“When he was six he was playing in a train yard. Just the thing mothers spend years telling their children not to do. Anyway, he tripped and a train came along and—” Her bare shoulders shuddered. Inwardly I shuddered a bit, too, imagining what it must have been like. The noise of the train. His screams. The pain. “Anyway, that’s what happened to his foot.”
“Do you know if he knows a pair of male twins?”
“Are you joking?”
“No.”
“Male twins?”
“Yes.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“What did he think of Curtis?”
“If I told you, I’d be incriminating him.”
“I’d appreciate it if you just told me the truth.”
“He thought he was a vain, shallow showboat. Robert has a real respect for the news — that’s why he’s kept Dev Robards on the payroll despite Dev’s ratings. David was the antithesis of what Robert respects.” She looked out the window. The traffic noise grew louder briefly, then faded again. “I’m getting kind of tired.”
I stood up. Went over to her. Took her in my arms. But she didn’t want to kiss me. Was stiff beneath my hands. “I’m sorry for ruining our evening,” I said.
“I thought it was me.”
“No, it was me. With my questions.”
“I love him. I can’t help it.”
“I know.”
“I wish I could break free... I’ll be forty-seven this July.”
“That isn’t so old.”
“It isn’t so young, either.”
There was more traffic. She let herself drift against me; I felt her tender skin and put my face into her hair and closed my eyes. I wanted her again in a sleepy way, wanted to feel good for a moment or two as I had there in our darkness.
When I opened my eyes and looked down to the street and saw it — I thought I must be imagining it. But it shone in the street, parked as discreetly as possible between two infinitely lesser examples of the automobile. The black XKE.
“God,” I said.
“What is it?”
I went to the bed. Began tugging on my clothes. “I have to go.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you moving so fast?”
“Look downstairs. There’s a black XKE.”
She went over and looked. “What’re you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. And I wasn’t.
16
A low fog swam through the chilled air, making the shapes of houses indistinct.
I used the rear exit of Kelly’s apartment house, taking the steps quickly. In back was a yard with clotheslines that I had to stoop under in the murk. The alley was gravel. The end of the block was lost in the fog. I had the impression of being in — a tunnel that had no end.
I reached the beginning of Kelly’s block and looked as far up the street as I could. From what I could see, he was still parked there across from her place. Watching. Waiting. I wasn’t sure for what.
I was both angry and afraid. Dave Curtis’s murder was baffling; about all I was sure of was that the Tomlin kid wasn’t guilty. Several people whom Edelman wasn’t even investigating seemed to have reasonably good motives for having killed the anchorman. And there was the man in the black XKE. Whoever he was. Whatever he wanted.
I got on his side of the street behind a tree and began to carefully make my way up the block. As I got closer I started to recognize the indistinct sounds of a car radio. His. The street was deserted enough, the fog thick enough, the blooming spring vegetation wild enough to make me feel almost lost in a bayou. My heart worked harder than it should have because I was frightened. Every former cop has stories of a buddy who approached the wrong car on the wrong night and got his face blown away. You get leery as you get older. I had no idea what I’d find when I got there.
The XKE was running. Its powerful but overly sensitive engine thrummed in the gloom. I was close enough to see the faint green glow of the dashboard through the rear window. I picked up a large rock that would give my punch the effect of a blackjack.
I got down off the curb doing my duck squat- and paused. I could see the shape of his head. Staring straight ahead. Smoking a cigarette. Fog rolled around his car like currents on the bottom of the ocean. The night kept the sound of his car radio indistinct. For a moment I had the sense that this was all a nightmare. It had that quality. But I was sweating and I had to go to the bathroom and I was scared in an oddly exhilarating way. It was real. I hefted the rock again and got ready to move.
The sonofabitch was a mastermind.
I was no more than two feet from his rear bumper when the XKE door flew open and a big bald guy wearing a fashionable leather topcoat pulled six feet five of himself to the pavement and put a Magnum on range with the middle of my forehead.
“You ain’t exactly quiet, you stupid bastard,” he said.
He came over. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Fog swirled around him like smoke. In the streetlight I couldn’t quite make out his features, just that for all his flashy style they were brutal.
“I want the tapes,” he said.
The dampness wasn’t doing much for my voice. Neither was his Magnum. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He crossed to me in no more than three steps, picked me up with impressive ease and slammed me against the back of his XKE.
“I want the tapes, asshole, and I want them now.”
All I could think of were the videotapes that Kelly Ford had in her office, the ones of Curtis interviewing the kid. But I had the feeling that these weren’t the tapes the man was after. “I don’t have them.”
“Then you know who’s got them?”
“I don’t even know what tapes you’re talking about.”
“Motherfucker.” He slammed me against the car again, and this time he put the cold hard end of the piece just above my nose. “She got it?”
“Who?”
He nodded across the street.
I had to take the chance. He had me pinned down with his left hand while his right held the Magnum. I took the only chance I had. With my left hand I dug my fingers deep enough into his left eye to feel it start to swim free of its socket. With my right hand I slammed the barrel of the Magnum away from my head.
It exploded so loudly that I lost all hearing as I dove for the fog and darkness behind the big elm where I’d been hiding.
The Magnum had blown out his back window. You could hear the neighborhood come alive, see the lights behind the gloom, sense the terror.
“You motherfucker,” he said, and started after me.
He wasn’t worth a damn as a tracker. Not any more than I had been sneaking up on him. He stepped through bushes and made enough noise to scare away all the animals in a seven-mile radius. He tripped on the sidewalk and swore. And his leather coat reminded me of the squeaking of bedsprings in a motel for adulterers.
I kept moving backward toward the point where, somewhere in the fog, my car was waiting. I already had the keys in my hand. Ready.
We probably heard the siren at the same time. Somewhere in the night it made its way toward us, probably acompanied by some very pissed-off police officers. This was a respectable middle-class neighborhood. You didn’t go around firing Magnums in it.
“Shit,” he said.
I was behind a bush. Watching him.
He stamped a foot like a peeved little boy, jammed the big gun into his coat and then started running back to his car. He made an impressive spectacle running like that. Put you in mind of a deft-footed fullback.
I felt my way through the scents of grass and apple blossoms and coldness and found my car.
He hit the street about five yards ahead of me, his lights slashing the gloom, his tires peeling out stunt-man style on the pavement.