He dreamed of deserts and the lone moon seen through a roof made of iron bars, of the smell of horseflesh and the lightning flash of carbine fire on barren slopes. Then he dreamed of the city as seen from above, a handful of blinking lights grown along the edge of the Sound like cobwebs caught in a corner. He listened to the lights below and realized they had a voice, one voice speaking together. After listening for a while longer he realized the lights were weeping.
“Meal subpar this time?” said a voice.
He awoke. The woman with the newspaper was smiling at him over the top of a sheet.
“What?” he said.
“The meal,” she said. “I noticed you haven’t eaten much of it.”
“So?”
“Well then, it can’t be very good.”
“Why?” he demanded.
She faltered, then said, “I’ve just seen you in here.”
“Seen me? Where?”
“In here. You come here pretty often and eat the same thing, steak and eggs.”
“Here? I come here?”
“Yes.”
Hayes thought, then squinted at her and asked, “Why are you watching me eat?”
“I’m… I’m not.”
“You know what I eat here.”
“No, I just come in here sometimes and I… I see you, so I was just curious.”
“Curious.”
“Y-yes. I thought I’d make chat.” She looked down, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Then she stood and put down some money and walked away.
“No,” said Hayes as she walked out. “No, I didn’t mean to…”
She did not hear him. She went through the front doors and did not look back. Hayes hung his head. “Shit,” he said softly to himself. “Goddamn it.”
He cursed himself a while longer and then paid and hobbled out. He wasn’t sure what he would say to her if he caught up to her or even why he cared. In the end it did not matter. By the time he reached the street she was gone.
He walked past the Nail to the web of side streets that made his neighborhood. He did not go to the warehouse but instead went to a small shop across from it with a FOR RENT sign hanging in the glass. He took out his keys and opened the door and went past the empty front room to the stairs in the back and then up to the second floor. It was unadorned except for a mattress in the middle of the bare floors, lying perfectly in line with the window, which looked down upon the front door of his warehouse and all the small alleys that went to the back. He had purchased the shop for that very feature. He was almost sure that neither Brightly nor Evans knew of its existence, as he had bought it using one of his less prominent identities.
“All the old tradecraft,” he muttered. He leaned his head up against the glass and began watching. Not a soul stirred in the street. The bleak light of dawn began to seep through the sheet of clouds in the east. He kept watching and waiting. After the first two hours he wanted to sleep but found he could not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When she returned to work the next day Samantha prepared the agenda and waited for Hayes to arrive. The world seemed to float by her as she entered her office, and she was unable to focus on any one thing. She was still living in the night before, she knew, how she had had to coax him as though he were no more than a teenager, and how after they had sat in comfortable silence, allowing the morning hours to slip by without a word. As she waited for Hayes she realized her every second was geared toward seeing Garvey again, and the murders and the many conspiracies seemed to fade to a murmur around her.
After an hour of waiting she figured Hayes would just show up late, claiming some injury or feebleness from his hospital stay. After three she called Evans, explained what had happened, and went by Hayes’s warehouse. She pounded on the front door for a good half-hour before she heard a cough. She turned and found a telegram boy standing behind her, looking awkward.
“Yes?” she said.
“Are you, um”-he checked his telegram-“Sam?”
“What? I mean, yes?”
“Message for you,” he said, and handed it to her.
She opened it up and scanned it. OFF A-QUESTING STOP ENJOY YOUR FREE DAY STOP
She read it again, then looked up and scanned the streets and windows around her.
“You cheeky little shit,” she said. “Where are you?”
“What?” said the telegram boy.
“Nothing. Oh, here,” she said, and tipped him. “Now go on.”
She called Evans, and he groaned when she told him the situation. “I’ll try and keep it under my hat, my dear,” he said. “But I’m getting a little tired of making excuses, especially under these circumstances.”
Samantha agreed and said she would send him all the information he needed to make their inquiry look productive, provided he spread it a little thin. She returned to the Nail and sent her work up to the forty-seventh floor, then checked the time. She had four hours left. She cleaned her office for another twenty minutes, then told Evans she was leaving for the day and caught the trolley back to Newton, not sure what she was going to do.
She went shopping at Earl Street and bought some nice bread, then sat on the benches in front of the museum, eating and watching people walk by. She wondered if she should be out trying to find Hayes. Then she wondered if that was even possible. If Evans was right, Hayes wasn’t the sort of person you found unless he felt you should.
She went back to her apartment with a bottle of wine and a good piece of chicken, deciding that a nice meal and a long soak in the tub was in order. She passed through the mezzanine and then found Garvey there again, seated in the same chair and wearing the exact same suit he had worn before. He grinned at her, but his face was strained and she knew he was carrying something awful with him this time. She walked to him and put one hand on his face, feeling his stubble. “You look terrible,” she said.
“I look terrible,” he agreed.
They went back to her apartment and he asked if there was a chair he could destroy. She guided him toward some overstuffed red affair and he dropped himself down gracelessly. She wanted to ask how he was doing, to search him and see how he felt about what had happened between them, but his mind was obviously elsewhere, and so instead she made coffee and poured two cups.
“How is it?” she called from the kitchen.
“How is what?” he said.
“Oh, please.”
There was a pause. “Fucked,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Fucked. Fucked sideways. Fucked in the ear. Pick a fuck, this case is fucked.”
“I see,” she said, carrying the coffee back over. Garvey took the little cup and tossed it down, dribbling some onto his shirt.
“Mayor went and gave a speech at Bridgedale today,” he said.
“Did he?” She sat down on the floor beside his feet.
“Yeah. Something about solidarity. How this is all one city and we’ve all got to stick together. Then he turned around and vaguely accused the Department and McNaughton of a few things. So I guess it is one city, excluding your guys and my guys. And they’ve added a shitload more people to the detail,” he said with a sigh. “Simons and Meyer. From High Crimes Division. Corralled in on the commissioner’s say-so.”
“How are they?”
“They’re bastards. Think they walk on water. High Crimes is used to details, sure, long investigations with plenty of manpower and resources. They’re the dashing heroes of our goddamn shit department. Today they came into Murder and they managed to piss Morris and Collins off in minutes.”
“And you?”
“I was already pissed off.”
“Well. At least you’re proactive.”
“Morris has sold everyone some serious horseshit,” said Garvey with another sigh. “Some serious, serious horseshit. Looking to impress. This is a career case, you know.”
“Oh, I know.”
“How do you know?”