“You done?” he asked, resting his tray on the back of a chair.
“Yes, sir. Be out ot here in a second,” one said.
The sir made him feel old. He didn’t know these three yet. It was spring, Glenvale was small but respected, and new interns were showing up every day. They finished and carried their dishes away, leaving a newspaper on the table.
“Hey, your paper,” he called after them.
“Keep it,” called a tall one with a wave of shining blond hair across his forehead. The women were going to love him, Adam thought.
He sat down, neatly arranged his plate, soda can, utensils, and scrap of paper napkin. Then he opened the paper, leafed through it back to front, and took a bite of hamburger that tasted better than it looked. The Red Sox were going nowhere as usual; the Mets were up there, but would probably be in the toilet by the middle of the season to his old man’s chagrin. He passed wedding announcements, recipes, ads for supermarket specials, and preseason bathing suit sales, saw the word Clairvoyant and stopped. It was a word that he’d never thought of in connection with her, but he liked it better than psychic, which reminded him of an overmade-up con-lady with hoop earrings and a storefront with Madame So-and-So, Reader and Adviser, in chipped gilt on the window.
Then he took in the whole headline. The Cop, the Clairvoyant, and the Wolfman, and started to read. Two lines into it, he knew Latovsky was the cop, he was the Wolfman, and she was the clairvoyant. He read it over and over, hoping for information that had escaped him last time through. Lunch hour ended, the cafeteria cleared out, and his beeper went off. He silenced it and kept reading while whitish flecks of grease congealed on the hamburger.
At last, like a kid saving the frosting until the cake is gone—the best for last—Adam looked at the byline.
“Hiya, Dave.” Riley tried to sound casual but his voice was tight because he knew Latovsky would be pissed off about the piece. He did not expect the rigid, pallid mask of utter rage he saw when Latovsky closed the door carefully, then turned to face him.
“Dave...” Riley’s voice shook.
Latovsky drew his ashen lips back from his teeth, raised the rolled-up copy of the Register in his hand, and pitched it at Riley. Riley’s hand flew up and deflected it. It fell on the desk and unrolled as Latovsky advanced on him.
Riley gave a loud, wordless yell for help, but it was lunch hour; the few left in the bullpen were hunched over terminals and the ceiling was acoustic tile, put up to muffle the clack of typewriters years ago.
The huge man coming at him like a moving wall could pound his head to mush, and no one would hear. Riley shoved his chair back, but the wall stopped it and he was trapped.
“Dave... c’mon...” he quavered.
Latovsky reached across the desk and grabbed a handful of Riley’s shirt; he hauled him out of the chair, Riley’s pelvis smacked the desk edge, and he yelped in pain. Latovsky drew back a fist the size of a baseball mitt, and Riley could already feel the dull, deafening, bone-crushing thud it would make when it smashed into his face.
“Dave... David... don’t hit me.” He tried not to whimper.
“Hit you!” Latovsky rasped. “I’m going to string your guts on the walls.”
The fist started to move and Riley shrieked, “Stop or I’ll print the names!”
“Names...” Latovsky hissed. The fist wavered.
“Names, you crazy prick. Her name, your name... and then I’ll sue your ass to perdition. You’ll be lucky to punch a clock in a toxic waste dump.”
“Names...” Latovsky sounded confused.
“Names, you maniac!”
Latovsky let him go as suddenly as he’d grabbed him. Riley was off-balance and he started to fall forward across the desk, with his feet slipping on the floor tile, his face aimed straight at the spindle for telephone messages. He threw himself backward with all his might, his feet caught on the tile, and he fell into his chair. It teetered, he flung himself forward, wrenching his back, and the chair righted itself with a crash that shook the office. No one came in to see what the commotion was.
“Names.” Latovsky backed away from the desk. “What about names?”
Riley grabbed the rolled-up paper and pitched it back at Latovsky. Latovsky caught it in midair, then backed up until he felt the visitors’ chair behind him and sank into it. He unrolled the paper and Riley watched his eyes race down the page.
“No names.” Latovsky choked. “I thought...”
“Bullshit! You saw it, jumped in the car, stuck the bubble on the roof, and raced here ninety miles an hour, working yourself into a frenzy. Think is exactly what you didn’t do.”
“But you know...”
“Of course. She’s Eve Tilden Leigh Klein. Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? And she lives in Bridgeton, Connecticut.”
“How?”
“From a waitress at a roadhouse there.”
“A waitress.”
“That’s right, Latovsky. A waitress.”
Riley’s voice still shook wildly and sweat was pouring off of him. He was a physical coward and always had been: a pantywaist who’d been the butt of every bully in the schoolyard. But Dave Latovsky had never been one of those bullies in spite of his immense size (six one at thirteen) and legendary temper... and suddenly Riley remembered Bunner from those days. He’d remembered the name; now he put a face to it. First a boy’s, then a man’s, and then he remembered that Latovsky and Bunner had been best buddies and shame at his callousness about Bunner’s winding up on page eight by Thursday brought tears to his eyes. He stared at the desk top, blinking until they were gone. Then he looked up; Latovsky held the paper loosely in one hand, his eyes were half closed, he looked on the verge of dozing.
“Dave, I’m sorry. Dave... talk to me...”
“You followed me,” Latovsky mumbled.
“No. You called in, Dillworthy wrote down where you’d be, then went to the can, and I read it on his pad.”
Latovsky let go of the paper and it slid off his thigh and fell to the floor. “What a bunch of shit-kicking hillbillies we are,” he groaned. The rage was gone; he looked exhausted, his huge body sagged in the chair.
“No, you’re not: I got lucky and hit paydirt. If you can call crap like that”—Riley nodded at the paper on the floor—“paydirt. The main thing is there’re no names, no harm done, except to you and me if we keep at each other like this.”
Latovsky looked past him without saying anything.
“Dave, can we do a little damage control here?” Riley tried not to sound like a terrified adolescent.
“Such as?”
“Such as talking this out over a beer and some food.”
Impossible to stay mad on a full belly, Riley’s father used to say.
Latovsky didn’t answer.
“C’mon, Dave.”
“A waitress,” Latovsky said wonderingly. “Things you can’t figure. A waitress.”
Riley and Latovsky ordered corned beef, which was perfectly sliced by a black man with bulging biceps and piled on sour rye.
The place was crowded, but they got one of the high-backed wooden booths after waiting a few minutes and slid into the hard seats covered with thin, worn vinyl pads.
They were both upset by the scene in the office, and they ate and drank off the first mugs of icy draft in silence. A busboy cleared the plates and the waitress brought them fresh mugs. Latovsky took a deep sip and said, “Okay, Riley. Talk to me.”
He no longer looked furious or exhausted; his eyes were cold and watchful.