by Ed Gorman
"What?"
"Maybe he wasn't just another one of your masochistic affairs."
"Really?"
"Maybe you loved him."
"And that should make me feel better?"
"Sure," I said, sensing how she felt now. "Isn't it better to know that you can truly love somebody instead of just having some neurotic hankering for him?"
She laughed again but this time the drabness of it fit the drabness of her office. "'Neurotic hankering,' " she said. "Now there's a depressing description."
Five minutes later, I was in my Toyota, fishtailing through newly fallen snow, heading out the expressway to Brian Ingram's house.
Chapter 22
The Ingram house was an older home in a hilly neighborhood that Dutch elm disease had apparently passed by. Easy to imagine this place in the Forties, just after the war, Hudsons and Kaisers and Henry J's pulling into the snug driveways, husbands home from office or plant for a cozy night by fire and radio.
Even with the funeral wreath on the door, the two-story white frame house seemed warm and inviting, the light in the windows laying a golden strip across the snow.
Brian Ingram's widow was a pleasant-looking if slightly plump woman in a brown V-neck sweater and wheat-colored jeans. "Won't you come in, Mr. Dwyer?"
"Thank you."
The front room in which we stood was simple but elegant, nappy wine-colored carpeting covering the floor, a fieldstone fireplace on the east wall and built-in bookcases on the west wall. A formidable Christmas tree stood in the corner nearest the closet, its lights winking on and off and covering the sprawling array of gifts with red and blue and green light. You could see where youngsters had draped silver tinsel over the branches—over-draped, really, in knots and clumps. Little hands, big ambitions. They'd probably been very proud of their work.
"Would you care for some tea, Mr. Dwyer?"
"That would be nice."
She pointed to a sofa. I slipped my shoes off and went over and sat on the couch.
She was back in two minutes. The tea was sweet and fine. She sat across the room from me in a leather recliner. "I take it you never met Brian."
"No, I didn't." I smiled. "I'm afraid I don't know your name."
"I'm sorry. It's Sally."
"Sally. Mine's Jack."
She nodded. "He worked very hard."
"He was a chemist at one time, right?"
"Correct."
"But he gave it up."
"There was more money in sales. And besides, Brian was"—she chose her word carefully—"restless. Not all the time but sometimes."
"Restless." I met her eyes.
"I didn't mean to make it sound as if it were a problem. It's just that some men are and some men—well, some men aren't."
"His employer said that Brian was an exemplary family man." I kept thinking about Sheila's notion that Brian feared his wife knew about his current affair.
"You met Mr. Bevins, then?"
I nodded.
She smiled. "He's stuffy, I know, but he means well and he's always been very kind to Brian and me and the girls."
"He said Brian was a model employee and a model parent."
The smile again—quick, sweet, endearing. I thought again of the Forties just after the war. Not only did this house recall that era, so did she. She would be defined by shopping and baking and cleaning and she would not mind it so much at all. I'd never found such women particularly appealing—I love stubborn and independent women—but meeting a Sally Ingram every once in a while is nice, sort of like enjoying an afternoon with an old Irene Dunne movie.
"I'd like to know about the last few weeks of his life," I said.
"I'm not sure what you mean." She sounded without guile or even suspicion.
"Did he behave any differently than usual?"
She thought for a time. "Not really."
"Did you notice any mood swings?"
She laughed. "With Brian, you noticed mood swings every half-hour or so."
I was about to ask another question when a small voice said, "Mommy, is that Daddy?"
On the stairway landing stood a tiny blond girl in pink pajamas complete with feet and a tiny white bunny tail. She rubbed one eye with a sweet little fist.
"No, honey, it's not Daddy. It's Mr. Dwyer."
"Who's Mr. Dwyer?"
"Just a friend of mine."
"Does he know where Daddy went?"
Sally Ingram looked across the room to me then back to the girl. "Would you like to come down and have a hug?"
"Yes, please."
"Come on then, honey."
The little girl, who was at most three, came cautiously down the steps, as if at any moment she might tumble from them into a rocky, roaring river wherein dragons dwelt. There was probably a wicked witch in there somewhere, too.
After examining me quickly, she trundled over to her mother, threw her little arms around Sally's neck, and then indulged in a long and reverent hug. As they embraced, I saw Sally's eyes close in sorrow and yearning, and saw her knuckles go white from holding her daughter so tight.
"Do you have to go to the bathroom?" Sally asked when the little girl pulled back.
"I already went."
"Good. Then say good night to Mr. Dwyer and go back to bed, honey." Sally pointed her in my direction and said, "This, by the way, is Lisa."
"Hello, Lisa."
Lisa, shy, dropped her head and stared at her pink bunny feet.
"Say good night to Mr. Dwyer."
Lisa glanced up at me again furtively and said, "G'night."
"Good night, honey."
"Now, scoot," Sally said, patting Lisa on the bottom.
Lisa, her thumb tucked comfortably in the corner of her mouth, walked by me as if staring in a department store window.
The steps up were tougher to climb than the steps down. She took very long, very careful steps and a few times I had the terrifying sensation that she was going to fall over backward. This brought back all the horrors I'd gone through when my own kids had been her age. I'd been overprotective and probably hadn't done either of them a damn bit of good.
"What a cutie," I said.
"Thank you. So's her sister Jean."
"Jean's older?"
"By two years." She said then, "I thought of two things."
"About your husband?"
"Ummm." She paused. "I want you to catch whoever killed him." She set her teacup down carefully on the end table and then stared at me. "I never thought of myself as a vengeful person. But the last few days—" She sighed. "Maybe it's what I'm drawing my strength from. Knowing that someday the person who killed him will be punished." She smiled sadly. "I keep trying to cry. But I just keep getting angry."
"You should be angry."
She said, "He did something at the lab late one night."
"I'm not sure I follow you."
"The lab has a distinctive smell. When he was working full time as a chemist, I always said I knew when he got home because I could smell him."
"I see."
"One night a few weeks ago he got home very late. I had been asleep, but I woke up when he slipped into bed. At first I thought he might have been drinking heavily, but then I realized that the smell wasn't alcohol. It was the lab—whatever odors he always picked up there."
"Did he tell you what he was doing in the lab?"
"No."
"Did you ask him?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
She smiled. "When Brian didn't want to talk about something, he could change the subject so quickly you didn't even notice he was doing it."
"He changed the subject?"
She shrugged. "He wasn't always a communicative man."
"Did you smell the lab on him anymore?"
"Not after that one night."
"And you didn't notice any lasting shifts in his moods?"
"Not in his moods, no. But he got . . . sentimental. Even with the girls, he was never part
icularly sentimental. I knew that he loved them and loved me for that matter but he was never demonstrative and he was never sentimental the way some men are."
I thought of all the affairs he'd had according to Sheila. "He started spending a lot of time in the den," Sally Ingram went on. "Looking at his senior yearbook."
"College?"
"High school."
"Did he say why?"
"Not Brian."
"Did you have any guess as to why?"
"No. I was just . . . shocked. He wouldn't even go to his last reunion. He said he hated those things, how everybody stood around and boasted all the time. But then all of a sudden he's spending hours poring over his high school stuff. It didn't make any sense."
"Do you suppose I could borrow the yearbook?"
She looked at me for a time. "You know things you're not telling me, don't you?"
"A few things, I suppose."
"Maybe it's just as well I don't know them."
It was a question. I didn't want to answer because to tell her what I knew would only hurt her.
"Please be very careful with it. I'll want to keep all of his things."
"Of course."
"I wish I could cry."
"You will."
"I almost feel guilty."
"After my father died fifteen years ago, I couldn't cry either," I said. "Everybody in my family took turns breaking down for a little while and really facing their grief. Except me. It went on for a month like that. Then one day I stopped over to see how my mother was doing and I sat in my father's favorite chair and I just started sobbing. When I looked back on it, I saw that various circumstances had forced me to be strong, and hold back, so I could help other people." I nodded to the girls upstairs. "You've got to be strong for them. Right now you're just not allowing yourself the luxury of grief."
"The anger feels good, though. I'm almost ashamed of myself. I really want to get the person who killed him."
I stood up. "I'm going to try, Sally. I'm going to try."
After going to get the blue and gray stiff-backed yearbook, Sally walked me to the door. I almost didn't want to leave. I wondered what it would be like to sit on the couch in the darkness with the Christmas tree all lit up and a woman like Sally under my arm. Whatever else Brian Ingram might or might not have been, he struck me as a foolish man. You didn't find Sallys very often; nor Lisas nor Jeans, either.
"I'm sorry it's so cold," she said when she opened the door for me.
I touched her shoulder. "Yes, and I'm holding you personally responsible for this weather, too."
She laughed. "God, I feel so guilty when I laugh. It's not appropriate."
"Who says it's not appropriate?"
"I don't know," she said. "It sounds like something somebodymust have said."
"Nobody important."
Now I was on the porch, in the wind and the night, leaving the womb of her place.
"Good night," she said, and waved in a girlish way that looked even sweeter with the Christmas tree in the background.
Chapter 23
They were shivering in the snow outside the Avanti, maybe two dozen of them, arrogant and pretty and young, pushing to get inside, their laughter high and boozy. Apparently the Avanti was so busy tonight, even the privileged had to wait outside for a few moments.
Away from the blazing light of the doorway and the cigar-store Indian of the doorman, you could see the street people, the eternal ragged ponderous zombies staring with unimaginable thoughts at the privileged young. A crone giggled madly; a shambling derelict tilted a paper-sacked wine bottle to his lips, his body giving an ecstatic jerk of pleasure.
I pushed inside. I pushed too hard and one of the pretty young men pushed back suddenly, looking as if he were about to swing on me. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the door frame. The back of his head made a thwocking sound as it collided with the wood. His eyes glazed a moment. I stared at him, furious. Then I saw that he could have been my son and I said, "Jesus Christ, are you all right?" He looked more surprised by my words than he had by my action. "I apologize, kid. I'm sorry. All right?"
"Who the fuck is this guy, anyway?" his girlfriend snapped, and I didn't blame her, though the "fuck" spoiled her upper-class princess look.
"I'm just a jerk," I said to her.
"No shit," she said back.
I left them there in the snow, with their breath silver, and the gruff doorman pretending he was sorry he hadn't gotten a poke at me.
The maitre d' started toward me but decided to leave me alone. Apparently I was wearing one of those looks. Like a sixth-grade snitch, he walked over to the two bouncers—Ken was absent tonight—and whispered about me. I beat the guy into the bar and lost myself among the crowd.
I took two drinks quick, scotches, and was about to embark on a third when a familiar voice said, "You look like I feel."
I turned to find Deirdre Coburn standing next to me. She wore a simple but expensive black dress. She looked beautiful in her arch and slightly wan way. "I'm sorry I was such a bitch yesterday."
"It's what you people do—you and Tom Anton and your husband."
"Be bitchy?"
"Or push people around. The ruling elite."
"You sound bitter."
"Just weary of you all. And weary of this place."
She moved in closer. Her arm brushed mine. Curiously, I wanted her then, just quick, loveless, lonely sex in a back room somewhere. She saw it on me. "You and I could get together, Dwyer."
"Yeah, but I'd hate myself in the morning."
"Maybe I'm not as bad as you think."
I sighed. "You have your troubles, Deirdre. I can't judge you. But you don't give a damn what you do to other people letting Earle Tomkins spend the night in jail and worrying his mother all to hell wasn't exactly a charitable act."
She said, quite seriously, "When he got home, I sent him over a check for a thousand dollars."
I stared at her a long moment and then I laughed and pulled her into me and gave her a friendly kiss on the mouth. "You're crazy and you don't even know it, Deirdre. You didn't owe him a thousand dollars. You owed him an apology."
I saw Jackie then and I set my drink down and started over for her. She was just leaving the dance floor with a portly man who looked as if he had devoted his life to selling life insurance.
I caught her by a slender wrist and moved her back to the dance floor just as the band began to play "Laura."
"I don't know if my feet are ready for another round just yet," she said.
"You look nice," I said, starting the box step.
"Thank you."
"Blue chiffon?"
"Richard gave it to me for my birthday."
"Very nice."
Something changed in her eyes. "Let's not talk about Richard." She held me more tightly. In the darkness, we danced for half the song without saying anything at all. I thought of being at a prom again.
"What did Brian Ingram find out for you?"
She kept her head tight to my shoulder. "What?"
"You gave him something, and being a chemist, he checked it out for you."
She leaned back so she could stare at me. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do."
"I don't even know a Brian Ingram."
"You're standing right next to him in your high school yearbook."
"You sonofabitch."
We danced some more. Once I stepped on her foot but this time she didn't make any joke about it.
I said, "Something was going on at the restaurant. Whatever it was, Brian confirmed it in his laboratory. It was something that could ruin the Avanti—and that's why you killed Coburn. You decided he'd never be strong enough for you. He was sick of all his rich friends and you were afraid you would lose your investment."
She said, quite simply, "I was tired of him anyway. He was a boy. I wanted a man. You know?"
She held me again and we danced as the band segue
d into "Dancing in the Dark."
After a time, she said, "What are they going to do to me?"
"Take you downtown and read you your rights and see that you get a lawyer."
"I'm scared, Dwyer."
"I'm sorry."
"Do you hate me?"
"No."
"But you don't like any of us here much, do you?"
"I guess not."
"Maybe you don't understand us."
"Maybe."
"Maybe we're not as bad as we seem."
"Maybe not."
"You're being very fucking sanctimonious."
"I don't mean to be. Believe me, I don't have anything to be sanctimonious about. I'm not much in the way of being a human being, either."
"Could we dance some more and not talk?"
"Sure."
So I held her tight again and we danced the next dance and she pressed hard against me, her soft round breasts tender and white in her low-cut gown, then she said she'd like a drink before I phoned the police. I got her a drink and we sat at a cozy table and she looked gorgeous in her fleshy way and then she cried and then she giggled and then she said that her parents were going to be very embarrassed when they heard their little girl's name on television, and then Tom Anton came over looking concerned but I waved him away and then I asked her to tell me why she had to kill Brian Ingram too and she said that he'd put together that she'd killed Richard and then Brian had gotten scared and wanted out. "He really wasn't much of a man," she said, shaking her head. Then she started crying again and I got more booze into her and held her hand for a long, long time.
Finally, she told me about it, all of it, what Richard Coburn and the chef who'd quit had known about, and what Brian Ingram had confirmed in his lab.
I got up and phoned the cops and then I phoned Gwen Daily at St. Mark's and then I figured out where I might find the man I was looking for.
Chapter 24
In the soft blue night, in the pale gold moonlight, in the quiet cul-de-sac where it had lain so long unused, you could hear the ghosts of the deserted factory—the whistle announcing the changing shifts, the men's safety shoes clanking up and down the steel stairs, the lunchroom alive with talk of the Cubs and Marciano and Ali, the parking lot where working-class housewives waited in new Chevrolets and Fords and the occasional Pontiac for their men. How full of promise it had been after World War II, this factory, in those giddy days when everything seemed possible—a nice tract home, shiny fine appliances, Friday nights out at a steak house, bowling with the boys on Thursday nights, even a college fund via the union for the kids.