She stood up off him. Stood in front of him. Slipped her panties down and stepped out of them. Weiss was looking directly at the triangle of curls between her legs. The hair was black there. No hint of red at all.
And he thought: She’d’ve bought a wig.
At once, his heavy heart started beating harder. That was the first thing a woman changed when she wanted to hide herself: her hair. But Julie Wyant wouldn’t have wanted to cut hers, or dye it. Long as it was, silky as it was, red and golden as it was. If she wanted to hide—if she wanted to pretend to kill herself and then run away and hide—the first thing she would’ve done was buy a wig.
His weary eyes grew bright as he looked at the black triangle between the hooker’s legs. Someone would remember that, he thought: a girl with hair like hers buying a wig. Even now, even months later. That would stick with them.
The whore held her hand out to him. He took it. Rose heavily from his seat. He pictured himself, running up a flight of stairs, kicking in a locked door…
The whore led him into the bedroom.
Thirty-One
Now up until this point, I’ve tried to keep my own presence in this story to a minimum. I know the misadventures of my callow youth can’t compete with the business at hand. But for reasons that will become clear soon enough, I have to pause here a moment to tell, as briefly as I can, the poignant and instructive story of My First Investigation.
You’ll remember that, as a reward for my “solution” to the Spanish Virgin case, Weiss had assigned me to assist Sissy Truitt in investigating the Strawberry trial. Theodore Strawberry, aged twenty-six, was our client, the defendant in the trial. He was no very sympathetic character. His mug shot, front and side, showed a baleful-eyed thug with a skewed face under a full head of slickly straightened hair. He was, in fact, an admitted crack addict and a convicted thief. This time out, he’d allegedly shot a Stanford student in the back while in the process of mugging him near an ATM. The student, Bill Mars, a second-string running back for the Cardinal, had been paralyzed for life. Strawberry’s parents had hired Jaffe and Jaffe, the law firm upstairs from us, to take their son’s case. Jaffe and Jaffe, in turn, had hired us, as usual, to do background checks on witnesses, confirm their testimony and so on. That’s where I was supposed to help out.
Excited to begin my life as a private eye, I was loitering outside Sissy’s door when she came in the next morning. Which made her laugh in that sweet motherly way she had. I held her armload of files and books for her as she unlocked her door to let me in. She had to bend over a little to fit the key in the lock, I remember. I took a half step back to better enjoy the view.
Now, as I said, Weiss was crazy about Sissy, and she was wonderful in lots of ways. But if you’d asked me, I would’ve said there was something kind of odd about her too. With those schoolgirl outfits of hers, the pleated skirts, the button-down sweaters and so on. And all that warmth and gentleness and maternal sweetness: It could get pretty treacly and smothering sometimes. I’d’ve been willing to bet she was neurotic as hell when you got her alone. But all the same, I have to confess, I found her incredibly attractive. She was ten years older than I was, if not more, but she still had the blond hair and delicate features, plus those blue eyes were so full of sympathy, that whispery voice sounded so caring…. Well, I was still a kid and I was three thousand miles from home. What can I say? I wanted her desperately.
So as we leaned over the files splayed across her desk, our heads bent together, I stole deep breaths of the scent of her. And whenever she looked up and our eyes met, I tried with all the power of my gaze to convey to her how incredibly available I was to serve as her youthful and energetic boy-toy for the price of a summoning phone call and maybe the cab fare home.
“Aside from the victim, there’s only one actual eyewitness,” Sissy said in her loin-simmering whisper. “But he’s a strong one. A Catholic priest. Father Reginald O’Mara.”
I gave a startled laugh. “The Reginald O’Mara? The governor’s brother?”
“That’s the guy. He runs a center for boys down in the mission. He was walking back to his rectory late, says he saw the whole thing. He’s the one called the police on his cell phone.”
I stared at her. Her eyes really were awfully nice, so sympathetic.
“A priest,” I said again, “the governor’s brother, a man who’s won awards for his work with disadvantaged youths, eyewitnessed our guy, a crack-smoking two-time loser, shoot a college kid in the spine, and we’re supposed to…do what exactly?”
“Find out if there’s any information that might discredit his testimony, silly, what else?” Sissy said.
I laughed again. Then I stopped laughing. “You’re serious.”
“Well, a priest can lie, sweetheart, no matter whose brother he is. And he might’ve just made some kind of mistake too. Our job is to make sure the justice system works properly by uncovering any evidence that shows he might not be the perfect witness he seems to be.”
I heard little of this after the word sweetheart, the use of which on Sissy’s lips had caused my separate self to begin uncoiling in the folds of my underwear. I simply floated off to my computer to—as we PIs say—“do the Background.”
Which turned up exactly what you’d figure. Namely nothing. No arrests, convictions, bankruptcies, judgments, liens. No credit troubles, AKAs, or false job histories. The governor’s brother had pulled down a big 4.0 GPA at Yale and then gone on to seminary. His work with the poor had been praised and recognized throughout the city—throughout the state—hell, even the president had shaken his hand. He was a source of pride and reflected credit to his governor brother, whom he advised on some matters concerning the Church and the poor. The guy was practically the right hand of God. As opposed to our client. Who was what we technically call in the legal business, a scumbag.
By lunchtime, I was back in Sissy’s office. Standing over her by the window this time, gazing down at her with basset hound eyes full of longing.
“Tell our guy to pack an extra pair of pajamas,” I told her. “I don’t think he’s going home in a big hurry.”
She cocked her head and gave a lovely, loving laugh. Touched my cheek with a cool palm. “Off you go, check out his witness statements at the scene,” she said. “When you’re done, write up a report for the lawyers.”
I walked as well as I could back to my desk.
Father O’Mara’s statements to the police were—what else?—models of simplicity and directness. He had coached a basketball game at his center till 9:30 P.M. Stayed behind to walk home to his rectory, a strenuous constitutional up the city’s hills, which he always enjoyed. Around 10:30, he was on Pine Street, near Nob Hill. That’s where he witnessed the robbery and the shooting. He was standing on the opposite sidewalk but he said he saw our young Mr. Strawberry clearly in the security lights from the ATM. He described him as a “tall, light-skinned black man wearing an Army camouflage jacket. A limp, a bald spot, a broken nose,” etc., etc. He said Mars, his back to the gunman, handed Strawberry his wallet over his shoulder. Strawberry rifled the wallet, cursed angrily and then fired twice into Mars’s back. He then ran forward into the darkness and vanished. Later, Father O’Mara picked the guy out of a lineup without hesitation. It turned out our young Mr. S. had been arrested for armed robbery twice before. He’d pled down to lesser felonies both times but this was number three with a bullet: He was going to grow old behind bars unless Jaffe and Jaffe could save him. Which I hoped like hell they couldn’t.
Still, Sissy had called me sweetheart and said something about the justice system—plus, did I mention she called me sweetheart?—so I guessed it was my job to help them try.
It was still early afternoon when I made my way to the Pine Street block below Nob Hill where the shooting had taken place. I was enjoying myself now, feeling very much the tough-guy gumshoe, even practicing a snarling curl to my upper lip and a knowing squint to my seen-it-all eyes, which I had brought along for the purpos
e. I stood across from the ATM and watched the passersby on the opposite sidewalk. I could make out their faces clearly. There was no doubt you could identify someone you’d seen from this distance. There was no doubt—in my mind anyway—that Father O’Mara was telling the truth.
I was about to head back to the office when, for my sins, a thought occurred to me. I stood a moment longer, watched the passersby across the street more closely. The mug shot of Strawberry. It showed, as I said, a man with a full head of hair. If the kid had a bald spot, as Father O’Mara had said he did in his witness report, you couldn’t tell from the front or the side. The priest had never seen him from the back—he had dashed forward into the darkness after the shooting. So how had he seen the bald spot?
I turned and looked up at the bay windows of the apartment building behind me. I thought: He could only have seen it if he’d been looking down from above.
The mailboxes in the apartment building foyer showed ten names. There was a Murphy on the second floor. A fellow Irish Catholic maybe. I buzzed that one first. A man’s voice answered and I said I was delivering flowers. The inner door unlocked for me. I felt very clever and detectivey indeed.
Mr. Brad Murphy was waiting for me in his doorway when I crested the stairs. He was a pretty young fellow and stood in a feminine pose, one fist pressed into his waist, his hip jutting.
“Mr. Murphy,” I said, “I’m from Weiss Investigations, a private detective agency. Do you know a man named Father Reginald O’Mara?”
Mr. Murphy’s pretty little face stared blankly at me for one second more. And then he burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.
“Oh, I told him,” he cried loudly, in a breaking, high-pitched voice. “I told him we could never keep it secret!”
Thirty-Two
Bishop now was in his bedroom, seated before the table, tapping at the miniature keyboard of his handheld computer.
Weiss. It worked. Wannamaker’s out. I’m in. Six tonight, I fly to some secret location out in the forest somewhere. Once I arrive, they’ll give me the details of the job. Soon as I know what’s what, I’ll make contact. With luck, we should be able to break it up without compromising…
“Turn around.”
Bishop’s hands froze in midsentence as the voice came suddenly from behind him. He didn’t turn. He stared out the window, where the hot afternoon sun burned through the tree branches.
Again: “Turn around.”
Quickly, he brushed his fingers over the keyboard. Saved the e-mail, closed it. Only then did he shift his chair so he could face her.
Kathleen was already in the room, standing just a few feet behind him. He didn’t think she could’ve read the e-mail from there but he wasn’t sure.
“How you doing, Kathleen?” he said. He kept his voice level but he was startled to see her that close, startled to see her at all. Ever since the fight at the Clover Leaf Chris had been watching her like a guard dog. She hadn’t been able to sneak over for their usual meetings. The last he’d seen her, this morning, she and Chris had been leaving to go to work at the airpark.
But here she was, all the same, real as life, pissed off as hell by the look of her. She glared at Bishop, her arms crossed sternly beneath her breasts.
“Well, how the hell do you think I’m doing, Frank?” she said. “What’s the matter, isn’t Chris screaming loud enough? You must be the only one in the neighborhood who hasn’t heard him.”
“Uh, Chris…?”
“What the fuck were you thinking, going into that bar, starting a rumble with him like that?”
Bishop felt relief. She hadn’t read the e-mail. It was only this. “I guess we just got into it,” he said.
“Oh bullshit, Frank. He told me what happened. You called him out. What the hell was that supposed to accomplish?”
“I don’t…I don’t know.”
“I told you: You’re not my white knight. No one asked you to be my white knight.”
“I’m not your white knight. We just got into it,” Bishop said.
“Now he’s on me every second. He’s saying you gotta leave, I gotta throw you outta here or else. He’s got everyone in town watching me. I say the slightest thing, he goes off like some kind of bomb. If it gets back to him I was over here while he was flying, he’ll fucking kill me. What the hell were you thinking?”
Bishop sat there, regarded her coolly with his pale eyes. What was he thinking? He was thinking that the time had come to dump her, that’s what. He’d gotten what he wanted from her. He was in on Hirschorn’s op. Her part in the deal was finished. It was time to press EJECT.
He hesitated though. He wasn’t sure whether to tell her or not. A few more hours, he’d fly off with Hirschorn into the woods. After that, whatever happened, he’d be gone and she could find out for herself what was what, no tears, no mess.
He thought about it for another second. I don’t know if it was conscience that finally decided him. Conscience or some code of his own he lived by. But the thing was: Kathleen was in danger. Hirschorn would kill her if he found out she’d been snooping on him, giving Bishop information. And Bishop did feel he had to warn her about that, give her a chance to save herself. Maybe it was just that he had liked being with her in the summer dark, that he remembered how his coiled mind would become easy when he lay with her there. But whatever it was, he couldn’t just leave her behind in harm’s way.
“Look, Kathleen…” he said slowly.
And she broke in at once: “Oh shit. Oh no.”
“Listen to me.”
“You’re leaving? Oh shit. Oh…” She stomped her foot. “Fuck! How big an idiot am I? Oh, Christ. I should’ve known. You’re leaving. Right?”
He looked down, nodded. He wished he didn’t have to warn her. He wished he could’ve just left and skipped this part, the mess of it. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve gotta go.”
Her nose wrinkled, her chin dimpled as she fought back tears. She kept her arms crossed tightly under her breasts. “Right. Of course. Obviously. How big a fucking idiot am I? Jesus!”
“Listen to me….” he told her.
“So what was it, Frank?” she said. She sniffed. “Huh? Was it, like, convenience for you? Like, you needed a summer job and a summer house and a summer fuck, and I came in handy? Is that it?”
Bishop cursed under his breath. What the hell did she want from him? What was he supposed to say? That it was his job? “Just listen, will you?”
“Because it happened to be more than that for me, okay?” she said. “It was more than…” She couldn’t go on without starting to cry so she stopped there. She squeezed her eyes shut. Pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and finger. A single tear spilled out between her lids and spilled over her hand. “Shit.”
Bishop pushed wearily to his feet. “Kathleen…”
She covered both her eyes with her hand now, her lips quivering. “I am so fucked,” she said. “My life is so fucked. I can’t go back there.” She let out a gasping sob. “I can’t go back to being with him. I just can’t do this, keep doing this anymore.”
She dropped her hand, exposed her mottled face to him. Beseeched him without restraint, without pride. “Why do you have to go? Why can’t you stay? Why do you have to go?”
Bishop cursed again but silently this time. He went to her. Put his hands on her shoulders. Looked down into her swimming eyes, at the lines of mascara running down her cheeks.
“Kathleen, you’ve got to get out of here,” he told her.
“I could make you happy, couldn’t I?” she said. “We’ve been happy up here together sometimes, haven’t we?”
“Listen to me!” he said again, more urgently. “He’ll kill you, Kath. Hirschorn will kill you. He’s had it with Chris, he’s through with Chris. He’s going to kill him and he’ll kill you too.”
She gazed up at him without comprehension.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” said Bishop. “You need to get out of town until it’s over, unti
l Hirschorn’s finished, until the whole thing is finished.”
For one more second she gazed at him, yearned up at him. Then she heard what he was saying, saw that it was over. Her face went dark with anger again. She yanked herself away from him.
“Don’t tell me that,” she said. “Don’t give me your grand advice and leave me here like that. Fuck you. Fuck you, Frank! Who the fuck are you to even pretend to care what happens to me?”
She bowed her head and cried. He stepped toward her. She waved him off. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. Stay away.”
He did. He stood still. He watched her. He had done what he could—that’s how he saw it. His code or his conscience or his sentiments were satisfied. He had warned her. He had done what he could. What else was he supposed to say? he asked himself. It was her life. What the hell else was he supposed to say?
Kathleen looked up, saw him standing there like that, watching her like that. She let out a laugh at first, a miserable little laugh. And then, crying, she shook her head at him. “Couldn’t you just love me?” she asked him softly.
He didn’t answer. He just stood there, just watched her. For a moment, he might have wondered…but no. He didn’t love her. He didn’t love anyone.
He was still standing there, still watching, when she walked out of the room.
Thirty-Three
As for Kathleen, she went slowly back to her house. She climbed slowly up the stairs to her bedroom. She lay down on her bed, on her back, and stared up at the ceiling. She stayed like that a long time. Some of that time she was crying. The light in the ceiling blurred and sparkled through her tears.
She was angry—angry with herself. And she felt like a fool, which was worse. She felt exposed in her foolishness, naked in front of the neighborhood, naked beyond recall, as if she could put on every piece of clothing she had and she would still be naked, naked and ashamed in front of everyone she met. In her shame, she was angry at the man she knew as Frank Kennedy also. She wished he were dead. She wished he would be hit by a truck and killed and no one would ever know about him and what had happened between them. But at the same time she was wishing that, she loved him too. She wished he was dead and she wished he would suddenly knock on her door and tell her he had made a mistake, he’d been wrong, he was humbly sorry, he wanted her back. It had been so good with him, in his bed, in his arms. She had felt she was beautiful because of the way he wanted her. When she lay with him afterwards, she had felt that her life was going to be different from now on because of him. Because of being with him, she could see clearly how bad everything was with Chris. She had seen it before but she hadn’t seen it so clearly. Because Frank—the man she knew as Frank—was gentle and sure with her, she could see better how awful it was that Chris hit her and drank and wanted to prove himself by being with a criminal like Hirschorn. Resting in Frank’s arms, she could see those things, but also she could feel that they were going to be different. Now though—now she knew they were not going to be different. She tried to believe she could change them herself, without Frank. She tried to believe she could leave Chris and start a new life on her own. But every time she tried to think it through, it just seemed impossible somehow and she knew she would be back with Chris again just like before and everything would be the same, day after day, forever.
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