The Night Remembers

29

I found a phone booth in the back of a tavern and called Faith. She asked if I could call back in a few minutes — her mother had suddenly gotten extremely upset over Faith’s condition and had been calling every ten minutes and Faith wanted, gently, to put a stop to it.

While I waited I got a bottle of Hamms and a glass and sat in the phone booth blowing blue smoke rings at the TV set over the bar where ESPN was running a tribute to Ali. In just a few minutes you got to see him go from a very young man, and maybe the best boxer who ever lived, to this shambling clown in very serious condition during his last fight with Larry Holmes. It was very depressing.

When I phoned Faith again, she said, “You sound down.”

“Oh, no. Things are going fine.”

“You’re helping Pennyfeather?”

“Ummm-hmmm. How’re you?”

“I took two tranks and I’m a little spacey. Right now I feel that there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“God, I wish I had these tranks all the time. I borrowed them from Marcia.” She paused. “Oh, this woman called.”

“This woman?”

“Kathy Stacek.”

“Really. That’s interesting. Did she leave a number?”

“Yes.” She gave me the number and I wrote it down.

“You going to bed?”

“Thought I’d watch your favorite show on the couch.”

“That’s got to be Carson.”

“Right. I know how much you hate him.”

“He’s stayed too long.”

“When’re you coming home?”

“I’ve got to drop by the Pennyfeathers’, then I’ll be along.”

“You’re lying.”

“Huh?”

“Things aren’t going well at all.”

“No. Really.”

“God, don’t you think I can read you by now? Something’s wrong. Your voice always gets tight when something’s wrong. So what is it?”

I thought of the slide. “Some real twisted stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Child porn.”

“Oh, God.”

I told her about being at Bainbridge’s tonight and then Conroy’s murder and then finding the slide in his apartment, the one with the naked six- or seven-year-old girl standing in the clearing of a woods.

“Who does it belong to?”

“Maybe Conroy,” I said.

“You think he was into it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How does this involve the Pennyfeathers?”

“I’m not sure it does. Though from what Gaute says, they were definitely paying this Czmek woman a thousand dollars a month.”

“And you have no idea what for?”

“No idea at all.”

“You should come home.”

“Why?”

“You sound real depressed and now I’m getting depressed again.”

“I shouldn’t have called. I was just being selfish.”

“We’re supposed to rely on each other, remember?”

“I suppose.”

“Just come on home, all right?”

“Soon as I stop at the Pennyfeathers’.”

“I’m sorry this is turning out to be such a sewer.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

It took two beers and three cigarettes before Kathy Stacek’s line quit giving me one of those mean-spirited little busy signals.

I said, “Kathy Stacek, please.”

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Walsh. You called this evening?”

“Yes, Mr. Walsh. I just wanted to ask you to leave me alone.”

It was the way she said it that struck me as odd. There was no emotion in her voice. “I’m sorry the boys roughed you up this morning, but they were just trying to protect me.”

“Protect you from what?”

“From being dragged back into it all over again.”

“Into what?”

“The trial. The Pennyfeathers. The attorneys. The police. It wasn’t any fun, believe me. When I was on the stand, the defense attorney tried to prove that I was an unfit mother and a hooker and everything. I’m not very well educated and I don’t have much money but I do have my pride, Mr. Walsh. I’ve never forgiven the Pennyfeathers for the way they had me treated.”

“I’m afraid that’s pretty standard procedure.”

“I don’t care. It’s not standard procedure where I come from.”

“All I really wanted to know was if your story was the same?”

“What you’re really asking is, was I lying?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“No, I wasn’t, Mr. Walsh. I saw what I said I saw. George Pennyfeather coming out of the cabin where they later found the body. I couldn’t be sure but it looked as if he had a gun in his hand. At the trial I didn’t say he did have a gun in his hand. I said I thought he might have. If I was a dishonest person, Mr. Walsh, I would have gone ahead and told the judge and jury that I saw the gun for sure.”

“You’re right. You would have.”

“I don’t want to go through it all again.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I still have nightmares about sitting there in the witness box and the things the county attorney said about me.”

“I’m sorry again.”

“I saw what I saw, Mr. Walsh.”

“All right.”

She hung up.