The press loves to pick up on ascriptions like "serial-murder expert," however imprecise they might be, and Jack Eichord had found himself to be so elected by the media mavens. They talked about his genius for crime solving and his Sherlockian brain, and like his colleagues who knew better, he laughed at the bullshit. He was lucky. He had a gift. Something. He got hunches. Whatever. The thing he had now. He thought of it as his shit detector. It was purring away and he didn't know why.
The one called Frank Spain had the same kind of instinct or intuition, only in reverse. Like two ships passing in the night, each shrugged off the cold feeling inside, but Spain had more difficulty getting the smell of trouble out of his nose. It dogged him as he left the concourse and climbed the stairs to find his seat in first class.
It was the troubling smell of a whore. Just professional paranoia, he thought, and the tired, heavy-lidded man with the LA/ST L ticket under the name Frank Spain closed his eyes and snuggled down as best he could into the seat.
He deplaned at Lambert Field at 12:21, and he had not adjusted his wrist-watch to Coast time because he hated the way the long trip out was only a couple of hours long if you did, and then it just added to the jet lag when you came home. His car was still there in the lot. That was something, anyway. The feeling hadn't left him. It was building. Like he'd forgotten something. A little detail left to come and kick his butt later. In his business that was not good. The paranoia was mounting.
Early afternoon he was on the top of the hill next to their home in Ladue, and he could see Buddy Blackburn's car in their drive, but he didn't think anything about it. Pat was always calling or writing the insurance companies about something or other. He tried to show her how it was all a big humbug, but she insisted that they have insurance out the kazoo, and mostly for Tiff's sake he let her do her thing.
He'd stopped at the top of the hill to rearrange some things in the attache case on the seat next to him and he saw the door of the house open and Buddy Blackburn come out. Just for a second, tired as he was from the trip, he thought he'd seen Buddy kiss Pat goodbye, which made no fucking sense at all. He shook it off and rubbed his eyes. Christ, he thought. Pat didn't even kiss him good-bye. Much less Buddy. Much less their insurance man, whom she could barely stand to talk to and . . . Oh oh, that's when he had the little zing and it dawned on him that he was back a day earlier than he'd told her.
Buddy was only three or four years younger than Spain but he wore his hair like a guitarist in a rock band, and Spain knew he had at least a couple of semi-platonic, flirting relationships with the younger married women among his clientele — but Pat? No fucking way.
He waited until the red sports car was out of sight and he shot down off the hill and into the drive, sprinting out of the car and into the house, fully intending to confront his wife in the bedroom, but there was no need. She was standing at the sink in the kitchen, looking out the window at nothing, standing there in high heels and a very sexy teddy he'd never seen before and wearing nothing else, her back to him, turning slowly as he burst in the door catching her in her fuck clothes in the early afternoon.
"I believe the phrase is flagrante delicto," he said coolly.
"You weren't supposed to be back today," she said, showing what he thought was an exceedingly good grasp of the obvious.
"Sorry about that." He was not having to fight to remain calm. That's what was surprising him. He was so calm even as he sensed everything crumbling about him. His life disintegrating, crashing down around his ankles. "I could go out and come back tomorrow if you think it'd help."
"Funny," she sighed, somewhat impatiently, and turned away from him.
"Oh. Sorry if my material isn't up to snuff. I could work on it and —"
"I don't want to fight," it sounded like she said, her back still to him. He hadn't even looked closely at his wife for a month or so. Oddly, she looked quite sexy to him at this moment. He said it before he thought.
"I don't suppose I could have sloppy seconds?"
She just sort of let her head move to one side and he saw her breathe deeply under the flimsy teddy, and with considerable grace she walked out of the kitchen.
"You owe me an explanation, bitch. Why, of all people. Buddy BLACKBURN?" he said to her moving back.
She said nothing and he followed her, catching an arm and spinning her around, still having no desire to slap her, which surprised both of them.
"Why Buddy Blackburn?"
"You'd never understand."
"It can't be because we didn't have great sex together."
"See what I mean?" She turned and he grabbed her again.
"Will you talk to me, goddamn you. Why?"
"Why? You must be kidding."
"It's always been good for us —" He was shaking his head.
"Sure," she said with heavy irony, at which she was past master.
"You never said it was bad — you acted like you enjoyed it between us. We had a great sex life."
"You call a two-minute quickie twice a month a SEX LIFE?" She laughed.
"That isn't fair."
"What do you mean, it isn't fair?"
"It isn't fair to me to say our sex life consisted of a two-minute quick —"
"See! It's a debate now. Okay, you win. Three minutes four times a month, eight minutes nine times a month. You win. It was great."
"Why BUDDY BLACKBURN?"
"You never cared if I was satisfied."
"What?" he asked, incredulously.
"You just wanted a fast wham-bam, and good night. When's the last time you did anything romantic or acted like you cared about me. Never. That's the last time. You don't care about anything or anybody except yourself."
"That's not true. Pat. How can you —"
"Why Buddy? It could have been anybody. A man. Not a wimp. You're not the kind of man who needs a woman. You should have been a . . . You should be gay or something. You don't even like it."
"You're crazy," he said. But the preposterousness of the situation, the ridiculousness of being inserted into the center of such a domestic cliche, had begun to numb him out. "You're nuts," he told her without an ounce of conviction.
"I want out."
"At least give us another chance together. I can change. I want to —"
"See what I mean? A WIMP! Why don't you slap me around. Scream. Break things. You want me to stay. You catch me unfaithful and you want another chance. Chance to what? To be more of a wimp? You want to watch me and Buddy from the closet, is that it?" She moved right in front of him, looking up at his reddened face, daring him to lash out at her. "You want me to tell you what it was like with Buddy? HUH? Will that get you off?"
"Pat. Come on." He could barely speak.
"You want to know if his is bigger than yours? It is, you know. A lot bigger. And he's a lot better. Better in the sack, Mr. Hotshot. How's that grab you? Is that what you want to hear? You want another chance at it — uh? Jesus! You make me sick." She stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door, indignant, as always the offended party, he thought.
Nice welcome back. He tried to swallow. There was a certain perverse gratification in discovering her infidelity, since it confirmed his secret fears of wimp-hood rather incontrovertibly. But the comfort was cold and fleeting.
He was dashed. That's the word. Dashed by it. And confused by the way his body chemistry had suddenly become independent of his brain in the face of the confrontation. Instantly benumbed, a growing hard-on had stiffened in counterpoint to the anesthesia of the dialogue. Undeniably, finding her desirable to another man had produced the curious effect of making him want his wife the way he hadn't in years. God, he was some kind of wimp.