Mitch took the longest, hottest shower of his entire life when he got home. But he still did not feel clean. He applied antibiotic ointment to his scratches, an ice pack to his lip. He helped himself to a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. Popped Angels with Dirty Faces into his VCR. Turned off all of the lights in the apartment and sat there in the darkness, watching Cagney trade spunky, crackling barbs with Ann Sheridan.
And, slowly, life began to make sense again. And it was fair and it was just and it was fun. And, for the umpteen-millionth time in his thirty-two-year life, Mitch Berger remembered why they made films and why he loved films and why it was that they purposely had nothing whatsoever to do with real life.
After a while he dug out Lieutenant Mitry’s business card and called her pager number. She got back to him in exactly two minutes, her voice alert and anxious.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Mitch apologized, it being 1:30 in the morning. “But I thought I ought to check in.”
“Not a problem, that’s why I gave you my number,” she responded, her voice partially drowned out by an entire choir of cats meowing in the background. “Sporty, you behave now, girl. No!”
“Just exactly how many cats do you own?” Mitch asked, his words somewhat slurred by his fat lip.
“Not a one. They own me. And if you’re wondering about Clemmie…”
“I’m not. But seeing as how you mention her…”
“When I stopped by this afternoon I found her curled up downstairs in your easy chair. The girl’s just moved right on in. Pretty soon she’ll be making microwave pizza, talking to her girlfriends on the phone… Now what have you got for me? And please, God, make it good.”
“Well, somebody in a green trenchcoat did try to push me onto the subway tracks today.”
She fell silent.
So silent that Mitch said, “Hello…?”
“Where was this?”
“Times Square.”
“Did you report it to the transit police?”
“And say what?”
“What you just said to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because whoever it was got away. And no one else saw anything. Who knows, it could have been a random act, some subterranean loon…”
“Uh-hunh,” she said doubtfully.
“Then again, I should also point out that Mandy Havenhurst and I had just parted company a few minutes earlier.”
“You’re saying it could have been her. She. Mandy.”
“Well, yeah,” Mitch acknowledged, fingering his fat lip.
“She was wearing a trenchcoat?”
“Well, no. But she was carrying a good-sized shoulder bag.”
“Um, okay, there’s one other possibility-Bud Havenhurst.”
“What about Bud?”
“He wasn’t around today.”
“She told me she spoke to him on the phone.”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t speak to him at his office. Or at their house. Because he wasn’t at either one of those places all day. He wasn’t in town, near as I can tell.”
“You think he might have followed me in?”
“Her, more likely-if I know men.”
“Do you?”
“I can check with the conductors on the Shoreliner tomorrow,” she said, deftly slipping his jab.
“What if he drove in?”
“Then he’s very clever,” she admitted. “Are you all right?”
“Why, don’t I sound all right?”
“No, you sound like Elmer Fudd,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Have you been to the dentist or something?”
“No, I’ve just paid a round-trip visit to Mandy’s dark side. She came on to me this evening, big time.”
“And…?” The lieutenant’s voice seemed a degree or two chillier now.
“And I told her I wasn’t interested, right?”
“How would I know? You’re the one telling the story.”
“Okay, I told her I wasn’t interested.”
“Fine. You told her you weren’t interested. And…?”
“And she tried to claw my eyes out.”
“Well, that certainly fits with the girl’s history.”
“I did find out something interesting from her, though. While she was still in full cuddle mode, I mean.” Mitch filled the lieutenant in on what Mandy had said about Bud being elsewhere, and wet, the night Tuck Weems was murdered-taking care to point out how this meant Mandy had no one to vouch for her own whereabouts either.
“Interesting,” she concluded. “Sounds like you’ve had yourself quite a day.”
Mitch allowed as how he had. And then she was yawning again. And the cats were yowling. So he said, “I’ll let you get back to sleep. Sorry I woke you. What does it say anyway?”
“What does what say?”
“The T-shirt you’re wearing.”
“Man, how do you know I’m wearing a T-shirt?”
“I just do. Why, have you got a problem with it?”
“With what, the way you keep acting like you’re up inside my head?”
“I guess this means yes.”
“No… Just trying to understand you, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s it right there, Lieutenant. I’m trying to understand you, too.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Man, that’s a riddle, not an answer!”
“I don’t know why, okay? Only that nothing in my life makes any sense right now. And it seems important to understand something. Or someone.”
She was silent a long moment. “It doesn’t say anything.”
“What doesn’t?”
“My T-shirt. It’s blank. No message. None. Good night, Mitch.” She hung up the phone before he could get out one more word.
He threw the dead bolt on his front door and climbed into bed. It wasn’t until he’d turned off his bedside lamp, punched his pillow two times and closed his eyes that he realized she’d finally stopped calling him Mr. Berger.
CHAPTER 12
DES LAY THERE STARING at the ceiling while the four Spice Girls chased each other blissfully around the bed, scampering over her, rumbling, tumbling. Their energy was boundless. So was their ability to amuse themselves. Their whole universe was right here inside this house. And, within its carpeted confines, they were totally content.
Damn, she envied them sometimes.
She had not been asleep when Mitch Berger called, even though she’d been awake nearly forty-eight hours straight and her body was exhausted. But she could not shut down her mind. It had kept right on searching and rewinding. Sorting through Big Sister’s residents, one by one. Reviewing what she knew about them. Focusing on what she didn’t know. And now she had a new fact to throw into the mix: Someone had tried to take out Mitch Berger.
Why? How did eliminating him link up to the three murders? Was Mandy responsible for it? If so, why had she let him leave her place alive tonight? How did that make any sense?
Des lay there, wondering. Same as she wondered how that man knew what she was wearing at this very moment.
Sighing, she reached for the phone again and dialed the number she knew so well. It rang twice before she heard the familiar rumbling voice at the other end.
“I need to see you,” she said, instead of hello.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” he said, instead of good-bye.
There had never been any wasted words between the two of them.
Des dressed hurriedly. Every cat in the house assumed it was happy meal fun time-if she was up, then that spelled food. Not knowing when she’d be back again, she gave in to them. Working her way from room to room, bowl to bowl, stepping her way patiently through her furry entourage. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, her mud room resident, was in particularly cheery form at two A.M.-he merely glowered at her, a low, baleful moan coming from deep down in his throat.
Des had half a mind to stuff him in a carrier and drop him on Mandy Havenhurst’s doorstep with a short, sweet message taped to his chest: “From me to you, bitch.”
She paused in her studio to examine the sketch she’d started working on before she went to bed. It was a sketch of Mitch Berger. She’d cut his grainy black-and-white photograph out of the Hartford Courant, pinned it to the easel and studied it long and hard. Then she’d drawn what she had seen. Reducing him to shadows and shapes. Abstracting him, deconstructing him, finding him. Now she unclipped the portrait and slid it into her portfolio.