They searched for half an hour and made a great deal of noise. A couple of times they called out to each other as if something important had been discovered, but in the end they didn’t seem to find anything. They finished back at the top of the stairs again.
“Great, just fucking great,” Donald said.
“Maybe we can try his apartment tonight.”
“That’s one I’ll let you handle yourself. I’m really not up for seeing the bed where you let him turn you into a whore.”
They went down the stairs and across the hardwood floor and outside, dragging their griefs along behind them.
Car doors opened and slammed. A transmission whined in reverse. The sound of the motor was lost on the vanishing point of the rain.
The weird thing was, we didn’t move. Even long after it was all right to crawl out of the closet and begin to bring proper circulation back to our legs and buttocks, we sat there and just listened to the rain.
“We shouldn’t argue,” Donna said.
“Yeah. I know.”
“After hearing them, loving somebody sounds so hopeless.”
She came into my arms. We didn’t kiss. We just held each other. “It’s so fucking scary,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, “yeah it is.”
We never did kiss there, just held each other (I kept my eyes closed and smelled her hair and skin, the soft warmth of them) and then we went downstairs and got into our car and drove off.
As soon as I got back into town, I pulled up to an outdoor phone and called the American Security office. Just before they answered I started hacking suddenly.
“God, are you all right?” Donna asked.
I turned my back into the receiver and really blasted it down the phone lines.
“Bobby Lee?” I said between blasts.
“Are you all right, Dwyer?” Bobby Lee said.
I should tell you about her. She is an amply endowed lady who wears Merle Haggard T-shirts and a beehive hairdo you could hide microwaves inside. She buys pro wrestling magazines, and is also the receptionist where I work. She was also the receptionist at our previous place of employment, where she had another duty as well — mistress to the owner. When the man threw her out, she rediscovered the wisdom of the most fundamentalist Baptist church in the city and has since given up swearing, married men, and, alas, her tighter T-shirts. Her new man is Harold, a wholesale auto parts dealer. He’s also a born-again Republican who genuinely believes that Latin America is ours to do with as we see fit, and the bass in a barbershop quartet. Whether you choose to believe it or not, he’s also a gentle, intelligent, and warm man and I’m damn glad Bobby Lee found him, for both their sakes.
“Just picked up a cold,” I said. “I’d better talk to Kastle.”
But Bobby Lee, who still appreciated my getting her this job, said, “Let me handle it, Dwyer. I’m going to tell him you’re sick and need to be in bed for at least a day. Now you just tell Donna to fix you up some soup and head for bed. You understand me?”
I gave her another blast for good measure. “Well, if you say so.”
“Soup and bed, Dwyer, and no ifs, ands, or buts — all right?”
“All right,” I said between hacks.
After I hung up, Donna said, “Boy, I don’t know if I’ll ever believe anything you tell me after that performance.”
“I’m sure I’m going to need the day off tomorrow. We’re getting close to something.”
“Yes, but what?”
“I’m not sure. Now I’m going to call the answering service and then we’re going over to Reeves’s.”
“Why Reeves’s?”
“Because that’s who Anne and her husband had to be talking about.” I reminded her about seeing Anne come out of Reeves’s office. “Maybe we’ll turn something up. We can also ask the tenants some questions.” I searched in my pockets. Nothing. There was a clap of thunder. The rain came down even harder. I felt wet and cold. I wanted to be under a warm electric blanket. “You got two dimes?”
She looked in her purse. She had two dimes. I called my answering service. The people who had called me included my agent, my insurance man, a costume rental place I still owed twenty bucks, and a Mr. Tyrone, who said he’d meet me tonight at St. Philomena’s at 9:00 P.M. I thanked her and hung up.
“We’re going to see Wade tonight,” I said as we pulled away.
“How do you know?”
“He left word with my service.”
“You kidding? He’s crazy to leave his name.”
“He didn’t leave his name. He left the name of the man in the play. Mr. Tyrone. James Tyrone, Senior.”
It was early dusk now. Donna sounded hoarse and lost. “Everything gets so fucked up sometimes.”
We held hands for several blocks without talking. There was nothing to say.
13
About a mile from Reeves’s place, there was a Hardee’s. We had some dinner. We sat in the car and the food smells filled the air. The sky was bruised. Skies like that always made me think of Good Friday. The air must have been similar, the black clouds low and roiling, the air chill and ominous.
We had our usual argument — for some reason I didn’t want to defer — about Top Forty versus jazz and negotiated a settlement by turning the radio off altogether except for a newscast that said nothing new about Wade. Then we just sat back and watched teenagers haul their acne around in trucks with big wheels and cars with big mufflers. Finally, I put the car in gear and we went over to Reeves’s.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I wonder if we could talk a minute?”
“You pushing Watchtower?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then what do you want?”
I showed her my American Security ID. I showed it to her fast, because any kind of scrutiny would show it to be the ringer it was.
She was eighteen and looked like a farm girl who’d moved to the big city. Her flannel shirt and OshKosh jeans said that about her. So did the pop country station in the background.
“We’ve been retained to do some further investigation into the murder the other night,” I went on.
She looked at me as if she didn’t know what I was talking about, and there was every possibility that she didn’t. I started to explain further — seeing that I was getting nowhere — when Donna stepped in.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” The girl seemed a little surprised.
“We just need to ask you about the other night. Is that okay?”
The girl shrugged. She was pretty in a plain sort of way. “Sure. I guess.”
“Were you home that night?”
“Yes. Studying. I work downtown during the day and at night I go to the community college.”
“Did you hear anything?”
The girl shook her head. “No. The police asked me that already. I didn’t hear anything at all.”
“Did you see anybody?”
The girl grinned with embarrassment, as if she’d been stumped on a quiz show. “Not really, no. Just like I told the police.”
“Did Michael Reeves get a lot of visitors?”
“I guess. I mean, I didn’t pay all that much attention to him. He was actually kind of a snob. I mean, he gave you the impression that he was much better than you.”
Donna smiled. “Yeah, I’ve known a lot of guys like that.”
The girl beamed. Obviously she had a friend in Donna.
“How about earlier in the day? Did he have any visitors then?”
The girl started to automatically say no, but then she stopped. “I guess the police didn’t ask me about that.”
“Then you did see somebody?”
“Let me think.” She leaned her auburn head against the door frame. “I guess so. Yes, I did.”