“That’s him,” she said.
“That’s who?”
“The fax guy. The guy who paid me to send it.”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s him, I tell you.” I let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. She looked at me, expectantly.
“You need some cash?” I asked. She smiled. I gave her a hundred bucks. “Where can I reach you if I need to talk to you again? Where do you sleep?” She gave me the name of a shelter in the West 70s. She paused, and a shy look came across her face.
“ ’Course, that’s just where I leave my body at night,” she said. I didn’t speak, but I must have looked confused. She went on. “You know, when the nighttime comes, and I have to put my body someplace?” I must have looked stupid to her. “Jesus’ car-I can’t bring my body in Jesus’ car. So every night when Jesus comes for me, I need to leave it someplace. Then I get in and we can drive all over the city, and over to Rome and Winnipeg, Boise too. All over. It’s a real nice car-a big Lincoln, dark blue. Rides smooth. But you can’t bring your body in. And no newspapers, either.” She started sorting cans again. I stood there for a while, watching her, listening to water hit the awning, like a rain of stones.
It was nearly three when I got back home. I was cold and damp, despite my rain gear. I peeled off my clothes and unwound my bandage and stood under a hot shower for a long while. I thought about Faith Herman. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away-sometimes all at once. Faith was nuts, at least some of the time, but enough to make her ID of Trautmann pretty much worthless to anyone but me. But what the hell-more than likely, it was all beside the point. I let the hot water beat down on my neck and shoulders.
I was just winding the elastic bandage around my ribs when the phone rang. Metz, I thought, and I pulled on a T-shirt and picked up. But it wasn’t Mike. It was a call from upstate. It was Donald Stennis.
“Get you in the middle of something?” he asked in his gravelly voice.
“No,” I said.
We talked for a long time, as we always did-at first about Burr County, and the news and latest rumors. Donald shared them with me in his rough, rumbling bass. He told me about the three genius brothers who had torched their boss’s car and blown up his gas grill-and video-taped themselves doing it; and the two kitchen chemists, just back from eighteen months of state hospitality, who were cooking up methamphetamine again-Donald hadn’t figured out where yet; and the battling welder who had laid her husband out in the Tidy Shack parking lot last Friday, busting his nose for the fourth time that I could recall. He went on and on; I knew most of the players, even after three years. There were a few new actors-the ones driving around the county at night, dumping hospital waste from Buffalo by the roadsides, the guy poisoning coyotes, and cutting off their paws and ears and tails-but not too many. And some things were immutable-like the announcement from the local Republicans, a year before the next election, that again they would have no candidate to run against Donald.
He told me how the fall had been for him. He talked about hunting in the bright woods and fishing in the icy streams and lakes, about the deer he had taken and the fish he hadn’t, about the bear that was coming too close to the Green Gorge Trailer Court and the one that had nearly killed Van Adder’s brown mutt, about the eagle found dead by the interstate, and the first snowfall, four weeks ago.
Then he asked about me. As always I said little, and most of that was about work, the only story I knew how to tell-the only narrative that strung my days together and made any sense out of them.
And after that we spoke, as we always did, of Anne. Donald had been to the grave, there beside her mother’s, just yesterday. Did I remember how pretty it was on that hillside? I remembered. That old oak was bare now, but for weeks it had been a fiery red. Anne loved that tree. She used to climb it when she was a kid, on the Sunday visits she and Donald made to her mother’s grave. Did I remember that tree? I remembered. Donald had brought a big bunch of orange mums. Mums were her favorite, orange mums and pink roses. I remembered. I remembered it all.
We were silent for a while, and then he asked, as he always did, if I was seeing anyone. I told him no.
“Takes time,” he said. Then we wished each other well and said good-bye. I folded my arms on the counter and rested my head on them. My breathing was fast and ragged, but no tears would come.
Chapter Twenty-two
I was still sitting with my head on my arms when the phone rang again. It wasn’t Mike this time, either. It was his secretary, Fran, asking me to come to Mike’s office ASAP. She didn’t know what for. I put on some more clothes and caught a cab uptown.
The evening rush was compounded by rain and holiday-season traffic, and it took me nearly an hour to get to the Paley, Clay offices. Fran was at her desk, busy with a stack of documents.
“Conference room,” she said, barely glancing at me.
I went in to find Mike and Neary sitting side by side in silence, staring out at the nighttime cityscape. Neary was in shirtsleeves, his tie loose and his collar open. They were bleary-eyed and pale. There were coffee cups and a pitcher of water and glasses on the table in front of them. They looked like hell. I probably did too. It was that kind of day. Mike motioned for me to sit, and I did. Neary let out a deep breath and rubbed his face. Mike took a long pull on his water and set his glass down.
“DiPaolo called,” Mike said, “with a take-it-or-leave-it-offer. We’re going to take it.”
“Do we draw straws to see who does the time, or is it rock-paper-scissors?” I asked. Mike smiled thinly. Neary didn’t react.
“She wants three things from us,” he said. “First, we agree to lay off Nassouli. No more questions about him to anybody. We don’t say his name; we don’t even think about him too much. Second, anything we find-about who’s behind this, Nassouli’s files, anything-we turn over to her. Third, we say not a word about this to anyone or the whole deal is off-and that includes her pal Perez, out in San Diego.”
“And in exchange for this… what?” I asked.
“She gives us a pass, and our client too,” Mike said.
“That’s pretty generous,” I said, “especially considering the kind of hand we were playing. Why?” Mike and Neary traded looks.
“Apparently she’s got an applecart that she doesn’t want upset right now,” Mike said.
“What, with Nassouli in it? Is she saying they’ve got him? Is she vouching for him-that he’s not involved in any of this?” Mike was quiet. He looked at Neary. “What?” I asked, impatient.
“I suppose she is vouching for him,” Mike said.
Neary scratched his chin. “Yeah, she’s sort of giving him an alibi,” he said, nodding at Mike. Then he looked at me, smiling. “I mean, being dead for nearly three years would pretty much rule him out of your case, don’t you think?”
I sat back in my chair and shook my head while Neary and Metz were entertained by my surprise and confusion.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“They found the body about six months ago,” Neary said, “buried in some park, way out in Suffolk County. Best they can tell, he’s been on the bench for around three years, since the time he dropped out of sight, they guess. One shot, a. 32, in the head.” I was quiet for a while.
“DiPaolo told you this?” I asked. Neary nodded.
“Reluctantly,” he said. “But she told me.” I shook my head some more.
“What’s she up to? Why are they keeping such a tight lid on this?” I asked.
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Neary said, smiling. He looked at Mike.