Her strokes economical, Lauren dropped ball after ball into the leather pockets.
Through the steroid clatter in her brain she listened as attentively as she could to my story about Tayisha and the surreptitious device that was discovered in my sofa cushion. Other than offering empathy and wondering why I hadn’t already involved the police, Lauren didn’t have much to say in reply.
She was still playing pool when I retired to bed around ten.
I missed her.
The phone rang minutes after I flicked off the lights. I pounced on it so the ringing wouldn’t stir Grace. As I lifted the receiver, I could still hear thethwop-crackof the pool balls coming from the dining room.
My “hello” earned me a “hey, buddy” from Sam.
“You okay?” I asked a little too urgently. I’d already convinced myself he was calling from some emergency room in some hospital. I was in a state of mind where I didn’t have any confidence that anyone I cared about was okay.
“Yeah, fine, considering. Guess where I am?”
Given the mood I was in, I didn’t want to play along, but Sam sounded happier than I’d heard him sound since his MI, so I tried to remember where he’d been the last time we talked. I thought Georgia, so I guessed, “Atlanta.”
“South Bend.”
My pulse jumped, just like that.
I was tired, but not so tired that my brain was unable to make the associations necessary to take me back to Gibbs’s psychotherapy session the day before and to her revelation that Sterling had once been involved with a woman who lived in South Bend, Indiana.
Notre Dame University. The Sports Information Office.
Sam went on, filling the void. “Carmen Reynoso tracked me down. Remember her? It was her idea to come to South Bend.”
Sam was telling me something. Given the hour, I had to believe it was something important. Maybe because of how close I’d been to REM time when he phoned, I wasn’t getting it. Not quite.
“Yeah? How’s South Bend?”
“I’m not a big Notre Dame fan. I liked Indianapolis, though. I didn’t expect to, but I did.”
“I’m not a Notre Dame fan, either. It’s like the Yankees, I think. You either love the Irish or you hate ’em.” I was still drawing a blank. I wished I weren’t so tired. God, I was tired.
Sam said, “There’s a woman here that Carmen thinks we should go see.”
Carmen?Sam called her Carmen. That’s when I got it.
Carmen Reynoso knew what I knew about South Bend. My next line in the script? “I guess I’m wondering how Carmen heard about the woman in South Bend.”
“Tip from Crime Stoppers. A guy.”
“Anonymous?”
“You know how people are; they don’t like to get involved. Listen, I don’t need any details or anything, but-you know me-I’m curious whether you’ve had any conversations at work lately about any women in South Bend.”
“Turns out I have, Sam. Just yesterday, as a matter of fact, I had a conversation about a young woman who lives in South Bend. Can’t say any more, because of how I heard it, but yeah.”
“Any reason to believe she might be in some danger?” Sam asked.
“The woman in South Bend or the woman who told me about the woman in South Bend?”
Damn!I’d just exceeded the parameters of the game I was playing. I’d told Sam that I’d heard about South Bend from a woman. He could have guessed it on his own. He probably had, of course. That would have been okay. What wasn’t okay was that I’d told him.
“Either. Both,” he said. “Listen, you ever heard of a guy named Brian Miles?”
“Don’t think so. Why?”
“He’s some old friend of Sterling Storey’s. And it turns out his background is in microelectronics. Given your conundrum, that might be important.”
Yeah, it might be.“An awful lot depends on what really happened in that river in Georgia, doesn’t it?”
“The Ochlockonee,” Sam said. “Funny, but it’s gotten to the point where I like saying it. Och-lock-onee. Ochlockonee. You know it’s yellow? The river?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“It is. Anyway, I figure it about the same way you do. It’s all going to come down to Sterling and the Ochlockonee.” He paused. “How’s Lauren feeling? Any change?”
“Her leg’s a little better. The medicine’s making her nuts, though. Thanks for asking.”
“Tell her I’m thinking about her.”
“I will. Sam, it was Crime Stoppers, huh? That’s how you knew about South Bend?”
“Yeah.”
“Hard to trace, those Crime Stoppers calls?”
“We don’t trace them. Did I say it was a guy who called?”
“Yeah, you did. And you said that this Brian Miles guy is in microelectronics. I’m grateful.”
“Well, I hope it helps you with your puzzle.”
“The fact that it’s a guy cuts the number of suspects in half, roughly.”
“There you go. Process of elimination. Just like a real cop.”
Did I fall back to sleep right away? Hardly. I was consumed with thoughts of Gibbs and Sterling and St. Tropez and a balcony on Wilshire Boulevard and women in Augusta and Indianapolis and Laguna Beach and West Point and a guy named Brian Miles in microelectronics and mostly-mostly-Sterling saying “catch me.”
“Sex. It’s not just for procreation anymore.”
Maybe Sam would catch him after all.
Maybe in South Bend.
Maybe.
I listened to the mutedthwop-crackof the pool balls for a while and toyed with counting sheep.
Instead, recalling Diane’s admonishment, I conjured images of me jumping hurdles, and I numbered each one as it passed beneath my feet.
FIFTY
Carmen Reynoso had an address for Holly Malone and a little map to the Malone house that she’d printed off the Internet. Although we didn’t get into South Bend until after eleven, we decided to drive by Holly’s residence just to make ourselves familiar with the area. We found the bungalow on a corner in a neighborhood more upscale than I thought that a university sports information officer could afford.
Carmen said, “Craftsman style. Nice.”
I think I surprised her by saying, “This is the territory for it. Stickley worked around here someplace, didn’t he?” The truth was that I knew damn well that Gustav Stickley’s furniture company had been just up the road in Grand Rapids, but I didn’t want to come across as a smart-ass. I figured Reynoso took me for a fat, dumb cop-most people did. Partly I cultivate that impression for strategic purposes: I like the advantage that comes with being underestimated. But partly I do it because I’m most comfortable hanging with people that fat, dumb cops get to hang with. Talking Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright and Elbert Hubbard doesn’t go over too well in most areas of my life.
That’s okay with me. The point of knowing stuff isn’t so you can let other people know you know it. Occasionally feigning ignorance is a small sacrifice for the companionship of good people. And in my life I got to hang with more than my share of good people.
Carmen smiled at me after my comment about Stickley’s furniture company. She didn’t just smile; she smiled at me. Her lips stayed smoothly together, though, so I still didn’t get a chance to see her teeth. But I wondered if the quick smile was her way of telling me that she cultivated the angry Hispanic persona the way I cultivated the fat doofus persona. We would see.