“See, the problem I’ve got, and I’m not able to get around it right now, is that Adele Stievers happens to be the last person who saw your friend alive, even if she did come to us. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time. It’s intended to throw us off the scent . . .”
If I could have, I would have shouted and leaped for joy. Thank God for another know-it-all cop.
Instead, I slowly shook my head, as if what Hackett was saying was simply too much for me to process.
“Good morning . . .”
The voice belonged to my wife, who was crunching down the driveway in her powder-blue terrycloth bathrobe and mules.
“I noticed you two having a long conversation out here and wondered if I should join in. It’s not often a police car rolls up on a Sunday morning.”
“George is missing,” I explained, then introduced her to Hackett and let him fill in the gaps.
“Oh, dear. This is terrible. What do you think happened to him?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Hackett sniffed.
He then put Monica through an abbreviated version of the interview he’d subjected me to while I stood by and tried to evaluate how I’d fared. My wife knew much less about any of it than I did, of course. The other difference was that Hackett didn’t repeat his suspicions about Adele to Monica.
I realized then that Hackett hadn’t written down a single note. That was good, the way I saw it. It meant that he didn’t suspect me of anything. It meant that my luck was stronger than ever.
He asked us to get in touch if we remembered anything of interest, or whether we heard anything directly from George himself, which hardly went without saying.
As he was backing out of the driveway, Monica clutched her robe to her throat.
“Where do you think George is?”
“Your guess would be as good as mine, hon.”
“If something bad really happened to him, it would be awful.”
“Terrible. But we don’t want to even think about that, because nothing happened to him.”
“Can we do anything?”
I shrugged. “Well, I suppose we could go out and look for him, but where would we go?”
“I don’t know . . . It just seems like we should do something.”
“The police are on it, babe. They’ve got to be better than we would be at something like this. But if you think of something, let me know and we’ll do it, okay?”
She turned and went back into the house, and I went out the gate for my run.
25.
A couple of days passed. Even though I was caught up in my work again, I kept a close eye on the TV and the Net and the papers for any developments in the Norman Wellington investigation and the case of the missing George Addington.
But it was uncannily quiet. George’s disappearance failed to make even a dent in the evening news. There was a blip in the Times that the arraignment of Christian Chibi was being postponed, but I couldn’t read between the lines. Did it mean there were suddenly doubts about Chibi’s guilt? If so, that was bad—very bad. I put in an anonymous call to the Manhattan DA’s office one afternoon from an empty conference room at Oriole, but nobody there could tell me when the formal charges were going to be filed.
“Would you happen to have some information on that case?” one of the secretaries asked me.
I didn’t say another word. Instead, I quickly hung up.
They’re still looking for something.
Detective Hackett phoned one evening to inquire whether we’d heard anything from my vanished friend, but I regretted to have to tell him the answer was no.
In idle moments I still thought about Gretchen. She was pretty much always there, hovering in some pocket of my brain like a fantastic dream I’d once had that kept coming back to me. Despite all the trouble it caused me, and no matter what happened now, making it with her on the sly was one of the highlights of my life. Maybe I’d never have the likes of her again. Too bad for me.
No doubt she was holding on tight to old Leonard, now that Wellington was out of the way. Why hasn’t she come to me? She had to be scared shitless that the cops would bag her, didn’t she?
And she has to suspect that I was the one who killed Wellington—doesn’t she?
But unless she’d been passed my real name by Wellington before his unfortunate demise (and I had no way of knowing if she had), she still didn’t know who I—Richard Marzten—really was. And aside from a few cryptic e-mail addresses, she didn’t know how to get to me.
Yes, it was quiet. Very quiet. Until Adele Stievers phoned one afternoon before dinner.
I’d just pulled in from a long, hectic day at Oriole. Diane was upstairs in her room talking on her private line, and Monica was at her masseuse’s office and running late.
“I have to speak to you—privately.”
Adele’s tone was like I’d never heard it—no-nonsense, no bullshit. I figured I knew what the deal was: She was going to lay into me for not getting in touch with her about what happened to George. Didn’t I care enough to even give her a call?
“Okay, Adele. But I have to tell you, I haven’t heard a word from George.”
“Fifteen minutes. In the parking lot of the Foodtown in Caldwell. I’ll be in my car.”
I didn’t get it. “Why don’t you just come on over here?”
“Take my word for it, Richard. It’s better for you if we meet one-on-one.”
A click and a buzz.
A spasm of fear jolted me. What the hell was it all about? I thought it over. I could just blow Adele off, but I had the feeling it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe Hackett had repeated to her what I’d told him, though I’d pledged him to secrecy.
But why did she have to see me alone? It didn’t make sense.
I called up the stairs to Diane that I had to run out again, but that I’d be back before long. Then I put on my jacket, got into the Beemer, and drove up to the supermarket on Bloomfield Avenue.
Adele was already there, waiting for me in her silver Volkswagen at the outer edge of the parking lot. I knew the car, since she and George had driven over to Rensselaer Road a couple of times in it.
I pulled up next to her. She motioned for me to come over.
“What’s up?” I asked when I climbed into the passenger’s seat.
Adele was in a blue corduroy jacket and faded jeans. My first thought was that she couldn’t have been at her job in that getup. Her pale features were strained. It was the first time I’d seen her without makeup or lipstick, and her complexion was pasty. She was a tall girl, five ten or so, and though she wasn’t strictly my type, I’d have liked to try her out in bed. George hadn’t let on that much to me about the specifics of their sex life, except that it had been pretty damned spectacular. Then why had he cut her loose? Maybe it had been too spectacular. George was the kind of guy who’d do that sort of thing. After being hitched once, he’d had it. He wasn’t getting caught again. Even though his ass was rotting somewhere, I still had to take my hat off to him.
“What’s up? Richard, if you only knew . . .”
I thought she was about to burst into tears.
Reflexively I reached out and touched her thigh.
“Hey. I know it has to be rough with George gone missing, but—”
“That isn’t the half of it.”
“It’s not?” I said innocently.
She shook her head. The tears had welled up and were about to spill out of her cornflower-blue eyes.
“There’s this cop, Hackett, from the Roseland Police. He came to see me after I reported George missing. I have the feeling he’s fishing around for something.”
“Yeah, he was over at the house on Sunday morning asking questions about George. I didn’t know what to tell him . . .”
“I know, but you don’t get i
t, Richard. I think the stupid bastard suspects me of—of—of doing something to George.”
“No kidding. Jesus.” I pretended to be as surprised and disturbed as she was.
She shook her head again. “It’s like being in a bad TV show. I was infuriated. He gave me that BS about how the closest person to someone who’s missing has to be considered, if not a suspect, then ‘a person of interest’ in the case. Can you imagine? Me? I’d never do anything to George.”
“Hmm . . . Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But you don’t have anything to worry about, do you? I mean—”
“He’s even called me at my job. I don’t know if he’s trying to catch me off guard or what, but it was goddamned stressful and embarrassing, and I’d sue his pants off if he wasn’t a cop.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t do that, Adele. At least not while an investigation is active.”
“I know, I know. But it’s a pleasant thought.” She forced a tired half smile. “Look, I know that George wanted to break off with me—I mean, we did break off. But there’s no way—no way on earth—I’d ever do anything to hurt him. Or any other guy for that matter.” She looked at me pleadingly. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Richard, please.”
“Sure I do. Of course.”
“When that cop came to talk you, was he . . . Did he ask if you thought I was responsible for what happened to George?”
“Nah,” I lied. “He was just looking for information. He was open to any and all theories.”
“I don’t know if I believe you, Richard. Why would this cop—”
“Come on, Adele. What do you want me to say? I don’t know what the guy was really after.”
“We were supposed to meet to talk it all over,” she said wistfully, and I knew she was talking about George. “I think Georgie was going to reconsider the whole thing, I really do. But even if he didn’t, it was okay—I had nothing to do with whatever happened to him. I just wish there was some way I could find out if he’s—”
Dead or alive? That’s what Adele was thinking. She must have had an ominous premonition.
I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say, really.
“But I will tell you this, Richard. I have a strange feeling that something seriously bad happened to George. He’s not the kind of guy who’s five minutes late to brush his teeth, let alone for a serious talk about his romantic future . . . unless, of course, I’m only deluding myself. Maybe what he really wanted was to get away from me, and so he decided to take a vacation.”
She glanced at me and then away. “But it still wouldn’t explain everything, would it?”
“Who knows . . .”
“I mean, does it really make sense that he’d skip town for a week just because he didn’t want to talk to a little girl?”
“Depends on what the little girl was doing to him, I suppose.”
She shot me a look—she didn’t think my comment was funny.
“And who’s looking after his precious house? Did he ask you to do it?”
I shook my head. It was a good question, actually.
“So how about you?” she asked.
I stared at Adele, hard. “How about me what?”
“What do you think happened to George?”
“Who the hell knows. I can’t figure it out.”
“Did he say anything to you? Anything that might have given you a clue?”
“Hackett asked me the same thing. The answer is no.”
There was silence in the car for a few moments. Faintly, I could smell Adele’s perfume. I’d always loved the scent of a woman’s perfume, though I had to wonder why she was wearing it right now.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said in a trancelike whisper.
“I wish I could tell you something. There’s something else I don’t get.”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you want to talk to me here—in a supermarket parking lot?”
“Because I know you and George were tight.”
“So were you two. He and I couldn’t have been as tight as—”
“No, I mean really tight, for guys. You don’t let on to just anyone that you’re having an affair. And I didn’t want Monica to hear me bring it up. That’s why I asked you to come out here to talk.”
Had I heard her right? I wasn’t quite sure how to react. For a long moment I said nothing. I just sat there and looked at her.
A huge white Dairyland van rolled into the lot and pulled up to the supermarket’s delivery platform. A weary-looking driver jumped out of the cab and shuffled around to the back of the vehicle. Then he pulled the doors open and disappeared around the other side.
His simple motions ignited a fantasy: about how I could climb into that truck and find a place among the crates and cartons and hide in there when it took off. Maybe when they opened the doors next, I’d find myself in New Mexico, or Wisconsin, or Oregon, or some other place far away, and I could start my life all over again. Then I thought about how I should get out of the Volkswagen and just do it, even though I knew I wasn’t going to, even though I knew it would never happen . . .
When I snapped out of my daydream, I noticed that Adele was staring at me as if I were a being from outer space. And I started having a strange fantasy about her . . .
I leaned over and wrapped my hands around her long neck. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she didn’t even try to resist. I squeezed, like I’d squeezed the life out of Norman Wellington, until she was dead and not ever again able to bring up classified information, like my covert affair with Gretchen Trecker.
“Richard? Richard?”
When I finally blinked, I realized that I’d been moving toward Adele—not much, an inch or two is all—but it was enough to make her reach for the door handle.
“What?”
“If there’s anyone George would have confided in, it’s you. Did he say anything to you? Did he? Because you can help me, Richard, you can. You can help me to get this detective off my back . . .”
I reached for my door handle.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know anything. Leave me alone, Adele. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
26.
What happened next—it was two things, really—was nearly simultaneous.
And uncanny.
Un-fucking-canny.
The first thing I learned later that night was that they let Christian Chibi go.
“Police earlier today released the prime suspect in the murder of a man at the ritzy Soho Grand Hotel . . .”
What the hell had gone wrong? I was totally freaked.
I was sitting in front of the TV in the living room with a beer, mulling over the strange incident with Adele a couple of hours earlier. Diane was upstairs sleeping, and Monica was in the master bathroom lounging in the Jacuzzi, something she treated herself to once a week or so.
They showed the same stuff from when the story first broke—a pan of the hotel, a swift, silent clip of the interview with the hotel representative. Then back to the anchor.
“A police spokesman said that Chibi was released due to lack of solid evidence tying him to the crime . . .”
And that was it?
Cut to the freshly liberated suspect outside the Manhattan Detention Complex downtown. He was speaking into a gaggle of microphones bearing the logos of the various New York TV and radio stations. Now that he was sprung free, it was apparently a major story.
“I very happy they let me go, sure, but how could they keep holding me? How? I do nothing, nothing to this man!”
Chibi was vehement, and his righteousness pissed me off. Who the hell was he to be all indignant and offended? I was the one who could be dangling in the wind now that he was out of the cage, wasn’t I? What the fuck was
wrong with those cops? Couldn’t they do anything right? Look at O.J. Simpson. Look at Robert Blake. Didn’t that prove it?
The squabble that raged inside my head was absurd and I knew it. Any trouble I was in was all of my own making. But casting blame somewhere else helped, even if just inside my own mind.
But the news wasn’t finished.
“Police also said that they have finally learned the identity of the murdered man . . .”
I sat there in a state of suspended animation. The TV went on burbling. My heart seemed to stop beating. If it didn’t start beating again, I was going to be dead. Monica would find me there, stiff on the sofa, when she came downstairs.
Maybe it would be better that way. Because it looked like my luck was about to finally run out.
“That victim’s name was Norman Wellington, and he lived in . . .”
I zoned out, altogether this time. I didn’t give a damn where Wellington lived. I didn’t give a damn how they found out who he was, or his age, or who he lived with, or any of the rest of it. Only one thing was important now, which was that somehow they’d found out who he was.
So—he’d been telling the truth about his name after all. Which in all likelihood meant that he was being honest about the rest of it.
And it meant that sooner or later, someone was going to put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.
I switched off the TV, picked up my beer bottle, walked across the house, and went into my study. I flipped the lock on the door, took a seat, and tried to think of all the places I could go in the event the net began to flutter down over me: Mexico . . . Morocco . . . France. I couldn’t remember which of them didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. France, maybe. Maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. I’d have to check. I’d never had to think about it before.
But wait a minute. What happened to stonewalling it? That’s what I was going to do, wasn’t I? Sure, that’s what I was going to do. How could they nail me if I stonewalled it?
Still, wouldn’t it make sense to have a bag packed, just in case?
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