She scratched her head. “It’s hard to explain. I guess it’s because I love music too much to want to work at it.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well,” she said. “When I play ... even practicing ... I don’t like to come to the piano because I have to. And I didn’t like to have to justify my existence by playing before a crowd—the regimentation of it made me start to think of it as drudgery. Sometimes it was anyway, and that was ruining the whole joy I got from playing. Can you understand that?”
“I think so,” Ron said.
“What about you?” Janet asked. “Why are you a detective? I’ve been trying to figure you out for weeks.”
Ron laughed. “You and the professor; only he claims he’s been at it for years. Am I really so puzzling?”
She just looked at him.
“All right, all right,” he said, “I’ll talk. Turn off the cold professional gaze. It’s a ‘Purloined Letter’ solution—I puzzle you with my very simplicity. I’m a detective because I hate mysteries.”
“You mean you love mysteries.”
“No, I hate them. I love answers. Life is so damn confusing, and it’s all mysteries: what’s going to happen in the Middle East; what can be done about the energy crisis; why do people do such rotten things to each other?
“That last one is Benedetti’s question—his studies into ‘Evil’ with a capital ‘E’ amount to just about that.
“But I’m too simple a guy for that. When you think about it there’s only one important question I’m equipped to answer—only one important question with a simple answer: Whodunit? I’m not saying it’s simple to find the answer to that, but when you do find it, there it is.
“Hey, this is wrong. I’m the one who should be on the couch.”
Janet laughed.
“Can I take a closer look at your guitar?” Ron asked. Janet said, “Sure,” and Ron shed his coat, put it on the other chair with Janet’s and went to pick it up.
Janet was eager to hear him play. She had a theory that the way a person played a musical instrument, regardless of skill, could give the psychologist a significant insight into a subject’s personality. She had tapes; one day she was going to do a paper comparing the piano style of Harry Truman with that of Richard Nixon.
Ron picked up the guitar, checked it for tune, then started strumming. He started playing a series of A-minor chords. It suited him, she thought. Inquisitive, a little ominous. Then he started to play.
His playing surprised her. It was far more sensitive than she had expected. He was playing “I’ll Follow the Sun,” an early Beatles song and, keeping with his perception of himself, a simple one. Technically, he was adequate at best. There was an awful lot of fretting-fuzz. But his phrasing was expressive, and more important, he was enjoying it.
She was now certain that Ron Gentry wasn’t the poking, probing inquiry machine she first thought he was. At least, that wasn’t all he was. If Professor Benedetti played guitar, or any other instrument, she was sure he would play it with an icy perfection. She was astonished at how pleased she was to find out that Ron wasn’t like that.
He finished playing, and Janet applauded him softly. She was astonished again to see him actually blushing.
He effaced himself. “Don’t try to pretend you’re not just being nice,” he said. “My playing is a lot better suited to a thirteen-dollar Stella than to a beautiful piece of wood like this.”
Janet pointed to the far wall and said, “Would you get me that gray case, please?” He got it for her. She opened it and took out her current pride and joy, a custom-made twelve string that cost her a little over three weeks’ salary.
She realized suddenly she hadn’t had her hands on it since Hog first came into her life. She threw the strap over her head, tuned, and looked up at Ron. Even bifocal lenses couldn’t diffuse the glow in her eyes when she said, “What do you want to play?”
It was a leading question. Maybe. He didn’t want to press the issue. He was enjoying himself. Janet loved music enough not to make her living on it; he loved it enough to enjoy doing it badly.
He liked this girl. He liked her clumsiness, her openness, even her temper. And he liked the basic paradox of a self-conscious shrink. He was more than a little weary of omnipotence and cynicism and froth and crusading; of the Benedettis and Fleishers and Diedres and Buells.
Tall, angular Janet gave him a happy and comfortable feeling that could have been falling in love, for all he knew. So he just smiled at her and said, “Just start picking, and when you come to a place where a chord I know fits in, I’ll play it.”
She liked that. She led him on a guided tour of the folk scene (1960-63), one of Ron’s favorite eras, playing and singing (in a sweet contralto) Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; the Limeliters; and some he didn’t even remember.
It was better than a vacation. For the first time, he could almost forget about looking for and at, and under, corpses. He told Janet so, and could tell she was pleased.
“You know,” she said, taking off the guitar, “the last time I—Ow!!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I am such a fool!” She had her right hand up to the side of her head.
Ron was still at a loss. “What happened for God’s sake?”
“It’s so embarrassing!” she said, then, seeing a look of pure exasperation on Ron’s face, she went on. “Oh, all right. I caught my earring on my stupid guitar strap! I hope I didn’t tear my ear.” She took her hand down to look at it, put it back, looked again. “Ron, would you please see if it’s bleeding?”
Smiling and shaking his head indulgently, Ron joined her on the couch. He lifted the thick, grey-brown hair to assess the damage to her earlobe. “It’s a little red,” he reported, “but I’m happy to say still in one piece.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t go look up a good psychologist.” She shook her head at herself. “What a dope!”
It was, Ron supposed, proximity. Or possibly just his way of impressing on her that to Ron Gentry, for one, there was nothing whatever seriously the matter with Janet Higgins, Ph.D. In any event, he discovered that she was not uncoordinated when it came to kissing. Nor, for that matter, uneager or uncooperative.
There came a point, though, when she started making urgent noises, and broke off the kiss to speak. “We’re going to scratch our glasses,” she warned.
Very solemnly, Ron removed Janet’s bifocals, then his own glasses, and placed them gently on the coffee table. “Now where were we?” he said.
The time soon came when they both realized a move to the bedroom was indicated. “But I can’t walk,” Janet protested.
“I’ll carry you,” Ron said. And before she could say anything about her being too big, he had lifted her off the couch. She just had time to reach down and scoop up the two pairs of spectacles.
In a combined spirit of scientific curiosity and biological necessity, Dr. Higgins had, from time to time, “had men.” The Janet part of her, though, where her emotions lived, was a virgin. So as she came closer and closer to the “Big Moment,” she found tormenting little questions spinning down like maple seeds through her brain. What is he thinking? What is he thinking about my stupid bumpy nose? What is he thinking about my stupid flat chest? What is he thinking about my stupid bony shoulders, and my stupid big hands and feet, and my stupid—
But then he said, “You have the back of a goddess,” and she knew it was going to be all right.
SEVENTEEN
JANET WOKE WITH A guilty start when the phone rang. She groped for it, gave up, turned on the light, picked up the receiver. Before putting it to her ear, she squinted at her digital clock—it was six-thirty-something.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dr. Higgins? This is Sergeant Shaughnessy.”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
The sergeant hesitated for a few seconds, then said all at once, “Look, I hate to bother you, but is Gentry there?
”
It was a two-stage blush; it deepened when she realized she had no neckline for the blush to stop at.
Ron was awake. Janet covered the receiver with her hand and said, “It’s Shaughnessy. Are you here?”
Ron didn’t smile, but there was a twinkle in his gray eyes. “It’s your reputation,” he said.
“That’s right,” Janet giggled. “It is.” To the phone, she said, “He’s right here,” and handed Ron the phone.
Whatever it was, it was bad news. Ron’s face went from happy to stern in the space of a few syllables. He said, “Great,” twice, very bitterly, then, “Oh, that’s really great!” then, “Okay, fifteen minutes.”
He gave Janet the phone to hang up, and said, “Hand me my glasses, please?”
As she did, she said, “What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He started to dress. “He was upset. Apparently, the professor has gone back to his easel, and won’t come out to see what they have to see. So I’m elected.” He shrugged. “I might as well; I’m going to lose my license pretty soon.”
Naturally, Janet was concerned about that. Ron told her about Atler. “It’s not so much the charges,” he concluded, “as much as the fact that it’s going to come out that I got my license through a very loose interpretation of the law.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re supposed to have three years experience as an investigator with a peace-keeping organization or as an operative for a licensed private eye, to get your own license. What happened with me was we got somebody in Albany to call Benedetti a special case, and that my three years with him let me qualify. But that was two administrations ago.”
That reminded Janet that her days as a member in good standing of the faculty association were numbered. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and started to get up.
“No you won’t,” he said. He was fully dressed now. He pushed her gently back to the mattress. “I’ll tell you all about it later, whatever it is—I promise.” He tucked her in. “You just stay here and take care of that foot, okay, Funnyface?” And before she could say anything, he kissed her, right on the bump of her nose, and left.
Funnyface, huh? she thought happily after she had heard the outer door close behind him on his way out. Disregarding Ron’s instructions, she got out of bed, and hobbled to the mirror. She’d always thought of it as an enemy; the merciless mirror.
She squinted into it. She’d forgotten her glasses. Scolding herself, she hobbled back to the bedside table, put them on, and hobbled again to the mirror. She turned around and looked back over her shoulder at her reflection. That was a nice back. It was a very nice back.
Then she saw her face. Her face didn’t look as bad as usual, and she wondered why. It wasn’t because of some “glow”; she didn’t believe in glows. Then she realized it was the smile—it was the first time she’d ever seen herself in that mirror when she didn’t have a look of dread and/or despair on her face. The smile made a lot of difference.
Fleisher never would have been on the scene when the body was found if some overachiever in Traffic hadn’t given Shaughnessy a buzz on the phone.
The inspector had been sitting in his office, going over reports. These were the most recent reports, but this was already the eighth time he was going over them. They told him nothing new. The bolt cutter couldn’t be traced. If they ever found it, of course, they could match the cutter with the cuts in the clamp; but it wasn’t like guns—nothing useful could be learned just by studying their marks. They were no kind of lead.
The other report was about Jastrow. They’d traced his movements for the years between the times he was making trouble in Sparta. He had drifted West, first to Cincinnati, then to Chicago, still working at his first love, petty extortion, only without benefit of a badge. The last three years he had been in the clink out there for it. He’d been released around Christmastime. That had been reasonably interesting, the first time Fleisher read it.
Right now, though, the only question the inspector was interested in was how tired he had to get before he could die. Goddamn the mayor, anyhow.
And God bless Shaughnessy, stays with me like a leech—no, that wasn’t right, and to hell with it anyway, because here he was.
“Thanks, Shaughnessy.”
“You’re welcome, Inspector.” The sergeant was tired, too. It took a couple of seconds for him to add, “For what?”
“Never mind, never mind. What’s up?”
“I just got a call from Winkel, in Traffic. They’ve got guys out now doing crowd control at a fire at the shopping center out on Huron Street.”
“So?”
“The fire—and Winkel says the buzz is it’s arson—is the Clockround Market.”
“The bastards who first started selling those pig masks, and all that crap?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Arson, huh? Think it might have something to do with our boy?”
“Can’t hurt to have a look,” Shaughnessy said.
Clockround Market was a modern supermarket—it sold everything from fennel to fan belts. It was a low, sprawling, modern-looking place, and, thanks to the recent striking down of an ages-old city ordinance, it was open twenty-four hours a day. It did a better business than one might expect in the early hours of the morning —night shift people on their way home, university students with the midnight munchies, insomniacs, and the people who just preferred to do their shopping at night.
These people (and others) were standing around the vast parking lot watching the Sparta Fire Department battle the blaze. It wasn’t a big fire, but it was a nasty one—there was a lot of plastic and rubber in the place, and the fumes were bad.
Fleisher got out of the unmarked car. He had to half-skate over leakage from the firemen’s hoses that had frozen to the blacktop. He slipped once, and fell, and Shaughnessy offered to help him up, but he barked, “I can do it myself, for crysake!” He did so, and made it without further incident to the man in the white fireman’s hat.
Fleisher and the chief exchanged greetings. “I didn’t know you were a fire watcher, Joe.”
“This place I am. This was the outfit that started cashing in on Hog. Maybe he resented it or something.”
The fire chief spoke some instructions through his bull horn, then turned to Fleisher. “Didn’t you know?”
“Didn’t I know what?”
“We caught the arsonists already. A couple of juveniles.”
Fleisher was impressed. “Yeah? How’d you do it so fast?”
The chief laughed. “They were standing there watching the fire, holding matches and a can of lawn-mower gas when we got here. One of our tougher investigations.”
“Where you got them?” the inspector asked. The chief gave a head jerk toward the rescue truck. “Couldn’t spare anybody to haul them in, yet.”
“Everybody get out okay?” Fleisher wanted to know.
“We think so. I had a few men look around inside, but the smoke was too thick. If there is anybody in there, they came alone—all the employees are accounted for, and families and friends are all matched up.”
“Good.” Fleisher watched the smoke pour out of the ax-holes that had been smashed in the huge plate glass windows in the front of the store. He refused to believe it was just a coincidence. He had stopped believing in coincidence.
“I want to speak to those juveniles,” he told the fireman.
“I don’t want to tell you your job, or anything,” the chief replied, “but you know the rules. If you talk to them without their parents’ knowledge—”
“Yeah, I blow the whole case,” said Fleisher. He spat on the ice. “As though you can get a juvenile punished for anything in the first place, right? We got fourteen-year-old murderers walking the street, for crysake.”
He got the key to the rescue unit and went in with Shaughnessy. The two kids inside were giggling over their accomplishment. A redheaded kid with freckles was saying, “I never thought it wo
uld go up so fast!” His companion, who had dark hair and a runny nose, said, “I toja not to put it in the car section. They got gas treatment, they got oil ...”
They noticed the inspector, broke off their review, and giggled some more. Fleisher was going to cow them into being quiet; he started by drawing himself up to his full height, which caused him to bump his head on the roof of the boxlike vehicle. The boys, whose age Fleisher put at fifteen, tops, found that hilarious.
Fleisher squatted on a heel and looked at them, with Shaughnessy standing behind him doing the same. The kids kept laughing, but after a while they began taking sidelong looks at the cops. They met nothing but those cold stares, and after a while, they shut up.
“I wish I could be that happy in so much trouble,” Fleisher said.
The boys seemed surprised at the idea they might be in trouble.
The inspector let Shaughnessy handle the preliminaries. He found out the redhead was William Smith—with documents to prove it (and here you go, Ickes, Fleisher thought) and the one with the runny nose was Marc (“with a ‘c’ ”) Goodsite. They both lived on the same street about five blocks from the shopping center, and they were in the ninth grade.
“Why did you do it?” Fleisher asked them.
Smith was indignant. “Waddaya mean, why did we do it?”
Goodsite wiped his nose. “Somebody hadda do it,” he said reasonably.
“Why?” Fleisher persisted.
“This place was cashing in on people gettin’ killed,” Goodsite said.
“Somebody wearing a mask chased my little cousin home from school, gave him nightmares,” Smith said.
“My kid brother, too. Last night, my mom said somebody ought to burn out the you-know-what that was selling these things. So this morning, Billy and me got up early, ‘cause we thought it was a good idea.”
“Jesus Christ!” Fleisher exploded. He lunged at the kid, but the sergeant held him back. “Your mother tells you to pick up your goddamn socks from the floor. I bet you’re not so quick to do that! But setting fires, that’s different, right? That’s fun! You little—”
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