“Whenever.”
Sal sat back, hands folded serenely on his middle. Jeremiah suspected Salvatore Ramie had academic degrees going up one arm and down the other. Bennie and Albert said his apartment was overflowing with books; they worried about them being a fire hazard. But now that he was a civilian, Sal liked to pretend he was just one of the guys, not a man who’d studied esoteric theological and philosophical subjects. He breathed in and out slowly, contemplating Jeremiah’s question.
Finally, he said, “I thought about marriage all the time.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know it isn’t. I thought about marriage in terms of an institution. As for myself and marriage…” He paused again, as if Jeremiah had asked him to define the meaning of life. “There was never any one woman, either before I became a priest or after I was unceremoniously booted out of the priesthood. But sometimes I’d imagine if there was a woman, if I did get married, and of course, it was all hypothetical because there wasn’t and I wouldn’t. So what did it mean? It meant I could fantasize about perfection. About everything I would want in a woman, a marriage. I could set the highest standards.”
“Because it wasn’t real.”
“Mm. And I kept it from ever becoming real.”
“Well, you were a priest.”
“It was more than that,” Sal said. “I performed hundreds of weddings over forty years. And there’s one thing I think I learned.” He shifted to Jeremiah, his old eyes pinched but clear. “The one who gets you is the one who makes you forget you ever had standards, who makes you forget you ever desired anything as dull and ridiculous as perfection.”
Jeremiah frowned, trying to figure out if Sal was making any sense or just pontificating.
The old man sat back. “You see? A time of day for reflection.”
“I’m going to go up and find a Band-Aid.”
“You do that.”
First he went out to Mollie’s car and found the tote bag of clothes she’d insisted she’d brought along. He felt no pang of guilt whatsoever at having had the passing thought that the clothes-in-the-car line could have been a strategic lie on her part, a way to convince him that returning to his apartment last night hadn’t simply been an impulsive act.
Which, of course, it had been, change of clothes in Leonardo’s Jaguar or not.
He managed not to run into any other elderly gentlemen with theories on romance before reaching his apartment, where he washed off his cut in the kitchen sink and bandaged it up as best he could. The throbbing had stopped. The bleeding hadn’t. Now he just felt like a damned klutz. He fixed a pot of coffee and sat at the table with his critters, all of whom had the sense to be asleep at six o’clock in the morning.
The telephone rang, jolting him out of his self-absorption. Sal with more revelations on the mysteries of romantic love? His father, perhaps, with an invitation to go fishing?
He snatched up the kitchen extension. “Tabak.”
“Tabak, it’s Frank Sunderland. You awake?”
Jeremiah ran a hand through his short hair. Frank Sunderland was his cop friend up in Palm Beach, and he wouldn’t call this early-or any time-without reason. “Yeah, I’m awake. What’s up?”
“I’m at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm. They’ve got a kid here-says his name’s Blake Wilder. He had the hell beat out of him last night.”
“Jesus, Frank, he’s a friend of mine.” Saying Croc was a friend was simpler than trying to explain the complexities of what he was to a cop or even, Jeremiah thought, to himself. “What happened? Is he okay?”
“He’ll live, but he’s not okay. Busted ribs, broken nose, broken jaw, cuts, bruises. Doctors are working on him. You’d have to talk to them to get the details. A couple of beachcombers happened to spot him. Another hour, he’d have drowned in the tide, maybe even been swept out to sea. We figure the guys who beat him up got spooked before they could finish the job.”
“Kill him, you mean?”
“Yeah, Tabak. Kill him.”
His stomach lurched. He got shakily to his feet. Mollie, he noticed, had stumbled into the kitchen. She was wearing one of his shirts, her hair tangled, the color drained out of her face. He said, “I’m on my way.”
“Listen, Tabak, this kid-he gave your name and his name and that’s it. You know anyone else I should contact?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s too bad, because it gets worse.”
Jeremiah went still. “Tell me, Frank.”
“We found the diamond-and-ruby necklace that got yanked off Mollie Lavender the other night in his back pocket. Way I look at it, we’ve got three choices. One, the guys who beat him up didn’t know it was there. Two, they didn’t have time to steal it. Or, three, they planted it on him. None of which I like, I have to say.” Frank inhaled, reining in his own irritation. “If I find out you haven’t been straight with me, we’re going to have a reckoning, Tabak. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
Jeremiah hung up and turned to Mollie, and his stomach ached and burned and his head spun. She inhaled, staying calm, at least on the surface. “What happened?”
He told her. Succinctly, accurately, his word-for-word reporter’s memory for conversations, his professionalism, clicking into gear. He left out nothing, not even the part about her necklace in Croc’s back pocket.
“We’ll take the Jaguar,” she said without preamble, digging the clothes out of her tote bag and pulling them on. Underwear, pants, shirt. She started back to his bedroom, presumably for her shoes. “It’ll be faster.”
Jeremiah shook his head and followed her back. “No. I’ll take my truck, and you can stay here.”
She snorted. “Forget it. I’d just end up passing you on the highway and beating you to the hospital, which would drive you crazy.” She sat on the edge of the tousled bed to slip on her sandals, but stopped suddenly, blue eyes on him, suspicious. “Or are you going to steal my keys?”
“I’m not a Neanderthal, Mollie.”
“Good.” She grinned, but her color didn’t improve. “Then let’s roll.” She shot to her feet, and as she passed him in the doorway, her expression softened. “At least they got to him in time, Jeremiah. He’s not dead.”
He inhaled sharply. “I haven’t gotten hold of him yet.”
They took the stairs fast and bolted outside, sunlight spilling out across the city. Sal had gone in, leaving the wood he was carving on his chair. Jeremiah felt as if his chest were being squeezed. He could no longer feel the pain of his cut.
Traffic on I-95 North was light. Mollie, steady behind the wheel, hit the left lane and drove fast. One after another the questions and doubts pounded, crowded Jeremiah’s thinking. One after another, he shoved them aside. Answers would come later. Now, he had to see to Croc.
“There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment,” Mollie said. “You can change the bandage on your thumb. You cut it whittling?”
He gave a curt nod.
Her quick smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Your concentration must be off.”
By the time they arrived at the hospital, Croc had been admitted to a regular room. They went on up, running into Frank Sunderland in the corridor. He was a tall, stringy, serious officer of the law, and he didn’t look happy. “Whoa, you two,” he said. “Tabak, I want everything you have on this kid.”
The door to Croc’s room was shut. Jeremiah stiffened, refused to let his impatience get the better of him. He told Frank, “I’ve known Croc about two years. He brings me the occasional tip. Half the time it’s nothing. The other half, maybe. He does odd jobs, nothing steady. I don’t know where he’s working now. I’ve never known where he lives. I don’t know anything about his past.” He gave out the facts shotgun style, and kept his opinions to himself. Mollie, he noticed, was staying close, listening to every word. “He says his name is Blake Wilder.”
“ ‘Says’ being the operative word,” Frank said. “As far as we can tell, it’s a phony name. We’re running his prints.”