Kearns’s coffee made Virginia’s taste like sludge. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For you, for Ray, most of all for Annie. I knew her pretty well and I liked her more than I knew her.”
Annie, thought Weir. Ray called her that, Mom did, I did. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Kearns reclined comfortably into his leather couch, glanced quickly at Jim, then sipped his coffee. “Let’s get a few things out in the open, okay? There’s talk around the station that Dennison put you up to this, because of Mackie Ruff’s statement about the cop car. He’s using you because you’re unofficial and deniable, and because Ann was your sister. Is that about right?”
Weir nodded. So much for deep cover. “It was more Ray’s doing. The idea was that I could waste my time checking out Ruff’s lead while everybody else does something more constructive.”
Kearns looked at him impassively. If he didn’t buy the version, he was gracious enough to hide it. “Jim, I’ll tell you what I did that night, or any other night. But don’t ask me about the men. I won’t talk about anyone but myself.”
“Agreed.”
The phone rang, a muted chirp. Kearns raised a finger to Jim, then produced a slim receiver from somewhere in the couch and put it to his ear.
Weir gazed out the windows toward Balboa while Kearns purred on quietly with a lot of “yeah, babes” and “love toos.” Kearns looked over the receiver at Jim with a smirk on his unblemished face and an actual twinkle in his eye. “Call me later, then,” he said, and hung up. “Sorry.”
“Sounded important.”
“Well, some more than others. You married?”
“Almost, once.”
“I was. Talk about human sacrifice. The day I walked out of that condo in El Toro and into this place alone — it was like getting out of the big house. There’s nothing wrong with a man living alone, as long as he can get himself taken care of once in a while. I don’t see how Ray and Annie did it.”
Annie. “You pretty tight with them?”
Kearns leaned forward and cupped his coffee in both hands. “Well, it was getting that way. Raymond thinks I’m... how should I say it... wasting myself. We were partners for six months and he kind of took me under his wing. I learned a lot from him. There was an assumption on Ray’s part that he had something I didn’t. I think the idea was to show me that two people could get along and be happy. So he and Ann and I did some things. Ray’s so domestic, and Ann was, too. But it was, well... it was interesting.”
“How so?”
“I think Ann was faking it.” Kearns looked at Weir over his coffee cup. Beneath the high, smooth forehead, his eyes were cool and clear. “Ray adored her, that was obvious. And Ann played along. But I sensed something false about her, something offered for show. I was the juvenile delinquent, remember.”
Jim heard the toilet flush from behind the hallway door, then the sounds of someone moving about. “What was it that didn’t ring true?”
“She looked like an animal in a cage. You could almost see her pacing. Sure, she’d tease Ray when he teased her, she’d squeeze his nose if he pinched her cheek, she’d let him kiss and make up after they bitched at each other for a few weird seconds. But she was always reacting. He was always reaching in for her and she was always backing up. When Annie and I were alone — like if Ray went to the head, or had to make a call — she’d be completely different. With Ray gone, she had slow hungry eyes, not hungry for me, I mean, but hungry for what was going on around her. You could see her unplug from Ray and plug into the world. She relaxed. It was like she was offstage. She’d sneak one of my cigarettes before he got back. They actually had a fight about that one night at Dillman’s when Ray caught her. Two people married for twenty years and they fight about a cigarette. She shocked me once. We were sitting in the Studio Café, the three of us, and Raymond goes back to the car because he forgot his wallet. I’m watching the waitress lean over to lay down a plate on another table. Short skirt, perfect ass. I know Annie’s watching, too. Then she says, ‘Frontward or backward if you had your way, Phil?’ She’s smiling at me like Ann could, real wicked, and real innocent at the same time. I said, ‘Just like you see it.’ And Ann says, ‘She would, too.’ So I asked her why and she says, ‘Because that way you could be anybody in the world.’ Two minutes later, Raymond’s back and we’re talking about the preschool again, or some shit. It was strange.”
The story collided with what Jim believed of his sister, but who can really know, he thought. Poon was the philanderer — untrustworthy, shameless, indiscriminate. Virginia, on the other hand, forsook these things, as avowed. Poon led secret lives. Virginia suffered them. Poon had actually encouraged duplicity in Jim... did he promote it to Ann, too? She was always daddy’s girl. Mother’s daughter, but daddy’s girl. Weir’s next question sounded strange to him. “Do you think Ann had it in her to see someone else?”
“I think she did, and I think she was. I worked the peninsula all of February, half of March. Couple of times, I was cruising past the Whale when she got off. She was heading down Balboa in her car, away from home.”
Where they found her car, thought Weir. “Still in uniform?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Did you ever tail her?”
“Not once. Not my business.”
“Did you tell Ray?”
“Never. That’s definitely not my business.”
“Have you told him since?”
“I haven’t seen him. He’s still in the hospital, isn’t he?”
“He got out yesterday. They made him sleep and eat a lot.”
The phone rang again and Kearns answered it. Chuckles, a whisper that Weir couldn’t make out, then some innuendo about what’s good for the goose being good for the gander. Kearns said noon would be fine and hung up. He looked at Jim, then out the window. “Anyway, I told you I’d talk about myself and here I am telling you about your own sister and your friend. I’ve said enough about that, I think.”
“Did Ray ever seem to think she was seeing someone?”
“Not that he let on to me. Ray was trusting. He was also pretty distracted, with school and all. You can go right to the source on that one.”
“I have,” said Jim. “And he didn’t.”
The door at the end of the small hallway suddenly opened and a woman came from the bedroom, wrapped in a bright green robe. She was slender and barefoot, fortyish, Weir thought, and her auburn hair hung around her face in tangles. She squinted as she came in, and headed for the coffeepot.
“Morning, beautiful,” said Phil. “This is Jim Weir. Jim, Carol Clark.”
The dispatcher, he thought. Cozy. He said good morning. She eyed him sleepily.
“Coffee’s almost gone,” she said.
“Make some more,” said Kearns.
“You need a bigger pot.”
“Get me one for Christmas.”
“Jerk,” she said sleepily, and not without tenderness, her face breaking into a yawn that she covered up with a small, smooth fist.
To Jim’s astonishment, the sound of a flushing toilet issued again from the bedroom, and a moment later another woman came traipsing down the hall and into the living room. She looked half Carol’s age, maybe younger. She was short and pale, with long strawberry blond hair that ended just above the shoulders of a white terry robe that had an Everlast label on the breast. “Bachelorette Number Two,” she mumbled. “Crystal.”