Big Nose threw his light on the cement floor, spidered with cracks that had been amateurishly patched over the decades. The beam drew Jurgenson’s and my attention. A large roundish patch, lighter in color than the surrounding floor, caught Big Nose’s eye. He crouched and hammered it lightly with the flashlight, across and back in an X pattern. It was solid.
“I don’t know,” Jurgenson said as if explaining it to a four-year-old. “I don’t know if Longo was guilty, but this is the second bill from one of the robberies to be linked to him. We have to check. It’s the job. You know that.”
I rubbed my left eye with the ball of my hand. “Yeah. I know that. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Me neither.”
“What about Longo owing Callinan twenty grand? What do you think of that?”
Jurgenson reached up overhead and dragged his hand along the top of a cold-air duct. He found dust. “I read this article once about Franklin Roosevelt. Guy who worked for him said that if FDR told you to do something once, you could forget about it. If he mentioned it again, you’d had better give it consideration. If he told you a third time, you had better do it.” Big Nose had worked his way over to the furnace and was unfastening a front panel. “Irish Tim’s the same way. He’ll give you about three last chances; it’s safe to ignore the first two. Everyone knows it. So if I were Longo, I’d’a waited until my third last chance before I paid up. Why give away the money before I absolutely gotta?”
Jurgenson ambled over to the furnace to help his man with the panel, an eight-by-eight square under a chrome legend proclaiming Homart Automatic Heating. I followed. Big Nose worked on four corroded screws with a pocketknife screwdriver while Jurgenson held the panel in place.
“Longo was a small-timer,” I said. “Do you really think he could come into a wad of cash and not throw it around? None of his pals—Abel, Patavena, the Slater woman—none of them gives any indication that Longo was flush when he died.”
The last screw defeated, Jurgenson lifted out the steel plate and Big Nose trained his flashlight beam on the interior of the furnace.
“Hell,” I said, “Eloise Slater says she loaned him a hundred bucks that he never paid back.”
“Things are tough all over.” The furnace had been shut down for the summer. It emitted the dusty, disused odor of such things. Jurgenson and friend satisfied themselves that it did not contain seventy-eight thousand dollars, and Jurgenson steadied the metal plate while Big Nose worked the screws back into position. “Look,” he said, “why’re you telling me all this? What’y’a want from me?”
“Slack. You’ve got some very tenuous evidence against Longo. I’ve got some equally tenuous evidence for him. I want you to admit that it’s just as likely that Longo wasn’t dirty—”
“I admit it.”
“—to see that even if he was, Carolyn Longo didn’t and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with it—”
“I see that.”
“—and to promise that you’ll at least continue to keep an open mind—for Carolyn’s sake, not Longo’s.”
“I promise,” Jurgenson said, straightening from his task and stretching his lower-back muscles. “Can I go home now?”
Actually, it was closer to an hour later, give or take, before we closed the front door behind them. Jurgenson apologized to Carolyn again, thanked her for her cooperation, and said he hoped they wouldn’t have to bother her further. Carolyn said nothing. Jurgenson shot me a quick look, shrugged with his eyes as much as his shoulders, and tramped onto the porch and out the door. The others followed dutifully, like the Seven Dwarfs.
Carolyn watched until their dark Dodge sedan pulled away from the curb. Then she slammed the front door, double locked it with a vengeance and a skeleton key, and headed purposefully into the kitchen. She fixed a stiff drink, made half of it vanish, and replaced it.
“You would think these people would have better things to do than to harass me!”
“Harassment wasn’t the point. I won’t say there wasn’t a little bit of that in there, but it wasn’t the point. They could never have gotten a warrant if it had been.”
“Bullshit! They ripped this place apart three weeks ago. My husband wasn’t even cold yet and they were tearing my house apart! They didn’t find any money then. What makes them think they’d find it tonight?”
I looked long at her. “They had to check it out. Just to cover the bases.”
Carolyn turned on me; her face wore a patina of rage. “Whose goddamn side are you on, anyway?” She stormed out of the kitchen via the dining room.
I started to follow her. Hesitated. Took my glass out of the sink, filled it with water, and added a few slivers of ice from the supply floating in the Cool Whip tub. I drank the water and put the glass back in the sink. Then I went through the dining room and into the living room, where Carolyn sat uneasily in an easy chair, boring holes through the wallpaper with her dark eyes.
“You think I have the money too,” she said hotly.
“Do I?”
“Don’t you? Admit it. I don’t care. You think what they think, what everybody thinks—that I knew where Gregg hid the money, I’ve had it all along, I’ve just been playing it cool.”
I flopped on the sofa. “It could be that way,” I said. “Is it?”
She turned her eyes away from the wall and searched my face. “No.”
“All right.”
Her smile was grim. “ ‘All right’? My say-so’s good enough?”
“For me. Why shouldn’t it be? Look, Carolyn, I read an awful lot of detective novels, and they’re the only place where guilty people hire private investigators because they think it’ll make them appear innocent. Real live people don’t think that way. They don’t bother. Besides, I’d like to think I know you better than that.”
She raised her glass two-handed and paused with the rim against her chin. Her eyes looked at something far away. “I’d like to think so too. But I can’t say that I haven’t thought about all that money, about having it all. With all the bills and everything … I don’t know. If I went out into the backyard and found a spot where Gregg had buried all that money …” Her eyes refocused, sought out mine, found them. “I don’t know if I would turn it in or not.”
“There’s nothing wrong with temptation,” I said. “The trouble starts when you give in to it.”
“God, though, just to think about it. Ivan, have you ever daydreamed about having stacks and stacks of money?”
“Only constantly. In my dreams, Ed McMahon shows up on the doorstep with a briefcase containing ten million bucks. Actually, you know, Ed doesn’t really give you ten million. I think he only gives you something like five-hundred thousand a year for twenty years.”
“Gee, what a rip; I’m glad you told me before I wasted twenty-two cents entering … . Ivan, if Gregg did have all that money, and he hid it away somewhere, and you found it … What would you do?”
“This is the second time tonight I’ve had to think about it,” I said. “A smart guy would keep it, go on living in his little apartment and driving his old car, maintain a low profile, improve his standard of living little by little, subtle-like. A smarter guy would skim off twenty or twenty-five thousand and turn the rest over to the cops, letting them think that’s all that was left and putting himself well into the clear. Me, being basically chicken and none too smart, I’d probably turn the whole stash over to the badges and politely ask for a receipt.”
Carolyn smiled dreamily. “Seventy-eight thousand isn’t exactly a fortune,” she said, “but it’s about four years’ pay for me. With seventy-eight thousand dollars we could disappear for a while, at least, Ivan, you and me. Go to Hawaii or Bermuda or someplace.” She looked at me. “Pick up where we left off twenty years ago.” Her voice matched her smile. “Make up for lost time.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. “Ah, well … it’s a nice dream.” She opened one eye. “And like you said, there’s nothi
ng wrong with temptation.”
My eyes had been closed; now I opened one and looked at her. “I suspect the odds of your having to wrestle with that particular temptation are slim. Because, as I was saying when we were so rudely interrupted, I do not believe that Gregg ever had that money.”
“But— Those men, just now …”
“Wishful thinking on their part. They thought it would be nice to waltz in and find where you’d torn up the garage floor, revealing Gregg’s stash, which you’d had to tap to pay the paperboy. And it would have been. Nice, I mean. For them. But the problem with cash, and the beauty of it, is that it’s largely untraceable.” I recapped the conversation I’d had with Jurgenson in the basement, about how the fifty-dollar note attributed to Boyer may easily not have been Boyer’s at all. “The thing could have been circulating for weeks, months already, before anyone happened to compare serial numbers. The robber buys groceries with it, the grocer gives it in change to a lady who uses it to buy a tank of gas, the service station deposits it in their bank, which doesn’t happen to check the number and gives it to a guy cashing his paycheck on his way to the local watering hole … . Meanwhile, the crook has been working on his tan in Saint Thomas. The link to you, to Gregg, is about as solid as a cobweb. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“Lou said he got it from Gregg.”
“Do you suppose Boyer checked the serial number? Do you suppose he put his initials on the bill that Gregg gave him? Boyer has no idea whether the note in question is the one from Gregg. Neither does Jurgenson. Jurgenson’s reaching. He reached right out and grabbed Boyer and squeezed hard. Boyer told Jurgenson what he knew he wanted to hear.”
Carolyn rested her glass on her right knee, rested her head against the back of her chair, and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted, drained. I shouldn’t wonder. Yet there was something enormously attractive about her even so. An appealing vulnerability. She wore a blue denim skirt and a vibrant green shirt with epaulets. Her legs and feet were bare, her sandals carelessly kicked into a corner near the chair.
She opened her eyes and looked at me looking at her.
“You don’t do that, Ivan, do you? Tell people what they want to hear?”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed, and closed her eyes again. “You won’t tell me her name,” she said. “Gregg’s … girlfriend. Will you tell me what she’s like? Do I have a right to know that much at least?”
“What’s she like … . Twenty-eight, maybe thirty, or thereabout. She’s a cocktail waitress. Gregg picked her up, or vice versa, in the bar where she works. They saw each other during the day, when you were at work. Her place. She doesn’t think Gregg was guilty, but she doesn’t know. She never saw Gregg flash any cash or give any indication that he was in the chips.”
Carolyn took a drink, her eyes still closed, her head still back. “I think I’m supposed to ask what she’s got that I haven’t. She’s young. Younger than me, anyhow. Is she pretty?”
“Yes. In some ways she looks like you.”
“Maybe I should take that as a compliment.” Carolyn opened her eyes. “Why? I mean, I don’t understand. Why, Ivan?”
“You’d have to ask Gregg.” I tried to make it light, gentle, easy.
“That’s not good enough. I don’t … I need to know, Ivan. I can’t ask Gregg.” She looked at me and her eyes were moist and shining. “I’m asking you.”
I ran a hand across the stubble on my chin. “Hell. Even if you could ask Gregg, I’m not sure he could tell you. I sure can’t. I guess … well, evidently she catered to some of Gregg’s, uh, less conventional tastes; maybe that was it.”
She laughed, an unfunny, rather unpleasant laugh. “And what does that mean? Gregg was some sort of pervert?”
“A pervert is just someone who likes to do something that you don’t. Gregg and his friend played little games, as she put it.”
“You dance divinely,” Carolyn said sourly. “But what’s your point? Did he like to dress up in women’s clothes? Did he like to screw schoolgirls? Animals? No, he couldn’t stand animals. Can’t’ve been a fag if he was seeing another woman. What’s that leave—whips and chains?”
I looked at her. “Bingo,” I said quietly.
The effect, for her, was like running headlong into a brick wall. “Jesus.” It was a bare, hoarse whisper. “Jesus.” She drained her glass. “He never said anything to me. He never did anything that would make me think …”
“I know,” I said. “I know.” The pointless things you say to someone who’s hurting.
“Jesus.” She looked at her empty glass, as if wondering how it got to be that way. “I need another one. You?” I shook my head. Carolyn stood, unsteadily, and took two steps toward the dining room. Then she stopped and turned and, without meeting my eyes, softly said, “He could have asked, Ivan. He could have said something. I would have … I don’t know, he just could have said something.”
So could I, but at the moment I hadn’t the slightest idea what.
Carolyn left the room, left me with my thoughts, left me with my anger at myself for having neither the words to break the news gently nor the finesse to comfort her after breaking it clumsily. Self-anger is difficult to sustain; inevitably, invariably, it turns toward someone else. In this case, Gregg Longo. After all, if he had been faithful to Carolyn—“faithful,” that old-fashioned word again—then I would not have been put in the position of having to tell her about her husband’s infidelity.
People. Who needs ’em? If there’s such a thing as sin, it must be hurting people, nothing more or less complicated than that. What else is there? God? How do you sin against God? You can’t hurt him. You can’t kill him, you can’t swindle him, you can’t steal his money, you can’t get him hooked on drugs and then turn and put him on the street to pay for his habit. Religious people say you hurt God when you turn away from his word. Which is what? Love thy neighbor.
Self-righteous? All right; what do you expect? Morality is at the center of the job. Any cop, whether he’s a private cop or on the public payroll, is a moral policeman. He’s fighting the battle of right against wrong, good against evil, order against chaos—all that unhip, uncool, old-fashioned jazz. The beat cop’s job is to keep order. The detective’s job is to restore order. The private detective’s job is to separate order from disorder, to sift through everything and, ideally, find truth. Not justice, necessarily: truth.
And the truth is, sometimes the truth is better left unfound.
I heard water running in the pipes overhead. Carolyn must have slipped through the kitchen and gone upstairs to the bathroom. I listened and soon heard her feet on the stairs.
Carolyn entered the room through the doorway leading to the entry hall. She had washed her face and brushed her dark hair and changed clothes. Now she wore a knee-length white terry robe with blue piping. She did not carry a drink. She carried a long slender piece of gray velvety material that might have been a bathrobe sash.
She crossed the floor and stood with her shins barely touching the footstool in front of me. Her eyes were downcast. Her voice, when she spoke, was ragged. “Tie me,” she said softly.
I said nothing. It’s what I do when I’m speechless.
Her words came haltingly, as if she had to invent each one before she spoke it.
“I need … to feel that someone wants me, really wants me, won’t leave me …”
I stood and came around the table. I put a hand under her chin and raised her head, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I kissed her forehead, then her mouth, lightly at first, then more firmly. Her body was warm against mine. She trembled.
She pressed the sash into my left hand. “Tie me,” she mumbled. Her breath was hot.
I pushed the robe away from her shoulders. It fell to the floor and she was naked. I kissed her mouth again, and held her as tightly as she held me. Then she pushed away, gently but definitely. She moved away a step and, eyes still downcast, turned and crossed her wrists at
the small of her back.
Hesitantly, I looped the sash around her wrists and knotted it loosely.
“Tighter,” she whispered.
I reached around her and pulled her to me. Her body now was very warm—hot—and smooth. My face was in her hair. I breathed the faint scent of her perfume.
“Tighter,” she whispered again, insistently.
I reached down to the sash, felt the smooth but nubby texture of it between my fingers. Then I loosened it and let it fall to the floor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mornings after are a bitch, so I did the manly thing and slipped out like a thief in the night while Carolyn was asleep. The world was dark and quiet, the night—morning, rather—was reasonably cool, damp. My car was coated with a layer of fat moisture beads, and a kind of haze formed a corona around the streetlights. It felt like you could grab a handful of air and wring water out of it.
I was in no hurry. I threaded back to my end of town via Sixteenth Street, through downtown, not caring that red lights stopped me at every corner and made me wait for virtually nonexistent traffic to cross. Drunks and hookers and other miscellaneous street denizens competed for sidewalk space. Cops cruised the streets, windows down, meaty left arms dangling into space, obscuring the decal on the door. Gaudy pastel neon blinked and buzzed in front of otherwise dark and empty buildings.
I went up Dodge Street, past the old high school where Carolyn and I had first met, all those years ago. Central High is a great, pale, federal-looking building propped atop a rise overlooking the city. At least, overlooking the city as the city must have been when the building went up. It’s not the school’s fault that most of the city now sprawls out more or less behind and to the west of it.
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