“We’ll go back another way,” Wiedstein said.
We eventually took Route 7 to the beltway and the George Washington Memorial Parkway to the District of Columbia line. None of us said anything until we turned right off Key Bridge into Georgetown. Then Procane looked at his watch and said, “It’s ten past ten. We’re right on schedule.”
He unfastened his chest harness and turned around in the seat toward me. “Well, Mr. St. Ives, how did you enjoy our million-dollar theft?”
“It was swell,” I said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
23
Wiedstein double-parked the car in front of the house on N Street. Everyone got out. Wiedstein moved back to the trunk and unlocked it and lifted out the three suitcases. Procane picked up two of them and turned to me.
“Will you give me a hand, Mr. St. Ives?”
“Sure,” I said and picked up the other one.
Carrying his two suitcases Procane turned toward Wiedstein. “Get rid of the car,” he said.
Wiedstein nodded. “I’ll leave it some place with the keys in it. Somebody’ll steal it.”
“I’ll be back in New York tomorrow around noon.”
“We’ll see you then,” Janet Whistler said.
My suitcase was growing heavy. I wished that they would end their conversation so that I could carry the suitcase to wherever it was supposed to be carried. It was a new case, I noticed, a two-suiter made out of cloth fiber and trimmed with a plastic that was supposed to look like blue leather, but didn’t.
“Is there anything else you can think of, Miles?” Procane said.
Wiedstein said he couldn’t think of anything.
“Janet?”
She shook her head.
“Mr. St. Ives?”
“This suitcase is getting heavy.”
“Yes, well, I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
They nodded at him and we stood there on the sidewalk and watched them get in the Chevrolet and drive off down N Street.
I followed Procane up the short flight of steps that led to the door. He had to put one case down so that he could find his keys. As he was rumbling the key into the lock, he said, “You’re welcome to spend the night here, Mr. St. Ives, if you’d like.”
“I’ll decide after I have a drink,” I said. “I may want to go back to New York.”
“Whichever you prefer.”
Procane had the door open now. He went inside, switching on the hall light. I followed. Procane turned on a lamp in the living room. It all looked much the same as it had nearly two hours before except for the man who sat in one of the spindly-legged chairs and pointed the revolver at us.
I guessed that the man was in his late forties. His legs looked long enough to make him well over six feet tall, but it may have been because of the way he had them stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It was a casual pose, but there was nothing casual about the way he aimed the revolver at us. It had a long barrel and I thought that it looked like a .38 caliber. The man moved the barrel from side to side a little, as if he couldn’t make up his mind about which of us he wanted to shoot first.
“You can put that away, John,” Procane said. “There’s no need for it now.”
“Set the bags down, Abner,” John said. “You, too, St. Ives.”
I still didn’t know who he was, but I put the bag down anyway. When the bags were safely on the floor, the man said, “Now both of your put your hands on top of your heads.” I did just what he wanted. Procane didn’t. Instead, he said, “This is ridiculous.”
“Put your hands up there, Abner,” the man said. This time Procane did as he was told.
I turned my head slowly toward Procane. “Who’s John?” I said.
“John Constable.”
“Ah,” I said, “the analyst.”
“That’s right, St. Ives,” Constable said, “the analyst.”
I ignored him. “He’s the one you always talked to about your problems,” I said to Procane. “About whether you wanted to get caught.”
Procane just nodded. His face had grown pink. I didn’t know whether it was embarrassment or anger.
“You told him all about tonight,” I said, not making it a question because there was no need to.
“I told him all about it,” Procane said.
“Is it becoming clear, St. Ives?” Constable said, rising from his chair. He wasn’t quite as tall as I’d thought, just barely six feet. But his legs were still long, too long really for his short trunk, and it made him look bird-legged. He tried to cover it up with a carefully tailored, extra-long jacket, but it didn’t quite come off. He still looked bird-legged. His jacket was cut from a soft-brown plaid that looked expensive and so did his dark-brown gabardine trousers and his French blue shirt and his dark-blue tie that had small brownish-red fleures on it that could have been unicorn heads. He wore a pair of gleaming dark-brown alligator ankle boots that must have cost him $150 and maybe even more now that alligators are getting scarce.
Constable’s face was wedge-shaped and a curling mass of iron-gray hair grew especially thick along the sides, probably because his big ears stuck out. They had long, thin dangling lobes that were bright pink in color and seemed almost transparent. His eyes were chocolate brown and set deep back underneath heavy brows. His eyes had a damp look about them as if they were always on the verge of tears and I couldn’t decide whether that would be a handicap or a help in his profession. His nose was big and fleshy and his mouth, wide and thin-lipped, made him look hungry for some reason. His chin had a deep cleft in it that his female patients must have liked. I didn’t much care for it.
“I asked you a question, St. Ives,” Constable said.
“I know. You asked me if things are becoming clear.”
“Well, are they?”
“It’s clear that you intend to kill us. But that shouldn’t trouble you much.”
“Really? Why?”
“They say that the second time’s always easier than the first and that the third time’s even easier than the second. I’ve heard that anyway.”
“And you assume that I’ve already killed somebody?”
“I don’t assume it. I know it. You killed a cop called Francis X. Frann.”
Constable turned slightly toward Procane, but not enough so that he still didn’t have me in full view. “You told me he was really quite quick, didn’t you, Abner?”
“All I know is that I told you too much,” Procane said.
“You liked talking about it. And I liked listening. For a while.”
There was a pause that seemed longer than it really was. And then Procane asked his one-word question. The word came out as a choking sound that was filled with disillusionment and shock and even bitterness. Procane asked, “Why?”
Constable didn’t answer right away. First he raised — himself up on his toes and then let himself back down. He patted his gray hair around the left ear. When he was sure that it was in place he gave his chin a contemplative stroke or two. He seemed to like to touch himself. It may have helped him think.
“Why do you think I killed a young cop, St. Ives? Frann, you called him?”
I was eager to talk. I would have talked all night if he would have listened. I would have told him tales of high adventure and tragic love. If he were still interested, I would have told him about my childhood in Columbus, Ohio, and about how my parents thought I’d caught polio in the summer of 1942 and how they believed that I’d been cured by a Christian Science practitioner that my great-aunt had called in until they discovered that what I had really had was a bad case of the summer flu that was going around that year.
It was the third time that night that a gun had been pointed at me. And this time there was no Janet Whistler or Miles Wiedstein to come out shooting. There was only me, Procane, looking suddenly older and somehow defeated, and a psychoanalyst with a gun who, before he killed me, wanted to know why I thought that he had killed a cop called Francis X. Frann. I decided to tell him. At length, if possible.