"I love you, too," he said.
"Maybe we can get through this."
"I hope so."
She had come no closer to him. Nor he to her. "I'm really trying to work through some things. I-I'd like a little more time."
How could he say no, after she'd come to him with such an air of reconciliation?
"All right," he said.
She smiled. "Do I have to give you a dollar to come over here and kiss me?"
She didn't even have to give him fifty cents.
Half an hour later Brolan was in his office finishing up the last-minute duties of the day-looking at a stem letter from the Screen Actors Guild about the impending actors' strike; calling a client and doing a little hand-holding, the man concerned that his bills were running too high (in fact, per-hour profitability on this particular account had been sinking steadily) when the intercom buzzed.
"Yes?" he said.
"Line three."
"Any idea who it is?"
"Sorry. He wouldn't give a name."
Brolan thought a moment. "All right. Three?"
"Right."
She clicked off.
Brolan picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"You don't know who I am."
"All right."
"But I know who you are."
"I see."
"And more significantly, Mr. Brolan, I know what you've done." Brolan felt acid beginning to eat up his stomach and run up to his chest. Boiling.
"I really should hang up," Brolan said.
"But you won't."
"What makes you so sure?"
The male voice-muffled somehow-said, "Because you want to hear what I'm going to say next."
"And what will that be?"
"That you killed Emma."
"I don't know any Emma."
"Of course you do, Mr. Brolan. We're both grown-ups here. We shouldn't try childish games."
"Who is this?"
He reached in his desk drawer for some antacid tablets.
"I want you to meet me tonight, Mr. Brolan."
"Where?"
"At the end of this conversation, I'll give you the address."
"What if I don't show up?"
"Then I go to the police. Would you like that, Mr. Brolan?"
Brolan's throat was starting to constrict. "I'll have to think this over."
"Nine o'clock, Mr. Brolan."
And then the man gave him the address.
"Did you write that down, Mr. Brolan?"
It was the turn of the other man to pause. "We pay for our sins, don't we Mr. Brolan?"
With that he hung up.
Brolan had two more antacid tablets.
7
After work Brolan went home. The first thing he checked was the freezer. The woman was still there, blue-tinted and almost embryonic in the way she was hunched over. In the kitchen he had a cheese sandwich and a handful of potato chips and a Pepsi. High school repast He tried watching the local news, but after it was clear that there would be no mention of a missing woman, he went upstairs, changed into jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and a pair of Nikes. Restless, he decided to kill the remaining two hours before his appointment by driving around. He did that sometimes when nothing else made any emotional sense-just drove, one with wind and darkness, ego and identity vanished. He was probably never more relaxed than at these times.
The address he'd been given turned out to be near North Oaks, a relatively recent development that sat on the edge of the suburbs. By nine, snow flurries had started flecking his windshield, and the wind was so hard, it rocked his car. As he drove through a small business district with a strip mall and some other stores on the other side of the street, he thought of Christmas time, the way people bent into the furious wind, hurrying on their way home to warmth and shelter. How innocent his life of even twenty-four-hours before seemed now. No dead women in freezers.
He had no trouble finding the address. It was an impressive duplex designed to resemble town houses. No lights shone on either side. He rolled to the kerb and shut off the engine. Wind continued to rock the car. He had another forbidden cigarette, and as he sat there smoking it, he sensed eyes on him. Knowing eyes, watching.
Taking only a few drags before flicking the cigarette into the darkness, Brolan got out of the car and started up the walk. Actually few lights shone in the entire prosperous middle-class neighbourhood. He wondered if everybody there was elderly.
At the door he raised an ornate brass knocker twice and let it fall. It sounded metallic in the chilly silence.
No response.
This time he used his knuckles.
Still nothing.
The impression of eyes watching him remained. He wondered for the thousandth time since the phone call who the caller was and how he knew about the dead woman and why he thought Brolan had killed her.
His hand fell to the knob and turned it. He pushed inward and felt the door start to open.
This didn't make much sense. Who left their front doors unlocked this way? Images from a thousand TV cop shows came to him. He'd walk inside and find the man who'd called him sprawled dead on the floor. The killer had left the door open on his way out.
Frightened but curious, he pushed his way inside.
Darkness, a shadowy gloom illuminated only by ghostly streetlight through gauzy curtains. The shape of fashionable furniture dark against the greater darkness. He inched inward, keeping the door behind him ajar in case he needed to run. The floor was hardwood. Even walking on tiptoe he made a certain amount of noise.
Once his eyes began adjusting to the gloom, he could see more clearly. The living room looked like a popular-culture display in a museum. The walls carried several framed blow-ups of movie stars, from Gary Cooper to Marilyn Monroe. An enormous TV screen sat between two sections of built-in bookcases that were filled with VHS tapes, everything neatly filed and apparently alphabetized. He got close enough to read some of the tides on the books in the other cases. They ran from tides as serious as Andrew Sarris's surveys of American film to books about Saturday matinee serials.
He was just about to explore the other parts of the duplex when he heard a thrumming against the hardwood. At first he didn't recognize the sound. But within moments his mind registered: wheelchair.
And so it was: a wheelchair bearing a small, somewhat twisted man rolled into sight, there in the ghostly light from the street. The man wore a dark turtleneck and what appeared to be jeans. His hair was combed back in a trendy way.
Brolan would have felt pity for such a man except the man was making it very difficult for him to do so.
The man was pointing a. 45 at Brolan's chest.
"You're Mr. Brolan?"
"I've got to tell you. Guns scare the hell out of me. I wish you'd put that thing down."
"In due time, Mr. Brolan. I have some questions first." A kind of unreality came over Brolan. He was standing in a darkened room with a crippled man in a wheelchair. The man held a gun on him. Back home Brolan had found a dead woman in a freezer chest. Images burned and faded; all this was like a fever dream he prayed would end soon.
"I want to talk about Emma," the man said.
"I don't know any Emma."
"She was hired to walk about and bump you in a certain bar the other night."
"Hired? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Hired," the man said. Then he added, "Why did you kill her?"
Carefully Brolan put a hand to his head. Despite the chilly night and despite the fact that the duplex was not exactly warm, Brolan's head was wet with sweat. As were his back and his shorts. "Do me a favour."
"And what would that be?"
"Don't say that anymore. That I killed her, I mean. I don't know who you are, and I don't know who she was, but I didn't kill her."
"But she did bump into you the night before last?"
"Yes."
"And then what happened?"