Pretty soon the receptionist replaced the handset on his switchboard unit and said to me in his bored voice, “Mr. Rivera is sorry, he can’t see you today. He’s very busy.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, sir. Would you care to make an appointment?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I stood up and headed not for the elevator but for the door that led into the rabbit warren.
The receptionist was caught off guard; visitors were not supposed to act in such aggressive fashion. He gawped at me and said, “Wait a minute, sir, you can’t—”
I said, “Yes, I can,” and opened the door and went on through. I’d been in the warren enough times over the years; I knew where Rivera’s cubicle was and how to get there through the maze. His double-size glass office had a door, which told you right away how important he was in GWI’s scheme of things. I yanked it open, walked inside, and banged it shut behind me.
“I guess you’re seeing me after all,” I said.
He was probably surprised, but he didn’t show it; he seldom showed much of what was going on inside his head, which made him a good poker player and a bad risk for personal intimacy. He peered up at me from behind his desk, his tubby little body so dwarfed by it that he looked like a doe-eyed, mop-headed kid playing executive. Women, for some insane reason, found him cute and cuddly and either wanted to mother him or screw his brains out; in all the years I’d known him, he had never lacked for female companionship. There had been a time, pre-Kerry, when I’d been a touch jealous of the man. Now his success with women and the careless way he treated his conquests were just two more reasons to dislike him.
He said, “What do you think—” and then broke off because the door opened and the receptionist poked his head inside. “I’m sorry Mr. Rivera he just barged in do you want me to call security?” all in a breathless rush. Barney said no, it was all right, he’d handle it, and the kid retreated and closed the door so softly I didn’t even hear it click.
Rivera reached out to the dish on his desk and popped a peppermint before he finished what he’d started to say to me. “What do you think this macho act is going to buy you?”
“Some cleared air. I don’t like being given the runaround.”
“And I don’t like former friends showing up unannounced.”
“Former friends. Right. Just like that, huh?”
“You treated Eberhardt like shit,” he said.
“Oh, sure. And he treated me like royalty?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Four years and not a word from him, and then he calls up out of the blue, no explanation, and I’m supposed to drop everything and rush to his aid?”
“You could’ve talked to him, at least.”
“I was two hundred and fifty miles away, for Christ’s sake, and jammed up in that Sentinels mess. I had no idea he was in trouble, any kind of trouble. Nobody told me. Not Bobbie Jean and sure as hell not you.”
“I didn’t know it was as bad as it was until two weeks ago,” Rivera said, “right before I phoned your office the first time. You didn’t bother to get back to me and you were still in town then. Your secretary said so.”
“Tamara’s my assistant, not my secretary. And you told her it was personal and nothing urgent.”
“The hell I did. Personal, yes, but I didn’t say it wasn’t urgent.”
“Did you say it was?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, maybe she misunderstood. Or maybe she took it for granted because you didn’t tell her otherwise.”
“Passing the buck?” he said snottily.
“No!”
“Either way, you didn’t return the call. My second one, either.”
“I was up in Creekside by then and you still didn’t tell Tamara what you were calling about.”
“It wasn’t her business. I told her personal. She told you personal, didn’t she?” When I didn’t answer, he reached for another peppermint. Outwardly he seemed his usual calm, unruffled self, but there was a kind of savagery in the way he was looking at me — a hint of the cruel streak that ran deep and dark in him. “You used to be somebody who returned personal calls right away.”
“I used to have friends named Eberhardt and Rivera, too. Friends who gave as well as took.” I moved forward and leaned on a corner of his desk with both hands, more to keep him from seeing that the hands weren’t quite steady than for any other reason. “I couldn’t have saved him, can’t you see that? You couldn’t stop him from killing himself, Bobbie Jean couldn’t, how was I supposed to after four years.”
“That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is, you didn’t even try.”
“This is crazy, this whole conversation. We’re like a couple of guys trying to shoot each other down through a bulletproof glass wall.”
“You’re the one who came busting in here.”
“Bang. Now it’s my turn again, right?” I leaned closer, my body bowed across his desk and my face only about a foot from his. He didn’t pull back; whatever else he was, he wasn’t a man who could be intimidated. “No more bullshit, Barney. What happened two weeks ago with you and Eberhardt?”
It was a few tense beats before he answered. His jaws moved, crunching on the peppermint; his breath smelled like a scratch-and-sniff add for Brach’s. He swallowed before he said, “I called him at his office to offer him a claims investigation. Eleven o’clock in the morning. He was so drunk I could barely understand him.”
“What day was that?”
“Same day as my first call to you.”
“Monday?”
“You know it was. Monday morning.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Come on, man. You must’ve known he was drinking heavily before that. You didn’t call me just because he was drunk at 11 A.M.”
“He mumbled something about being ready to throw in the towel. I thought he meant quit the detective racket, but when I asked him he said no, he might as well check out for good. I figured it was the booze talking — I tried to kid him out of it. He wouldn’t kid. He said he was afraid he’d go too far, and even if he didn’t, it was too late for him to come back.”
“Go too far? Meaning what?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a coherent answer out of him. He mumbled some more and then hung up. Concerned me enough to want to talk to you about it, get your input. My mistake.”
“Put the frigging needle away, Barney. Second time you called was Wednesday. Follow-up, or had you talked to him again?”
“Both. He called me Tuesday afternoon.”
“Drunk or sober?”
“Sober. Mostly, anyway. Wanted to apologize, he said. Hadn’t meant to lay all his crap on me but he was at the end of his rope. Didn’t see much point in trying to hang on anymore. I asked him flat out if he was seriously thinking about doing away with himself. Took him a while to answer. Then he said, ‘Don’t be surprised if you hear I ate my gun.’ ”
“Those exact words?”
“That’s right. And he hung up again before I could say anything else.”
“What’d you do about it besides call my office again?”
“What you didn’t do,” he said. “Kept trying to get in touch with him. He wasn’t at his office any of the times I phoned, or home when I called there or when I drove out Friday night after work. I left messages on his machine and with Bobbie Jean, but like you, he never got back to me.”