He switched on the miniature television set that squatted on a corner of his desk. There was an item on Fox 5 News, just a plain reporting of the facts. New York 1 had sent a camera and a reporter, and there was footage of Terri Taylor briefly on the pavement outside the warehouse. She was a pale, waiflike creature with a little pointed face and haunted eyes. She did not seem entirely heartbroken; rather, her look was one of bafflement and dismay, as if she were wondering dazedly how she had come to be involved in this mess. The camera team had managed to corner Captain Ambrose. On screen he looked even more like a tormented saint, in his brown suit and his big black brogues. He talked here also of “definite leads,” and then walked away quickly from the camera at his Indian-scout lope. Common to all the reports of the murder was an underlying note of-not indifference, exactly, but of halfheartedness, and faint impatience, as if everybody felt that time was being wasted here, while matters of far greater import were calling out urgently for attention elsewhere. What this meant, Glass knew, was that no one expected the murder to be solved. Dylan Riley had been a loner, according to the Daily News, so there would be no one to press the police for action. Even Terri Taylor, it was obvious, was leaving the scene as fast as her skinny legs would take her.
Glass went into the kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, but Clara was there and of course insisted on doing it for him. He stood leaning against the refrigerator pretending to read the sports pages of the Daily News. Louise had already breakfasted and left-she had a meeting at the United Nations with someone from UNESCO. Glass wondered idly if his wife ever met anyone who was not someone. Covertly he watched Clara as she bustled about the windowless room. He knew almost nothing about her life. Her people were from the Caribbean-Puerto Rico, was it, or the Dominican Republic? He could not remember. She had a boyfriend, according to Louise, but so far there had been no sightings of the ghostly lover. What did she do in the evenings, he wondered, in her room off the kitchen? Watched television, he supposed. Did she read, and if so, what? He could not imagine. It struck him that for a journalist he felt very little curiosity about people, how they thought, what they felt. Dylan Riley, for instance: what did he know of him, except that he resembled a lemur and did not wash often enough? Maybe that was why he had given up journalism, he thought, because fundamentally he had scant concern for human beings. It was events that interested him, things happening, not those involved.
Clara handed him his coffee. “Real strong, Mr. Glass, like you like it.” She smiled, flashing her shiny white teeth. The toast had the texture of scorched plaster of paris.
The day outside was fresh and blustery, and there was a lemony cast to the sunlight. He took a taxi to Forty-fourth Street to check his mail. As usual, there was none. He sat with his feet on his desk and his hands behind his head and studied the sky, or what he could spy of it, between the jumbled buildings. He believed he could see the wind, faint striations like scour marks etched on the clear blue. He wished he could feel something solid and real about Dylan Riley’s murder-anger, indignation, an itch of curiosity, even. Yet all he could think was that Riley was dead and what did it matter who had killed him?
Then he remembered something, and he shifted his feet from the desk and reached for the telephone, fishing Captain Ambrose’s card out of his wallet.
When he said his name the policeman betrayed no surprise. Was he looking out at the same sky, that streaked azure?
“Who else did Dylan Riley call?” Glass asked. “Before he called me, I mean.”
There was a breathy sound on the line that might have been a low laugh. “Called lots of people,” the policeman said. “You thinking of anyone in particular?”
“I mean, did you trace all the numbers on his phone? Did you identify them all?”
“Sure, we traced them. His girlfriend, his dental hygienist, his mother in Orange County down in Florida. And you.”
“No one else in my family? Not my father-in-law?”
“Mr. Mulholland? No. You think he might have called him about this research you wanted him to do?”
“I expressly told him not to.”
“You said Mr. Mulholland didn’t know you were bringing in someone to check out his history.”
Glass closed his eyelids briefly and pressed an index finger to his forehead. “I told you, I hadn’t decided finally whether to hire Riley or not.”
“Right. So you did, I remember.” There was a silence; it hummed in Glass’s ear. The policeman said: “You were the one he called-twice. That’s why I asked you to come in. You were the only one we couldn’t account for, the only one who wasn’t his girlfriend or his dentist or his mother.” Another pause. “You got something you want to tell me, Mr. Glass? About Mr. Mulholland, maybe?”
“No,” Glass said, and expelled a breath. “I was just curious.”
“And worried?”
“Worried?”
“That Riley might have let your father-in-law know you had hired-were thinking of hiring-a snoop.”
“No,” Glass said, making his voice go dull. “I wasn’t worried.” He could sense the captain thinking, turning over the possibilities. “Mr. Mulholland and I have an understanding. He trusts me.”
Again there was that snuffle of suppressed amusement. “But you hadn’t told him about Dylan Riley.”
“I would have,” Glass said, still in that dulled, dogged tone.
“Sure, Mr. Glass. Sure you would.”
When he had put down the receiver he sat for a long time drumming his fingers on the desk and gazing unseeing before him, trying to think. His mind was still fogged with the after-traces of last night’s unremembered dreams. He picked up the phone again and called Alison O’Keeffe and asked if she would have an early lunch with him. She said she was in the middle of work but he pressed her and in the end she gave in, as he had known she would. He telephoned for a table at Pisces, a little fish place down at Union Square that had been a favorite haunt of theirs in the early days of their affair. Like Mario’s, it was becoming depressingly fashionable, and Glass worried that someday Louise would come in with one of her someones in tow and find him and Alison all snug and cozy at their accustomed corner table. That would be awkward.
He had not spoken to Alison since yesterday. He did not like to think of her being involved, however peripherally, in the business of Dylan Riley’s death, and was sorry he had mentioned Riley to her in the first place. He still could not think how Riley might have found out about him and Alison; he supposed he was naive for having imagined that New York was big and impersonal enough to allow him to carry on a love affair without anyone knowing.
In the restaurant he sat at the table with his back to the wall and watched the door, impatient with himself for his nervousness. So what if Louise should appear and find him with Alison? They were not children, they knew about each other’s lives. Probably if she did come in she would merely sweep the room rapidly in that way she did and let her glance glide over the happy couple and then change her table to one as far from theirs as possible.
In his honor Alison had exchanged her painter’s smock for a skirt and a blue silk blouse. When she kissed him he caught behind her perfume a faint whiff of acrylics; the smell always reminded him of brand-new toys at Christmastime. He waited for her to mention Dylan Riley but she did not; she must not have seen the news of his death. She wore her hair drawn tightly back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck with an elastic band. She touched his hand, smiling, and asked what it was they were celebrating. “Nothing,” he said. “Us.” She nodded, skeptically, still smiling with lowered eyelashes; she knew about Glass and spontaneity.