"A farm girl who stands in front of people's houses and then sneaks up on their back porches, eh?"
"Well."
"Maybe does a little B amp;E on the side."
"What's B amp;E?"
"Breaking and entering."
"No, huh-uh, honest." She shivered. "Also, I'm getting real cold."
"You weren't cold standing across the street all that time?"
"I kept walking back and forth. I wasn't standing still like this."
"How does some hot chocolate sound?"
"What?" She couldn't be sure she heard him right. One minute he was holding a gun on her and talking about B amp;E, and the next minute he was asking her how chocolate sounded. "It sounds great."
"Well, I'll make you a cup if you promise me."
So, here it was; the old trade-off. You promise me you'll do all these nice moist things to my body, and I promise you I'll give you something. In this case a cup of hot chocolate. "Promise you what?"
"Promise me that you're not dangerous."
"That's all?"
"Of course. What else would I make you promise?"
"I guess I was just thinking of something else." He paused. "Why don't you put your hands above your head?"
"Like this?"
"Exactly."
"Just like on TV," Denise said.
"Just like on TV."
"And then what?"
"And then turn around very slowly and face me."
"Like this?"
"Like that."
So, she turned all the way around and faced him.
And then-shocked-she saw why his voice was so small. Here was a man sitting in a wheelchair, holding a gun in his hand.
Then he said about the goofiest thing he could say, considering the gun. "You like marshmallows in your hot chocolate?"
18
Culhane sometimes drank in a bar out by the airport. It was a place where the middle management level of advertising people went to sulk about how bad the top level of management was. A nautical motif lent the place the look of a fashionable steak house in the 1950s-a little long on cute, a little short on taste.
Brolan and Foster had come here many times back in the days when they'd been employees and not employers. But as soon as they departed Cummings and Associates, they were no longer viewed by the gang here as reliable. They'd sold out. They were bosses. It was never anything as formal as a dig or a punch in the mouth… but soon enough they detected the subtle but certain way the boys viewed them. And so they started hanging out where top-level management folks were supposed to go. It was a caste system rigid as India's, except nobody would admit it existed.
Brolan found Culhane's ten-year-old Mercedes sitting in the lot. Despite the recent cleansing snow, the car still needed a wash.
Brolan got out of his car and stood for a moment taking fresh night air into his lungs. Several times that night he'd thought of giving this all up and just calling the police and telling them what had happened. Maybe they'd believe him after all. The problem was that having a woman in his freezer did not increase his credibility as a witness.
Taking the fresh air deep, he thought again of Emma's portrait. He was beginning to wish he'd known the woman. Some intimate knowledge of her might help him as he tried to figure out who'd murdered her.
Feeling refreshed, even a little mean in the face of all the forces against him, Brolan went inside.
The nautical decor was covered up with holiday decor. An electric Santa Claus peered out from a buoy, and mistletoe hung from an anchor. This was from last year. The place smelled of cigarettes and whiskey.
Brolan had a straight scotch while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He didn't see Tim Culhane anywhere. After a time he went to the men's room. The big clean white room was empty, nobody at the urinals, no feet sticking out beneath the stall doors.
He went back and had a second scotch. This time he asked the bartender-who looked somewhat familiar-if he'd seen Tim Culhane.
The bartender winked at him. Brolan hated winks. "Think he got lucky."
"Oh?"
"Brought some real babe in here; then they took off."
"His car's still out in the lot. That's why I asked."
The bartender winked again. "Probably took her car. Is Tim boy lucky or what?"
Brolan decided to finish his drink slowly. Sometimes it felt good to stand alone at a bar and think about things. There was humanity all around you, reassuring in its way, and yet you weren't forced to be a part of it. He listened to an ancient Beades ballad, Lennon slightly too sweet for Brolan's taste but the song-"Norwegian Wood"-comforting in its smooth line of melody. At this moment even the corny decorations looked nice. He allowed himself the luxury of forgetting the spot he was in. He wanted to stay all night like this. There'd be other old songs on the jukebox. He could forget.
He felt the cold air on his back when the front door opened. A young couple came in. They had snow on their heads and shoulders. They looked enviably happy. The cold air reminded him again of what lay ahead. He no longer paid attention to the Beades; he downed his drink and started for the front door.
Earlier the snow had been light, scattered flurries. By this time it was a serious snow, making the Expressway slick, sticking to the contours of parked cars. Oddly enough it did not seem quite as cold.
He was just looking over Culhane's car-wondering where Culhane might have gone-when he saw headlights start down the steep incline to the parking lot. He thought nothing of them, just continued on to his own car.
After brushing off his front and back windows with his hand-the moist snow was heavy and white as paste-he slid in behind the wheel and closed the door. And it was then he got his first good glimpse of the car that had just pulled in.
It was a new silver Cougar. It was Kathleen's car.
Obviously the occupants hadn't seen him-neither Kathleen nor Culhane-and so they sat in her car talking and smoking cigarettes. Arguing, really. Or that's what it looked like anyway.
He sat there feeling stupid and embarrassed for all three of them. He should have known that eventually Kathleen would get around to the office heart throb.
In high school he'd dated a girl ('serious' dating for him; something less for her obviously), and one night, with no warning, he'd been walking along a river path and found her making out passionately with a senior boy. He'd never forgotten the sick and helpless feeling of that terrible moment. It had taken long and solitary weeks to recover, and even then he no longer trusted women the way he once had. He saw the power they had over him, and he knew he had to be wary.
At some point their argument ended, the one Kathleen and Culhane were having, because she leaned over and pulled him to her gently and kissed him.
Brolan could smell her perfume, taste her lipstick, feel the silk slip beneath her dress. He dropped his head, unable to watch anymore.
After a time he heard a car door open. He looked up. Culhane was leaving. He still leaned half-in, half-out of the Cougar. They were talking now. Intense talking. She took his hand and kissed it, something she'd done many times with Brolan. Even in the wan interior light she looked beautiful, far more beautiful than Brolan wanted her to.
Culhane went over to his car, got a scraper, and proceeded to clean the windows. She gave him a little beep and then left the parking lot. Brolan waited till she got to the top of the incline that lead to the access road and then the freeway. Then he went after her.
It took him twenty minutes to be sure where she was headed: home. A house in the North Oaks area. In the meantime they both slid around on the snow and ice. Brolan must have passed ten fender-benders. For all its vaunted winter Minneapolis went to hell during the season's first bad snow, as if its citizens had never seen the white stuff before and had no idea how to drive on it Miami couldn't have responded much worse. Unlike Miami, however, what made Minneapolis tolerable was that it was one of the world's great cities, big but not too big, modern but with traces of its prairie history and dignity still in evidence, proud but not disgustingly so a la San Francisco. Wherever he went on vacation, Brolan was always happy to be back in the loving arms of the Twin Cities.