The check took less than an hour. After a while, a woman came in and handed Ford a printout. He read it, grunted, and gave it back to her. He pushed my shield and card across the desk to me. He leaned forward, and said quietly, "Okay, so you check out, but that doesn't mean that I can let you hassle Mr. Weiss. He pays his taxes just like everybody else around here."
I shook my head. "I'm not trying to hassle anybody, and I don't know any Weiss."
"Look, you think you're the first one who tried to get at him? You're the fourth, sailor, four that I can remember. One guy actually popped him as he was coming out the door, damn near broke his jaw. We stopped the other two, and now you come along."
"Is that why you tried to run me?"
"We keep an eye on that street, but that wasn't it. His wife called it in. She saw you from a window. So it doesn't make any difference what kind of a badge you're carrying. I want you out of town."
"I guess you know what you're talking about, but I'm still in the dark."
He sat back, and shrugged. "If that's the way you want to play it, but let me give you a piece of advice. If you can't control your wife, get rid of her, but don't try to settle it here on my turf."
"Is that what this is all about? Wives?"
"And husbands. Three of them, and now you."
"This Weiss sounds like quite a guy."
"From what I hear, he's the greatest cocksman since Errol Flynn, but what happens on board the Carnival Queen is none of my business." He gave me a steely cop look. "What happens here in town is very much my business, and I've got enough business to worry about without a bunch of angry husbands buzzing around that house. You understand? You've been warned."
"I understand, but you've got it wrong. I'm not even married." I stood up. "Am I free to go?"
"Sure, I've got nothing to hold you on. You want another piece of advice?"
"I already heard it. Get out of town."
"That definitely, but something else. There are two ways out of this station. You turn to the right, and you go out the front. You turn to the left, and you go out the back. I'd go out the back if I were you."
"Any particular reason?"
"Mrs. Weiss is waiting out front. She says she wants to see you. You don't want to see her, do you?"
"I don't even know the lady."
"Now you're talking." His eyes turned shifty. "What my boys did… can we keep that off the record?"
"I've been drinking your whisky, haven't I?"
He grinned. "Off you go, sailor."
I went out of his office, stood in the corridor, and looked at my watch. It was only eleven-thirty. Left or right, stupid or lucky? I wasn't sure which, but I had the feeling that I had exhausted my capacity for stupidity, at least for one day. I turned right.
She was waiting for me in the reception area, sitting on one of those wooden benches that they make for the cop shops, the hardest, saddest benches in the world. In an age of premolded plastics, they still make those seats of misery, or maybe the old ones never wear out.
She stood up when she saw me, and I knew that my luck had kicked in. She was a beauty, a tall and slender blonde. She was ten years past the best of it, and those years showed in her eyes, but she was still a beauty.
She stood in front of me, and said, "Mr. Slade, I'm June Weiss." Her voice was throaty, with a catch in it. "I've been waiting to see you."
"The lieutenant told me."
She stared at me with a concentration that was disconcerting. "I'm sorry, this must seem strange to you, but you're the first one I've ever seen. I never saw any of the others. I had to see what you looked like."
"Why?"
"It was important to me. Would you mind if we went someplace, and talked?"
"About what?"
She looked at the busy station. There were at least a dozen people in the room. She put a hand on my arm. "Not, here, I can't talk in a place like this. Please?"
She knew how to do it. Come close, touch you lightly, let you breathe her, and use that throaty voice to say please. It worked just fine on me. I felt a soft plum in the back of my throat, and I had to swallow hard.
We walked out into the sunlit street, and I managed to say, "Where do you want to go?"
"My car is right here. Will you follow me?"
To the ends of the earth, I thought, but all I said was, "Yes." I followed her car to an X-brand motel near the Interstate. It was a cheap-looking joint with a faded facade, and the parking lot was a checkerboard of weeds. The bar in the rear was called the Tropic Moon, and it stank of antiseptic. It didn't seem like her sort of place, but I told myself that I didn't know anything about her. We were the only customers in the room. She wanted a gin and tonic, I ordered a beer, and we sat at a table silently. She stared at her glass without drinking, and I wondered what she wanted. I could have gone into her head to find out, but I was reluctant to pry. Instead, I put it into words.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"Do you have a picture of her?"
"Who?"
"Your wife. Do you carry a photo?"
I finessed that one. "No, I never got into the habit. Why?"
"I wanted to see what she looked like." Her eyes shifted away from me. "I'm told… I hear that Calvin's women tend to look like me. I was curious."
"Why don't you ask him?"
She smiled faintly. "It's not something we talk about."
"Maybe you should."
"What good would it do?" There was a tired note in her voice. "I don't know why I should tell you this, maybe because we're in the same boat together, but during the season Calvin goes to sea for eight days, and then he's home for two. Eight days of chasing every woman in sight, and two days of resting up for his next adventure. That's his routine, and it doesn't leave much time for small talk."
"Children?"
"Are you serious? Do you think I'd still be here if there weren't children? Two boys, fourteen and ten. You?"
"No, no children."
"Does she look like me? Your wife, I mean."
Another finesse. "Not really."
"Are you still in love with her?"
And another. "That's not something I talk about."
"I'm sorry, you're right, it's none of my business."
She took a tiny sip of her drink, and fell silent. Again it was time to go into her head, and again I did not want to. It would have been like marching through a rose bed in jackboots.
I asked, "Is that all you wanted to talk about?"
She shook her head. "No, there's something else. It's about Calvin. I want you to leave him alone. You're not the first one to come after him, or did you know that?"
"The cop at the station told me."
"Ben… may I call you that?" I nodded. "Please leave him alone."
"It sounds as if you still care about him."
"He's a miserable son of a bitch, but I don't want him dead," she said calmly. "Marrying Calvin was the biggest mistake of my life, but my children need a father. He's betrayed me, he's humiliated me, he's tortured me with those women of his. But it's my mistake, I'm stuck with it, and he's still the father of my children." She reached across the table, and put her hand on top of mine. "Let it go, Ben. He's gone by now, he's on board the Queen, and he'll be gone for eight days. I'm asking you, please, don't be here when he gets back. I know what you must be feeling, God knows I feel the same way, but I want you to leave him alone."
"You sound as if you thought I was going to kill him."
"I don't know. I don't know what the others wanted, either. Maybe they just wanted to hit out in anger, and maybe they wanted to do more than that. But whatever it is, I'm asking you not to do it." She looked away, and in a voice so soft that I could barely hear it, she said, "There are other ways of taking revenge."
Her words hung between us. For the third time, I knew that I should go into her head, and for the third time, I backed away. I said, "Maybe you'd better spell that out."