“Two men beat up your daughter yesterday,” I said.
“My God,” Markham said. “Is she all right?”
“She is,” I said.
“Where is she?” Markham said.
“She’s safe,” I said. “Can you think of any reason why that would happen?”
“No. My God!”
“She probably made it up,” Mrs. Markham said.
“Why would she do that?” I said.
“She makes up all kinds of stuff,” Mrs. Markham said.
Well, well. The gloves were off.
“She does?” I said.
“All this nonsense about who her parents are. The girl is a born liar.”
Mr. Markham stared at his wife for a moment and frowned.
“Come on, Barb!” he said.
“She is, George, and you’d know it, too, if you didn’t always coddle her.”
“She did have some bruises,” I said.
“Probably one of her drug-addict boyfriends,” Mrs. Markham said.
“She wasn’t,” Markham said, “you know, I mean, there was nothing else happened to her?”
“No,” I said.
“Why did they do it?” Markham said.
“They told her to stop investigating her parentage.”
“She’s crazy,” Mrs. Markham said. “She’s a crazy liar.”
All three of us were quiet. The dust motes drifted. The silence pressed in.
“Sequence,” I said finally, “doesn’t necessarily prove cause. But the beating happened shortly after I talked to you about your days in Moline.”
Mrs. Markham looked quickly at her husband.
“Moline?” she said.
Mr. Markham looked straight at me.
“I told you before,” he said. “I’ve never been to Moline.”
“What is this about Moline?” Mrs. Markham said to me.
“You lived there twenty years ago. Your husband was an announcer at WMOL.”
“That’s crazy,” Mrs. Markham said. “I don’t even know where Moline is.”
“Are you suggesting that I had something to do with Sarah getting hurt?” Mr. Markham said.
“Did you mention our conversation to anyone?”
“No. Of course not. It was too absurd.”
“But if it were that absurd, wouldn’t you tell people about it? Your wife, for instance. Wouldn’t you say, maybe, like, ‘Gee, Barb, that crazy broad that Sarah hired claims we lived in Moline, Illinois’?”
“I don’t waste time on foolishness,” Mr. Markham said, “Neither does my wife.”
“Well,” I said. “Somebody, for some reason, doesn’t want this investigation to go further. Can you imagine who that would be?”
Mr. Markham took in some air.
“Of course, Barbara and I would like it to stop. It is painful for us. But you can’t believe we would harm our own daughter.”
“She made the whole thing up,” Mrs. Markham said.
“You could settle it with a simple DNA comparison,” I said.
“We will not dignify her lies like that,” Mrs. Markham said.
I looked at Mr. Markham; he shook his head. I stood.
“Well,” I said. “I have a dog waiting for me.”
Neither of them stood.
“For what it is worth,” I said, “your daughter is not quitting, and neither am I. Sooner or later we will know the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be.”
“The truth is,” Mrs. Markham said, “that she’s a self-indulgent, spoiled, drug-addicted liar.”
I smiled at her.
“No more Mrs. Nice Guy?” I said.
Mrs. Markham didn’t answer. Mr. Markham said nothing. I had nothing else to say.
So I left.
23
I could never understand why he loved her,” I said. “She was so dumb and bossy and . . . what . . . self-centered, I guess.”
Dr. Silverman was wearing a gray suit this morning, with a black turtleneck sweater.
“Tell me a little more about her,” Dr. Silverman said.
A regular damn chatterbox today.
“My father pretends she’s smart. He always acts like she’s a wonder if she, you know, cooks a lamb chop, or finds her keys, or buys some cheap piece of fabric for the couch. He always acts as if no one else could have done it.”
“It must be annoying.”
“It is,” I said. “And she always sort of acts like she’s won some sort of contest when he does it.”
“Maybe she has,” Dr. Silverman said.
“With me?” I said.
“You think?” Dr. Silverman said.
“Yes. With me and my sister. For Daddy.”
Dr. Silverman nodded. She appeared to understand everything. Of course, that could be training rather than truth. Still, there was a great deal of warmth in her. I could feel it. And distance, too. I couldn’t quite understand how she was both at the same time. She waited.
“Elizabeth is older,” I said. “She didn’t like me. I’m sure she resented me for being born.”
“How do you get along now?”
“We don’t. We are connected because we’re, you know, sisters. But we still don’t really like each other.”
“Why?” Dr. Silverman said.
“Why?”
She nodded.
“She’s so much like my mother, I suppose. And more than anything else, she thinks you are a failure if you are not with a man.”
“Is she with one now?”
“Too many,” I said. “She’s divorced. She’s desperate. She’ll sleep with the first guy who offers.”
“How about you?” Dr. Silverman said.
“After my divorce? No. I handled that pretty well. I slept with men if I liked them, and not if I didn’t.”
“Until recently,” Dr. Silverman said.
“Yes.”
We were quiet.
“Now I don’t sleep with anybody.”
Dr. Silverman was quiet. I was quiet. It wasn’t so hard being quiet as it had been.
“How did you compare,” Dr. Silverman said.
“To my mother and sister?”
She nodded. I smiled.
“Favorably,” I said.
“Talk about that,” she said.
“I was always good at things. I was an athlete. I rowed in college, single sculls. My father taught me how to shoot. I liked to go to ball games with him. I liked to talk about his work. My father was a cop. A captain when he retired. He used to take me in to work sometimes. I was kind of funny. I had dates. I was popular in school. My grades were okay. Not like Elizabeth’s. She got all A’s every year. It impressed the hell out of my mother, but I sort of knew, and I think my father did, that grades are mostly bullshit. I got B’s and C’s without trying very hard.”
“It sounds like you were close to your father.”
“Yes.”
Then Dr. Silverman said, “Did your father prefer you?”
“You mean over my sister?”
“Or your mother,” she said.
I was quiet again, thinking about the answer. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answer. It was trying to say it without sounding like a jerk. Finally, I settled for sounding like a jerk.
“He liked me best,” I said.
Dr. Silverman nodded. We were quiet again. I felt very heavy inside.
“Are we getting oedipal here?” I said.
“What do you understand by the term ‘oedipal’?”
“Kill my mother and marry my father . . . symbolically of course.”
“Do you think we’re getting oedipal?” Dr. Silverman said.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re the oedipal expert.”
>
Dr. Silverman smiled.
“He liked you best,” she said.
“Yes.”
“That could be quite burdensome for a young girl. Particularly if her mother was problematic.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “I wanted to kill my mother and marry my father? That’s so trite.”
“I normally try to avoid using terms like ‘oedipal,’ ” Dr. Silverman said. “It is merely a label, and as such is not very useful.”
“Then why the hell are we talking about it.”
Dr. Silverman smiled and didn’t answer.
“Because I introduced the damn term,” I said.
“I think you did,” Dr. Silverman said.
24
I had just cleaned up after breakfast with Sarah when the phone rang.
“Sunny Randall?” a voice said.
“Yes.”
It was a whispery voice, as if someone wanted to disguise it.
“I got information about that Sarah Markham case you’re working on.”
“Would you like to give it to me?” I said.
“You know the Middlesex Fells?”
“I do.”
“Road runs along the south edge of the woods?” the voice said. “West of Route Ninety-three?”
“Border Road,” I said.
“Drive there and park anywhere on Border Road. We’ll find you.”
“When?”
“When can you get there?” the whispery voice said.
“Noon,” I said.
“Noon,” the voice whispered, and they hung up.
It was 8:30. They were generous with their lead time. Which is dumb. Or amateurish. Or both. I called Spike.
“I need you to be in the woods off Border Road in the Middlesex Fells by eleven a.m. at the latest.”
“Sure,” Spike said. “Gun or no gun.”
“Gun,” I said.
“Okay,” Spike said, “tell me about it.”
I told him.
“Ah,” Spike said. “Movement of some sort. Could it be a feint, and they are after the girl?”
“The thought occurred,” I said. “I’m making an arrangement.”
“Okay,” Spike said. “I’ll be there.”
“Don’t forget your cell phone.”
“Or my gun,” Spike said. “Or my head.”
I hung up and dialed again and got Tony Marcus.
“Sunny Randall,” he said. “Always a pleasure.”
“I need a favor.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Tony said. “Doing favors for Sunny Randall.”
“I need someone to babysit my dog, Rosie. . . .”
“That funny-looking little one with the nose?”
“The beautiful little one with the classic features,” I said, “and a young, scared white woman who is hiding in my apartment.”
“And why was it I would do that?” Tony said.
“Because you like me,” I said. “You’ve told me that often.”
“I do like you, Sunny Randall, except sometimes when you’re annoying me.”
“It’s only a couple of hours,” I said. “I’ll owe you.”
“That’s important,” Tony Marcus said. “What the hell can you do to pay off a debt to me?”
“Don’t be picky,” I said.
Tony gave a deep, soft laugh.
“Can’t send you Junior and Ty-Bop,” he said. “They doing something with me.”
“I don’t want to know,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” Tony said. “Send you a guy named Leonard.”
“Is he any good?”
“ ’Course he good,” Tony said. “Nobody work for me ain’t good.”
“Does he like dogs?”
“Leonard don’t much like anything,” Tony said. “One reason he good.”
“But he’ll be courteous to both.”
“The dog and the white girl? Yes.”
“I need him now,” I said.
“Here he come,” Tony said. “You still wired with the Burkes?”
“No.”
“What about Richie?”
“He got married.”
There was silence on the line for a moment.
Then Tony said, “Oh, well. Can’t hurt to have Phil Randall’s daughter owe me something.”
“My father’s retired,” I said.
“You trying to talk me out of this,” Tony said.
“No. I need the help.”
“He be ringing your doorbell in about five more minutes,” Tony said.
25
Leonard was very black, with good cheekbones. He had on a pinstripe suit and a white shirt with a pin collar and a white silk tie. His head was shaved. He wore a moustache and goatee, and he smelled of very good cologne.
I had already explained Leonard to Sarah. She looked sort of titillated when I introduced them. Rosie came over and smelled his ankle. Leonard looked down at Rosie with no expression at all. Then he went over to the breakfast table and sat.
“Coffee?” he said.
“Fresh pot,” I said. “Sarah will pour you some.”
He nodded. Sarah got the coffee. I crouched down to kiss Rosie goodbye. Then I stood and got my bag, and checked. Car keys? Gun? Cell phone? Oakleys?
“Nobody in or out,” I said to Leonard. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“What if you’re not,” Sarah said.
“Leonard will stay with you until I am.”
“But, I mean, what if something happens?” she said.
I scribbled Phil Randall and a phone number on the blackboard.
“My father,” I said. “He used to be a cop. He’ll know what to do.”
Leonard was drinking coffee out of one of my big, white diner-style mugs. He held the mug softly in both hands.
“Do you have a gun?” Sarah said to him.
Looking at her over the rim of the mug, Leonard nodded.
“Don’t answer my phone,” I said.
I smiled at Rosie and said, “Bye-bye,” and went out the front door and down the steps to my car.
26
At five minutes past eleven, I was driving on South Border Road through thick woods in the Middlesex Fells Reservation. The reservation was probably ten miles from downtown Boston, but it felt like the Canadian Rockies driving through it.
I dialed Spike’s cell phone.
When he answered, I said, “I’m in the woods, driving west.”
“Keep coming,” Spike said. “I’m about a half mile in.”
“Where’s your car.”
“I parked up at the dog meadow and walked down.”
“Seen anybody else?”
“Nope.”
“See me yet?”
“Did you hear me shriek with delight?” Spike said.
“No.”
“Then I haven’t seen you.”
“Do you mind if I breathe quietly into the phone,” I said. “So you’ll know I’m alive.”
“Long as you don’t sing,” Spike said.
I drove in silence for another minute or so and then, on the phone, Spike said, “Shriek.” I slowed down.
“Here?” I said.
“Another ten yards,” Spike said. “Couple of big boulders on the right kind of leaning on each other. Park there.”
“Here?”
“Perfect.”
I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped.
“Where are you,” I said.
“Right behind the boulders.”
“I’m going to get out of the car,” I said, “and lean on the fender. If things begin to go badly, you appear in force.”
“Can I do my rebel y
ell?” Spike said.
“Use your best judgment,” I said.
I closed the cell phone and put it in my purse. I took my gun out of my purse and put it in the right-hand side pocket of my belted camel-hair coat, which I always looked good in. I left my purse on the front seat, adjusted my Oakleys, and got out of the car. I stayed on the driver’s side and leaned on the front fender and waited. It was the middle of November and getting cold. I put my hands in my pockets. The trees had reacted variously to fall. Some had bare branches. Some had a few yellow leaves. Some were still leafy and at least partially green. It must have something to do with the kinds of trees. Nothing moved in the woods. No one drove along the road. Some birds chirped. I tried not to keep looking at my watch. I looked at the boulders. They were tilted against each other and deeply sunk into the side of the hill, just as they were, probably, when the last glacier melted and left them there. A squirrel ran sort of spasmodically across the road, the way squirrels do, and scrambled up a tree on the other side. There was some gray-green moss on the boulders, and the pale remnants of some sort of vine that had tried to colonize the boulders, but failed fatally.
A dark maroon Chevy sedan appeared from the other direction, driving slowly. It stopped opposite my car, and the window rolled down. The driver was wearing little sunglasses with wire frames and blue lenses. He looked at my license plates for a moment and then said to me, “Sunny Randall?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said and shut off the motor.
He got out of the driver’s side, wearing a belted trench coat. A husky man in a brown leather jacket got out of the passenger side. As he walked across the street, I could see the crude lettering in blue ink along the knuckles of each hand. I couldn’t read what it said.
The two men stopped in front of me. The guy with the tattoos had shoulder-length black hair that didn’t look very clean. The man with the shades looked like his haircut had cost three hundred dollars. His teeth had been worked on. They gleamed like a new sink.
“Cute shades,” I said.
“You know where Sarah Markham is?” the man with the sunglasses said.
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