Selby nodded. He smiled a goodbye at Libby and turned to the door.
Emma Green said, “You ain’t gonna ask to look at my picture? See I wasn’t just braggin’?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You ain’t no hustler, are you, man? You kind of dumb too.”
“Momma, stop talking that way.”
“Well, it’s the truth.” Emma Green was near tears. “He know if he looks at the picture and says how nice I look that I’ll be foolish crazy and write anything he wants. Don’t you know that, mister?”
“I’m not going to add to your problems, Emma.”
“Hey, I ain’t got only a few teeth left to get knocked loose anyway. Sit down, go ahead, sit, you and Libby can look at ’em together while I write it down.”
There were photographs of Emma Green and her friends in a pickup truck at a beach. A sheet was spread on the sand, held down at the corners by six-packs of beer. Others were of Emma in the stands of a highschool stadium, in backyards and porches, one of a teenage Emma standing with a laughing group in an arcade of pinball machines. Libby hung over the back of the chair, pointing over Selby’s shoulder, identifying her mother, naming friends she remembered hearing about.
Emma’s hair was black then. She was small and slim and pretty, with a direct, confident smile. Her daughter pointed to those pictures with particular pride, the ones where her mother was smiling and showing her perfect white teeth.
While Selby looked through the album, Emma Green put her drink aside and covered page after page in her daughter’s notebook with childishly round handwriting. She then told Libby to leave off studying the old pictures and go down to the church and get the minister and his wife.
Emma Green smiled tensely at Selby, not bothering to cover her damaged mouth. “I told you you shouldn’t fool us, mister. We too dumb for good fun. Look what I’m doing. I’m writing it all down about that fucker Earl. See what I mean about dumb?”
Selby turned off the highway at an exchange near Camden and called home from a pay phone at a gas station.
It was late afternoon and overcast; it had taken the Reverend Elmer Davis, an efficient but simmeringly angry black man, almost two hours to type up Emma Green’s deposition and to have the documents duplicated, witnessed by his wife and Selby and notarized by a local bank officer.
At the end of the block was a small meadow covered with shallow water, natural terrain enclosed by industrial grime. Birds swam and fed among the stubby weed patches. Currents moved in sluggish waves over the sheaths of dirty ice. Fine for ducks, Casper would complain, if there weren’t so many cars and gas pumps and people around. But nothing would look very cheerful now, Selby knew, with the memories of her broken smile and the daughter’s shy goodbyes.
Mrs. Cranston answered his ring and told him she was glad he’d called. Not that anything was wrong. Davey was home from school and Miss Brett was driving Shana back from East Chester.
But a Sergeant Wilger phoned and wanted Mr. Selby to call him as soon as he could. She gave him a number Selby didn’t recognize. It wasn’t the Detective Division or Wilger s apartment.
He dialed and waited. From the booth he could see gas pumps, a littered street, rows of auto body and repair shops.
A phone was lifted. Wilger said, “Selby?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in a pay booth.”
“Okay, so am I. I didn’t want to use the office or my place. How’d it go?”
“She’s gun-shy, like you said. But I’ve got it in writing, witnessed and notarized. What good it will do is something else.”
“I called her place trying to get you but you’d left. Then I left a message at your home. I picked up something at the Hall you should know. Another of them funny links. Word is, the defense is bringing in a witness from Germany who’ll blow Brett’s case out of court. Also I heard the psychiatrist is testifying for Davic tomorrow and Brett told me it could be rough. So I had a double Scotch and thought screw Slocum. I’m going to the airport to see who else is interested in the GI from Frankfurt.”
“So you know who it is? Do you know his name?”
“Sure. He’s Derek Taggart, Ace Taggart from Rockland, General Adam Taggart’s son.”
The shore birds had settled in for the night; the cold, gray meadow was quiet.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Selby said. “I mean that.”
It was almost dark when he left the phone booth. A glare of traffic rose from the Camden Pike. A last fading light lay across the stretch of marshland, which spread like a cracked and smudged mirror under the gently drifting birds and frost-white weeds.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Early the next morning Selby drove Shana into East Chester. Brett had asked them to come to her office before court convened; she needed the time to prepare Shana for Dr. Clemens’s probable inferences and conclusions.
But when they arrived Brett’s secretary told Selby there was a call for him from Senator Dixon Lester’s office in Washington. He took it in Brett’s reception room.
“Mr. Selby? Mr. Harry Selby? I’m Victoria Kim, Senator Lester’s staff coordinator. Do you have a moment to talk, Mr. Selby?” Her voice was full of energy, and flat with an unmistakable midwestern accent. Without waiting for his answer she said, “We’ve been monitoring the Earl Thomson trial as a matter of course, Mr. Selby. The senator’s committee has an ongoing investigation that includes George Thomson.”
“Yes, I’ve read about that.”
“Our interest in the trial was routine until yesterday when the defense introduced the transcript of the Jonas Selby court-martial. That shifted the emphasis from a local defense of Earl Thomson to a personal attack against you and your late father. I sent off a record of that testimony by jet courier to Senator Lester last night. The senator’s in Belgium presently. He called later to ask if you’d meet with him and discuss this development.”
“What ‘development’? I’m not sure I understand—”
“Has the defense offered you any inducement to drop the charges?”
“You mean some kind of bribe, a payoff?”
“Mr. Selby” — her voice sharpened with impatience — “I can make the eleven a.m. shuttle flight to Philadelphia. We have a suite at the Hamilton on the Fairmount Parkway. Do you know the Hamilton?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be possible for you to meet me there, about twelve-thirty this afternoon?”
“Miss Kim, I’m on my way to court for the morning’s hearings. I didn’t know anything about the committee’s interest in this trial or in my father’s court-martial. I was never able to get a copy of that transcript myself, as you may know. But the defense had no trouble getting it, and it seems you didn’t either.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve caught you at a bad time, Mr. Selby. I can’t discuss this on the phone, but I do urge you to cooperate. If the Hamilton isn’t convenient, I’ll meet anywhere you suggest.”
“No, the Hamilton’s fine.” Selby looked at his watch, then said, “Miss Kim, I need help. I’m willing to trade for it. If you understand and agree to that, I’ll see you around twelve-thirty.”
“Can you give me an idea what you’d have to trade, Mr. Selby?”
“I’ll bring it with me.”
After hanging up, he returned to Brett’s office and explained that he was driving over to Philadelphia but would try to be back as soon as possible after his meeting with the senator’s assistant. He gave Shana a kiss, nodded to Brett and headed for the elevators.