Veronica ordered veal. I asked for the rib eye. There are times when nothing will do but meat.
She was at it again. Talking. I caught about every third word. Arson. Deadlines. Wu Chiang. I just wanted her to tie that hair back up and pull it loose again. To uncross her legs and recross them.
“You ever get lonely, Mulligan?”
That caught me by surprise. I felt myself about to stutter, then remembered what a cool dude I’m supposed to be. “How could I get lonely with you, Gloria, and Polecki all wanting a piece of me?”
She didn’t smile like I thought she would. Instead, she lowered her eyes and ran a slow finger along the rim of her wine glass.
“We kiss, we roll around in your bed, we sleep. What you want from me now is something you can get from anybody.”
“No way,” I said. “From Gloria, sure, but Polecki’s a lousy lay.”
“Is everything a joke to you?”
“Most things. Not everything.”
I was quiet for a moment, not sure what to say or how to say it.
“You’ve figured me out,” I said. “You know the shit I slog through every fucking day, how I stink of it, and you still think I’m good enough to be with you.”
As she raised her eyes to stare at me, Chad or Corey materialized, working me for a tip. No, I don’t want any more water. No, we haven’t finished our drinks. Keep your cracked pepper to yourself. Go the fuck away.
We ate in silence. It was a cozy silence, and it scared me a little. I’d said too much. Or not enough. What exactly had I said? Ah, yes. Shit, and stink, and fucking—the three magic words of romance.
“Mulligan?”
Silence broken.
“You get me too. And I’ve been told that I’m a hard woman to love.”
Love? Jesus! Who’d said anything about love?
I sawed at my rib-eye, stalling for time. Then she tossed that gorgeous mane, and my breath caught on something.
When Chad or Corey showed up with the check, Veronica snatched it, handed him her AMEX card, and headed for the ladies’ room. Love? Who said anything about love? I was still pondering that when I felt her hands on my shoulders and her breath in my ear.
I followed her out of the restaurant, and we strolled arm in arm to her car. We were through the door to my place and out of our clothes before I could decide whether the rush of blood to all the right places was lust or something more.
Heavy necking, Mulligan at full mast, then a cold shower. I knew the routine. But when I stretched out on the bed, her hands were insistent. So was her mouth. Then she moved to place me inside of her.
An interesting development, to say the least. As the sportscasters say, the crowd went wild.
What had I been doing with Dorcas those two wasted years? Whatever it was, it bore no relation to this. We tangled and writhed, slipped and adjusted, bumped noses and giggled, rode and shivered. And when it was finally over we—gulp—cuddled. Spent and sweaty, I hoped that I had been at least mildly entertaining. This lady was a keeper.
The lady lifted her head from my chest and smiled.
“That test I asked you to get?”
“Yeah?”
“You passed.”
So she had been just stalling for time. Be nice if she’d found a way that didn’t involve me getting stabbed with a needle, but I had to admit it had worked. I suppressed a pinpoint of irritation. What exactly had been the point of waiting?
“So,” she said, “are you all tuckered out, or shall we try that again?”
Love? Who said anything about love?
34
I awoke to the familiar sound of Angela Anselmo shrieking at her kids. Something about paste, confetti, and “How could you do that to poor little Toodles?”
I swung my feet to the floor and gazed back at Veronica in the light filtering through the shade. Her breathing was deep and regular. Resisting the urge to bury my face in the tangle of jet hair on the pillow, I tiptoed to the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and lathered up. Suddenly there was a sleepy, naked court reporter beside me in the cramped stall.
“Who’s Toodles?” she asked. Looking at the rivulets of hot water streaming over her skin, I had other questions, but I answered the one she asked.
“The family cat.”
I pulled her into my arms, and we kissed under the spray. She scrubbed my back, and I took my sweet time with hers. I would have taken all day if she hadn’t reminded me that our jobs were waiting. There’s nothing better than a wet woman.
My fridge was empty, so we headed for the diner. Charlie raised a shaggy eyebrow as Veronica and I walked in together. Aside from Wu’s arrest, it had been a slow news day in Rhode Island, the editors filling the news columns with spin from the presidential primaries, lies from Washington, and gore from Iraq.
While Veronica scanned the “Lifestyle” section, I turned to the sports. Curt Schilling’s shoulder had mysteriously worsened over the winter, and doctors were debating whether he needed surgery. But with Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester, Wakefield, Buchholz, Colón, and Masterson, we had more starters than we needed anyway. Charlie scraped a layer of grease from the grill, wiped his hands on his apron, and turned to grin at us.
“Your taste in women is improving, Mulligan. Whatever happened to that skanky blonde you tripped down the aisle with, the one who thought your name was ‘Bastard’?”
Whenever I ate at the diner, day or night, Charlie was there to cook for me. You’ve got to work a lot of hours to put a daughter through Juilliard. I grunted and dropped a twenty on the counter, grateful to be in a place where I could treat my girl to a meal without applying for a loan to cover the check.
35
“I’m about to push the send button, so go stand next to the fax machine, Liam,” Aunt Ruthie said. “I don’t want someone else to get his hands on this and start wondering where it came from.”
It was ten pages in all, Wu Chiang’s Visa charges for November, December, January, and February, and a partial bill for the first few days of March. I carried it back to my desk to check the billing dates against the dates of the fires, but a quick glance had already told me this was going to be trouble.
Wu was a copy-machine salesman, and most of the charges spoke of a mundane existence: CVS, Stop & Shop, Texaco, Target, B & D Liquors, although $249.95 spent at Victoria’s Secret looked intriguing. He had a girlfriend, or maybe he was a cross-dresser. But what concerned me was a $477 November charge for a U.S. Airways flight and $2,457 for a twenty-one-day stay ending December 20 at the Hotel Whitcomb in downtown San Francisco. A business trip, maybe, or a winter vacation. Or could this have been an elaborate alibi?
I called the Whitcomb and got the concierge on the line. Yes, he remembered Wu. The guy’d been a chronic complainer. He didn’t like the view from his window. He whined that his no-smoking room smelled like cigarettes. There was never enough J&B in his minifridge. And on the way out, he argued about his bill.
To be sure, I e-mailed him a photo of Wu, and the concierge called back with a positive ID.
I turned to my keyboard and started to write it up, a slam-dunk, page-one byline. Then I thought about it and realized I owed some people a heads-up.
36
“Sonovabitch!” Zerilli said.
“Technically this just clears him of the three December fires,” I said. “Looks like he was in town for the others. But to suspect him now, you’d have to think more than one serial arsonist is working Mount Hope.”