“Not much to talk about,” Riley said. “I found the waitress in the local roadhouse—the only bar in town—and got her to talk by telling her she might help catch the Wolfman. What do you think of the moniker, by the way?”
Latovsky shrugged.
“It’s from the old movie,” Riley said. “You remember it?”
“Sure. Saw it on about its twelfth go-round when I was a kid.” Latovsky looked off into space. “I remember the end where they kill him and he turns back into a man... Lawrence Talbot. Crazy the things that come back to you. I remember he turns back into a man and it hits you he never meant it, that he was a... victim of circumstance... and then it was sadder than it was scary.” He focused on Riley again. “Okay, you went to Bridgeton, found a waitress in a roadhouse, fed her hooch, and she fed you a malicious fable about a local psychic and you believed her.”
“She believed it. I didn’t.”
“But you printed it.”
“If we only printed what we believed, all newspapers would be half a paragraph long. And the waitress wasn’t drunk or malicious, she liked Eve Klein, as much as you can like anyone you think can touch you and tell you you’re going to get hit by a car on April fourth, nineteen ninety-seven. She was certainly in awe of her and wanted to talk about her... about the whole family. Said lots of them had ‘the gift, ’ generations of them going back to land grants, or so the legend goes. Seems one male Tilden was even hung as a witch in sixteen something. In recent times, it drove the grandmother to suicide and the mother to locking herself up in that palace for twenty years. No one knows how it’ll end for the daughter, of course. So far, she’s found a set of emeralds that disappeared in the sixties and saved the waitress’s mother’s life.”
“How?” Latovsky leaned his arms on the table, all his attention on Riley, and Riley thought, He cares—he believes this horse hockey and cares.
He said, “Seems the waitress was serving the Seer and her best buddy one day and the Seer stopped in the middle of whatever she was saying, looked up at the waitress, and, in a sort of please-pass-rhe-catsup tone, says, ‘Your mother’s on the kitchen floor and can’t move.’ You know, Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home. The waitress went nuts as I gather anyone in that town of Gullible Gulch would, and she called the medics and raced home. Seems the old lady had a stroke and took a header, or took a header and had a stroke. Either way, they treated it before it turned her brain to cottage cheese, and the waitress thanks the Seer. I heard this ninety-three-octane bullshit and knew why you’d gone to Tilden House. Shocked the shit out of me,” he said quietly.
“Expected better of me, did you?” Latovsky asked.
“Sort of.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Riley.” Latovsky didn’t sound sorry. “Who else have you told about her?”
“No one.”
“Barb?”
“No one.”
Latovsky moved the mug around the table and looked at the whorls of moisture. “You know, we had a kind of pact, Jim. We never said it, but we both knew it. I never lied to you, you never went behind my back. Now you’ve broken it.” He looked up at Riley. “And I figure you owe me one. What do you figure?”
“Depends,” Riley said miserably.
“On the debt?”
Riley nodded.
“Your word never to tell anyone who or where she is.”
Riley smiled in relief. “Easy, Dave. I never would anyway.”
“I need your word on it, Jim.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Your spoken word,” Latovsky said softly. Riley wanted to come up with a fast, on-target line about how if he said it, he’d do it, a la Spenser, the honor-bound detective on late-night reruns. But he couldn’t think of one, wouldn’t use it if he could, because Latovsky’s friendship meant too much to him. Maybe because Latovsky would be squad captain when Meers retired in ’97. But maybe even more because Latovsky had never been one of the overgrown creeps who’d gotten an immense kick out of smashing little sissy-fairy Jimmy Riley in the face to see him blubber.
“Sure, Dave. On my mother’s grave if that’ll make you happy.”
“Your mother’s not dead, Riley.”
“No.”
“Then on your mother’s life,” Latovsky said, and Riley felt his skin prickle. He thought of boys pricking their fingers to sign in blood on three-hole, college-ruled looseleaf paper and almost laughed. But it wasn’t funny. Latovsky wanted to protect the woman from Connecticut whom he believed had the gift of gifts and, with a solemnity that surprised him, Riley raised his right hand and said, “Okay, Dave, on my mother’s life, I’ll never tell anyone who she is. Happy now?”
“Sure,” Latovsky stuck out his hand, they shook, and Latovsky started to slide out of the booth.
“Hey, where’re you going?”
Latovsky slid back. “We got more business?”
“You bet. What’d she tell you about the Wolfman?”
Latovsky laughed. “I thought you thought it was shit on toast.”
“I do.”
“Then what do you care what she told me?”
“I don’t, but I do,” Riley mumbled, and grinned shamefacedly. “Maybe I’m as gullible as you are... or something.”
“Or something.” Latovsky grinned. “Ah, Jimmy, I’d tell you, but I’m outta time. I’m supposed to pick up Jo and Jeanne’s kid Matt in half an hour. Meers ordered—and I mean ordered—me to go fishing to clear my head. And I’m taking the kids.”
As Latovsky headed up the narrow aisle to the door of Casey’s Good Time Saloon and Restaurant, Bill Lyons, the new head of personnel for the Register, stared at the phone ringing on his desk. He’d only been in Albany three weeks, hated it, and longed to be back in D.C., where no one above the janitor answered their own phones. But his rotten secretary, who had Fu Manchu nails and the dedication of a gnat, was late coming back from lunch. The phone started its third ring; on the fourth, the call would cycle back to the board, where they’d take a message, and he meant to let it do just that but Madge Myers, the comptroller, happened to pass his open door and look in. She looked at the ringing phone, then at him., and the look said, You limp-wristed D. C. slug. This is Real America where we get up at five, eat dinner at six, shovel our own snow, and answer our own damn phones.
He gave her a crooked grin and grabbed the phone. “William Lyons,” he said, and she passed by.
“Personnel?” asked a muffled, garbled voice. The caller had a rotten cold or the phone system (which belonged in the Smithsonian) was on the frit; again.
“This is personnel.”
“I’m looking for Jim Riley.”
“They can connect you directly.” Lyons reached for the hold button, trying to remember how to transfer a call.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” the caller said quickly.
“Oh?” A warning bell went off in Lyons’s head. He never gave credit information on the phone.
“What do you want?”
“I’m an old buddy of his.” The guy’s cold was really bad, must be something going around with the change of weather. The climate was abysmal, sixty one day, twenty the next.
“We were stringers together,” the caller said. “Palled around for a few years, then lost touch. You know how it is. I didn’t even know where he was until this morning when I blew into town and saw that little piece of his.”
“Oh?”
“Knew it was the Jimbo from the style. And I thought it’d be fun to surprise him, you know? Just show up at his house tonight with a bottle and kick around old times.”