“You’re saying she sometimes didn’t come home at all after going out with Colder?” he asked.
“Does that bother you?”
“No.”
“I mean, when two people are all grown up and everything, it’s the natural thing to do, right?”
“Right.”
“Take me and you, for example.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, let’s take you and me.”
“Yeah, well, if you and me had a sudden yen for each other and decided to do something about it, who’d care?”
“Harold?”
“He wouldn’t mind. He had a yen for Felicity, but he never got anywhere. Shoot, I wouldn’t have minded if he had. He was always answering the door when she knocked in his Jockey shorts and a half hard-on. That’s why I think he was late with the rent sometimes. So he could open the door for Felicity in his Jockey shorts and his half hard-on.”
“Harold sounds like quite a guy.”
“He’s about what you’d expect. Any more bourbon out there?” She waved her glass a little and Dill decided she was even drunker than he had thought.
“Sure,” he said, rose, took her glass, and went back into the kitchen, where he mixed her another drink, but filled his own up with the last of the Perrier. When he came back into the living room, the halter was all the way off. Dill handed her the drink, smiled, and said, “Looks a lot cooler that way.”
“What d’you think of them?” she asked, cupping her left breast and offering it for display.
“Nice.”
“Just nice?”
“Extremely nice.”
“This is sort of a pass I’m making at you.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“Well, it’s a shame I have to be downtown in fifteen minutes.”
“No kidding.”
Dill nodded regretfully.
Cindy McCabe drank a third of her new drink. When the glass came down, her eyes were still glazed and also a little crossed. They stared at Dill anyway. “You know something?” she said.
“What?”
“I made a pass at Felicity once — out there in the backyard.”
“What happened?”
Cindy McCabe laughed. It was a brief harsh laugh, more sad than merry. “She brushed me off real nice.” McCabe paused, frowned, looked down at her bare breasts, looked up, and added, “Almost like the way you’re brushing me off right now.”
Chapter 13
After he finally got rid of Cindy McCabe, Dill drove downtown, parked the rented Ford in the basement garage, and at 3:46 P.M. walked into the nicely cooled Hawkins Hotel. The temperature outside, according to the First National Bank sign, was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. There was no wind. Dill could not remember when there had been no wind.
The elderly woman, whom he took to be a permanent resident, was seated in her usual chair in the lobby working on an intricate piece of needlepoint. She looked up as Dill approached, but this time she didn’t frown or glare. Nor did she smile. She merely stared. Dill smiled and nodded. She nodded back and said, “Tornado weather.”
Dill said, “You could be right,” and continued on until he came to the reception desk, where he paused to see if there were any messages in his box. There was one on a slip of pink paper. He asked the clerk for it. The clerk, the same one who had checked Dill in, looked at his watch first, took the slip from the box, and leaned across the counter, his manner suddenly confidential or conspiratorial. Or both, Dill thought.
“Captain Colder,” the clerk said, barely moving his lips.
Dill liked melodrama, especially in the afternoon. “Where?”
“The Slush Pit.”
“How long?”
The clerk shrugged his thin shoulders. “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”
“And?”
“He’s looking for you.”
“There a back way out?”
“You can go—” The clerk stopped. The tips of his ears grew pink. “Aw hell, Mr. Dill, you’re kidding me.”
“Not really,” Dill said, turned, and headed for the Slush Pit. As he walked he read the message slip. It asked him to “please call Mr. Dolan, Washington, D.C., before 6 P.M. EDT.” Dill looked at his watch again. It wouldn’t be six in Washington for another hour. But there was really no hurry. Timothy Dolan never left the subcommittee office before seven anyhow, not even on Friday nights.
The Slush Pit, living up to its name, was as oil-black as always. It took Dill’s eyes several moments to adjust. He finally located Captain Gene Colder at a table near the north wall. Colder sat with his back to the wall, a glass of beer in front of him. The beer looked untouched. Dill suspected Colder of not really being much of a drinker despite the two Scotches he had put away up in Dill’s room the previous afternoon. Dill thought those two drinks might well have used up Colder’s ration for the week.
Dill crossed to the table. Colder looked up at him and nodded. It was not a friendly nod. Neither was it unfriendly. It was the cool nod one stranger might give another, reserving all judgment until the second stranger does something strange.
“Sit down,” Colder said.
Dill nodded back his own stranger-type nod, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
“Drink?”
Dill didn’t really want anything. But he said, “Sure, I’ll have a beer. A draft.”
Colder raised his hand. The cocktail waitress hurried over. Lately, Dill told himself, you’ve been drinking with people who command instantaneous service.
“He wants a beer, Lucille,” Colder said to the waitress.
“You okay, Captain?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
Lucille went away. Colder took out a package of Salems and offered Dill a cigarette. Dill shook his head. “I quit.”
“If I keep on smoking these things, so will I.” Colder lit the cigarette with a throwaway lighter and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “I thought we could have a talk without the chief breathing down our necks.”
“Okay.”
“Felicity,” Colder said. “I’d like to talk about her.”
“All right.”
“It may not show, Dill, but I’m almost falling apart.”
Dill nodded in what he hoped was a sympathetic way. It apparently wasn’t, because Colder stared at him as if expecting something more.
“So am I,” Dill said. “Falling apart. Almost.”
That was better, Dill saw. Not much, but some. Colder looked away and said, “I’m married to a bitch.”
“It happens.”
“She’s the daughter of an ex-deputy chief back home. In Kansas City.” He ground the scarcely smoked cigarette out. “And that’s why I married her — because she was a deputy chief’s daughter.” He went on carefully grinding out the cigarette. “I made a mistake.”
“I make them all the time,” Dill said because he saw that Colder expected him to say something. The waitress came over, put the glass of beer down in front of Dill, and went away. Dill took an experimental swallow. Colder still hadn’t touched his.
“I’m thirty-six years old and if I play it right, I can be chief by the time I’m forty. Maybe even before. And I don’t mean chief of detectives like Strucker. I mean chief of police — the queso grande.”
“But,” Dill said.
“What d’you mean, but?”
“That’s why you’re telling me all this, because there’s a but.”
Colder stared at Dill. It’s his Grand Inquisitor’s stare, Dill decided, the one that says: Confess. Reveal. Disclose. Spill.
“Just what kind of but do you think it is?” Colder said.
Dill shrugged. “I won’t even try to guess because you’re going to tell me.” In fact, he thought, you’re dying to tell me. The Inquisitor becomes the Inquisitee, although I suspect that whatever the revelations are, Captain, they will leave you blameless.