“Tell me what it is,” Jessica said.
“I’d rather not,” he said.
“Why?”
“Knowing can be dangerous.”
She turned off the water. He heard her sighing deeply. Behind the glass, she ran her hands over her body again, sweeping droplets from it. She opened the stall door then, and stepped onto the tiled floor, naked, reaching for a towel. Tardily, she said, “Turn your back.” And then, the towel wrapped around her already, she said, “Never mind.”
She started out of the bathroom, paused where he was standing in the doorframe, reached up to touch his cheek gently, smiled, and then went into the bedroom. He turned to watch her.
“What’s Olivia giving up?” she asked.
“Well...”
“Nothing, right?”
She went to her dresser, opened the top drawer, took from it a pair of rose-colored, lace-edged panties and a matching garter belt. She rummaged in the drawer, searching for a pair of similarly hued nylons.
“The Captain wouldn’t dream of asking her to sell her precious horses in Kentucky, would he?”
“Well, the horses aren’t worth all that much,” Sarge said.
“Still, he didn’t ask her, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Jessica went to the bed, dried herself, tossed the towel aside, and fastened the garter belt around her waist. She did not ask him to turn his back, and he did not. He remembered the first time he’d seen her breasts. Thirteen years old, she was, the Captain would have killed him. Standing only in panties at the bathroom sink, breasts cupped in her hands, looking at herself in the mirror. Are they too small? she’d asked. He’d assured her they weren’t too small.
“Of course not,” she said, sitting on the bed again and extending one leg, pulling a nylon onto it, smoothing it up over her calves. “You have to sell your paintings, I have to give up my trip to Switzerland, but Olivia just goes her merry way.”
He said nothing. He watched as she put on the other stocking, clasped it to the garter belt, and stepped into her panties. Again, the flash of dark pubic hair. He remembered once — this was later, when they were teenagers — watching her dress for the beach. “My summer trim,” she’d said, smiling, and then stepped into the bikini.
She went back to the dresser, took a half-slip from it, and put it on. No bra. She had not worn a bra for as long as he could remember. She walked to her dressing table, sat, crossed her long legs, picked up a hairbrush and began brushing out her hair.
“I’ve still got all my pre-Columbian stuff,” Sarge said, shrugging.
“How kind of him to let you keep it,” Jessica said. She was looking at herself in the mirror, stroking her hair with the brush, preening for the mirror, sitting straight upright, firm breasts moving only slightly to the rhythm of the brush strokes. She smiled at him. “Tell me what the big deal is,” she said.
“I can’t,” he said. “Not till after Christmas.”
“What’s so special about before Christmas?”
“Big secret,” Sarge said, smiling.
“Surely you can trust your own sister with a secret,” she said. Right hand still moving. Rhythmic brush strokes. Breasts jiggling.
“Not this one,” he said.
“Tell me, Sarge.” she said, her eyes meeting his in the mirror.
“Can’t.”
“You used to tell me everything,” she said, a pouting look on her face. “Tell me, Sarge.”
He shook his head. “No use even asking, Jess.”
“Meanie,” she said, and smiled again. Putting down the brush, she turned suddenly on the stool, her long legs together, toes pointed, hands on her thighs. “When are you going back to Phoenix?” she asked.
“I’ve got to stay in New York.” he said. “Same as you.”
“For what?”
“The money from Sotheby’s, for one.”
“And your signature?”
“Well...”
“If needed?”
She rose, walked past him to the closet, selected a simple sheath, pulled it over her head, smoothed it over her hips. She knelt to pick up a pair of matching high-heeled shoes. She sat on the edge of the bed, crossed her legs, put on first one shoe, then the other.
“Want to go dancing with me some night this week?” she asked.
“I’m not much good at that disco stuff you do,” he said.
She rose again, walked to where he was standing.
“I’ll teach you,” she said, and kissed him dangerously close to his mouth.
This was the old city.
This was where the Dutch had been. Narrow streets lined with tall buildings, but Reardon could still visualize horse-drawn carts rumbling over these cobblestones. Historic New York. Now the bastion of high finance and the law.
The law offices of Martin Bennett (nee Berman) were in a building on Beaver Street, not far from the Fraunces Tavern. Bennett owned the building, and most of his time was spent supervising leases and collecting rents. Reardon had once done a favor for him, tracking down an errant client by using the Identification Section’s base file at Headquarters, and Bennett was now handling the divorce action gratis. Reardon was willing to take a freebie wherever and however it was offered — unless it was linked to criminal activity. But sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off with an attorney more skilled in matters matrimonial.
Bennett was a man in his late fifties, perpetually smiling, eternally puffing on one or another huge-bowled pipe with a curving stem. He rather resembled a sharp-nosed Sherlock Holmes, minus the deerstalker hat and the ability to reach conclusions on the basis of sparse information. His brows were thick and shaggy; Reardon suspected he never clipped them, further suspected he thought of them as a sort of trademark, like Michael Jackson’s white glove. His desk was always piled high with papers. Infallibly, he could reach to the bottom of any stack, or the middle, or a spot a third of the way down, and pull from the untidy sheaf the exact document he wanted. A conjuror’s trick. No Sherlock Holmes, but something of a magician in his own right. Sitting behind his barrier of yellowing papers, a cloud of thick smoke floating above his head, he puffed on his pipe and serenely reported on the latest development in the case of Reardon v. Reardon. The clock on the wall behind his desk read 2:10 P.M.
“Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone this morning?” Reardon asked.
“Because I didn’t have it this morning,” Bennett said. “Her lawyer called ten minutes ago.”
“And said they’ve got a court order?”
“Right. Forbidding you to see either Kathy or your daughter.” Bennett puffed on his pipe. “Have you been making a pest of yourself, Bry?”
“A pest?” Reardon said. “She ships my daughter to Jersey, her parents live way the hell over near the Pennsylvania border...”
“The order says you’ve been harassing her,” Bennett said.
“I haven’t. Who signed it?”
“A judge named Santangelo. We’ll have it here in half an hour. I sent a messenger for it.” Bennett paused. He puffed on his pipe again. He looked quizzically at the bowl, and then struck a wooden match and held it to the dottle. Great clouds of smoke surrounded his head, drifted up toward the old tin ceiling in the book-lined room. No, he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, after all. He was somebody out of Great Expectations. “They found out about your rape case,” he said, puffing, the match still held to the bowl of the pipe, his eyes looking up over the bowl.
“What do you mean?” Reardon said. “Who found out? Found out what?”