The waste pipes that ran across the boiler-room ceiling—ancient pipes, pipes that probably had been laid by the Romans—burst under the unaccustomed strain.
And eight thoroughly drenched high-school teachers evacuated the room, howling like fiends loosed from hell.
Only a few of the scapegrace organizers were ever bought to justice. One of them—he proudly claimed the stunt was his bright idea—was a zit-faced greaser named Gregg Longo.
That was my Gregg Longo, the single well-formed recollection I had of him. Hard to reconcile that with the picture of a calculating, gun-wielding holdup man who not only successfully robbed a series of banks for a total of not quite eighty thousand dollars, but also secreted the take so cleverly that now, coming up on a month after his death, it still remained hidden.
Who was Gregg Longo? A basically good man caught up in bad times, bad ideas, bad luck? An innocent lunk who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? A modern Dillinger, crafty enough to have pulled off his jobs without anyone being the wiser? Which? Who was he? What had gone through his head as he died? Anger? Confusion? Relief? What?
I shared none of this with Eloise Slater. I doubted that she knew any of the answers. I doubted that she had considered any of the questions. Eloise Slater was not the sort of woman given to long musings about other people’s attitudes, behavior, or comments. Her antennae were not sensitive enough to pick up on the nonverbal signals.
Correction: I had the distinct feeling that she was very good at receiving a particular type of nonverbal transmission, namely, the sexual variety. But nothing beyond that. Her relationship with Gregg Longo had been almost purely physical. She had volunteered as much when I interviewed her that morning. I would have been very surprised to discover that her concern, her sensitivity, extended beyond their little bondage-and-discipline sessions.
As if to confirm my suspicion, her hand went to my thigh. Her nails dug in through the thin summer-weight slacks I wore. Then her hand began to meander slowly, very slowly, up my leg.
I looked into her eyes and said, “Who’s the black guy you met after I left you this morning?”
My leg might have been electrified, the way she jerked her hand away from it. “You fucker,” she hissed, “you followed me!”
I caught her wrist as the nails came up toward my face, held it a moment, letting her push, letting her see it was futile. Her other arm, her left arm, moved, and I pinned it against the car seat with my right shoulder. Then, carefully and slowly, I forced her right arm back.
She held her breath as long as she could. Then it broke in a ragged gasp. “You bastard, cut it out!”
“What’s the matter, Queenie, you don’t like being on the receiving end?” I let go of her wrist.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Maybe some other time. Have your girl call my girl.”
The hand came up again; this time the palm was open. I brought my arm up and hers crashed into it, hard, which hurt her more than it hurt me.
“Ow, goddammit!” She massaged her inner forearm, midway between the wrist and the elbow. “Christ, you’re a bastard.”
“So you’ve already said. What about the guy this morning.”
“I oughta sic the goddamn cops on you,” she said petulantly.
“Be my guest. I know several who’ll be happy to help you. And tell you that there’s no law against following someone. I think it’s illegal to follow fire engines and so on, but there isn—”
“Screw you. Why should I tell you anything?”
I shrugged elaborately. “You might as well. I followed your friend home this evening, I know where he lives, I can find out who he is. You’d just be saving me some time is all. Saving you some time, too, because if you don’t tell me, I can pretty well guarantee that the boys with the badges are going to have some new questions for you come morning, and this time they won’t be so easygoing.”
“Fucker,” she said, but silently, lips only. She eyed me warily for a long stretch, guardedly, gauging the seriousness of my threat, trying to decide how much of what to tell me, trying to decide what I would believe—hell, I don’t know. These things don’t go shooting across people’s eyes like stock-market quotes.
Finally she puffed disgustedly, making a big deal of it. “Monroe James,” she said sourly. “That’s his name, Monroe James. He’s just a friend of mine. Happy?”
“Tickled pink. I think it’s funny you scampered off to meet this product of patriotic, if dyslexic, parents immediately after Abel and Patavena ripped your place apart looking for the Longo treasure.”
“Who cares what you think,” she said acidly. I let a little time pass, let her mull things over. Again, she sighed and shook her head. “Look, Monroe’s a friend, okay? An old friend. We get together from time to time.”
“But not in the Dungeon of Pain.”
She made a face at me. “A friend,” she repeated. “Just a friend. Okay?”
“What did you meet him for this morning?”
“Nothing. Just to get together. You probably don’t understand what I’m talking about, since you probably don’t have any friends.”
“You thanked him for meeting you. When you first arrived. I heard that—and some other parts of the conversation.” A little bit of invention, that last part, but I didn’t think it’d hurt to leave her wondering what else I might have overheard. “When old friends get together, they say things like, ‘I’m sure glad we could get together.’ Not ‘Thanks for meeting me.’ So?”
“So what? Look, I was upset. Wouldn’t you be? These two creeps come busting in, first one, then the other, waving guns, carrying on about Gregg and me and money I don’t have, ripping my place apart … then you and your twenty questions.” Her voice changed—it softened, took on a low, quiet, sympathy-eliciting tenor. “I was upset. I needed a friend. So I called Monroe, and he was there for me.”
“God love ’im. He wouldn’t come over to your place?”
“I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to deal with it. I still don’t. The place is still a wreck.”
“So you said.” I considered a fly working his way across the dashboard. The bluish parking-lot lights gave him a shadow as big as a terrier. “So you and Monroe James got together, you cried on his shoulder, he dried your tears and patted your tush and said there-there, and you went your separate ways.”
She nodded, almost contritely.
“Where’d you go then?”
“Home.”
“What’d you do?”
“I went to bed. I was bushed.”
“Who’s Jonathon Desotel?”
“I don’t know.”
I considered it.
“It’s true.”
“It probably is,” I said. “Given a string of rapid-fire questions like that, a liar will try to hedge, stall, keep himself calm enough that he doesn’t make any obvious slipups. Fast answers to fast questions tend to indicate truthfulness …”
“Well, all right.”
“… or that the respondent is an accomplished liar.”
“Screw you,” Eloise laughed and slapped my arm.
“What’s James’s story? What’s he do for a living that he can pull away in the middle of the morning to hold hands with distraught friends?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “He’s a financial consultant.” I thought of Woody Allen’s line: “I tell people what to do with their money until it’s all gone.” Maybe my whole-life crack hadn’t been too far off the mark after all.
“Does he consult your financial?”
Eloise laughed. “What financial?”
“Well, you had a hundred to lend to Longo …”
“Which left me a balance of exactly ninety-two eleven in savings. You don’t want to know about checking …”
She was right. I wanted to know about Monroe James and Jonathon Desotel. I wanted to know what business they had. Sure, James could have been advising Desotel about his finances
, or trying to land Loverboy as a client, but it didn’t feel right, didn’t smell right. I’ve seen people on the business end of a high-powered salesman, I’ve been there myself and so have you, and Desotel’s reaction just wasn’t right. He was teetering on the brink, wanting to do something and not wanting to, or being afraid to, just as strongly. What? Where did Monroe James come in? Where did Eloise Slater come in? And what about Longo?
I became aware of Eloise’s eyes on me. For something to say, I said, “Did your friend Monroe know your friend Longo?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why?”
“When was the last time you saw Longo?”
“Day before he got killed.” Her hand was on my leg again. I don’t know when it got there, while I was lost in thought, probably. The hand moved lightly, sinuously.
“What’d he talk about that day?”
“He didn’t do much talking.” Her hand moved up and her face moved closer. Her voice, already soft and low, softened further, melted into a bare whisper. “I didn’t let him.”
Closer. “I wouldn’t let you talk much either,” she whispered, harshly now. Her hand had moved up my leg about as far as it could. I seemed to be giving her the reaction she wanted. She smiled. “You talk too much,” she said. “Think too much.”
It wasn’t a kiss. She bit again, hard: I tasted blood on my lower lip. At the same instant her hand moved, squeezed. She laughed when I drew back with a curse and pushed her away.
She popped open the car door on her side and jackknifed out. Then she leaned back in.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “All night.”
Her laugh was canceled out by the slam of the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Carolyn’s street was a portrait of Middle America, summer, late twentieth century. Under the eerie glare of high-intensity streetlights, two kids played with a dog and a Frisbee. Across the street, the old couple out of American Gothic sat in plastic chairs on their concrete slab of a porch, taking a break from the heat inside. The old lady had one of those little battery-operated plastic fans. Next door, an obese man in striped walking shorts and a white undershirt that was hard-pressed to conceal his massive midriff fought with an oscillating sprinkler.
“Is there a water shortage?” I asked Carolyn when she opened her front door. I jerked a thumb at the neighbor. “That’s usually why people water their lawns under cover of dark.”
She rolled her eyes. “Mr. Pistelli has his own ideas about things. He says it’s better to water at night and he doesn’t believe you if you tell him it causes root rot. He also wears a black bowling shirt when he mows because he says black keeps you cooler.”
“During the day?” She nodded. “He’s wrong,” I said.
“Don’t tell me, tell him,” she laughed.
We were in the living room by then. It was softly lighted by a torchière that threw its illumination against the high ceiling, to be scattered back from there. The day’s newspaper was strewn across the sofa. So was the day’s mail, consisting mainly of the dreaded window envelopes, from what I could see. In the corner, a nineteen-inch portable color television prattled away, ignorant of the fact that the audience had walked out on it.
Carolyn said, “I left a couple messages on your machine. I thought I’d hear from you today.”
I looked at my wristwatch. “You thought right: It’s still today.”
“You always were the comedian.”
“Union rules. Us hardboiled P.I. types gotta crack wise. Also gotta have the strength and smarts of a musk ox. Wanna see me bend a quarter with my biceps?”
“Some other time, maybe.” She gathered the paper together, folded it into a rough approximation of its original state, and threw the wad into an armchair. “Let me get some of this junk out of the way,” she said while she got some of the junk out of the way. She pulled together the envelopes and waved them at me. “Want a few of these?”
“Thanks, I’ve got my own collection at home.”
“The cost of things never goes down, does it.”
“I read where the only thing that hasn’t gone up about a bazillion times since the end of World War Two is the per-word rate paid by mystery magazines. Of course, I read it in one of the umpty-eleven mystery-writers’ newsletters I get, so consider the source.”
Carolyn threw the bills on top of the newspaper, chuckling politely. “What can I get for you? A drink?” She killed the TV picture. “There’re a coupla beers in the fridge.”
“Actually, a cup of coffee would be good, if it’s no trouble.”
“No trouble. Instant okay?”
“On second thought, a beer sounds good.”
I followed her into the kitchen. It was a big old-fashioned—old-fashioned, nothing: old—square room. Copper molds hung on the wall, cookware hung from a wrought-iron rack that looked like it had been picked up at Torquemada’s going-out-of-business sale. The sink was heavy white porcelain, no cabinetry surrounding the pipes beneath it. In fact, there was no cabinetry at all in the room—no counter, no cupboards. The stuff that goes into modern kitchens’ cupboards and drawers was stowed in a small pantry at the back of the kitchen, next to the back door, and on long, thick shelves over the sink and near the stove. The stove and the refrigerator, at least, were modern.
Carolyn popped open the icebox, stuck her head in, and came out with a can of three-two beer and a Cool Whip tub filled with ice cubes. She put the tub on a square-topped wooden table situated under the medieval torture rack and handed me the beer. “Glass?”
I squeezed the can. “Feels like aluminum.”
She shook her head, disappeared into the pantry, and emerged with a bottle of J&B. On her way back to the table, she snagged an old-fashioned glass from the shelf over the sink.
I peeled open the can and watched her build her drink. Three cubes, a healthy splash of Scotch, no water. She took a quarter-inch of liquid off the top and replaced it before capping the bottle. Then she pulled out one of the ladder-back table chairs and sat. I dragged out a chair and sat opposite her.
It felt right. The homey kitchen, the rickety wooden table, sitting there, just sitting there like that, with Carolyn. It felt very right. It felt like maybe I should have been doing it every night for the past twenty years. Come home to a real house and a real wife after working all day at a real job. None of this apartment shit. None of this sometimes-marriage shit. None of this chase-the-rainbow shit. Real life. Middle-class Middle America. Kids and dogs and mortgages and orthodontia, church on Sunday and Rotary on Thursdays …
It could have been like that. It wasn’t, but it could have been. Life is a string of choices, most of which we make without even knowing. Carolyn made hers. I made mine. Maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong. The problem with decisions, most decisions, is you never really know. Not really. You don’t get to find out until ten minutes after you’re dead. And then you don’t care.
Carolyn was as much enmeshed in her thoughts as I was in mine. I floated out of my reverie and became aware of her looking at me, studying me, her lips faintly pursed, her eyes slightly narrowed.
I said, “I’ll give you a penny for ’em. ’Course, you’ll have to take an IOU.”
She smiled mirthlessly. “I think we’re wasting our time, Ivan,” she said. “Or I guess maybe I’m wasting yours.”
“Oh?”
Carolyn looked at the glass between her palms. “I got to thinking about it today. What’s the point? Why spend money I don’t have, why waste the energy? Like you said, Gregg’s gone. Whether he did it or not, what they say—it doesn’t matter.”
“Kind of a sudden change of heart.”
Her shoulders went up and down in a neat roll. “They’re determined to make Gregg their scapegoat. The police, I mean. Well, let them. Let them say whatever they want about him. What’s the difference? They can’t prove anything, or at least they haven’t so far.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?�
�� She looked up.
“I thought the whole point was to get the cops off your back.”
She angled her hands away from her glass, a palms-out gesture of indifference. “They’re going to think and do what they want. Maybe they can’t prove anything, but neither can I.” Suddenly her head became very heavy. It sagged on her long, slender neck. “I just have to wait,” she said to the glass in her hands, her voice a ragged, thready whisper. “Just … wait. Wait, and try to hang on, and hope they get tired and go away …”
“That’s some wonderful attitude,” I said, looking at her hard. “Well, maybe we can do something. At least instill a reasonable doubt, as they say.”
Her eyes widened and her body straightened expectantly. “What do you mean? You found out something? Already?”
“Yes and no. Nothing conclusive. Nothing you could call evidence. I can’t prove Gregg didn’t rob those banks. According to the civics books, it ought to be enough that the cops can’t prove he did, but we both know how that works.” I took a slug of beer. “Look, I can’t promise anything, but I do have friends in low places. Might prove helpful if I tell them some things I’ve learned.”
She didn’t budge. “Like?”
“Like Gregg’s drinking buddies, Abel and Patavena. They profess to know nothing about the alleged larcenies. I believe them. But from what you’ve said and what I’ve observed, Gregg and they were pretty tight. Somewhere along the line, probably late one night after a few too many, Gregg was bound to have let something slip. He didn’t. Which suggests there was nothing to slip.”
“What if they were lying? What if they were in on it? What if they have the money?”
“They don’t.” I laughed.
It was contagious: Carolyn smiled in a confused sort of way and half-laughed, “What’s so funny?”
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