“I don’t get you.”
“He’s taken you under his wing. Why?”
“I’m cheap help.”
She shook her head, no, and the blond hair shimmered. “No. Look at Mr. Leisure. He’s a top Wall Street attorney, and I get the feeling he’s working for peanuts, too.”
“Your point being?”
“Clarence Darrow can finagle just about anybody into helping him out. It’s like the President asking you for help, or Ronald Colman asking you to dance.”
“I wouldn’t care to dance with Ronald Colman, thanks.”
“Why you, Nate?”
I looked out at the ocean; the little beach had small rock formations here and there that the gentle surge of surf splashed over idly.
“Let’s go for a swim,” I said.
She touched my arm, gently. “Why you?”
“Why do you care?”
“I care about you. We’re sleeping together, aren’t we?”
“How exclusive a list is that?”
She grinned, chin wrinkling. “You’re not going to get out of it by making me mad. Like the gangsters in the movies say—spill.”
She looked so cute, her eyes taking on an oddly violet cast in the non-light, that I felt a sudden surge of genuine affection for the girl wash over me in a tide of emotion.
“It’s because of my father.”
“Your father.”
“He and Darrow were friends.”
“You’ve said that.”
“My father didn’t want me to be a cop. Neither does Darrow.”
“Why not?”
“Darrow’s an old radical, like my father. He hates the police.”
“Your father?”
“Darrow.”
She frowned, trying to sort it out. “Your father doesn’t hate the police?”
“Hell, he hated them worse than Darrow.”
“Is your father dead, Nate?”
I nodded. “Year, year and a half now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“So Mr. Darrow wants you to quit the police force and work for him. As his investigator.”
“Something along those lines.”
She squinted in thought. “So it’s all right, being a detective…as long as you’re not a policeman.”
“That’s it.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”
“The cops represent a lot of bad things to people like Darrow and my father. The government abusing citizens. Graft, corruption…”
“Aren’t there any honest cops?”
“Not in Chicago. Anyway…not Nate Heller.”
“What did you do, Nate?”
“I killed my father.”
Alarm widened her eyes. “What?”
“You know that gun you asked me about the other night? That automatic on the dresser?”
“Yes….”
“That’s what I used.”
“You’re scaring me, Nate….”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Look, I did something that disappointed my father. I told lies in court and took money to get a promotion, then I used the money trying to help him out…his store was in trouble. Shit.”
Her mouth was trembling, her eyes wide not with alarm but dismay. “He killed himself.”
I didn’t say anything.
“With…with your gun?”
I nodded.
“And you…and that’s the gun you carry? You still carry?”
I nodded again.
“But, why…?”
I shrugged. “I figure it’s the closest thing to a conscience I’ll ever have.”
She stroked my cheek; she looked like she was going to cry. “Oh, Nate…. Don’t do that to yourself….”
“It’s all right. It helps remind me not to do certain things. Nobody should carry a gun lightly. Mine’s just a little heavier than most people’s.”
She clutched me, held me in her arms like a baby she was comforting; but I was fine. I wasn’t crying or anything. I felt okay. Nate Heller didn’t cry in front of women. In private, deep into a sleepless night, awakened from a too-real dream of me finding my father slumped over that table again, well, that’s my goddamn business, isn’t it?
Taking my hand, she led me across the sand into the surf and we let the soothingly warm water wash up around our ankles, then let it up to our waists, and she dove in and began swimming out. I dove after her, cutting through water as comfy as a well-heated bath.
She swam freestyle with balletic grace; rich kids get plenty of practice swimming. But so do poor ones, at least those with access to Lake Michigan, and I knifed my way alongside her, catching up, and thirty feet out or so we stopped, treading water together, smiling, laughing, kissing. We were buffeted gently by the tide, and I was just about to say we’d better swim back in when something seemed to yank at our feet.
I lurched toward Isabel, clutching her around the midsection, as the undertow sucked us down under, way under, in a funnel of cold water, fourteen feet or more, flinging us around like rag dolls, but I held onto her, I wasn’t giving her up and the riptide tossed us around in our desperate embrace, until finally, after seven or eight seconds that seemed a lifetime, a wave thundering up from the ocean’s floor deposited us on the shore, and I dragged her onto the beach and onto dry sand, before that wave could withdraw and pull us back out to sea, and down again into the undertow.
We huddled on one towel, teeth chattering, hugging each other, breathing fast and deep; we stayed that way for what seemed a long time, watching an incredibly beautiful wave crash onto the shore, reminding us how close we’d just come to dying.
Then her mouth was on mine and she was clawing off her swimsuit as desperately as we’d fought the riptide, and I was out of my suit and on top and inside of her, the slippery velvet of her mingling with grating sand, driving myself into her, her knees lifted, accepting me with little groans that escalated into cries echoing off the ridges around us, heels of my hands digging wedges in the sand as I watched her closed eyes and her open mouth and the quivering globes of her heaving breasts as those puffy aureoles tightened and wrinkled with vein-pulsing passion, and then we were both sending cries careening off the canyon-like walls, drowning out the roar of the surf, before collapsing into each other’s arms, and sharing tiny kisses, murmuring vows of undying love that in a few moments we’d both regret.
She was the first to have regrets. She trotted back out into where the water came to her knees and she crouched there, to wash herself out, her fear of the tide overriden by another fear. When she trotted back, and got back into her suit, she sat on her towel and gathered her arms about her, trying to disappear into herself.
“I’m cold,” she said. “We should go.”
We both got quickly dressed, and this time she led the way up the rocky footpath to where our car was parked near the Blowhole overlook.
As we drove back, she said nothing for the longest time. She was staring into the night with an expression that wasn’t quite morose, more…afraid.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Her smile was forced and her glance at me was so momentary it hardly qualified. “Nothing.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just…nothing.”
“What, Isabel?”
“That’s the first time…you didn’t use something.”
“We were all caught up in it, baby. We damn near died out there. We got worked up. Who could blame us?”
“I’m not blaming anybody,” she said reproachfully.
“It won’t happen again. I’ll buy a bushel of Sheiks.”
“What if I get pregnant?”
“People try for years and don’t make babies. Don’t worry about it.”
“All it takes is once.”
We were gliding by fancy beach homes again; I pulled over in the mouth of a driveway. I left the motor running as I reached over and touched her hand.
“Hey. Nothing’s going to happen.”
She looked away. Pulled her hand away.
“You think I wouldn’t make an honest woman of you, if it came to that?”