“Must be a fight,” he said. “There’ve been a few there.” He put the car in gear and eased off. “Wife turning in husband for beating her, have another row just to prove it. Thug shoots his buddy, who is about to rat on him, adding a murder charge for good measure.”
“Damn hot day for a fight.” Lennox sat in the blast of heated air coming through the window. The barbecue feed at Bryant’s had been an animal frenzy, a gnawing and gnarling and baring of teeth. She licked her still-sticky fingers, the sweet-hot sauce more pleasant than she deserved. She thought suddenly of Louie Weston, duffing around the golf course with the old man. Louie Weston would never take her for barbecue. He was nothing but bad luck, for herself, for her friend, for everyone. She tried to hold on to that thought, but it was too hot for heavy thoughts.
“Well, we won’t fight then, will we?” he said, smiling. He turned around a corner, making a sudden decision. “What if you were so hot, you could just melt?”
“I’ve been that way about seventy-five times this summer. I survived.”
“But if you could do something about it, where would you go? To the river?”
“No. Not the river.”
“Take some cold beers, lie in the sand, dangle your toes in the current… .”
“Not the river.” She glanced at him. Sweat dripped down his temple. “I was kidding about the picnic. I knew Luther wouldn’t really go.” She stuck her head out the window.
“Okay, I get ya. No rivers. I always go upstream from the packing plants, but I know what you mean.”
He was staring at her as he drove. She felt like a ninny.
“Listen, Talbot. I changed my mind. Head down to the city wharf, will you?”
They bumped over the railroad tracks that crisscrossed over Delaware Street, until there was no farther to go. Front Street ran up to the wharf where the steamboat she’d seen Friday floated on the muddy water. The barges had gone, but a small tugboat was tied up behind the steamboat.
“This is where they found her, isn’t it?” Talbot climbed out of the parked car and squinted into the sun.
He followed Lennox down the thick wood planks to where two stevedores lounged against a piling. They straightened as the two approached.
“Hey, fellas,” Lennox said. They nodded. Talbot reached out a hand and they shook it.
“Harvey Talbot, Kansas City Star. This is my assistant, Doria Lennox.”
She tripped on a piece of the dock and glared at him.
“We heard you fellas found a body down here yesterday.”
The fatter stevedore, dressed in huge overalls, shook his head. The thinner one said, “That was Manny.” He was muscled from hauling freight but sported a very bad haircut. He had a thick Slav or Romany accent. “Not work Sunday.”
“Manny.” Talbot got out his notebook and pencil. “Got a last name for Manny?”
The thin stevedore frowned and shook his head.
“When does Manny work next?”
Another shake and frown and blank. Talbot asked them their names and they clammed up completely.
“Come on, Talbot,” Lennox said. “Thanks, fellas.”
They turned back toward the street. The water lapped against the sides of the wharf. From the steamboat came the sounds of laughter. Business was brisk, the holiday mood in the air. Overhead, seagulls swooped, an incongruous sight so far inland.
“That was productive,” Talbot said, walking at her side. “Did you think Manny’s buddy was going to tell you what he stole off the body?”
Lennox turned to him. “What was that taking over back there?”
“You could have asked the questions. Nobody was stopping you.”
“And suddenly I’m your assistant?” But she turned away. He was right, of course, but it didn’t stop her from being angry with him.
What had she been thinking, bringing him in? She worked alone, or with Amos, not some scribbler. She would go home, check out the bag of Iris’s clothes, make some solid progress. She reached the Chrysler and was about to open the door, when the bridge caught her eye. High and wide, with its tall stone piers plunging into the Missouri, the Hannibal Bridge swept across the wide expanse of the river. She spotted the place Iris must have jumped from; a tiny ladder led from the auto level down to the train level.
Her eye followed the line Iris would have made, into the water. A long way down, a long way to contemplate death. Better not to stare death in the face. What you didn’t think about couldn’t hurt you: Lennox’s credo of forgetfulness. If death caught you with your pants down, you were just as dead. Standing on the Chrysler’s bumper, she could see the cluster of fishing shacks on the marshy banks along the river. Railroad tracks curled along the edge of the marsh, then cattails and other reeds. Red-winged blackbirds sat perched above the stagnant pools. What’s down there? she wondered. A fisherman in rubber boots and battered hat emerged onto the sidewalk on Woodswether, carrying a string of small fish. Scales flashed in the sunlight. His boots were covered with mud and green slime. He turned away from them and disappeared down the hill. No, she wouldn’t go down to the river. Even to find some clue to Iris’s demise.
Talbot stopped at a stop sign on Independence Boulevard and turned, putting his arm across the back of the seat. “What if there was another way to cool off, one that didn’t involve rivers? What would you say to that?”
She looked at him, unable to revive the anger of minutes before. In a strange way, she felt grateful for the company. He must have friends, family, a picnic to attend, a baseball game to pitch. It was Labor Day. The streets were deserted; everyone was playing, boating, swimming, canoeing, having fun. She could go back and sit in her stuffy, hot room, which smelled like cauliflower, play her father’s old jazz records on the gramophone, make herself sick in front of Mrs. Ferazzi’s fan.
“I’d say you were damn persistent.”
He fingered her damp hair. “A swimming pool,” he whispered. “Cool, clean water.”
She closed her eyes for a second, feeling the heat on every inch of skin, the sweat rolling down her chest between her breasts, damp pants stuck to the seat, her armpits sticky, her ears—even her ears were sweating!
“I don’t have a suit,” she heard herself say. “I’d have to go home.”
The house was enormous, a mansion by Loose Park, sitting regally with white trim and tidy hedges, a sheltering overhang of eaves and dark purple brick. Through the shrubs and a wooden fence, the swimming pool glimmered, still and inviting.
His managing editor’s place, Talbot said. Away for the weekend. He was keeping an eye on things. Feeding the cat.
Lennox changed in the small bathhouse, white tile cool against her toes, and slipped over the side of the cement edge into the blue coolness. She didn’t care whose house it was, whose pool, but God bless. Liquid heaven, seeping into her ears, over her head, into her scalp and hair. She let herself drop to the bottom and bob up.
“Watch this.” Talbot did a cannonball off the board. The splash rocked her. She had no great notions for showing off; just lolling in the coolness was all too luscious.
She closed her eyes and hooked the back of her neck over the gutter, letting her legs float up. Talbot’s hand pressed against her back, pushing her to the surface.
“You’re smiling, Miss Lennox.”
She opened one eye. “Getting the barbecue sauce washed off at last.”
“I told you I’d help you with that,” he said, licking her chin, her cheeks. He paused, but she kept smiling. Then he licked her lips. Her mouth, kissing her. When she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, she tried not to think. On a day when the weather takes over your body, your mind simply follows.
They fell back in the shallow end. She pressed him against the wall of the pool, a water animal cornering its prey. He tasted like salt, and cigarettes, and cinnamon. She pulled his hair with her hands until he moaned under her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said, and dunked him. He gulped to the surface
and dunked her. She twisted away and came up five feet away, laughing. “Is this what you mean by working together?”
He put on a mock frown, water dripping across his cheek from the hank of disobedient hair. “No.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him. “We need to have a much closer working relationship. Don’t we, Miss Lennox?”
“Is that what you want, Mr. Talbot?”
He slipped his hands inside the back of her suit and moved her into the shady corner of the pool.
“Call me Harvey.”
“What do you want, Harvey?”
“No—what the fuck do you want, Harvey?”
“Oh, what the fuck, Talbot.”
They kneeled on the gritty concrete bottom of the pool and he cupped her breasts in his warm hands.
A quiver of fear went through her, unbidden, there in the shade. He was kissing her neck. The face of that man, the one back in Atchison who wrestled her into his car, came back to her. That man, who gave her back her love of her blade. That man, who made Verna send her away. She gasped, and Harvey stopped what he was doing and looked in her eyes.
Her mother would have liked Harvey Talbot. Verna liked ‘em short and tall, skinny and fat, rich or poor. She didn’t discriminate. She always said she just liked men, liked the way they made her feel, that special, wanted feeling she could get nowhere else. Even if you couldn’t trust them, even if they hurt you, she liked men. Verna was like that.
Lennox reached up and smoothed Talbot’s haphazard black eyebrows. She wasn’t Verna, but she felt that need. But she didn’t want to be lost. She had been lost and knew how that felt. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was thinking too much.
He leaned close to her ear, pressed his rough cheek against hers. “It’s all right,” he whispered.
She examined his face again, as if the future were hidden there, tea leaves to be read in the flecks of his irises. He had the most beautiful mouth.
Was it all right? Who was he? A reporter who had been pumping her for information, a man, yes, but first a reporter.
She pushed roughly out of his arms, backed up to the side of the pool. “Is this—is this about Iris? For information about Iris?”
Talbot flipped back his hair. The gesture somehow confirmed her worst fears. “Is that what you think?”
She hoisted herself out of the pool, pulled her knees to her chest. “Tell me you weren’t thinking about Iris just now. Tell me.”
He said nothing, just looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. But something had snapped inside her and she couldn’t change it. Not now.
She went toward the bathhouse and picked up her towel. Talbot climbed out of the pool, his long limbs tanned and strong. He looked smug, standing with his hands on his hips, dripping under the elm tree.
“Tell me, Talbot.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Iris. I was thinking about you. Would that be so strange?”
She shook her head. ‘T don’t believe you.”
“Dorie,” he said, taking a step toward her.
She stepped back, holding the towel over her chest. His hair was dripping across his forehead, falling into his eyes. She couldn’t look at his eyes now. She felt too open, too ready to believe him. He would use her, use that feeling against her.
She wiped the water off her face with the towel. Why couldn’t she be like Verna, just have the moment and move on? People had called Verna a whore and a slut, but she’d been happy, hadn’t she? But Dorie had never wanted to be like Verna. And now perhaps she was doomed to be the opposite.
Lennox felt dizzy, as if the world was spinning too fast, as if she’d forgotten to eat, to drink, to sleep, forgotten how to live, how she had lived, every day. It had to stop.
“I have to go,” she said.
TWELVE
The heavy sweetness of twilight descended on Janssen Place. The air was punctuated with shouts of children playing in the street and down along Hyde Park’s sloping lawns. The yellow begonias on the Vanvleets’ porch hung dully from shiny leaves.
Lennox parked in front and headed up the walk, trying to frame the words for her lack of progress. The old man was unlikely to let it slide; he would have words, recommendations, recriminations. There was a reason for his daily reports, even on weekends and holidays. He expected progress, round the clock.
Diligent, that was his word, but she had been anything but diligent today. Reckless, indulging in fantasies, from flying in airplanes to— A wave of shame washed over her. Why was she being so touchy? She felt bile rise in her stomach.
The voice from the shadows of the porch startled her. “The country girl, am I right? Come to take tea with us this evening?”
The old woman flounced on the porch swing. She pushed out a toe and made her seat rock, chain creaking. Lennox turned toward her. “Ma’am.”
“A fine evening, my dear. Please sit down.”
Mrs. Vanvleet wore a simpler dress this evening, but one that had seen better years, a pleated white-and-blue cotton print with a wide white collar that framed her proud head and the upswept hair. A WCTU ax-wielder with that glint of madness in her eyes. Lennox’s hair was still damp from the pool. The ride back to the boardinghouse with Talbot had been agonizing and silent. She eased into a white wicker chair with a dusty blue cushion.
“Such a pleasant summer evening,” the old woman murmured. “One of the last, I suppose. I have such a morbid feeling this evening, as if we won’t be allowed to enjoy evenings anymore. As if taking the air will be unpatriotic.”
The old woman rang a small bell on the table in front of her and called for someone named Totty. In a moment, iced tea with lemon was being served by the maid.
The old woman sipped her tea and said, “You have heard about the Germans, my dear.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Quite distressing, don’t you think?” Although her words were appropriate, the old woman kept her tone breezy. She sipped her tea, rocking in the porch swing.
“Very.” Lennox put down her tea. “Is Mr. Vanvleet in tonight?”
“My boy Dick fought the Germans. He died there. So many boys killed. It doesn’t make much sense to me to take fine, healthy boys and put guns in their hands. I suppose we have no choice. Dick was my oldest, a fine, fine boy, in law school when he enlisted.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Mrs. Vanvleet gazed at the twilight hanging over the street. “And the Polish! No one really cares very much about the Polish as a people—it’s not as if they’ve really contributed to the world’s literature or art or great thinkers—but it is the principle of the thing. One cannot simply drop bombs on other people, can one? With no good reason?”
Good God. “No, ma’am.” Where was the old man?
“So glad you came properly dressed today, my dear.”
Lennox tried to smile, smoothing her green cotton skirt.
“The world is becoming such a place, such an awful place, that certain customs are so very necessary. So, so very …” Her voice faded off as her eyes wandered the yard, from bush to flower and back.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Is Mr. Van—”
The old woman jumped to her feet. “Stop that, you wicked children! Stop it this instant!” She shook a finger at three children running down the sidewalk. They hit each and every upright in the iron fence with sticks, making a tommy-gun prattle.
The children shrieked and kept running, lost in the purple light. Mrs. Vanvleet eased back into the porch swing, causing the chain to groan. She put her hand across her forehead and eyes for a moment, a long-fingered, freckled, jeweled hand. Then came up smiling again.
“Where were we? Is your tea sweet enough? Can Totty get you some crackers?” She tinkled the bell again. “Totty! Cheese and crackers!”
Lennox sat forward on her chair. “Mrs. Vanvleet, I need to speak to your husband. Is he at home, ma’am?”
Totty arrived with a tray. Lennox picked up the thread, afraid it was hopelessly lost: “Is he home?
”
The old woman arched her neck. “Well. No. He has gone to watch horse racing. Not that I dislike the sport so much. The horses can be so beautiful, so wickedly strong and healthy. You must know what I mean, young country miss.”
The lewd glint in her eye embarrassed Lennox. She looked away, ate a cracker and a slice of cheddar. The woman was batty. And Vanvleet wasn’t here. She felt a keen disappointment to miss the old man tonight. Strange, that disappointment, because he surely would have upbraided her for doing nothing today. Work, the case, that was what she needed.
“But the men and women who congregate at the races,” the old woman continued, “that is another matter. If Punky feels it is necessary to be there for business reasons, then, well, of course he must go. But to drive there with that odious Italian? I ask you, is it necessary for the neighbors to see that man in my driveway, that hideous automobile? Who drives a red car? I ask you. Not a businessman, no, and that Italian is no businessman.”
Lennox ate another cracker.
“The Italians are in cahoots with the Germans, for heaven’s sake. Just another reason that he should not be seen at my home. We can’t afford scandal. No, I told Punky at supper, no scandal should come down on our children and grandchildren. No, never.”
“They’ve gone off to the Pendergast track, then?”
“Good heavens, no. The Blue Valley track has lights, don’t you know? Well, you are from the country. There is no night racing at the Pendergast track, child.”
For a woman who hated racing, she certainly knew a lot about it.
“Then they went for the eight o’clock run?”
Mrs. Vanvleet blinked at her. “Silly thing. The run starts at nine.”
Four heats had run by the time Lennox drove east, through the Blue Valley industrial district, then around the Mount Washington cemetery and south along Blue Ridge Boulevard. The sun had set over this no-man’s-land between the city and the small towns to the east, over the fields and pastures, the clumps of houses. There was still enough country here, with whitewashed barns, cows and ducks, creeks and cottonwoods rippling their leaves in the evening breeze. Enough to lure people out of the smelly city, for a picnic, a little white cottage, a day at the track.
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