“What answer did you get?”
“I got, ‘Morrie, I think you better let him go with a warning.’ You understand me?”
“Sure. You’re softhearted.”
“Bullshit,” Bloom said. “Parrish wouldn’t give us the statement he’d promised, and Delassandro refused to sign the confession, told me he’d made the whole thing up. A family dispute, plain and simple. So I asked myself, ‘Morrie, do you have a case?’ And you know the answer I got?”
“Morrie, you do not have a case.”
“Correct. Morrie, you do not have a case.”
“So you let Delassandro walk.”
“I let him walk,” Bloom said. “And you and me never had this conversation.”
“Have you looked him up since the murder?”
“Delassandro? He’s living in San Francisco. He did not kill Parrish. Matthew, if that’s what you’re thinking. He did not come back with his pocketbook to stab the man in the heart with it. As I was saying, Matthew, but you weren’t listening…”
“I was listening.”
“I was saying that what you’ve got here is a no-good fag prick who was kept in style by his straight brother from Kansas…”
“Indiana.”
“Wherever, who suddenly can’t take it any longer. He starts an argument with Parrish when he sees all those prancing queers…”
“Your star witnesses, Morrie.”
“Sure, and don’t think the S.A. isn’t worried about that. But they heard and saw the argument, Matthew, that’s all that matters. And then the brother wakes up even madder than when he went to bed. The priest next door hears the two of them screaming their heads…”
“What priest?” Matthew asked at once.
“You got your witness list, I’m sure he’s on it.”
“There’s no priest on the list I got.”
“Then maybe he’s a new witness. Ask the S.A., he’ll give you his name. He’s the priest at St. Benedict’s. He heard them yelling. They woke him up with their yelling.”
“They woke him up.”
“Yes.”
“They were yelling loud enough to wake him up.”
“Yes.”
“Did he call the police?”
“No.”
“He heard yelling, but he didn’t call the police,” Matthew said.
He was thinking priests wore black.
He was thinking maybe Ishtar Kabul was clean, whoever the hell he’d been sleeping with on the morning of the murder.
“Look, you’ll get his name from the S.A.,” Bloom said, “you can talk to him yourself. What I’m saying, I’m saying this is open and shut. A violent argument witnessed by twelve people. More screaming the next morning, only this time the guy who hears it is a priest, Matthew, try to discredit a priest’s testimony. And here’s your farmer client with bloody clothes and the murder weapon in his hand. Tell me something, will you please?”
“What?”
“Why did you take this case?”
The rain drilled relentlessly on the roof of Warren Chambers’s four-year-old dark gray Ford. Ideal car for a private eye. Shabby, fading, perfectly camouflaged at night, hardly noticeable during the day, no flashy Corvette or Alfa Romeo, not in this profession, man, even if you could afford one.
His appointment with Charles Henderson — the man with whom Ishtar Kabul claimed to have been in bed on the morning of the murder — was for six o’clock tonight. On the phone, Warren had identified himself as Harold Long of the Prudential and had told Henderson that he’d been named as one of the beneficiaries in an insurance policy. There was not a man or woman on earth who would refuse to see someone coming around to give away money.
It was now three in the afternoon and Warren was watching the front plate-glass window of what had once been a beachwear shop but was now an aerobics studio. The plate-glass window was painted over red and the words The Body Works were lettered onto it in pink. Leona Summerville, carrying a black umbrella and wearing yellow tights, a black leotard, and black aerobics shoes, had gone into The Body Works at one forty-five. He had watched her running across the mall from where she’d parked her green Jaguar, dodging puddles, the black leotard riding high on the yellow tights and showing a lot of ass, and he had thought she didn’t look at all like a woman in need of any body work, but perhaps she’d been a three-hundred-pound midget before she started coming here.
Axiom of the trade: If a fat married woman suddenly starts losing weight, she is having an affair.
He wondered how long she’d be jumping around in there.
He looked at his watch.
Two minutes past three.
My how the time did fly when you were having a good time.
After his phone call to Henderson at eleven, he had driven over to the address Matthew had given him, just to check out the Summerville house, get the feel of the place, see how many vehicles were usually parked outside, the gardener, the maid, the pool man, whoever, get some idea of who came and went legitimately. He’d been surprised on his second pass of the house when the lady herself backed out of the garage in the green Jag, there had to be a God. He followed her first to a beauty salon on Lucy’s Circle where she spent an hour and a half in her exercise clothes and a blue smock getting her hair cut.
Second axiom of the trade: If a married woman suddenly changes her hair style, she is sucking some stranger’s cock.
Leona Summerville drove next to a soup-and-sandwich shop on the mainland where, still in the exercise clothes, she took a table near the window and sat eating what looked like yogurt, staring out at the rain distractedly, her eyes sweeping the gray Ford once, and causing Warren to think he’d been made the first day on the job.
It was almost one-thirty when she finished eating.
Some men entering the shop turned to look at her as she came out.
Small wonder.
That high-cut leotard showing half her ass.
He thought he saw her smile.
Lots of married women, when they started having an affair, they began to think of themselves as infinitely more desirable. You saw a married woman flashing a lot of leg, or walking with a bouncy little wiggle, you knew she was thinking of herself as sexy and seductive, you knew she was thinking that if one stranger wanted to fuck her, then surely all strangers wanted to fuck her. Third axiom of the trade.
Warren was full of axioms today.
The work brought them out.
The moment she came out of the shop, she ran to a phone booth, didn’t even bother opening the umbrella, just ran through the rain to the nearest phone booth, as if she’d been thinking about this call all the while she’d been eating her yogurt and staring at the rain.
When a married woman started making phone calls from a public booth, watch out, mister. Axiom number…
He watched her.
Turned her back to the traffic on the road.
Inserted a coin.
Dialed a number by heart.
Leaned in close to the mouthpiece.
Smiled.
Talked rapidly.
Nodded.
Hung up.
Came out into the rain again, no longer smiling, opened the umbrella this time, and ran to where she’d parked the Jag. Closed the umbrella, got into the car. Started it. Looked at her watch. Nodded again, and then drove to the mall and The Body Works.
She was still inside there.
Quarter past three now, how the hell long did these sessions take?