Fools Rush In

21

“Good morning, Mr. C.”

“’Morning, Jamie.”

“My birthday is next week. And guess where Turk is taking me?”

“The Dairy Queen?”

She laughed. “No, a birthday is a big event. He’s taking me to see Frankie Avalon.”

“Is Frankie Avalon still around?”

“He is in Des Moines. Don’t you like him?”

“He’s all right. But I’d take Chuck Berry, personally.”

“He puts too much grease on his hair. Like Jerry Lewis.”

I knew this could go on forever, so I said, “Any calls?”

“Just one. Nancy Adams.”

I got myself seated behind my desk, scanned down the “To Do” list I always make for myself the day before.

“You want her phone number?”

“Sure.” She gave it to me and I dialed. “Nancy Adams, please. This is Sam McCain returning her call.”

“Dammit,” the woman said, after cupping the phone. Or kind of cupping the phone. “Your father and I told you not to call him.” I couldn’t hear what Nancy said. The woman again: “May she call you back? She’s washing her hair right now.”

“Or I could call her back.”

“Well, actually we have to run a few errands after she’s finished with her hair. And she’ll call you after that. Good-bye, Mr. McCain.”

“Did you take the call from Nancy Adams or did the service?” I asked after hanging up.

“The service. It came in before I got here.”

I dialed the three digits to connect with our answering service. “Hi, this is Sam. Did you take the call from a Nancy Adams?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. McCain.”

“Did she say anything other than she’d like me to call her back?”

“Not really. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Well, I sort of had the impression she was sort of nervous. It was her tone, I mean. She didn’t say anything specific. She just sounded real uptight.”

“Thanks, Betty.”

I had three briefs I had to read before I could spend any time on the Leeds murder. Or on what I was going to say to Judge Whitney when the time came to go up and see her and bring up the subject of the clinic in Minnesota.

In the next two hours I caught up on everything pressing. I’d told Jamie to tell everybody I was out. She knew the exceptions were Judge Whitney and my folks. Right now, she didn’t have to worry about the judge.

When I finished, I leaned back in my chair and started mentally plotting out my argument for court tomorrow morning. An especially ugly divorce case. I represented a mill worker who, in response to the affair his wife was having, took their three-year-old daughter for the weekend without telling anybody (a) that he did it, or (b) that he was taking a hotel room in Cedar Rapids.

It was easy to portray the wife as a woman of soiled virtue. But I knew John, the husband, was almost psychotically suspicious of her and had made their lives hell from the start of their marriage. John was a decent man and Sandy was a decent woman. She claimed she was justified in having an affair because he’d had so many himself. The joys of divorce court. Plenty of psychic pain and blame to go around with the kids in the middle.

She came in just before lunchtime.

Turk had made his usual appearance (“Hey, Mr. C, you always look so busy, man, you should relax more.”) his black leather jacket looking like something from West Side Story rather than The Blackboard Jungle.

A few minutes after Turk and Jamie left, Nancy Adams stood in the doorway and said, “Are you busy, Mr. McCain?”

“Hi, Nancy.”

She smiled nervously, a perfect young woman, slim in tan walking shorts and a starched white blouse, possessed of long, tanned arms and legs and a small earnest face. Her dark hair was worn short in a shag. “I wondered if we could talk a little bit.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t think badly of my mom. She just doesn’t want to see me dragged into court or anything. That’s why she said what she did on the phone.” A voice as soft as her brown eyes.

“I know my office isn’t much, but don’t be afraid to come inside.” She was still standing on the threshold.

“Oh, right.”

She came in and took one of the client chairs. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“If you’re telling the truth, then that’s the right thing.”

“That sounds like something you’d hear on TV.”

I laughed. “A little pompous?”

She smiled. She was blushing. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” I’d been doing that lately — beginning to sound like Dear Abby.

“I have some pop in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks.” Still busy with her hands. “I guess I may as well just tell you, huh?”

“Probably best, yes.”

She sat up a little straighter. “Well, you know I go out with Nick Hannity. Or I should say, used to go out with him.”

“You broke up?”

“Yes. He... he told you and the police that he was with me during the time David Leeds and Richie Neville were being killed out at the cabin.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Well, he wasn’t. I didn’t see him till much later that night.” She took a deep breath. “And the fact is, he hated David. One night when David and Lucy were having some problems, David came over to my house and we just talked. My folks — please don’t think they’re bad people because they’re not — they were pretty mad about him coming over like that. You know, with my dad’s position and all, he said if people thought I was going out with a Negro then they wouldn’t want to do business with him anymore.”

Another deep breath. “In fact — and this was really embarrassing — David and I were sitting out on the front porch talking and my dad came out and said he wanted to talk to me. He was very cold to David. Wouldn’t say hello or anything after David was so polite to him and everything. Anyway, my dad got me inside the front door and he was so mad he didn’t care if David heard him or not. He just ranted and raved at me the way he does sometimes. He said some very mean things about colored people and David in particular. David couldn’t help but hear him. He told me to go back out there and get rid of David in five minutes or he’d come out there and get rid of him himself. I was afraid to go back out after all the terrible things he said but I didn’t have any choice.”

“What did David say when you went back to the porch?”

“He didn’t say anything. He was gone.” She shook her head. “That was the last time I ever saw him. But that wasn’t all.”

“When was this, by the way?”

“Two nights before they were killed.”

“Fine. Now you said there was something else, too?”

She sat up straight again. “I’d been taking some time off from Nick. He was a year older and he was one of the really cool guys in high school and everybody always told me how lucky I was to be going with him — I just always thought we’d get married. But then I started going to the university in Iowa City and seeing him constantly and — I didn’t like him. I always knew he was sort of a bully, but it really came out when he was on campus. And he got mad if I even said hello to some guy. So when Rob told him about Lucy seeing David — he went insane. He had no reason to be jealous of anything. Even if I’d had a crush on David, I’m not sure how I feel about dating Negroes — I’m being honest here — and I’d sure never date any boy, white or colored, who looked like David.”

“Why not?”

“Just too good-looking. Girls were always making passes at him and right in front of Lucy. I just couldn’t have dealt with that.”

“How did Nick find out that David had been at your house?”

“My dad told him when Nick came over on his motorcycle that night. You should’ve heard Nick. I was really scared. He wanted to go and find David right then. He kept saying he was going to kill him.” She started picking at her fingers.

The phone rang. I excused myself and picked it up. Kenny Thibodeau. “A little news for you. The afternoon Neville and Leeds were shot to death, Rob Anderson asked Ned Flannery to make him up a good-sized ‘tar baby’ with a rope around his neck.” Flannery was a local artisan. “Ned wouldn’t do it, of course. Anderson offered him a hundred bucks.”

I saw Nancy glancing at her watch. She started to stand up. “Hang on a minute, Kenny.”

“I’d better go. I’m s’posed to meet my mom in a few minutes. I’m pretty much done, anyway.”

“Well, thanks for coming in. I really appreciate it.”

As she left, Kenny said, “Pretty sick, huh?”

“Very.”

“I wonder if he got somebody to do it for him.”

“I’ll ask him when I see him.”

“Man, I get all hepped up watchin’ TV and all the Freedom Riders and thinkin’ everybody will get behind all this, they’ll see what bullshit racism is. But it’s like bein’ stoned when you think like that — because when you come down again, nothin’s changed. People’re gettin’ tar babies made.”

“It’s hard to watch TV anymore. You want to put your fist through the screen.”

I heard Kenny strike a match and light a cigarette. “That was pretty cool last night. Those old mountain songs, huh? You still gotta hear this Bob Dylan guy. He’s as good as Woody Guthrie.”

I laughed. “You’ll guarantee that?”

I went over and locked the door. Jamie wouldn’t be back for another fifteen minutes.

The wall safe was behind a framed reproduction of an Edward Hopper painting. I pulled the frame back on its hinges and went to work on the safe. It was good-sized. When I got it open, I pulled out the manila envelopes with the blackmail negatives. Four envelopes.

I set them on my desk, grabbed the phone book, and went to work. I had sealed them all with extra-heavy tape. I hadn’t looked inside. It wasn’t that I was such a moral person. I just didn’t want to know what the negatives would tell me. Because once I knew, it would change my attitude, however subtly, toward the people in the pictures. And two of them, excluding the senator, I considered myself at least casual friends with.

I called each name on the envelopes and said that I’d come into possession of something that Richie Neville had inadvertently left in my office. I wondered if they’d like to stop by and pick it up between five and seven tonight. I gave them each specific times to be here. They all agreed to appear.

Most important, I said that I hadn’t had time to look at the contents and that there’d be no charge. They all sounded relieved. One woman started crying and saying thank you so often, she sounded like the lucky contestant on a quiz show.

The flower shop was nearby. I decided to see if Lucy was working.

Karen porter said, “I still think you should have a nice fresh flower for your lapel. I hear judges are impressed by things like that.”

She was always fun to clown with. “Not any judges I know on this planet.”

The small shop was filled as always with the sights and scents of dozens of flowers, arrangements, and potted plants. A pair of women in straw hats were dawdling over carnations while the little boy with them looked as if he’d suddenly found himself in hell.

Karen, in her usual crisp white button-down shirt, long blue apron, and chignon, still looked as if she should be in a fancy wine ad in The New Yorker. New England, modest wealth, intelligence, quiet beauty.

“You lucked out, Sam. Ellen’s off running errands.”

“Am I going to get you in trouble if I go in the back and talk to Lucy?”

“Not if you happened to have snuck in the back door and I didn’t happen to see it.” She frowned. “I don’t know why Ellen has to see you as the enemy.”

To me the reason was obvious. Ellen was afraid that Lucy might have killed David Leeds and Richie Neville. Lucy had said herself that David had wanted to break it off. I represented a threat to Ellen and her daughter.

“I appreciate it, Karen.”

“Just don’t get me involved. That lady has got a temper.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here, Mr. McCain.”

Lucy, in jeans and a black Hawkeye T-shirt, was using a spritzer to water rows of plants.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“How do you think I’m doing? That’s sort of a stupid question, isn’t it?”

“Now that you mention it, it is. I apologize.”

“It’s like those stupid reporters asking parents how they feel when something’s happened to one of their kids. ‘How do you feel?’ That really pisses me off, being that insensitive.”

The rear of the shop had been built as an afterthought, a shedlike area that housed two huge refrigerated glassed-in cases to keep flowers fresh and then plants and seedlings sitting on sawhorses that had been covered with plywood.

“Have you talked to Rob?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Spritz, spritz.

Lucy said: “I did talk to David’s sister. She called me and we had coffee. I liked her very much.”

I didn’t tell her of David’s real relationship with his “sister.”

“So do I. I just wish I had some news for her.”

“A lot of the kids around town think it was Rob.”

“Or Nick.”

Spritz, spritz.

“Or Nick.”

The smell of damp earth brought back a memory of my Uncle Bob’s funeral. He’d died in Korea. When they buried him here, a light rain had given the grave dirt a particular odor. I smelled that odor here, now, with the spritzed dirt in the various plants.

“You know anything about Rob trying to get a tar baby made up?”

She nodded, still not looking at me. “Oh, yes. I heard all about it from a couple of people at the craft store. Good old Rob. God, I don’t know how I could’ve gone out with him all that time.”

I said, as carefully as possible, “I guess I never really asked you.”

“Well, then, I’m sure you will. Whatever it is.”

“I just need to know, just to keep everybody equal, where you were the night Neville and David were killed.”

Now she looked up. “Why, I was out at Neville’s cabin, killing them. I’m surprised it took you this long to ask. So do you put handcuffs on me here or do we wait until we get in your car?”

“You could’ve done it, Lucy. You know that.”

“You stupid ass,” she said, pushing me aside so she could reach another tray of seedlings. “I loved him. I was willing to destroy my father’s career because of him. Why would I kill him?”

Karen appeared in the doorway. She was irritated: “Hold it down, you two. We’ve got customers, for God’s sake.”

“Sorry,” I said.

I left Lucy alone for a few minutes.

“You told me yourself that he wanted to break it off.” I spoke in a stage whisper.

As did she. “Break it off because he thought that marrying him — and yes, that’s exactly what I had in mind — would destroy me. He didn’t think I was strong enough to handle it in the long run.”

I touched her sleeve. She jerked away. “I had to ask. I just want to know what happened.”

“What happened” — and here she pushed her beautiful face close to my unbeautiful one — “is this society is so racist it won’t even let you marry the person you love. That’s what happened.” She pulled back. Visibly forced herself to calm down. “If we’d just been two white people, we could have had a wonderful life together. But David was right. That would never happen. Not in this country, anyway. No matter where we went, somebody would get ugly either with us or the kids we had. That’s what happened. Somebody just couldn’t stand the idea that David and I were together. And so they killed him.”

Her voice had steadily risen.

Karen was in the doorway again: “Dammit, you two!”

I waved at her. And left.

I was walking back to my office when somebody behind me called my name. I wasn’t familiar enough with her voice to recognize it yet. Jane Sykes.

“Mind some company?”

“Be my guest.”

“You sound kind of mad.”

“Confused more than mad.”

“I really did lay it on pretty heavy.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I’m just protecting you and protecting me.”

“More you than me.”

“Stated just like a lawyer.”

We were across the street from the town square. Kids splashing in the wading pool, retirees playing checkers and throwing horseshoes, teenage boys aching for the teenage girls they saw passing by. As much as I wanted to be an adult, I had flashbacks to when the mode of transportation was a Schwinn and you could find a girl who’d ride on your handlebars as you pretended to be in complete control of the bike that was about to go careening into a tree. Memory is a lie, but not a complete lie.

Two decades of cars crawled down the crowded street. I loved the prewar coupes, the preferred cars for pulp cover gangsters riding on the running boards with their guns blazing; the big unapologetic Packards that announced to one and all that even if you didn’t own the entire world, you owned a damn good share of it; and the 1955 Chevrolets, the most radical departure from the accepted look in automobile history. The languid dusty sunlight on them all gave them a feel of being trapped inside a museum.

“So why don’t you buy me dinner tonight, see how it goes?”

“I dunno, Jane.”

“Oh, God.”

“What?”

“I run hot and cold and now you run hot and cold?”

“How about I call you later?”

“All right. But I’ll be at Cliff’s most of the afternoon. I’ve asked him to bring Rob Anderson in. Or haven’t you heard about the tar baby?”

“Yeah, apparently the whole town has.”

She broke into long strides that pulled her far away from me in less than a minute. In less than forty-eight hours I’d gone through love at first sight, fear, embarrassment, wanton sexual need, and rage with her. Sounded like the basis for a promising relationship.

22

By 6:45 all but one of my blackmail subjects had shown up and taken a manila envelope. Two of them tried to disguise themselves in slouch hats and heavy coats. In this kind of weather they looked suspicious as hell.

But it was a happy time for them and they thanked me.

The senator hadn’t shown up yet. Given how eager he’d been the morning he’d worn his own disguise, I was surprised he chose to be late.

I kept watching the office door. I also kept watching the office phone. I thought maybe Jane Sykes would decide to call me, since I’d decided not to call her.

I didn’t waste time, though. I had plenty of paperwork to shuffle through and I kept busy right up until 7:20. The senator was now thirty-five minutes late.

I went down the hall to the john, washed up, and combed my hair. Somehow a Swanson TV dinner didn’t sound so good. I decided I’d go to the steak house out on the highway.

I’d left my office door open. I’d also left the lights on. Now the lights were off. This would have alarmed me more if the electrical wiring in this building hadn’t been done by Ben Franklin himself.

The first thing was to get to the fuses Jamie kept in her desk. I was two steps across the threshold when someone moved from the shadows and smashed something hard across the side of my head.

It wasn’t a clean knockout. It wasn’t even a clean knockdown. What it was was a whole lot of pain and confusion on my part. On their part it was not just one but two more applications of something hard against the side of my head.

They got their clean knockdown and their clean knockout.

Now you know and I know what they were after. There was absolutely no other reason to come after me the way they had. They didn’t find it, because I had put the envelope back in the wall safe before I went to the john. The only person I was sure it hadn’t been was the good senator himself. All he would have had to do was ask when he showed up for his appointment.

I went down the hall and got a good look at the lump on the side of my head. Ugly, but not bleeding. I leaned into the bathroom mirror to check my eyes. They looked normal, though I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly.

I returned to my office, sat behind my desk, took out a pint of Jim Beam, and had a nice self-indulgent shot. Two shots, in fact. Jamie had left part of a can of Pepsi. I used the rest of it to gulp down two aspirins.

I was starting to calm down. I’d been scared and then mad and then scared-mad and now I was just mad. And puzzled. Why hadn’t the senator shown up, and why had somebody come in his place?

Though you never hear much about them, both parties have political operatives who perform all kinds of services for their employers.

What a service it would be to hand over photos of the senator and his mistress to the man running against him. Now, no opponent would be stupid enough to call a press conference and share the photos with every leering reporter in the state. The opponent couldn’t use the photos in any public way without implicating himself and looking seedy.

But there was certainly a way the photos could be used privately. This particular tactic had been used before. Opponent takes photos to the senator and demands that the senator withdraw, otherwise the photos will be circulated privately to reporters.

Some people can tolerate scandal. They can go before their public and apologize with wife and children by their side and go on from there. But there are those who can’t, those who are willing to give up the power that comes with a Senate seat, rather than face a scandal-hungry press that will likely not let go of the subject for some time.

What the hell was going on here?

I ate — don’t ask me why in the Edward Hopper diner. Slice of peach pie, cup of coffee. As usual, the place was mostly empty. I was all things at once — tired, restless, angry, baffled.

I’d brought along my nickel notebook to make out the list I probably should have made out forty-eight hours ago.

Those were the primary suspects. The Neville brothers had to be included because they had a good reason to kill their little brother — to take over his blackmail business and find the cash he’d already amassed.

I also needed to make a separate list of those he’d been blackmailing, the names on the manila envelopes I’d handed out tonight. Last names only. I’d been able to guess correctly which family member bearing the name was being blackmailed. Logic and familiarity dictated a husband in one case and a wife in another, whereas the third had been determined by my favorite scientific method, the lucky guess.

“Your handwriting is worse than mine.”

She slipped onto the counter stool next to me. Her perfume set off an alarm in my trousers.

“It was good enough for the nuns,” I said.

“The nuns always gave boys the benefit of the doubt.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. Think back. I went to Catholic school, too.”

“Since when are Sykeses Catholics?”

“My dad saw this movie when he was in Italy during the war. You know, one of those corny things where there’s a miracle in the end?”

“I always hated those movies. They always embarrassed me.”

“Me, too. But they didn’t embarrass my dad. He wrote my mom that he wanted all of us baptized Catholic right away. He’d already been baptized. So, anyway, after seventh grade, I went to Catholic school. And the nuns preferred the boys.”

I saw her looking at the list on my notebook page. I flipped the cover closed.

“I already saw it. I do the same. Make out a list of suspects.”

The night man came and took her order for coffee and a piece of buttered toast.

“So how’d it go with Rob Anderson?”

“He now has a lawyer, and a damn good one. Frank Pierson. Des Moines.”

“Yeah, he is good.”

“Pierson allowed us half an hour and he did most of the talking. Anderson just sat there and smirked. God, he’s a jerk.”

“You ask him about the tar baby?”

“Of course. Pierson answered that one, too, and said that it was just a prank and that it hadn’t even been constructed.”

“Because he couldn’t find anybody who’d do it for him.”

“According to Pierson, even if it had been built, it wouldn’t have any bearing on the case.”

“I’d like to hear him try that one in court. You could take him apart with it.”

“I did. In fact, that was the only point I scored. I said it spoke to state of mind and to motive — how much he hated Leeds.”

“What’d Pierson say?”

“Said it was tangential and a waste of time.”

“So I don’t suppose you learned anything new?”

Her coffee and toast came. She ate fast. “Haven’t had anything since lunch.” Then she turned to me and said, “Even if I did learn something new, I can’t share it with you, Sam. Remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“So it’s no fair asking me. I wouldn’t want to damage our relationship.”

“Some relationship.”

She swallowed the last of her toast. “You know your problem?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You love being in love. A lot of people are like that. And it’s fun. In the beginning, anyway. It’s like you’re high all the time. Everything is new and exciting — even though you’ve been through it with a number of people before — and it’s like you’re living in this state of grace. And that’s what you’re after.”

“I probably am. So what’s so wrong about that?”

“Nothing at all, Sam. I love that feeling, too. But I’ve been through too many ups and downs with men. For once in my life, I want to take my time. And you don’t. You want the exhilaration immediately. Two dates and we’re sleeping together and living in this Technicolor romance. And then in six or seven months it all falls apart.”

I gave it some honest thought. Because the night man was listening so carefully, I almost asked him what he thought. Maybe we could have a vote and he’d be the tie-breaker.

“I’ll tell you what. I think after the big heartbreak of my life — a beautiful girl named Pamela Forrest — I think I probably was like that. But I don’t think I’m like that anymore.”

“You know what, Sam?” She rested her hand on my arm. “I was sort of the same way. Rush into things and then watch it all fall apart. So why don’t we make a pact?” She glanced up at the night man. “How does that sound, sir? A pact?”

He smiled, wiped his hands on his grease-spotted apron. “I get up late in the mornings and my old lady always has soap operas on. This is just like one of those. A pact sounds great.”

“Do I get to know what this pact is all about?”

“Why don’t I tell you outside? We have some business to discuss, anyway.”

As we were leaving, the night man said, “Stop back, you two, so I know how it works out.”

We all laughed.

“Were you ever in that little wading pool over there, Sam?”

“Oh, sure.”

“I’ll bet you were cute.”

“Skinny, that’s for sure.”

“I can picture you, actually.”

We were sitting on the steps of the bandstand in the middle of the town square.

“So how about that pact, laddie?”

“Laddie?”

“I heard Maureen O’Hara say that on the late movie last night. If it’s good enough for Maureen, it’s good enough for me.”

“Yeah, I mean, sure, the pact I mean. Slow and easy.”

She put out her hand and we shook. We sat silent in the darkness then, watching a lonely dog sniff around the grounds and the teenagers roar by in their custom cars, radios blaring, Roy Orbison and Jan & Dean and Lesley Gore providing the soundtracks for all those high school lives that would make sense only years later to those who had lived them.

“Did you used to drive up and down the street like they do?”

“Sure.”

“Did the beautiful Pamela Forrest ever go with you?”

“Sometimes, when she was mad at tall, dark, handsome, and very rich Stu.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“Up several notches. Her god.”

“I had one of those in high school. My girlfriends always said that when he was looking into my eyes, he was actually looking at his own reflection.”

I smiled. “Maybe sadomasochism is the essence of all romantic love.”

“As long as I get the ‘sadist’ part, I’ll be happy.” Then: “You ready for some business talk?”

“Sure. Because ‘laddie’ here is getting a little chilly.”

“C’mon, then, you can walk me back to my hotel and we can talk along the way.”

And talk we did.

“Did you talk to the judge today?”

“No. I tried to get in to see her but she still doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“She’s going to the clinic in Minnesota.”

“Yes. I’ll drive her if she wants me to.”

“I know how much you care about her. But since she’s going there, it seems to me that we can go on with our original plan and work together.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“Good. Have you also been thinking about who might have killed Leeds and Neville?”

“I keep going back and forth between Anderson and Hannity.”

“So do I, actually. But I’m not one hundred percent sure about either of them. I’ve been thinking about the senator, in fact.”

“The senator. He had the most to lose.”

I’d been wondering if I should tell her about what had happened in my office tonight. I did.

“I didn’t notice any bump on your head.”

“It’s gone down a lot.”

“You don’t think you should have it checked?”

“I’m fine.”

“You know, in private-eye novels they take a lot of punishment. But in real life you can die from something like that.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

We stood a quarter of a block from her hotel, in the shadows of an old movie theater that had closed down.

I put out my hand. “Well, I guess we shake hands good-night, huh?”

“Oh, I think we can do better than that, laddie.”

And we sure as hell did.

23

The window went just after midnight. Two rocks the size of a heavyweight’s fist, as I learned later.

Sitting up in bed. Real or nightmare, that glass-smashed sound?

The cats weren’t sure, either. Usually they would’ve jumped off the bed. But they were as frozen as I was. Real or nightmare?

The third rock came through the window on the opposite side of the back door.

No doubt about this one.

The cats and I sprang off the bed. I found my slippers, wanting to avoid cutting the hell out of the bottoms of my feet, and rushed to the window for a look.

The backyard, limned by moonlight, shimmered summer-night beautiful in moon shadow and glistening dew. Even the two garbage cans looked like pieces of art in the darkness.

One of them peeked out from the alley side of the garage. Couldn’t be sure but it looked like Hannity. But they would be operating as a team.

They were getting ready for another assault.

During the next three or four minutes I got into my jeans and penny loafers sans socks, then grabbed my dad’s army .45 from the bureau and started my way down the interior steps of the house.

The widow Goldman waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. Even somewhat sleep-mussed, she was still a slightly better-looking version of Lauren Bacall. She had a blue silk robe drawn tight up to her neck. Everybody should have such a landlady, though that seemed too coarse a word for someone as stylish, bright, and gentle as Mrs. Goldman.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“Let me call the police.”

“No. Please don’t.”

“Good Lord, Sam. That’s a gun in your hand.”

“My dad’s from the war.”

“Please, Sam. Let me call the police. Let them settle this. In fact, why don’t you stay down here with me. That way I know you won’t do anything crazy.”

“I know who it is, Mrs. Goldman. I can handle it.”

“With a gun?”

“Just for show. Honest.”

“Good Lord, Sam. A gun?”

“I’ll stop by when I’m done with this.”

Just then another window shattered upstairs.

“I’ll make sure they pay for every one of them, Mrs. Goldman.”

“Sam, it’s you I’m worried about. Not somebody paying for the windows.”

I didn’t want to miss them. I opened the front door and said, “I’ll be right back.”

The night was exhilarating, rich in scents of newly mown grass, loam, the wood of respectable old houses, and the cool air of the prairie.

I swung wide, running quickly up the street, then darting between houses and out to the alley.

I stood in the shadow of a garage overhang, watching them. They were gathering rocks for their next assault. Rob Anderson and Nick Hannity. America’s youth.

I didn’t have to worry about them seeing me. They were too drunk to see past their own hands.

I stayed in the shadows and started moving slowly down the alley. Anderson glanced up once. I thought he might have seen me. But I ducked behind a pile of fireplace logs and stayed there for a few minutes. If he’d seen me, he’d quickly forgotten about it.

I waited until their backs were turned away from me, until they were taking position to start throwing again. They were going to run out of windows soon.

“Drop the rocks. And hands up in the air.”

Hannity started to twist around, but then I stepped into the moonlight and gave him a peek at my .45.

“Shit, man, what’s the gun for?”

“Because I’m taking you in.”

“It was Rob’s idea, man. Not mine.”

Now Rob turned around to face me. “That’s bullshit. This was your idea, you jerk.”

“Doesn’t matter whose idea it was. You both smashed out windows. You both broke the law.”

“My folks are gonna be so pissed it’s unbelievable,” Anderson said. His voice sounded reasonably sober. But the way he kept jerking around, trying to stay in one place without simply falling over, gave him away.

“Which one of you killed Leeds and Neville?”

“He did, man,” Anderson said. “I was at a movie and I can prove it. He did. He was afraid Nancy Adams was going to sleep with the Negro.”

“You lying bastard. You were afraid Lucy was gonna sleep with him!”

In their white T-shirts and jeans, they looked young and harmless. But there was a good chance they weren’t harmless at all. There were a lot of racists in this country, but when you added the scorn of the upper classes to the scorn of race, you had a real monster.

“Step up here, Anderson.”

“Why should I, you bastard? You don’t mean shit to me.”

“Because I’m going to cuff you.”

“Handcuffs?”

“That’s right.” I’d brought two pairs, just in case. “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”

I kicked him hard in the shin. He called me several names, at least two of which I’d never heard before. Every time he tried to move on me I shoved the .45 in his face. He still hadn’t turned around.

Another shin kick worked wonders.

He turned around. He was crying. Unfortunately my pity function seemed to be turned off.

Hannity, being Hannity, had lunged at me twice while I was cuffing Anderson. Both times I’d shouted at him close up and put the gun in his face. He’d stepped back. I think the shout bothered him more than the gun.

“You’re not gonna get me in those easy, McCain, I’ll tell you that.”

“Then you’ll be going to jail with one hell of a headache.”

He didn’t expect it, but when it landed, I think he was as much shocked as hurt. And that wasn’t right. So I hit him again, and this time I was sure he was more hurt than shocked. The way I’d intended.

He’d probably never been slugged on the temple with a gun before — come to think of it, neither had I — but he sure caught on fast about the protocol of it all. He staggered and touched his fingers to his head. I grabbed the other hand and used it to whip him around. I got one cuff on him and said, “You can either put your other hand around your back or you can get hit again and I’ll do it for you.”

Anderson was sobbing. Between the alcohol and the rage and the dim recognition that he was, yes indeed, going to jail, he was coming apart.

Hannity gave up the fight. He was no doubt plotting my death.

I got him cuffed, both hands.

Mrs. Goldman was gliding down the backyard walk. “Are you all right, Sam?”

“Would you be so kind as to call the police?”

“Of course. But are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

She turned back toward the house and hurried to her own rear door.

“You sleepin’ with her, are you?” Hannity said.

“Yeah, as soon as I finish with your mother, I usually grab Mrs. Goldman.”

“You don’t know what’s gonna happen to you, McCain. My old man’s right. You’re just trash from the Knolls. You’ve got it in for us because we’ve got money and you don’t.”

“Knolls trash is right. You little jerk. You just wait till my old man gets done with you.” Anderson would’ve sounded meaner if he hadn’t been crying while he threatened me.

When the cop car came, I helped pile them into the backseat, then I got in my ragtop and followed them to the station.

“’Lo.”

“Don’t bother to look at your clock. I’ll tell you the time.” Which she did.

“Jane.”

“Uh-huh. I thought I’d share the misery with you.”

“Oh, shit.”

“At least.”

“Anderson’s old man and Hannity’s old man. They called, I bet.”

“Anderson’s old man called. Hannity’s old man came over.”

“Oh, God.”

“He plans to use all his power, which he seems to think is considerable, to get your law license lifted.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You did the right thing. I mean, these two are spoiled brats to the highest power. I suppose he would’ve visited you, but then he would have had to look at all the windows they broke.”

“The breeze is nice, but I don’t appreciate all the bugs.”

“But neither one called?”

“Yeah. But I hung up after they started calling me names.”

“Well, expect trouble tomorrow. You’ll be hearing from their lawyers. You don’t have to be nice to them, but I have to, since I’m supposedly the objective third party.”

“I still think those two jerks are good for the murders.”

“So do I. Now more than ever, in fact. This shows how irrational they are. I’d love to get either one of them on the witness stand.”

“Damn.”

“What?”

“A bug. The cats are going crazy, chasing them all over the place.”

“Good. Then you’ll be as tired as I am in the morning.”

“Yeah, but you’ll look prettier than I do.”

“Listen, Sam, you made some serious enemies tonight.”

“I know.”

“They don’t have as much power as they think they do, but I’ll bet their lawyers can get them a hearing on your license. I wouldn’t make them any madder than you already have.”

“I won’t. Damn.”

“Bug?”

“Yeah.”

“’Night, Sam. Just remember what I said.”

“I’m not likely to forget it. They’ll be all over me tomorrow.”

At 9:30 the next morning I wandered around the flower shop looking for something appropriate to send to Jane. I wasn’t sure what the occasion was — thanking her for waking me up in the middle of the night? — but I hadn’t bought a woman flowers in quite some time and doing so always made me feel better about myself, as if I had a bit of class after all.

The siege had run about an hour, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. First Mr. Anderson and then Mr. Hannity, full of threats, had called me about their sons. Then their lawyers called to tell me about all the things they were suing me for, both of them adding that I would be lucky to be a legal secretary this time next year. And then finally Nick Hannity himself called to tell me that he hadn’t forgotten about last night. I congratulated him on his remarkable powers of recall.

Jamie sat there with tears in her eyes. She could hear some of them shouting at me. After each call she’d said, “He’s such a mean SOB, Mr. C.”

I, in turn, called the most successful lawyer I knew in Cedar Rapids, laid it all out for him and asked him to tell me if I was in any serious trouble. He said he didn’t see how. He mentioned case law for every part of the incident and every one was in my favor. He told me to relax and to steer any further calls, messages, or bomb threats to his office.

“Why, good morning,” Karen Porter said. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say ‘good morning’ after last night.”

She was in her domain here, an attractive middle-aged widow who’d co-owned this florist business with Ellen Williams longer than the senator had held his seat in Washington. Her youthful face made her graying hair look out of place.

Walking into the store was like sliding down the center of a bouquet of flowers, sights and scents overwhelming, the beauty and aromas almost alien in their lushness, like those in a hundred pulp science fiction stories I’d read, where the gorgeous forest finally grabbed you and ate you, a light snack for the monsters disguised as tulips.

“Ellen called me in the middle of the night. I’d never heard her that upset before. She just kept sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.”

“Wasn’t the senator there to help her?”

“You know Lloyd. As much as I love him, he’s useless in a crisis.” She glanced around the store, making certain that we were alone. “He just gets angry and sputters and splutters. I almost feel sorry for him. He just can’t deal with crises.”

“I wonder how Lucy’s doing.”

She frowned. “I’m a family friend. So I probably shouldn’t be kibitzing this way. But I think Lucy could’ve thought the whole thing through a little better.”

“‘The whole thing’ being David Leeds.”

“I actually liked David. I had him do some work around here. Best helper we ever had. Punctual, bright, really hard-working. I was all for David and Lucy going out. I just wish they could have confined it to Iowa City. We’ve got a nice town here. Once most of us got over the initial shock of Lucy and David being together, we did our best to accept it. That doesn’t mean to condone it exactly but just to say that it was their own business. And if people had opinions, they kept them private. They were still nice to Lucy and still nice to David. But of course there’s always ten, twenty percent who can’t accept anything or anybody different. And they’re active about it. We lost a few customers here who didn’t want David to wait on them because he was going out with Lucy. Can you imagine that? You look at people like that and you think they must be insane. They can’t get past anything that’s different.” She leaned in, “Of course, the senator is like that himself. Anything a little bit different and he can’t deal with it. Look at his voting record. The traditional way is the best way even if it doesn’t work anymore.” She smiled. “How was that for a speech?”

“I told you ten years ago you should run for mayor.”

“Why, when Howie provides us with so much fun?”

Howard D. K. Fogerty Jr. was both the local Chrysler dealer and the mayor. He was given to quoting Herbert Hoover, a local boy who probably deserved better by historians than he’d received thus far. He also quoted, no kidding, the Lone Ranger. In his most memorable commencement speech, he’d quoted not just the masked man himself but also Tonto. The town was waiting for him to quote the Ranger’s horse, Silver.

The bell above the shop door rang.

“Duty calls,” she said, smelling wonderfully of an exotic perfume as she passed by me.

From flowers I can’t tell you. I know what a rose looks like, a red one anyway, and I know what a gardenia looks like. The rest of them, I’m pretty shaky on.

I walked up and down the aisles. I was in no hurry to make my decision. I was glad to be out of the office for a while. Poor Jamie. She’d probably had a breakdown by now.

I stuck with the roses. By the time I hit the counter, the store was busy. Karen Porter was waiting with a customer. I gave my order to one of the Klemson twins. Betty Klemson worked in the store here while Sandy Klemson had eloped with the Gutterman boy who’d since joined the navy. The now pregnant Sandy was living in San Diego with many other navy wives. Every once in a while I read the “Catching Up” column about former citizens of ours now living afar.

“Half dozen red roses, please.” Then: “Wait a minute. Make that two orders of a half dozen roses each.” Mrs. Goldman deserved a treat too. Thanks to me, she probably hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

“Sure, Mr. McCain.”

I gave her Mrs. Goldman’s name and address and then Jane’s.

“Boy, she’s a really classy woman, isn’t she?”

For some reason I was suddenly back in ninth grade and sending roses to the beautiful Pamela Forrest, the sort of thing that was embarrassing to a he-man freshman.

Right there and right then, a grown man, a court investigator and a private eye, I did the unthinkable. I blushed.

Outside the hospital room where James Neville was currently residing, Cliffie had stationed one of his auxiliary cops, a scrawny kid named Sullivan who stood rather than sat in the chair they’d provided for him. Hard to look tough when you were sitting down. Leaning against the wall like this, your right hand on the handle of your holstered weapon, a suspicious squint for everybody who passed by in the hall, people knew you were tough. Except he’d spilled some coffee or cola on his tan cotton auxiliary police shirt and that detracted from his tough-guy pose. Tough guys should never be spillers.

“You got permission to go in there, McCain?” He hated me because Cliffie hated me. That was the first thing they learned under his tutelage. Cliffie good, Judge Whitney/Sam McCain bad.

“Do I need permission?”

“You do as far as I’m concerned.”

“All I need is five minutes.”

“That ain’t what the chief said.”

“How about the district attorney?”

“Who?”

“Cliffie’s cousin.”

“You ain’t supposed to call him Cliffie.”

“Well, she’s technically his boss. And she gave me permission.”

“Is that true?”

“Which part?”

“Her bein’ his boss?”

“That’s how I learned it in law school.”

Like hell I did.

“And she really gave you permission?”

“She did indeed.”

He looked around. I didn’t feel good about lying to him. Sullivan was stupid but he wasn’t mean. He just liked to play dress-up like most of the other auxiliary cops. I’d seen him playing cop at the county fair and the Fourth of July corn roast. He was nice to everybody. Why couldn’t he be one of Cliffie’s thugs? Then I wouldn’t feel so guilty about getting him in trouble with Cliffie.

But then I remembered the promise I’d made to Cy out there on his porch.

“Five minutes is all and if Clifford says anything to you, tell him to call me and I’ll take complete responsibility.”

“You will?”

“I will.”

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any gum on you, would you?”

“Two sticks or three?”

“Two’d do fine. I got a break comin’ up here.”

While he was unwrapping the first stick, I made my way inside the room where Will Neville sat on a chair talking to his brother James, who lay in the bed with his right arm in a cast and enough gauze and tape on the rest of him to wrap up Boris Karloff in a Mummy sequel.

“You get that son of a bitch out of here,” James said. “I wouldn’t be in here except for him.” James grimaced. He was in pain of some sort.

Will got up. He was going to lumber over to me and pound my head in. I reached in my back pocket and brought forth my sap. “This can put you in a bed right next to James here, Will. I’d think it over.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“I think James already said that, Will.”

“You got no business here.”

James grimaced again.

“Boys,” I said. “I’m here to find out who killed your brother. And I expect you to help me find out. Otherwise, James, you’re going to go straight from the hospital here to a jail cell. Personally, I’d prefer the hospital. You don’t get all those cute nurses in jail.”

“What the hell’s he talking about, James?”

“Yeah, McCain, what the hell are you talking about?”

I lit a Lucky Strike. “You ran some kind of blackmail ring in Chicago. You told Richie how to set one up here. That comes under the heading of felony, in case you forgot all the law you learned while you were in Joliet.”

Will looked at James, then at me. “You can’t prove that.”

“Well, among all the rubble at the murder scene, I found several pieces of equipment in the darkroom that had been bought in Chicago. Sounds like you bought him one of those handy-dandy blackmail kits, huh?”

“You can’t prove that,” Will said again.

This was where I decided to risk another lie. Two a day is usually my limit, but this was a sudden-death playoff and I needed it bad.

“I haven’t figured out your share of the proceeds yet, but after Richie made his collections — once a month, I suspect — he sent you your cut. Fine and dandy, but he did it by check.”

Both their faces froze as what I’d just said registered in their small criminal minds.

“So any smart detective and any smart DA could lay their hands on bank records and demonstrate the pattern of payout you and Richie had going.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. “If you think I’m lying about any of this, wait and see how fast I can have a detective up here.”

“A detective from Cliffie’s office?” Will sneered.

“Even a detective from Cliffie’s office could figure this one out. And even if he can’t, the DA can.”

“I hear you’re trying to get into her panties,” Will said.

“And I hear you don’t wear any panties, Will.”

And the troops arrived. A doc and two nurses. They swept in as if they had been dispatched by Divine Providence. One of the nurses pushed a wheelchair.

The doc didn’t deign to look at me or Will. To James, he said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to run some more tests on you, Mr. Neville.”

“When can I get the catheter out?” James said. No wonder he’d been grimacing.

Will glanced at me and said sotto voce, “That’s got to hurt.” And then he pointed to his crotch in case I hadn’t heard.

Both nurses scowled in Will’s direction.

“I’ll wait out in the hall,” I said.

Nobody was crying, there were no code blues, nobody was wheeled past in the last stages of their lives. The three or four times I’d been in the hospital I’d enjoyed myself. When I was a small boy, I got Green Lantern and Captain Marvel comic books. And when I was older, I got the names and phone numbers of several nursing students who later proved to be damn good dates.

But as the years pass, hospital visits start to get grim. No more bad tonsils and busted legs from sliding into second in the kids’ league. Now you’re into the real business of hospitals: hushing up and sanitizing the process of death. But every once in a while all the hushing-up fails and you get a glimpse of a frightened doctor or the knife-sharp sob of a loved one or the stark stink of bowels bursting at the point of death itself.

The irony of standing in a hospital hall smoking a cigarette, after several years of the surgeon general pounding home the connection between cancer and heart attack and cigarettes, wasn’t lost on me. If I ever managed to get married and have kids, would they be standing in this very hall twenty, thirty years down the line wishing that the old man in the room behind them had never taken up the devil weed?

The nurse pushed the wheelchair carrying James Neville out of the room and down the hall. Then came the doc and the other nurse. Both heading to the elevator, too. No sign yet of Will.

When I entered the room, he was standing by the window, looking down at the activity in the parking lot.

“I know you think we’re dumb,” he said, knowing who was there without turning around. “But that don’t mean it hurts any less.”

“Richie?”

“He was a good kid.”

“Then help me catch his killer.”

He swung his large head around and looked at me. “Can’t. We say anything it’s like confessing we were in on it.”

“I wouldn’t have to tell anybody what you told me.”

“James says you’re a liar. I say you are, too.”

“I guess I won’t be getting invited to your family reunion, huh?”

“I get sick of your jokes.”

“I get sick of them sometimes, too. But what makes me real sick is somebody getting away with murder. A lot of crimes go unsolved, you know.”

“Not murder.”

“You’re wrong, Will. Lots of murders go unsolved. The cops call them ‘open files.’ But ‘open’ really means the opposite. ‘Closed.’ They give up on them.”

“Maybe in the big city.”

I lit another smoke. “Remember when the two Furnish girls were found beaten to death in the woods? All the publicity that got? They still haven’t found the killer.”

He looked back at the parking lot below.

“You and your brother had a lot of responsibility here, Will. It was you two who got him into this blackmail thing and you damn well know it. He’d be alive today if it wasn’t for you two.”

“Shut your face.”

“James runs the same kind of setup in Chicago and then he brings it out here to Richie. Sort of like a franchise. Like the Dairy Queen or something.”

We didn’t talk for a while.

“I need to know if anybody hassled Richie over being blackmailed. Did anybody get mad? Did anybody try to hurt him? Did anybody threaten to go to the law? You’re running out of chances here, Will. I gave you a chance to talk while I was at your apartment. Now I’m giving you another chance.”

“You don’t give a shit about Richie. You just want to find out who killed him — for your own sake.”

“You’re being real stupid here, Will. Real stupid. You’ve already lost a brother. Maybe you and James will lose your freedom, too. Going to prison.”

There was nothing more to say. I stood there staring at his back for a few more seconds and then I left.

When I got to the ground floor, I found an open phone booth and called the judge’s house. A year ago her longtime employee had decided to retire to Florida and in his place she now had a chauffeur/functionary who seemed to think he was also her press secretary. Stingy he was with info, Aaron Towne.

“How’s she doing?”

“Just about how you’d think she’d be doing.”

“Well, at least she was able to go home. I imagine the master bedroom looks like a hospital room.”

“We’ve been able to make it serve her needs.”

“You know something, Aaron?”

“I’m not sure I appreciate that tone.”

“Well, I don’t really give a shit what you appreciate or not. She’s not only my boss, she’s my friend.”

“If you’re such a good friend of hers, why did she give me specific instructions not to bring her your calls or let you in the door?”

“Because she’s embarrassed, that’s why. Because she’s lonely and afraid and ashamed and she needs to talk to me more than ever.”

“Well, she won’t talk to you. And I won’t ask her to. She spends way too much time worrying about you as it is.”

“What? She worries about me?”

“She worries that you’ll never really get ahead as a lawyer. She worries that you resent the important people in this town to the point where it holds you back. And she worries that you’ll be as unhappy in love as she’s been.”

Four husbands. At least she knew whereof she spoke.

“I see.”

“So right now seeing her would be unwise — both for you and for her.”

But right now I wasn’t listening all that carefully. I was thinking of that imperious, elegant middle-aged woman worrying about me. I’d never had much of a hint that she considered me any more important to her than the milkman. Probably less, because she really liked milk.

“Please give her a message for me, Aaron.”

“If it’s the right kind of message.”

“Tell her that I’m really eager to see her and that she’s in my thoughts and prayers constantly.”

“I guess I could tell her that.”

“You’re such a swell guy, Aaron.”

“I know you’re being sarcastic, McCain.”

“Gosh,” I said, “how could you tell?”

24

I was doing my Philip Marlowe routine — feet up on the desk, pipe in my mouth, copy of Mr. Hefner’s latest fitting nicely between my hands — when he appeared in my doorway. This was just after five. Jamie had gone home and the office was quiet, especially since I’d taken the phone off the hook.

“I didn’t realize you were an intellectual,” Senator Williams said, nodding at the magazine.

“I’ve looked at all the pictures several times. Now I’m actually reading it.”

“I’m told they do have a good article or two on occasion.” He walked in and said, “Mind if I sit down?”

“Of course not.”

I’d never seen him this dressed down. Button-down yellow shirt, brown belt, brown slacks. His hair was wind-mussed, too. He’d almost lost that senatorial pose he lived inside.

He seemed to be as nervous as I was about his visit. I wasn’t sure what he wanted.

“Thanks for dropping those negatives off at my office today. I’m sorry I didn’t make it last night.”

“That’s fine. I survived. So what can I help you with today?”

“I need to ask you something, Sam.”

“All right.”

“Are you sure those were the only negatives you had with my name on the envelope?”

“Sure. I gave you everything I had.”

“And you didn’t look at them?”

“No, I didn’t. I kept my word.”

He started leaning forward, sliding his hand behind him, apparently to retrieve his wallet.

“I have money, Sam. Plenty of money. I’m sure Esme doesn’t pay you all the money in the world.”

“Why are you offering me money?”

He paused and then said, “We’re sort of talking in code here.”

“We are?”

“Look, Sam. I know you held the rest of those negatives back. Make a little money for yourself. I don’t blame you. You’re the one who’s really done most of the work on this matter. But now I need the rest of the negatives.” This time he succeeded in getting his wallet out. “I brought plenty of money, Sam. So let’s talk about me getting the rest of the negatives and you getting the seven hundred dollars in my wallet here.”

“Don’t bother with any money. First of all, I wouldn’t want it even if I had the negatives—”

Anger in those cold, disapproving eyes. He had restrained himself as long as he could. “Even if you had the negatives? Where the hell are they?”

“I don’t know what negatives you’re talking about.”

He sat back in his chair, folded his hands in his lap, and just stared at me. His lips were white and his eyes moments from expressing the rage I could feel even across the desk.

“You really expect me to believe this bullshit?”

“And what bullshit would that be?”

“You’re as bad as Neville. And since you’re smarter than he was, your price will probably be higher, too.”

“You think I’m shaking you down for the negatives?”

“What the hell else would you be doing?”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“What?”

“You heard what I said. I’m not putting up with this crap. I don’t shake people down. And I don’t have the negatives you’re talking about.”

“Then where the hell are they?”

Then: “Oh, shit.” He rubbed his face. I was pretty sure I heard him sob. He dropped his hand. “Listen, I owe you an apology.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“You’d be as overwrought as I am if you were in my spot.”

“Maybe. But I’d be a lot more careful of making accusations.”

He sighed. Rubbed his face again.

“So you don’t have any idea where they are?”

“If I did, I’d go get them.”

“Yes, I suppose you would.”

He snapped up from his chair and walked over to the window. “There’re spies everywhere.” Then he turned to me and smiled. “How paranoid does that sound?”

“I imagine it’s true.”

“My worthy opponent’s got just as many gumshoes and political ops on me as I have on him.”

“You think it was one of them who slugged me?”

“I’d say it was a good possibility, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

He came back and sat down. That sudden explosion of energy had seemed to drain him.

“I can still win. If we can get those negatives back before they get to the wrong people.”

“How’s Lucy?”

He looked shocked that I’d brought her up. My God, we were talking about his career and I’d had the nerve to drag in something as trivial as his daughter’s well-being?

He waved me off. “Oh, you know, still moping. She’s like her mother. Everything’s my fault. Now her mother’s telling me if I’d been a more ‘loving’ father maybe Lucy wouldn’t be so — disturbed.” He made a face. “‘Disturbed’ is the code word. There’s some clinical insanity on my wife’s side of the family. Dementia in two of her sisters. I think we may be looking at something clinical with Lucy. Not as severe as dementia but certainly some kind of serious dysfunction mentally.”

So who could blame him if his daughter’s misery was genetic? He was blameless as always.

He stood up. He seemed lost, not quite sure where he was. “I thought it’d be so easy. I’d just come down here and get the negatives tonight. I thought I’d be all done with this. But it’s still going on, isn’t it?”

He went to the door. “If you find any more negatives, call me right away, Sam. Please. I’ll pay you anything for them. Anything you ask.”

“If I find any more negatives pertaining to you, I’ll hand them over to you. No charge. Again, I’m not in the shakedown business.”

He stared out into the hallway. “It used to be so damned easy for me, Sam. Everything was. But not anymore. Not anymore.” He sounded ghostly.

And then, head bent like a penitent’s, he slowly left the building.

I sat there for a few minutes wondering what was going on. Certainly something was. Williams was terrified of negatives that weren’t in his file. I doubted that the pictures he was after had to do with his adulterous affair. Presumably, those were the ones I’d given him.

What other kind of photos would shake him up this badly? I spent twenty minutes trying to finish off some paperwork. But concentration came hard. Too hard.

Preparing my papers for tomorrow was easier than reading briefs. I shoved papers into appropriate file folders and shoved the file folders into my briefcase.

I finally hung up the receiver and the phone rang instantly.

Jane said, breathlessly: “I was just about ready to come over there and get you. Get over to the hospital right away.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Somebody snuck into James Neville’s room and killed him.”

25

Flashing emergency lights imbued the three-story brick building with a blanched red hue. Cops were stationed at both side doors, two at the front. A crowd had already gathered. Some of them were probably visitors on their way home when all the alarms went off.

The cops recognized me and waved me through. I took the interior stairs rather than the elevator. I never ride when I can walk. There’s something coffinlike about elevators that has always scared me a little.

The west wing of the third floor was in chaos. There was a sense that this part of the hospital had been invaded.

Patients were being wheeled out of their rooms and steered to the east wing. The police business would go on for hours. Not exactly a relaxing atmosphere for people recovering from gall bladder surgery or even more deadly operations.

Nurses, a pair of doctors, and a janitor were being interviewed by one of Jane’s young assistants. She’d increased her staff by three.

The hospital boss stood off by himself. This was Public Relations Nightmare numbers 1—20. A murder in your hospital while a police officer was ostensibly standing guard. The hospital would recover, of course, but not before there was a trial in the press and an endless number of local jokes. His soft, round face gave the impression that he had been shunned by the entire human race.

Jane wore a pair of walking shorts and a white blouse. Her hair was done in a chignon, which provided an interesting contrast with the informality of her attire. She was talking with Cliffie and it was pretty clear, even though she was doing her best to make it appear that she was just having a conversation, that she was helping him set up the crime scene properly. She had walked all his cops through three nights of evidence-gathering. I’m told they weren’t happy that they hadn’t gotten overtime pay for sitting in the borrowed public school classroom. She’d even brought in two experts from the State Bureau of Investigation. For joy for joy.

But her diligence looked to be working. I’d never seen Cliffie’s men working a crime scene so efficiently.

Jane came over. “The man standing guard went to the bathroom. If he’s telling the truth, he was gone no more than five minutes.”

“So somebody was watching him, waiting to make a move.”

“It appears that way.”

“Anybody see anybody else going into or out of the room?”

“The only people working this wing are the two docs, the nurse, and the janitor my people are interviewing now. And they didn’t see anybody.”

“How’d he die?”

“Throat cut. The nurse on duty said that Neville had been given a heavy sedative about half an hour ago. He’d had trouble sleeping. So he probably wasn’t in any shape to resist, especially with a broken arm.”

“Anybody call his brother Will?”

“Busy signal. I should check it again.”

“Let me do it.”

She watched my face as if it was going to reveal something to her.

“You wouldn’t forget our little bargain, would you? About being partners?”

I hadn’t thought about it since getting caught up in all the confusion up here. “Maybe I should tell you about Senator Williams dropping by.”

“Yeah, Sam, maybe you should.” The tone was impish; the eyes were remorseless.

So I told her, finishing up with, “I have no idea what the negatives are.”

“But he was really upset.”

“Very upset. Like he was dazed or something. He seems to think that his whole career is on the line here.”

“That’s strange. He got the negatives you said he’d wanted in the first place—”

Just then one of her assistants waved her over.

“I’d better check on this. Are you going to try Neville’s phone again?”

“Yeah. And if it’s still busy, I may wander over there.”

“You sure you’re telling me everything?”

“You want me to swear on my ragtop that I’m telling you the truth?”

The imp again. “Sometime when we’re just relaxing I want to talk to you about that car of yours. You ever think it’s a little bit ‘youthful’ for a grown-up attorney?”

“‘Youthful.’ People generally aren’t that kind.”

“I need to go.” And she was gone.

I walked down to the lobby, got a cup of coffee from the snack bar, headed over to the pay phone.

I had to look up his number. I got a busy signal for my trouble. I decided to make sure he hadn’t just taken it off the hook, the way I had.

When I gave the operator my request, she said, “Is this an emergency, sir?”

“It could be. Does it matter?”

“We generally don’t like to try the line this way unless it’s an emergency. The teenagers ruined it for all of us. The girls, especially. They talk to each other for hours and their boyfriends can’t get through. So the boyfriends start calling us to check on the line.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you’d do this for me. It really could be an emergency.”

“Well, I appreciate you being so courteous with me. You should hear some of those teenage boys.”

There was a busy signal and then she said, “Please give me a minute. I have to check this now another way.”

A busy signal for ten, fifteen seconds, then no sound at all.

“I can report this if you want me to.”

“So the phone is off the hook?”

“That’s what it appears. Would you like me to report it?”

“No, thanks. I appreciate your help.”

The traffic was heavy tonight on the route I took to Will Neville’s place. When I got there, I parked halfway down the block. A red ragtop is pretty easy to spot.

I walked between a sandwich shop and a vacuum cleaner repair shop to reach the alley. I wanted to come up the back way. If Will Neville had anything to hide, he’d hide it the moment he saw me coming up his sidewalk.

His car was there but the windows were dark on the second floor of the stucco house. Not even the moonlight could cast any magic on the debris that littered the backyard, including a tricycle without a front wheel, torn clothes, and pages of newspapers and magazines. Home sweet home.

I reached the stairs and started climbing. With each step, I knew I was drawing closer to something I didn’t want to see.

26

Will Neville lay facedown in the middle of his living room. There was enough moonlight through the nearest window to see that he was bleeding badly from a wound on the back of his head and I could see his back expand ever so subtly with each breath.

The place wasn’t much messier than it had been when I’d visited here the other day. But still I could see, here and there, where it had been ransacked in a desperate search for something. And of course I knew what that something was.

I righted a floor lamp that had been knocked over, clipped on the light. In the bathroom I ran water into a grimy glass, grabbed a dirty bath towel, and went out to see what I could do for Neville.

I didn’t try to get him to his feet. I just eased him up enough so that his back would rest against the front of the couch. I asked him a few questions. He answered only in moans. I put the glass to his lips. He didn’t seem to understand the implications of it all. I said “Drink” and he said “Huh?”

As he drank, I dragged the floor lamp over for a closer look at his wound. The size of it startled me. Probably about that of a silver dollar.

I poured a slug of water onto the towel and started to dab the wound. He let go with an uninterrupted thirty seconds of dirty words.

He spoke coherently for the first time: “Son of a bitch thinks he can get away with it because he’s some big shot in Washington.”

“Senator Williams?”

“You damn right Senator Williams. Big-shot asshole.”

“He wanted those negatives?”

“Yeah.” He grimaced and grabbed the towel from me. He was his old shitty self again. “But he didn’t get ’em.

“How do you know? He knocked you out.”

“Because I hid ’em where he’ll never find ’em. Where nobody ever will. And they ain’t just negatives. I got a set of photos of them too.”

I stood up.

“Somebody killed your brother James about an hour ago.”

He brought his head up too fast. He grabbed his head, the pain was so bad.

“In his hospital room. Somebody snuck in there and killed him.”

“They couldn’t have. Cliffie put a guard on that room. I seen them guards for myself. They rotated them around the clock.”

“This guard went to the john and somebody got inside long enough to do the job. They cut his throat.”

“Williams. That son of a bitch Williams. I bet it was him.”

“Why would he kill James?”

“Because he musta thought James would tell him where them negatives were. He probably thought I was too dumb to be in on it with Richie and James. But I been workin’ with ’em three years.”

“Three years? You three haven’t been here three years.”

“Different places.”

I said, carefully, “I need to know where those photos are.”

He looked like a giant baby sitting on the floor that way. He smiled up at me with that malicious homely face and said, “Well, I ain’t telling ya.”

“It’s all over, Will. For all of you. You’ve got two brothers dead and you’re headed for prison.”

“Not with what I got, I ain’t headin’ to no prison.” He smirked then grimaced again. “Senator Williams is gonna keep me out of prison.”

“He can’t. Not even a senator has that kind of power.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen these pictures.”

I suppose I could have given him a few more minutes. But I was tired of him and tired of the kind of game he and his brothers ran and so, almost without realizing what I was doing, I slipped my .45 from the pocket of my windbreaker.

He started to say something, but I brought my hand down so quickly that he didn’t have time to get three words out.

I made sure that the barrel of the gun struck him right on the wound. And for good measure, I kicked him in the chest. And when he reared up, looking capable suddenly of pushing on through his pain, I kicked him in the chest again.

He fell back against the couch and started crying. I think it was more frustration and hurt pride than pain. All his life he had been able to deal with problems by a force few could equal. But he’d been injured tonight and now I’d only made that injury worse. And for a humiliating moment here, a much smaller man was able to contain his wrath and his power.

His massive hand reached out to grab my leg and spill me, but his hand came in low and so I was able to stomp it to the floor with my heel. Bone cracked. This time his cry was more pain than wounded pride.

“I need to know where the photos are, Will. You might get lucky and grab me, but before that happens I’m going to keep on breaking your bones.”

I whipped the gun barrel into his head wound again. For a time there he sounded inconsolable, just moaning, sobbing, moaning. Then he vomited all over his lap.

The smell didn’t make his hovel any pleasanter.

I went over and sat on the edge of a chair across from him and said, “If you try to get up, I’ll shoot you. I won’t kill you but I’ll put a bullet in your knee so you’ll never walk right again. You understand me, Will?”

His head came up. His eyes and nose were gleaming messes and he had a chunk of vomit hanging from his chin.

I stood up and walked over to the phone and dialed the police station.

“Police station. Patrolman Emmett Billings.”

Jane had improved the phone etiquette, too.

“Emmett, this is Sam McCain. I’m going to give you an address. I need a car here as fast as possible. I have a prisoner for you. Jane Sykes will explain this later.”

He wouldn’t have done it for me. But for the new district attorney, you bet.

I gave him the address. “Right away, Emmett. Please.”

After I hung up, I walked back to Will Neville.

He was quiet now. He didn’t smell any better. There was a dumb animal sorrow about him I couldn’t enjoy anymore.

“I’m sorry I got so rough, Will.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“If I tell the DA that you cooperated with me, I think I can get her to go easy on a few of the charges.”

“She’s Sykes’s kin. She won’t listen to you.”

“She will in this case. We’ve been working together on it.”

He raised his head two inches. Apparently, the pain was too much to bring it any higher.

“I done time in juvie. I don’t want to go to no prison.”

“You’re not listening, Will. You’ll probably have to do some time. But maybe I can cut some for you. That’s what I’m talking about here.”

“He could get me out of it entire.”

“If you mean Williams, no, he couldn’t. That’s a pipe dream, Will. I’m offering you the only real kind of help that’s available to you. Now tell me where those photos are.”

And I’ll be damned, right then and right there, if he didn’t.

27

The maid said, “They’re all in the library.” She looked unhappily at the manila envelope in my right hand. “I hope that’s not bad news. I don’t think they could handle much more of it.”

“Who’s here?”

“The senator and his wife and daughter. Were you expecting somebody else?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

The expression on her prim face now became suspicion. “I take it it is more bad news, then.”

“I can’t really talk about it.”

“This whole house is coming apart.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I like it here, at least when the senator’s out of town.” Then: “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’m ready for the library anytime you are.”

I followed her through the house. The living room was so brightly lit, it seemed a party was about to begin as soon as the guests swept up the drive in their cars — a night of pleasure for sure.

The maid knocked curtly. The conversation stopped. The senator said: “Yes, Marjorie?”

“Mr. McCain is here to see you.”

“McCain—” He sounded confused.

“Excuse me,” I said, as I covered the doorknob with my hand and pushed inward where the entire Williams family sat around a small table staring at me like the interloper I was. I had interrupted the most sacred business of all, private family business.

I walked in. The maid did me the favor of closing the door behind me.

“You weren’t invited,” Senator Williams said. “And I don’t want you here.”

“God, Dad,” Lucy said. “That’s so embarrassing, treating him like that.”

“Lucy, why don’t you pour him some coffee?” Ellen said.

“That sounds good about now.”

The senator didn’t try to hide his disgust with me. In fact, he made sure I’d see it by making faces and sighing deeply and shaking his head as I sat down. He seemed to think that I’d brought some kind of plague with me. As, perhaps, I had.

Lucy, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans, poured me a cup of coffee from a carafe. “Sugar or cream?”

“Just plain is fine.”

Each of them took turns staring at the manila envelope I’d set on the mahogany table in front of me.

The coffee was good. I took several sips of it in the uneasy silence. Then I finally said, “Any particular reason for this particular meeting?”

Lucy smirked. “We’re each confessing our sins here, asking each other for forgiveness. And take my word for it, Mr. McCain, there’s a lot to forgive.”

“Haven’t you done enough already? Why don’t you give it a rest? He’s enjoying this. He’ll tell everybody what a trashy family we are.”

“Then he’ll be telling the truth, won’t he?” Ellen snapped.

The senatorial mask faded momentarily, replaced by a glimpse of weariness and dread. “Everything I’ve worked so hard to build, you two have tried to destroy. But by God, I’m not going to let you.”

He knew what was in the envelope. That explained his unease. He’d lied to me about having an affair to cover up the real nature of the photos — his wife in bed with her business partner Karen. These were the photos he’d been desperate to keep from circulation. I really hadn’t wanted to peek inside, but I hadn’t had any choice. Unlike the other envelopes, this one had a bearing on a murder case.

“Maybe he’s here to arrest one of us,” Ellen said tartly. “That would be the final scandal, wouldn’t it? Seeing your wife or your daughter in prison?”

“That was a consideration for a long time,” I said. “You each had reasons for killing Leeds and Neville.”

“Please don’t talk about them in the same breath,” Lucy said. “David was only trying to help us get” — she glanced at her mother — “get certain photos back from Neville. He was just trying to help us.”

“A beautiful young white girl — that’s why he was hanging around you, Lucy,” her father said. “Goddammit, I wish you could understand that. He wanted a trophy. You’ve idealized him to the point where he—”

“He paid attention to her, he was proud of her, he genuinely loved her.” Ellen’s voice was hard, unforgiving. “Things you wouldn’t know anything about, Senator.”

“Knock off that ‘Senator’ bullshit. You know I hate that. I’m your husband.”

“In name only.”

“Maybe in name only to you. But not to me.”

“Welcome to our little home, Mr. McCain,” Lucy said. “And this is one of our better moments.”

I tapped the manila envelope. I’d had enough of their family troubles. “So you told David about these photos?”

“Yes, and he kept our secret about Mom, too. I’m sure of it. He didn’t tell anybody. David thought maybe he could reason with Richie. That’s why he was there. Whoever killed Neville had to kill David so there wouldn’t be any witnesses.”

“That’s what I was beginning to think, too,” I said. Then, to the senator I said: “You never did have an affair, did you?”

“No.”

“You only told me that so I wouldn’t know what the photos were really about.”

“I... didn’t want the real truth to get out.” He scowled at his wife. “The public might understand that I couldn’t control my daughter if she wanted to go out with a Negro. But my wife being a sexual deviate—”

“Oh, God, Senator,” Ellen snapped. “‘A sexual deviate.’ It happened twice.”

I said, “Richie Neville had been trailing the senator. Trying to get something on him. A big payday if he could. But that wasn’t going anywhere, so he decided to trail you for a while. That’s how he found out about you and Karen. He did his Peeping Tom routine and got some photos of you in a bedroom together.”

I shoved the envelope to her. “It’s all yours. The negatives are in there, too.”

“I sure as hell don’t want them, McCain,” Ellen said. “I’m not ashamed of what I did. Karen is my best friend. It was an act of affection more than anything. But these photos — they just make the whole thing dirty.”

The senator stood up. “The whole thing was dirty. Is dirty. It’s perverted and it’s sickening.”

“Do you feel the same way about all your girlfriends in Washington, Daddy?” Lucy said. “You’re always in the gossip columns there. They never use your name but we know who they mean.”

“That’s completely different. At least it’s — normal.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Ellen said. And without warning fled to the door and vanished. Lucy was close behind her.

The senator sighed, ran a hand through his Hollywood hair. “At least it’s over. I can deal with them privately. This won’t affect the campaign.”

I wanted to be astonished by his words, but I wasn’t. I supposed that was another sign of growing up — albeit a bad one — that you moved beyond shock when you saw something truly ugly. You just accepted that it was there and then decided what to do about it.

“It isn’t over, Senator.”

He was the one who was astonished. He looked at me in disbelief. In the moments after his wife and daughter had left the room he’d managed to convince himself that everything was fine again.

“It isn’t?”

“You beat up Will Neville pretty bad tonight.”

“He didn’t have it coming?”

“He’s in police custody right now.”

The dark eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand what I was about to say. A part of it, anyway.

“Will is going to tell them everything he can to stay out of prison. You need to get to him before that happens.”

“He’s a blackmailer.”

“He’s a blackmailer who can take you down with him.”

“Why are you trying to help me? You hate my politics and I’m sure you hate me.”

“Because if you lose — and I hope you do — I want it to be because you’re a shill for every crooked big businessman in the country. But I don’t want to see you lose because of blackmail.” Then: “Call your favorite local lawyer and get him to the hospital fast. I asked that he be looked at. He was in bad shape. Get him before Cliffie starts asking him any serious questions. Then you can bribe him or whatever it takes to keep him quiet about the blackmail photos. I scared him. I told him he was going to prison. You can tell him he isn’t — if he’ll do what you tell him. He’ll be so relieved, he’ll go along with anything you say.”

“I trust everything that was said here tonight—”

“I like Lucy too much to say anything to anybody. And for the first time in my life, I like your wife. I think this experience gave her some humility, even if you’ll never understand it that way.”

He smiled. “And me—”

“You’re just another whore for the robber barons. They’re training your replacement now. If you win this time, it’ll be your last term.”

Anger filled the dark eyes. “I never realized until right this minute how much I detest you, McCain.”

I tapped my chest. “Badge of honor, Senator. Badge of honor.”

And that was where I left him.

I walked out to the ragtop and turned the key in the ignition. A blast of Chuck Berry. A cleansing blast of Chuck Berry. One I needed badly.

28

I saw Stan Green’s Studebaker parked at the A&W on my way back to my office so I wheeled in, ordered myself a tenderloin and fries, and then walked over to Stan’s car while I waited for my food to be deposited on the window ledge of my own car.

There was a time when the Studebaker with its futuristic grill and futuristic taillights looked downright... futuristic. Now it just looked sort of weird, like a sad mutant version of a real car.

“Still headed for outer space, I see.”

“Oh, yeah,” Stan said. “Headed for Mercury tonight. All those blue-skinned Mercurian babes.”

Stan and I used to buy a magazine called Planet Stories. Sure, the half-naked women were green and mauve and blue sometimes, but they had breasts and hips that appealed to every boy who’d ever locked himself in his room with a magazine. The stories themselves were as ridiculously splendid as the sexy blue babes on the covers.

“Anything new for an intrepid reporter?”

“Not at the moment. Sorry.”

“I still like Anderson and Hannity for it, don’t you?”

“Pretty much.”

He ate the last piece of his cheeseburger. I knew it was a cheeseburger because he had dollops of melted cheese on his tie. The blue-skinned people who lived on Mercury had a strict dress code. Those cheese stains might get him barred.

At this time of night, just after nine-thirty, the testosterone parade was at its peak. There were the tough guys who walked around with the sleeves of their T-shirts rolled up so you could see their muscles. There were the boys in the cars with the glass-pack mufflers that could shake an entire building when the boys floored the gas pedals. And there were the lover boys, the ones all the carhops smiled at and sort of aimed their cute little bottoms at, the lover boys being too cool to acknowledge this in any way but all the other boys knowing that these bastards could have their pick of any carhop they wanted. And there were some sweet sweet carhops.

“I talked to Marie Denham tonight,” Stan said.

“What about her?”

“She’s getting discouraged. Wonders if the police are working as hard as they would if David had been white.”

“Well, I admit everything’s pretty confusing right now. Especially since somebody killed James Neville.”

“Yeah, she said she’s surprised nobody’s arrested Will Neville. She said he’s already violated his probation.”

I saw the carhop bringing my food. “Well, just tell her we’re doing our best. I don’t blame her for being frustrated. We all are.”

I finished my meal listening to Miles Davis on the Iowa City jazz station. The bleakness of his horn probably wasn’t what I needed right then but it was too cool and too perfect to turn off.

I was thinking of something Stan had just said — or trying to remember what Stan had just said, something that had bothered me afterward — when I saw him back out of his slot and exit the root beer stand.

But the yawn that made me lay my head back against the seat put curiosity out of my mind. Not being a tough guy, and not being a guy who can get by on little sleep, the past few days of violence and quick naps were starting to sink me.

I’d been planning on going to my office, but right now that six-block trip seemed far too long. There was a phone booth on the west corner of the A&W. I’d check my messages from there and then head on home.

“Hi, it’s McCain. Any messages?”

“One. Aaron Towne. He said you’d know the number.”

“Thanks.”

“For what it’s worth, he wasn’t very nice.”

“He never is. I’m sorry, Julie.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry — for you.”

Aaron answered and as soon as he realized who it was, he said, “You took your own sweet time.”

“Aaron, now’s not a good time to push it. Believe me. Now what the hell’s going on?”

“She’s decided she wants to go there tonight. She doesn’t want anybody to see us leave town.”

“I’m just glad she’s going.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“She’s been avoiding me.”

“If I had my way, she’d still be avoiding you. I don’t see where this will help her at all. But I’ll go tell her. She’ll pick up from the den. She’s making lists of things for me to do.”

“Poor baby.”

He went away.

I scanned the action at the root beer stand while I waited for her to pick up. One scene involved a lover boy trying to steal the attention of a girl who was talking to a kid who looked even more insecure than I had at his age. To the tutored eye insecurity is as obvious as deformity. The other was a cute little girl sitting on the back bumper of a pickup track sobbing into a handkerchief while all around her girls laughed and talked. Some real friends she had there.

No hello. “I’ll be there for a month. Or so they tell me.”

“I’m glad you’re going.”

“Of course you are. I won’t be there to make sure you earn your paycheck.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s why you hired me. Because I’m so lazy.”

A hesitation. “There’re an awful lot of people who’ll get a good chuckle out of me going to a hospital for drunks.”

“To hell with them. You’re doing what you need to do.”

“I hope you’re not expecting any corny speeches from me about how I’ve finally realized that I need help. I’ll save all that for AA.”

This time the hesitation was mine. “I hate to say this, but I’m going to miss you and I’m going to be praying for you.”

“Now you’re the one getting corny.”

“I figured you’d say that.”

“I want to be nice and sober when my friend Dick Nixon visits me here in July. And I don’t want any remarks about Dick. He’s my good friend and one of these days he’s going to be president again.” Then: “I’m scared, McCain.”

“I know you are. But you’ll make it. You’re too strong not to.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do, Your Honor. I do.”

Hesitation. “They’re going to make fun of me.”

“And you’ll make fun of them right back.”

Hesitation. “You know that I like you more than I let on sometimes.”

“You’d almost have to.”

She laughed. “Yes, I would at that, wouldn’t I?” Pause. “Now I’m the one in danger of being corny. Good-bye, McCain.”

“Good-bye, Judge.”

I doubted that she had tears in her eyes, but I sure did.

At home I stripped to boxers, fixed an egg-and-ketchup sandwich, and sat on the couch watching the news.

The cats collected around me, ready for a good long sleep with, by default, their favorite human being.

Something Stan had said still bothered me, but not until now did I understand why. How had Marie Denham known that Will Neville had violated his probation?

I quickly called Stan. It took him a few minutes to find the name of the school administrator he’d talked to the other day while following up on the David Leeds story. He didn’t have the phone number. I had to call information for the home phone number of the guy.

Deep, aggrieved sigh. “Yes, this is he.”

“I’m sorry to be calling so late, Mr. Tooker.”

“Then why are you? This is a school night.”

“This concerns Marie Denham.”

“Who?”

“Marie Denham. A teacher at your school.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I’ve been principal here for eleven years and I’ve never heard of any Marie Denham.”

We spent four or five minutes longer on the phone. He gave me no more useful information.

I next called the local hospital and got a report on Will Neville. He was listed in fair condition but was in the hospital overnight for observation. I asked if there was a phone in his room.

“Yes, there is, but you can’t call him now.”

I said, “May I have your name? I’m McClintock on the hospital board. In fact, my law firm takes care of all your legal matters.”

I hated this particular game. Lying to an employee who could get in trouble if she let me have my way.

“I’ll ring the number, sir.”

When he picked up, he said, “I didn’t even notice the phone when they rolled me in here. Who is this?”

“McCain.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“There isn’t time for that now. You can call me all the names you want after this is settled.”

“After what is settled? What are you talking about? Ouch. My damned head. You made it worse, you son of a bitch.”

“What I’m talking about is you not being considered a suspect in these murders.”

“I wouldn’t kill my brother. Even the cops would know that.”

“We’re talking Cliffie here, remember? He might decide to come after you for those killings. You know Cliffie.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know who you and your brothers have been hiding from.”

“This colored bitch — we were shaking down her father, or tryin’ to. And he killed himself over it. She’s been stalking us ever since.”

Then he told me all about it, her real name and what she’d been up to. Now the murders made sense.

29

I parked in a No Parking zone and rushed into the Greyhound terminal. The man behind the ticket counter looked shocked when he saw me running toward him.

Out of breath, I told him who I was looking for.

“That bus is leaving in about five minutes. She’s probably already on it.”

The loading area held only one bus. Most of the windows had passengers looking out them. At me.

The door was open. I climbed aboard. At first I couldn’t see much. But after my eyes adjusted, it was easy enough to spot her. She sat in an aisle seat about halfway back. She sat with her head back. Her eyes seemed to be closed.

It was a busload of corpses for the most part, longdistance travelers so fatigued they slept through most stops.

I walked back to her, passing through sections of perfume, tobacco, unclean flesh, whiskey.

I couldn’t tell if she was seeing me or not. Maybe she really was dozing.

“Hi, Marie.”

The eyelids parted instantly. “I figured my luck would run out.”

The woman next to her said, “Is everything all right?”

Marie said, “I killed some people. He’s going to take me in.”

“I need your wrist, Marie.”

I handcuffed her to me and then we left the bus. Whispers hissed behind us.

A killer. Handcuffs. My God. A dull trip suddenly became an exciting one.

When we reached the pavement again, she said, “How about we get a tenderloin and some fries?”

“I won’t let you get away.”

“You want to hear about it or not, McCain?”

“And the price of hearing about it is—”

“A tenderloin and fries. And a Coke. Be a long, long time before I ever have food like that again.”

The bus depot diner hadn’t been redecorated in years.

The place was a time trip. Framed newspaper pages of World War II vintage; framed photographs of Joe Louis and Harry Truman and of course FDR; the most recent movie stars were Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. There was a museum feel to it all.

I’d taken the cuffs off outside. We sat at a wobbly Formica-covered table. An exhausted waitress dragged herself over and took our order.

“You had us all fooled, Diane.”

“Diane?”

“You’ve used two other names since you got to town here. I don’t blame you for being confused.”

She just watched me. She knew it was over. Her dark and lovely eyes sparkled with tears.

“Diane Foster. The daughter of a Chicago alderman, the Reverend Thomas Foster. He was admired by black people and white people alike. Unique in Chicago politics in that he never took a bribe, never used his position to improve his own finances.”

“Don’t tell me about my father. He was the most wonderful man who ever lived.”

“But he fell in love with a woman in church and they had an affair. She had a baby out of wedlock.”

She angrily tapped a cigarette from her pack and put it in her mouth. I held my lighter out for her. She slapped it away.

“You keep your filthy thoughts about my father to yourself. You don’t have the right to even speak his name.”

“I’m not judging him. I’m explaining why you’re here and why you murdered three people.”

“Two people I murdered. Richie Neville and James Neville. David Leeds lunged at me after I shot that bastard Richie. I didn’t mean to kill him at all. It was completely accidental.”

“The woman your father had the affair with, she worked in the same office James Neville did. That’s how those three found out about your father. They were already blackmailing several other people, so they just added him to the list.”

She put her hand to her forehead. Tears gleamed on her cheeks now. “He didn’t have any money. He just had his salary from the city council. He never even took a stipend from the church. He had to clean out all his savings to keep paying them. And then when he couldn’t get any more money—”

I reached over and touched her hand. She jerked it away.

“You know the rest, McCain. He killed himself.”

“And then you went looking for the Nevilles. One time you set their house on fire in the middle of the night but they got out all right. And two different times you shot at them. But they got away from that, too. They couldn’t go to the police because they were blackmailers. And you didn’t want to go to the police. You wanted your own vengeance.”

She took the napkin from her side of the table and dabbed it against her eyes. “I didn’t get Will. That’s my only regret.” She was composed again. She scanned my face. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“How’d you find them here in Black River Falls?”

“I hired a private investigator to find them. He tracked them to Black River Falls. I came here to kill them. I found Richie first. Unfortunately, David Leeds tried to stop me and I accidentally killed him. But then I realized if I was going to stay here I needed a reason so people wouldn’t get suspicious — a Negro woman in this town sticks out — so I pretended to be David’s sister. There was plenty of information about him on the news the next morning here and from Chicago, so it wasn’t hard to fake.”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

“You didn’t even know him.”

“I’m sure he was every bit the man you said he was.”

“Don’t patronize me. That’s the worst thing of all.”

“I want to get you a lawyer.”

A cold smile. “You don’t want to represent me yourself?”

“I want to get you a better lawyer than I am. I haven’t had any experience in murder trials.”

“You let me worry about my lawyer. I don’t need anything from you. Or from anybody.”

“Is there anybody you want me to call?”

Her eyes shone again with tears. “I never thought of it before. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in Iowa. In prison. In Iowa.” She touched a slender ebony finger to her cheek. “I was the one everybody thought would be such a success. Just wait till this gets on the news.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Diane.”

She smiled. “If ‘sorrys’ were worth anything, McCain, I’d be a rich woman.”

30

She sat at the counter sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette, an air of isolation about her that old Edward Hopper would have appreciated. It had begun to drizzle, big hot drops dancing on the pavement, but the dampness felt good on my skin and so I stood across the street from the diner just watching her. She was a Sinatra song from just before the war, “Haunted Heart” or “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week” maybe, that sort of sad urban dignity right here in our little town of Black River Falls.

Except for the night man and Jane, the place was empty now. She raised her cup and he filled it for her. Then he went back to scraping the grill.

The rain started abruptly, as if some cosmic hand had flipped a switch. She turned at the sound of rumbling thunder. And saw me. She didn’t acknowledge me in any way, not even a tiny tip of the head.

Then she was grabbing her umbrella and her briefcase and dropping a dollar bill on the countertop and walking toward the door.

Standing beneath the overhang of the place, she opened her umbrella and then came walking toward me across the empty street.

She didn’t say anything even when she reached me, just tugged me close beneath the shelter of her umbrella. I was gallant enough to relieve her of her briefcase.

We were getting wet, of course, because now the rain was such that not even a dozen umbrellas could keep feet and legs dry. Sewers ran with water; rivers formed at intersections.

But I didn’t mind the rain at all. I was pretty sure I was going to get a real good kiss for all this trouble.