Night Kills

5

Wednesday Morning

It was the usual desperate stuff Rumour had it that a large client of Brolan-Foster's had been seen lunching with the president of a rival agency. A two-inch videotape that was supposed to air on Cleveland television that night (this was a political year, and Brolan-Foster had taken on two candidate accounts) had somehow gotten lost in transit, and everybody (including the hysterical man working on the client's side) was frantic. A perpetually dissatisfied employee in the art department was trying to get several lost souls to band together and demand even more comprehensive health benefits (Brolan-Foster now paid the best in the Twin Cities). A key copywriter had fallen off the wagon again and this time-to avoid firing-was promising to join AA. Brolan looked at a pencil layout for the agency's third largest client (a retail chain) and felt acid start working its way up his stomach, oesophagus, and throat (a pen-and-ink drawing that was supposed to look fashionably little-girlish just looked amateurish instead). And the accounting department had left the latest balance sheet on his desk in a large manila envelope marked FYI. This had been a particularly good quarter.

Brolan kept his door closed through all this, of course. He'd gotten at most an hour's troubled sleep last night, finding himself three times descending the basement steps to peer into the freezer. To make sure she was still there. (What the hell did he expect? That she was going to get up and run away?) At seven o'clock he'd said hello to Mr. Coffee, draining off two cups before the machine even stopped burbling, and then had a quick one-mile run on the treadmill machine he kept in one of the extra bedrooms he didn't know what else to do with. He used an electric razor instead of a safety razor to shave because he was afraid he'd mutilate himself. And he put on several slaps of after-shave because he knew that he was already sweating all over his freshly showered skin. He permitted himself only one more look at the dead woman. Opening the freezer lid, he looked down with tired, sober eyes at the blue-white flesh, at the gouges and slashes and cuts on her slender, gorgeous body. He wondered again what kind of man and what kind of frenzy could have led to this. An image of Richard Cummings, his former boss and a card-carrying sociopath, came to mind. Cummings with his layered, carefully-moussed dark hair; Cummings with his chiselled handsome face and dead blue eyes; Cummings with fists the size of a professional heavyweight's. Cummings could have done something like this. For sure.

From his office he answered Foster's third phone call. "How's it going, pally?"

"Better than I would have expected, I guess."

"I wish I could get out of my lunch plans."

"You've got to see Fenwick. No doubt about it."

"What're you going to do?"

"For lunch?"

"Yeah."

"Dunno yet." Pause. "Have you seen Kathleen yet this morning?"

Foster paused, too. Foster and his wife, Dana, were always trying to line Brolan up with somebody. Somebody who was-in Dana's inelegant phrase-marriage material. To the Fosters, Kathleen Logan did not qualify. They saw her as the femme fatale of Twin Cities advertising. At thirty-five, ambitious in an almost chilling way, she'd already caused two legendary marital splits on her way to her vice presidency at Brolan-Foster. Foster said, "Can I be honest, pally?"

"Okay."

"With all the troubles you've got right now, do you really need to be worrying about Kathleen?"

"Isn't that sort of my business?"

"You getting pissed?"

"Yeah. Sort of."

Foster sighed. "It's your life, pally." Irritation sounded clearly in his carefully selected words. Then he softened his tone. "Hang in there."

Brolan's tone changed, too. "I appreciate everything, Foster. I really do."

"I know, pally. I know."

Around eleven-thirty there was a knock on his door. He looked up from the storyboards he had on his desk. The boards depicted a new blue snowblower sucking up all the snow on an entire block and changing a winter scene to deep summer. It was a great visual idea if the right special effects man could be found on the West Coast "Yes?"

"It's Kathleen."

"Oh."

It was strange, he thought. Here he was, ass-deep in the worst trouble of his life-a dead woman in a freezer in his basement, for God's sake-yet he still brooded over his love life. In St. Cloud prison you didn't have a love life. Or not the kind Brolan preferred, anyway.

She came in. That morning she wore a dark blue suede shirtdress with matching belt, white nylons, and pumps that matched the tint of the dress. Her ash-blonde hair was glossily arranged in a pageboy, her gorgeous blue eyes showed no hint of sleep lines, and her eminently kissable mouth was neatly stained the colour of blood. When she parted her lips to smile, he looked at teeth so white, they would have made a dentist weep with joy. She said, "You seem to have left about ten notes on my desk."

"I wanted to talk to you."

"You know how Shirley loves drama." Shirley was Kathleen's tirelessly gossipy secretary. "Maybe you don't care about your reputation among the employees, but I do." She stared straight at him. "I really tried to be nice last night."

"I just want you to be honest, Kathleen."

Closing the door behind her, she came a little farther into his office.

She said, "You look pretty bad."

"Thank you."

"I meant that in a friendly way."

He sighed. "I know you did. I'm sorry for my mood."

She came over and leaned down and kissed him. He couldn't tell at that rushing moment which made him dizzier-the intoxicating aroma of her perfume or the touch of her soft lips on his.

"I'm not trying to be a bitch about this," she said. "I really do need some space to think."

"You have any plans for lunch?"

"That's why I got in late this morning. I'm working out Kilgore's next ad budget with him personally. We met for breakfast. He wants me to meet him for lunch, too."

She turned and faced him, once again, as if to say: Go ahead, Brolan, accuse me of sleeping with my clients. I dare you. He thought of well-tanned, fleshy, white-haired Harry Kilgore. He looked like a TV minister. Actually he owned a chain of eighty computer stores. He'd been one of the few people to survive the computer boom and bust of the mid-eighties. Many ad agencies had overextended credit to computer hotshots and had been forced out of business when the hotshots took bankruptcy. But not Kilgore. Kilgore became a millionaire many times over.

Brolan did wonder if she was sleeping with him, of course. "And to get back to my office," she said. "I'm only here for a few minutes."

He stood up and walked over and took her by the elbows and drew her to him. He started to say something-something that would partly be rage and partly be the tenderness he felt for her despite everything-yet when his mouth opened, no words came out.

She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth again. He felt an exhilaration he could scarcely contain. He wanted to grab her and make love to her right there in the office. He wanted to shake her till she came to her senses and agreed that they should plan a life together.

But he said nothing; nothing.

"Kilgore says to say hello," she said as she walked back to the door. She gave him a cute little wave. And was gone; gone.