by Ken Brigham
Shane was sitting in the living room, staring at nothing, lost in those thoughts, when he heard the rumble of the garage door opening that heralded KiKi’s return home from her academic ivory tower.
“Pour me a drink, Shane,” KiKi said as she exited the elevator and dropped her Gucci briefcase by the bar.
Whoa, Shane thought. This is serious. KiKi did not drink alcohol as a rule, and the rare request for a drink, the tension in her voice, and her body language declared that this was trouble of unusual proportions.
“And good evening to you as well,” Shane said, a feeble attempt at levity.
“Sorry, Shane,” KiKi responded. “It’s just that it’s been a bad day.”
She walked over to where he sat and kissed him lightly on the lips. It was an uncharacteristically perfunctory gesture that disappointed Shane when he thought of how she usually kissed him when she arrived home of an evening. He always looked forward to that.
Since the accident, Shane was sensitive to any hint that KiKi’s feelings for him might be cooling. They had discussed that and she had done all she could to reassure him, but there was still a latent fear that things could change between them. Even that remote possibility could shake Shane to the depths of his soul. Life without KiKi was beyond his ability to imagine. In fact, Shane refused to allow his imagination to enter that inviolable territory. He simply would not go there.
“What would you like, KiKi?” Shane asked.
“Scotch. Do we have any of that peaty Islay single malt, what is it?”
“Lagavulin?”
“Probably,” KiKi answered. “Pour me a generous one and let’s sit on the deck and bury this day in the sordid sounds of the alley’s nocturnal fantasies.”
Shane thought the remark oddly cynical, unlike KiKi. She was anything but a cynic.
It was after dark in the real world, but a brilliant glare illuminated the alley, painting the teeming flock of jostling alley partiers with splotches of neon-vibrant color like a work of abstract art. The alley itself was an abstraction. If it was once connected to the reality of the city, that was no longer true. The place was now more a relic, a curio, like the Ernest Tubb bobblehead dolls for sale in the Lower Broad record shop that still bore the name of the long-dead Texas Troubadour. It was the abstraction, the unreality of the place, that mesmerized Shane. He had more than enough reality to deal with.
They sat for a while on the porch sipping Scotch and watching the milling crowd, vaguely aware of the music—country, blues, and from somewhere, something that sounded like it might be rap. The mixture of competing sounds was more interesting as a cultural phenomenon than as an aesthetic experience. Maybe that was true of everything about the alley.
And the music was loud, too loud for the two of them to talk. Shane looked at KiKi—her strong face, devastating cheekbones, full lips—changing colors chameleon-like in the flashing neon. She appeared to be deep in thought.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” Shane asked.
They had moved inside and sat in the living room. KiKi had not spoken. She sat rolling the glass of Scotch between her hands, sipping at it occasionally, and staring vacantly into the too-large space that separated them.
“I’m not sure what to tell you,” she answered. “I’m not even sure what to tell myself.”
“Why don’t you have a go at it?”
She hesitated a while, staring at the brown liquid in the glass. She drank the last of the Scotch and sat the glass on the coffee table.
Turning to Shane, she said, “I had a run-in with Cy today.”
“What’s so unusual about that?” Shane answered.
He was well aware that she had frequent disagreements with Cy Bartalak, which didn’t usually seem to cause her a lot of concern.
“This one was unusual. Beth wasn’t there and I was at her computer when he came into the lab. He blew a gasket! Is that right? Blew a gasket?”
“Yes,” Shane answered. “And what were you doing at Beth’s computer?” he continued, honestly wondering why his wife, whose integrity surpassed that of anyone he had ever known, would enter another person’s computer without permission.
“Well, Shane, to explain that, I would have to tell you a much longer and more complicated story that is still incomplete and fuzzy in my mind. I am not prepared to share that yet with anyone, even you. We can talk about it when things are clearer. I’m sure things will be clearer at some point.”
Shane wasn’t happy with that answer, but he didn’t pursue it. It wasn’t information that he needed, it was KiKi’s trust. He liked to believe that they had no secrets from each other. What was there that was so private that she wouldn’t share it with him? He wanted to press her, but sensed that given her emotional state, it wasn’t a good time to do that.
“Would you like more Scotch?” Shane asked.
When Cy Bartalak arrived home, punched the button in the car’s ceiling panel that opened the iron gates, and wound the black Mercedes sedan up the long serpentine driveway, parking in the brick-paved expanse that fronted the main entrance to their Italianate mansion on Jackson Boulevard, his wife was sitting in her private study nursing a gin and tonic and thinking back over the events of the past two days. The earlier nervousness had subsided, and now she was going over things in her mind. The data were secure, insulated from scrutiny; even Cy didn’t know where they were or how to access them. And Beth was pretty sure that her clean-up of the data had been sufficiently thorough and opaque that they could withstand the kind of scrutiny that the FDA submission would require. She was a magician with data. Beth was feeling pretty good about what she had done. No one, not even Cy, needed to know the details. She had covered his back. She stood, walked to the French doors and stood there, looking out at the perfectly manicured English garden, thinking.
The only potential problem was that arrogant bitch, Katya Karpov. Cy really needed to get rid of her. Why not just fire her and solve a potential problem before it matured into something insoluble? But when Beth had approached that subject with Cy, he had cut her off. He wouldn’t discuss it. He even accused Beth of trying to tell him how to do his job, which was ridiculous. His accusation caused Beth considerable pain but she didn’t let on to Cy. He had enough things to deal with. He didn’t need any worries about her.
“Beth,” Cy called as he entered the front door and dropped his worn briefcase in the foyer. “Beth. Fix me a drink, will you?”
He loosened his tie and sat in his favorite chair by the fireplace in the large den. Beth kept a big arrangement of cut flowers in the fireplace in the summer, and the vase of blood-red gladiolas annoyed him. He hated gladiolas, thought them garish and intrusively vertical. He must tell Beth that.
He looked at the wall of empty bookcases. He kept intending to hire someone to populate the shelves with books that would be appropriate for the elegant house and would duly impress important guests. But he hadn’t gotten around to it, so the shelves were still empty.
“Beth,” he called again, “Can you fix me a drink, please?”
She heard him the first time and had immediately started toward the den, but Cyrus Bartalak was not a patient man.
“Hi, Cy,” she said, brightly, as she entered the room.
She walked to the bar, iced a martini glass and located the Plymouth gin that he favored for his nightly drink,
“How was your day?” she said, trying to sound bright and cheery.
She could never tell what mood he would be in at the end of a day and so always opened the conversation carefully. She wanted his arrival at the house he was so proud of to be pleasant, a highlight of his day.
“Don’t ask,” he said, “Can you hurry up with that drink, please?”
Not an afternoon for small talk, obviously. Beth finished the drink and took it to him. She bent to kiss his cheek and bumped his glass as he was raising it to his mouth, sloshing some of the gin onto his shirtfront.
“Damn, Beth,” he said.
H
e sat the glass on the side table, stood up and started brushing at his shirt.
“Look what you’ve done. Damn!” he said.
“I’m sorry, Cy,” Beth responded. “I’m sorry, let me get you a napkin.”
She headed back over to the bar, retrieved a napkin, and started to dab at the wet spot on his shirt, but he grabbed the napkin from her.
“Let me do it,” he said. “You’ve done enough already.”
“I am sorry, Cy, I really am. I was just trying to kiss you.”
“Well, you see where that got us,” he said.
He sat back down, picked up his drink, and took a long swallow of the cold gin.
Glaring at his wife, Cy asked, “Can you bring me the papers? Think you can manage that?”
“Of course, I’m sorry. I should have brought them in earlier,” Beth responded.
She left the room briefly and returned, handing him the two daily papers that he always read. He opened the Tennessean and perused the headline that he had seen earlier.
“Did you see this?” he asked Beth. “That old geezer in Printers Alley went and got himself killed. He was in the study, wasn’t he? One of the good responders as I recall?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I saw that. He was the best responder to your drug. But we have all the data on him. Fortunately, he didn’t get killed until after he had essentially finished the study.”
“We’re damn lucky he didn’t, you’re right about that,” he said.
Cy leafed through the local paper, and then picked up the Wall Street Journal and started reading it in earnest. Beth sat opposite him. Neither of them spoke for a long time while he caught up on the day’s business news. Beth sat quietly and just watched her husband as he read, occasionally sipping from his drink. He paid her no attention, but she was used to that when he was engrossed in the newspapers.
Cy’s mood seemed to be softening some when he finally put down the paper and polished off the last of his martini.
“You do have all the data from the drug study secured, Beth,” he said, more a statement than a question.
“Of course,” she answered. “The data are absolutely secure, no one can get to them except me.”
“In your lab computer?”
“Well, duplicates of the complete data set are on two portable hard drives that are locked away in separate places. There may be some of the original data still on my lab computer, but nothing that anyone could make sense of, I don’t think. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
“It’s funny you should ask, because when I went in this afternoon for a bit, I could have sworn that someone had been into my lab computer. And, you can guess who I immediately thought of.”
“Of course,” he sighed. “You and Katya obviously have a real problem with each other. You should try to get over that. I’ve told her the same thing. Conflict like that in the lab is not good for the work.”
“I think our differences are irreconcilable, Cy. I really do. Now that the study is about over, do you really need her anymore? “
“Beth, we’ve talked about this before. Katya Karpov is the brightest and most productive member of my faculty. This drug study is only part of her value to the department and to me. She is really an outstanding scientist and physician. How many times do I have to tell you that? The answer to this conflict is for the two of you to figure out how to coexist without compromising the work.”
“I just don’t think she has enough respect for you. That’s my problem with her.”
“That’s probably true. If she weren’t so good, that would be harder to tolerate.”
“Well, I’m just afraid she may undermine you if she gets a chance.”
“I don’t think she would do that deliberately, Beth,” Cy said. “But we should make damn sure she doesn’t get the chance anyway. Damn sure.”
“You know I’ll do everything I can to prevent that, Cy. You know that.”
“Good old Beth,” he replied. “I can always count on you.”
The earlier unpleasantness seemed unimportant now. Just that small expression of Cy’s confidence in her was enough for Beth. She smiled at him and he returned the smile.
He was actually thinking that it was good that he could count on Beth, alright, dependability had its value. But she was no match for Katya Karpov.
Beth was beginning to wonder if some of her husband’s fascination with Katya was related to her non-scientific assets. Beth really needed Katya Karpov out of their lives.
When Hardy Seltzer dropped back by the Dew Drop Inn after finishing up at headquarters, it was almost ten o’clock, but Marge Bland was still tending bar. About half the barstools were occupied, mostly working stiffs smoothing off the rough edges of another hard day. There were a couple of women of the sort Hardy knew well, hard-drinking types who had racked up a lot of obvious mileage running in place as fast as they could; rode hard and put up wet as the saying went. Probably not prostitutes in the strict sense, but available for the price of a drink or two. But, hell, didn’t everybody have a price?
“Hardy,” Marge greeted him, mopping the space on the bar in front of him with a cloth that had an apparent history Hardy didn’t want to know about. “Twice in one day after all this time. To what do we owe the pleasure, Detective Seltzer?”
“Hi, Marge,” Hardy said. “Can you give me a Bud?”
Seltzer didn’t answer her question because he didn’t know the answer. He wasn’t sure why he had come back there other than for a drink and a familiar face. It wasn’t really a conscious decision. He had thought about Marge Bland for the first time in a while that evening as he sat in his stifling office, going over what facts he had about Bonz’s murder for the umpteenth time. He kept pondering the possibility that the murderer was a woman; that troubled him. He just couldn’t imagine a motive for one thing. And then there was the weapon. Women rarely killed with handguns. And a fancy rare collector’s gun? Four shots point-blank to the face? If this killer was a woman, she was some piece of work, that was for sure.
After a while, his mind wandered, and he remembered Marge asking earlier if he wanted to talk about it, whatever it was. Sounded like an invitation but to what he wasn’t sure and wasn’t even sure if he wanted an invitation from Marge Bland.
But he was there. He had fought his way through the late-night Lower Broad snarl of cruising teens and drunk jaywalking tourists, braved the blaring cacophony of dueling loudspeakers blasting a dissonant mix of contrasting aspirations for the future of country music into the limited space of Lower Broadway’s wet night air. At First Avenue, he had intended to turn left and head up the hill and over the Woodland Street Bridge to the emptiness of his simple flat in the east part of town, but found himself turning the other way and winding up the hill to the bar where he now sat nursing a flat beer and looking into the dark eyes of his old high school classmate, unsure of what he saw there and unsure of what he was looking for.
Chapter 7
BONZ KILLED BY WEALTHY GUN COLLECTOR?
The headline screamed from the front page of Tuesday morning’s Tennessean. The story that followed recounted how the slug recovered from Bonz’s dog had been run through NINIB to obtain a preliminary description of the expensive and rare gun that must have been the murder weapon. There were speculations about how the dots might be connected. The latter part of the story was pure fantasy, but the facts were accurate and there in surprising detail. The possibility that the killer was female was not mentioned. The byline was Harvey Green’s.
Shane had awakened alone, picked up KiKi’s note from the bedside table and read it. “Shane, had to go in early and didn’t want to disturb you. Shouldn’t be late. Love, KK.”
He was disappointed that she left without waking him. He struggled into the wheelchair parked next to the bed, rolled up to the kitchen near the front of the flat, made some coffee, and opened the paper that Katya had retrieved and left on the kitchen table. Surprised by the headline and the story,
he phoned Hardy Seltzer.
“Not good, Hardy my man, not a good idea to get the press onto this so early,” Shane said.
Shane called Hardy at his home number immediately after reading the story. Although he thought that Hardy would surely know better than to leak this information to the press at this point, Shane wondered whether he had overestimated the detective.
“Wasn’t me, Shane. If it wasn’t you, I don’t know where the leak was,” Seltzer answered.
When Seltzer first saw the headline, he was furious. The only Tennessean reporter, maybe the only reporter on earth, that Hardy trusted was Harvey Green. Green had left a couple of messages on Hardy’s home answering machine trolling for information about the murder, but Hardy didn’t return the calls. Hardy wasn’t even sure how Green knew he was on the case, but then the reporter no doubt had other contacts in the department.