‘See anything?’ Alex had whispered.
Darn. Nick thought Alex had been asleep. He quickly stuffed a blanket down over his hard little weenie. He took a last look, thinking about the way boobs changed shapes when women moved around, leaned over, stretched up. His brother had called him a ‘boob man’ last week. Well, he guessed he was, if that’s what interested him, and he wore that knowledge like a badge of honor. A man, not a boy.
He pulled the drapes closed in front of the telescope. He’d keep the crying a secret between just him and her. ‘Naw,’ he had told Alex, ‘I think she went to sleep.’
David Freeman, Nick, Alex and their father walked through the living room, Mr Strauss saying he was sorry about his sons’ language, referring to Nick calling Alex a jerkoff. Their mother wasn’t very strict with them and the language thing was impossible to correct in the six weeks or so he had them every year. You had to pick your fights.
Freeman saw the telescope as soon as he entered the room, and walked over to it. ‘This is pretty cool,’ he said. ‘This looks like a real telescope.’
‘It is a real telescope,’ Alex said.
Freeman put his eye to the glass. ‘What can you see through it?’ What he was looking at, what it had been set on, was the turret across the street, the room beyond. He saw May at her kitchen table, drinking something, so close he could see the steam rising off her cup.
There was a knack to putting a little twinkle in your eye, to sounding conspiratorial and friendly. ‘You ever spy on people?’
Alex answered quickly, too quickly. ‘No way.’
‘How about you, Nick?’
Nick pulled himself further behind his father’s robe. Big Nick broke in. ‘What are you getting at here?’
‘Take a look.’
Freeman moved aside and Big Nick came over and lowered his eye to the eyepiece. He stayed that way a minute.
‘That’s her,’ Freeman said. ‘My client.’
Big Nick was angry, turning on his boys. ‘You guys have got to -’
‘Mr Strauss, please. Just a minute.’ The stentorian voice stopped everything. The boys stood transfixed. Freeman muted it, sat on the bed, and gave them Gentle and Soothing. ‘You guys are not in trouble, no matter what. I guarantee it.’
He explained the situation then, slowly, calmly, no judgments. He told them what their father had said about the Saturday they’d first come here, that they’d only changed and had lunch and then gone out for the day. He just wanted to know if that was all they’d done, and were they sure? He didn’t want to lead them.
The two boys looked at each other. ‘I think so,’ Nick said.
‘Alex?’
His eyes went back to his brother, to his father. ‘It’s all right, Alex, just tell the truth.’
‘Well, you know, the telescope was up, so I started looking around a little, just looking at things.’
‘And did you see anything? Anything interesting or unusual, maybe across the street there?’
Alex looked at Nick, shrugged, and gave it up. ‘She was naked. She was walking around naked.’
‘When was that, Alex?’
‘Just before we had to go, when Dad called us, just before lunchtime.’
‘And you’re sure it was that day, the very first day you were here, the Saturday?’
The boys checked each other again. Both of them nodded and said yeah, it was.
33
Hardy picked up the phone on the kitchen wall on the third ring. He’d gotten out of his warm bed from deep sleep.
‘Dismas, this is Andy Fowler. Did I wake you up?’ The kitchen clock said 10:45.
‘That’s okay, Andy.’
‘I just got your message. What’s so urgent?’
Hardy was coming out of his fog but he wasn’t yet awake enough to beat around the bush. ‘May Shinn.’
A pause. ‘Since you’re on the case, Diz, I don’t think we should discuss it.’ As bluffs went, Hardy thought, except for the pause it wasn’t too bad.
‘I think we have to, Andy. I think you know what I’m talking about.’
In the silence Hardy thought he could hear Fowler’s breathing get heavier. Then he said, ‘Where can I meet you?’
They met at a fern bar on Fillmore, half a mile from Andy Fowler’s house on Clay near Embassy Row. When it was not happy hour it was the local watering hole for doctors and nurses at the local medical center. It wasn’t Hardy’s type of bar but he wasn’t here for the ambience.
He was wearing his prelawyer clothes – an old corduroy sports jacket over a misshapen white fisherman’s sweater, jeans, hiking boots – and felt better for it. At a place like this, at this time of night, those clothes put out the message that he wasn’t a yuppie looking to get laid with the accepted props of elegant threads and the attitude that went with them.
The music was some New Age stuff that was supposed to make you believe real people played it – bass pops, synthesized everything, music that eliminated the strain of having to listen to words or follow a melody. It was just There, like the ubiquitous television blaring in the corner, like the National Enquirer at checkout stands, like McDonald’s.
Surprised that the judge hadn’t arrived yet, he pulled up a stool at the corner of the bar in the back. He ordered a Guinness, which they didn’t have on tap, so he went with Anchor porter, an excellent second choice.
Maybe it was being awakened from a good sleep, but he realized he was in a foul humor.
Andy Fowler’s appearance didn’t pick him up any. The judge hadn’t changed out of his tuxedo. He had his trim body, his thick hair, his guileless smile so different from Hardy’s weathered one.
These good-looking older guys – who were they trying to kid? Suddenly he saw a different man than the Andy Fowler he’d known – vainer and shallower, the august presence and appearance not so much a reflection of an enviable and confident character as a costume that concealed the insecure man within.
Coming back through the bar, the judge checked himself in the mirror. A man who checked his hair in a burning building had his priorities all wrong.
Hardy gave a small wave, and Andy brought up the stool next to him, ordering an Anejo rum in a heated snifter. There was a moment of cheerful greeting, ritual for them both, but it subsided quickly. Hardy reached into his pocket, took out the paperweight and laid it on the bar between them. He gave it a little spin.
There it was – Andy’s Fowler’s whole world in an orb of jade. There was no more avoiding it. ‘May Shinn gave this to you, didn’t she?’
Fowler had his hands cupped around the amber liquid. There was no point in denial anymore. ‘How’d you find out?’
‘Phone records.’ He told him how he’d made the discovery, put the jade jewelry – his paperweight, Nash’s ring – together. ‘Anyway, there were a dozen calls to your number, maybe more.’
‘That many?’ Did he seem pleased?
‘What’s happening here, Andy? You can’t be on this case.’
‘It’s going to come out now, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t see how it can’t.’
‘Who else knows but you?’
Hardy sipped his porter. It wasn’t the direction he’d expected. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean who’s put it together, Diz?’ He brought his hand down on the bar, a gavel of flesh. ‘Goddamn it, what do you think I mean? Who else knows about this?’
Hardy stared into the space between them. They were the first harsh words the judge had ever directed at him. Immediately Fowler put his hand over Hardy’s. ‘I’m sorry, Diz. I didn’t mean that.’