Now and Then

10 .

Imailed Jordan Richmond’s wallet back to her, with an anonymous note saying I’d found it on the street. Then I called Doherty on his cell phone and said I needed to report, and he said he’d come to my office. He showed up ten minutes later wearing a camel-hair topcoat over a dark suit. He took the topcoat off when he came in and put it on Pearl’s couch, which stood against the far wall to the right of the office door. Pearl wasn’t visiting today, so the couch was empty.

“Whaddya got,” he said.

His shirt was very white. His tie was striped red and blue. His face looked stiff.

“Your wife is having an affair,” I said.

His face got stiffer.

“You got proof?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Lemme see it.”

“It’s a tape recording,” I said. “It’ll be hard to hear.”

“Play it,” he said.

“You don’t want to take my word?”

“Play the tape,” he said.

I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “First some background. She’s been seeing a man after work every night. She went to his apartment several nights. One night before she went I was able to slip a bug in her tote bag.”

He sat motionless while I spoke. I had no way to know if he’d heard me.

“Play it,” he said.

“There’s a lot of silence and aimless noise on the tape,” I said.

“I edited it out.”

He stared at me. I took the tape recorder out of my desk drawer and put it on the desktop and pressed the play button.

“I can’t wait to get naked. . . . Do you think we’re oversexed?”

I stopped the tape.

“Enough?” I said.

“Play it all,” he said.

“You know already what you wanted to know,” I said.

“I want to know everything.”

I pressed the play button again.

“What if someone opened the elevator door? . . . We could say I was helping you look for your keys . . . A drink first? . . . Maybe a short one while I fl uff up . . .” The bag bumped on the fl oor . . . a sound that 38 might have been a shower . . . The sound of intimacy . . . Jordan screamed . . . and giggled . . . “What are you doing to me? . . . I think I should give you a blow job.”

I shut it off.

“That’s all there is,” I said.

Doherty was rigid. His face was flushed. He looked past me out the window. His eyes fi lled.

“ ‘I think I should give you a blow job,’ ” he said.

“Hard to hear,” I said.

“You ever hear anything like that?”

“No.”

“Then how the fuck do you know how hard it is?”

“I’m guessing,” I said.

“Who is he?”

I expected the question. It was possible he’d go looking for Perry with a gun. It was possible he’d use the gun on himself. Or on his wife. I couldn’t make those judgments for him. He had a right to know.

“Name’s Perry Alderson,” I said.

“How’s she know him.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’s he do?” Doherty said. “He work there?”

“I don’t know.”

There were things I suspected about Perry, but they didn’t seem like things that Doherty had a right to know. At least until I knew.

“Find out,” Doherty said.

I nodded.

“You going to be all right?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

He stood suddenly and walked past my desk and looked out my window.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“I have no idea,” Doherty said. “I have absolutely no idea what to do.”

His voice had thickened. His shoulders began to shake. He was crying. Without another word he turned from my window and left my office.

I sat for a while after he left, looking at nothing, breathing deeply, trying to locate exactly what it was I was feeling.