
“The French’re capable of anything. Look at World War Two. How long did they hold out, an hour and a half?”
This time, she sighed. “Ok, but you can only say it once.”
“That’s good enough for me. Let’s hop to it.”
So we hopped to it. Pleasuring her was a pleasure. But fornicate we did. She was some fornicator she was. She’d taught me any number of things about lovemaking, things I longed to try out on Pamela. Things I was sure that stupid rich handsome and successful Stu would never know.
The fornication was, as always, great. She smelled good, tasted good, moved good, whispered good. As soon as we finished, she started to push me away. “Thanks, McCain. That was nice.”
“Wait a minute. You didn’t let me say it yet.”
“Aw, shit, I forgot. Hurry up, will you?
My butt’s starting to freeze.”
I looked at her gorgeous eyes. She was incomprehensible to me. A creature from a future world. Most girls not only begged but demanded some choice words of amour afterward. She despised them.
“Can’t you at least pretend you like it?” I said.
“Just hurry up.”
I was still in the saddle and it felt wonderful; it’s as good a place to be as there is, and I wanted to stay there for a minute or two, maybe joke around a little or something, but I knew I had to hurry so I said, “I really do like you, Maggie. You’re crazy and you scare the shit out of me but I’m fascinated by you and I like the hell out of you and I can’t help it.”
“Great,” she said, giving me a shove.
We dressed on either side of the desk.
Underwear elastic snapping. Feet stomped into shoes. Zippers running their patterns.
She was all dressed and lighting a Camel when she said, “By the way, you know that prick David Squires, his wife just got killed.”
“Yeah?”
“I ever tell you he put the make on me one night at his summer home?”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh. Wanted me to go down in the basement with him. Told me it was a lot of fun to do it standing up. Just like Hemingway did, he said. I guess he was trying to impress me with his vast knowledge of literature.”
“How’d he know Hemingway did it standing up?”
“I guess because of that scene in A Farewell to Arms.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”
“What a jerk.”
“Hemingway?”
“No, Squires. He’s this big capital-punishment jerk. Schmuck. I’d like to capital-punish him sometime.”
That was another cool thing about Maggie Yates.
She knew all these great Yiddish words from New York. Hearing them and saying them made me feel very cool.
I started to kiss her good-bye but remembered that a good-bye kiss was another no-no.
“See you, McCain,” she said. And was out the door.
So David Squires had put the make on her. Interesting. What if he were a chaser? What bearing might that have on this case?
On the way over to Keys Ford-Lincoln, I listened to the national radio news. The big Edsel Day had been something of a bust all over the country. A lot of people had found the car ugly.
And a lot more found it overpriced.
The cleaning crew was already at work on the grounds. There were dead balloons and pennants and Pepsi cups and gum wrappers and cigarette butts covering the tarmac everywhere. The celebration had been scheduled to last until evening with a country-western band and a barbecue. Dick had obviously called it off.
No police cars. Cliffie had done his usual thorough job. The body had been discovered less than four hours ago and Cliffie was already long gone.
I wheeled the ragtop around back and went in the service door. Keys’s big yellow Lincoln convertible was parked nearby so I assumed he was still there.
He was there, all right. In his office.
With a cigar and a bottle of Wild Turkey that he was pouring straight into a Pepsi paper cup.
He had his shirt open, his tie off, and his cordovan Florsheim wing tips up on his desk.
His wife sat on the edge of a wooden chair.
She wore a green dress that looked light enough for summer. For such a big-boned woman, she moved with appealing grace. Her perch on the chair was delicate.