I went up the winding steps for a closer look at the man. He wore a monogrammed blue silk dressing robe over a pair of lighter blue cotton pajamas. The monogram read "GE." He wore expensive brown leather house slippers, new enough that you could see the brand name imprinted on the soles. He was maybe six feet and slender and his skin was the color of creamed coffee. But he was one of those black men whose features are as white as Richard Chamberlain's. He was probably my age, but there the similarity ended because he looked brighter and handsomer and, even unconscious, a lot better prepared to put his personal stamp on an impersonal world.
I glanced quickly around the second level. This was an open area with another fan-shaped window to my right and a huge Matisse to the left. You could see dust motes tumble golden in the sunlight. The carpeting was the same light gray as downstairs, and it ran down a long hail with three oak doors on each side.
I lifted up his hand. His pulse was strong. I leaned down and looked closer at his wound. It was open to reveal pink flesh. It would most likely require a few stitches.
I went in search of a bathroom, which proved to be the second door down to the right. On the way I passed a room with a Jacuzzi and a master bedroom laid out to resemble a den where people only occasionally slept.
In the john-or should you call something composed of marble with a sunken bathtub big enough to hold Olympic tryouts a john? — I soaked a towel in warm water and then found some Bactine and Johnson amp; Johnson Band-Aids and then I filled a paper cup with water about the right temperature to drink.
I was halfway out the bathroom door when I thought about the few times I'd been knocked out back in my police days. I'd forgotten one important thing. I went back to the medicine cabinet, which I noted held any number of brown prescription bottles with Karen Lane's name on them. Among many others, the medicine included Librium and Xanax. Somewhere amid the prescriptions, I found some plain old Tylenol. I thumbed off the lid and knocked three of the white capsules into my hand. When I managed to get him awake, he was going to have a headache and he was going to appreciate these.
I was halfway down the hail, hands loaded with the towel and the Bactine and the Band-Aids and the drinking water and the Tylenol, when he staggered toward me and said, "If you move, I'm going to kill you. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," I said. "Yes, I do understand that."
And I did. He looked to be in pain. He also looked frightened and slightly crazed.
He held in his slender tan hand a fancy silver-plated .45, and I had no doubt at all that he would, for the slightest reason, use it.
"Now," he said, "I want you to lead the way downstairs. We're going to go to the kitchen and sit in the nook and you're going to answer questions, and if you do anything at all that seems suspicious, I'll shoot you right in the belly. All right?"
I hadn't realized till then how badly he was hyperventilating. Nor had I realized that he had begun to sob, his whole torso lunging with cries that seemed half grief and half frenzy.
Then he pitched forward face first and collapsed on the carpet soft and gray as a pigeon's breast.
The gun fell from his hand.
I wondered if I'd underestimated the severity of the head wound.
I wondered if Dr. Glendon Evans hadn't just fallen down dead right in front of my eyes.
Chapter 4
In one of the kitchen cupboards I found a bottle of Wild Turkey. I poured a lot of it into the coffee I'd made us. Then I carried the cups over to the nook, on the wooden windowsill on which a jay sat, overcome with the soft breeze. Beyond were the hills of pine and the sky of watercolor blue.
"You feeling any better?" I asked him. I sat there and blew on my coffee, having overdone the heat in the microwave, and then I sat about staring at him again.
Twenty-five minutes had passed since I'd helped him downstairs and sat him up on one side of the breakfast-nook table. Twenty-five minutes and he had not uttered a single word. At first I wondered if he wasn't in some kind of shock, but his brown eyes registered all the appropriate emotions to my words, so shock was unlikely. I'd said a few things to irritate him just to see how he would respond, and he'd responded fine. Then I'd considered that maybe he thought I was the man who'd knocked him out, but now he'd know differently. Most burglars didn't put iodine and Band-Aids on the wounds they'd inflicted.
Glendon Evans sat there, a slender, handsome, successful-looking man who even in these circumstances gave off a scent of arrogance. He wasn't talking to me no matter what I said and I didn't know why.
I had some more coffee and then I said, "This is pretty ridiculous. Your not talking, I mean."
He sipped his coffee, set the delicate white china cup back down. Looked out the window.
I said, "Did they want the suitcase?"
This time when he faced me there was more than a hint of anxiety in his eyes.
"So it was the suitcase. You know what was in it?"
He went back to looking out the window. From some distant hill, a red kite had been sent up the air currents where it struggled with comic grace against the soft and invisible tides of spring.
"She told me it had sentimental stuff in it.” I paused. "She made it sound very innocent."
I went over and got the bottle and gave us each some more bourbon.
"How's your head?"
He turned and looked and, almost against his will, raised his shoulders in a tiny shrug.
I sat back down and said, "I wonder who's going to get pissed off first. You because you're sick of me talking or me because I'm sick of you not talking."
I congratulated myself on the cleverness of that line, feeling for sure this would open his mouth and get him going magpie-style, but all it produced was a wince and a touch of long fingers to the back of his head.
So I watched the kite for a while, how it angled left, then angled right, red against the light blue sky. It made me recall how warm even March winds were when you were ten and had your hand filled with kite string.
I said, "She did it to you, didn't she?" I knew he wasn't going to talk, so I just kept right on going. "She did it to me when I was twenty. I really thought I was going to marry her and all that stuff. At the time I was working in a supermarket for a dollar thirty-five an hour and spending a dollar twenty-seven on her. I bought myself a forty-nine Ford fastback and one night she gave me a crock about needing it to help her mother and you know what she did? She took a guy to the drive-in in it." My laugh, bitter even after all these years, cracked like a shot in the aerie.
I poured us some more Wild Turkey. His body language-he was leaning forward now and his eyes started studying me-indicated he was getting interested.
He said, "Was that a true story?"
"The drive-in?"
He nodded. He had a great and grave dignity. He certainly had the right demeanor for a shrink.
"True," I said.
Then I went back to staring out the window at the kite and the birds. The silence was back.
I went and found a bathroom and came back. When I slid into my place in the nook I found a new hot cup of coffee in my place. He was pouring Wild Turkey into it.
He said, "Three months ago she told me she desperately needed money for her mother. Some illness. She was very vague. I gave it to her, of course."
"There's something I should tell you."
"You don't need to. I looked through an old scrapbook of hers. Her mother died in nineteen-sixty-four."
"Right."
The pain in his eyes was not simply from the head wound. "I really thought we were going to be married." His lips thinned. "God, what a stupid bastard I was."
"Was she a patient of yours?"
For the first time, he smiled. "A patient? You think she'd ever seek help? Ever think she'd need help? Her version of things is that the world is here to serve her, and if she occasionally has to inconvenience or hurt somebody to be served, then she just hopes there will be no hard feelings; Holly Golightly."
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p; 'That's Karen."
"I met her at a party." Miserably, he said, "Her pattern is to have a new one ready to go before she notifies the old one that he's finished."
"You know who the new one is?"
"No. But I'm sure there is one and has been for some time now." His-face tightened. "You can tell." He shook his head. "She got calls a few times from a man named Ted Forester. Somehow, I didn't get the impression it was romantic."
So I sat there and thought about Ted Forester and his money and his arrogance. Then I remembered something I hadn't thought about in a quarter century. All the time I'd been going out with Karen, Forester had been skulking in the background, calling her, buying her gifts, waiting me out. She'd admitted this to me one night, saying, "Ted doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's fallen in love with a girl from the Highlands." Which was true enough. It was hard to imagine his parents approving of such a match. Then I spent a moment or two thinking of how Malley and I had smashed out his car window.
Glendon Evans said, "I suppose she told you I hit her."
''No."
"I did. I actually hit her. Not hard. Just sort of a slap. It was something I never thought I could do. Ever."
"She seems to have survived."
"Would you like some more bourbon?"
"No, thanks. Just some more coffee." I was making instant Folgers with tap water and setting it in the microwave. "You want some more?"
"Please."
So I made us some and sat back down and said, "What's in the suitcase?"
"I don't know."'
"Really?"
"Really. She kept it in her closet. It had a clasp lock on it. Several times, after things started going badly for us, I was tempted to open it and look inside, but I couldn't see any way to do that without her finding out."
"You never got a glimpse inside?"
"Not a glimpse."
I sipped my coffee. "You have any idea who hit you?"
"None."
"Tell me about it."
He shrugged lean shoulders beneath the expensive blue silk robe. "I came home early today. The flu. I got undressed and into my pajamas and robe and went into the den to lie on the couch and watch the news on cable and that's when somebody came up behind me."
"You remember anything about him?"
"Not really."
"He didn't say anything?"
"No.''
"You remember any particular odors or sounds?"
''No.
"How long've you been out?"
"Maybe an hour."
"So he was in here, waiting?"
"Apparently."
"It doesn't sound as if he got the suitcase."
"I know he didn't."
"How do you know?"
"I looked for it yesterday. It was gone."
"You sure she left it behind when she left?"
He touched manicured fingers to his lips. Thought a moment. "That's it. Now I remember. She said she'd pick up the suitcase when Gary Roberts got her things."
"Did she get it then?"
"No. That's the strange thing. He asked for the suitcase, but when I looked for it, it was gone."
"What did Gary say?"
"Oh, he's always polite. He's a holdover from the sixties and he can't let himself consciously admit that it bothers him that she'd live with a black man. He doesn't mean to be a bigot. I feel sorry for him."
"He got all her other things?"
"Yes."
"And he just left without the suitcase?"
"Yes." He thought a moment. "I could be wrong, but I believe the day before Gary came, somebody jimmied one of my windows."
"And got in?"
"Possibly."
Now Karen's coming to me made sense. She had sent Gary over to get her things. When Glendon Evans said the suitcase was gone, she refused to believe him. So she looked me up, sent me in to get it.
"I don't know if I'll ever feel safe here again."
More to myself, I said, "What the hell could be in the suitcase that so many people are interested in it?"
He laughed. "It couldn't be money. Not the way she depended on my Visa and American Express cards." His laugh was as harsh as my own. Then, "The terrible thing is I'd take her back. How about you?"
"Oh, no. She's been out of my system for a long time."
"So why did you agree to help her?"
"We're from the Highlands."
"Oh, yes," he said. "The Highlands."
"So she talked about it?"
"Frequently. She even had nightmares about something that happened back there. Always the same thing. She'd be waking up screaming and bathed in sweat and-" He stared down at his coffee. "My father was a surgeon. I rode around in a Lincoln and went to private school. I almost feel guilty."
I was curious. "She never told you what the nightmares were about?"
"No. But she did always use the same word. Pierce."
"Was that somebody's name?"
"I don't know. I thought you might, being from the Highlands.
"No."
He put a hand to the back of his head. "I'm afraid I'm going to need stitches."
"I was wondering about that."
"Would you give me a ride? There's a trauma center not too far from here."
"Sure."
He stood up. He was still wobbly. He put his palms flat against the table as a precaution.
"You all right?"
He looked up. He looked pale beneath his light-brown skin. I pretended I didn't see the tears in his eyes. "She's never going to come back to me, is she?"
Soft as I could, I said, "I don't think that's her style. Coming back to people, I mean."
Chapter 5
From a drive-up phone I tried my service to check or calls, discovered I had a radio spot for tomorrow in a downtown studio-a local spot but one that promised decent residuals-and that the same woman had called three times but had not left her name.
Finished with my service, I called Donna Harris' apartment. It was publication time for Ad World, and I didn't really expect her to answer-she tended to a bunker mentality the day everything got put to bed, eating innumerable and exotic pieces of junk food (I'd once seen her mix Count Chocula and Trix into a kind of bridge mix)-but she surprised me by being home.
"Hi," she said. "I was hoping you wouldn't call because I'm so damn busy, but then I was hoping you would call because if you didn't, I'd feel neglected. You know?"
"I know."
"I wish we could go to a movie tonight."
"That would be nice, wouldn't it?"
"You finished working?"
"At Security I am. Actually, I'm working on something else."
I explained what that something else was.
Her voice got tight. "You've mentioned her before, haven't you?"
"Karen Lane?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yes, I suppose I have." I sighed. "Please don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Get jealous. There's nothing at all to get jealous about."
"I trust you, Dwyer."
"Really?"
"The rational part of me does, anyway."
"How about the irrational part?"
"How does she look after twenty-five years? God, that sounds like a long time."
"It is a long time, and she doesn't look all that sensational."
"In other words, she looks gorgeous."
"She looks all right."
"Now I know gorgeous for sure."
"It's a job. You seem to forget that little incidental fact. She's actually paying me money."
"Otherwise you probably wouldn't want to get involved with her at all, would you?"
"You probably won't believe this, but no, I wouldn't. She's a classic example of retarded adolescence. Nothing to her matters quite so much as her tan or her new sweater or how that cute guy at the health club looked her over. It's a seventh-grade mentality and we're headed toward fifty. The big five-oh. It's a pain in the ass."
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"You figured out what's in the suitcase?"
"Obviously something valuable."
"You think she might have stolen something from somebody?"
It was then I saw it for the first time. The sleek black Honda motorcycle. Driven by a sleek black-leathered figure. Black leather head to toe, with a black helmet and black mask. Across the street. Just sitting there. I looked back from my rearview and said, "I'm assuming that's what it's all about. Some kind of theft. Otherwise Glendon Evans wouldn't have gotten beaten up."
She sounded a bit scared. "I'm sorry I was so pissy."
"It's all right. You know how I got the other night when that old actor friend of mine stopped by our booth and spent twenty minutes staring at you."
"God, why are we so jealous?"
"Insecure."
"But why are we so insecure? I mean, we're bright, we're attractive. We should have at least a little self-confidence."
"Probably our genes." I looked into the rearview again.
The black-clad rider still sat astride his black Honda.
"Your mind is drifting. I can tell over the phone."
"Sorry."
"Something wrong?"
"I don't think so. Just my usual paranoia." Then I said, "You could do me a favor."
"What?"
"On your way back to your office, you could stop by my place and pick up some clean clothes for me."
"In other words, you want to stay all night?"
"If you wouldn't mind."
"No, that'd be nice. Only I want the window up."
Donna is never so happy as when she's covered with goose bumps and sleeping soundly. "Can't we flip for it?"
"We flipped for it last time and you cheated."
"Oh, yeah."
"So if you stay, the window's going to be up. Clean fresh air."
"Okay. And I appreciate you stopping by my place. I have the feeling I'm going to be busy."
"Where you going?"
"Up near the Highlands. Little housing development there. Where Karen Lane claims to be staying."
"Claims?"
"Right now, I'm not sure I believe anything she tells me."
"Good." Donna laughed. "Stay that way."
They'd built the houses in the mid-fifties, and though they weren't much bigger than garages, the contractors had been smart enough to paint them in pastels-yellow and lime and pink and puce, the colors of impossible flowers, the colors of high hard national hope-and they were where you strived to live in 1956 if you worked in a factory and wanted the good life as promised by the Democrats and practiced by the Republicans. There were maybe four hundred houses in all, interlocked in Chinese puzzle boxes of streets, thirty to a block, glowing in the sunlight, hickory-smoked with backyard barbecues and driveways filled with installment-plan Ford convertibles and DeSoto sedans. The housing development seemed the quintessence of everything our fathers had fought World War II for. My own father never made it there; we always stayed in the Highlands farther down in the valley. But on Sundays we'd drive in our fifteen-year-old Plymouth with its running boards and mud-flaps through the streets of the development while my parents discussed just which type of house they would buy-there being four basic models-when the money came in.
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