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“All the time I knew Mike I never realized he was so important”
“Alive, I don’t think he was. It is his death that is important, and the reasons — if any — for it”
“Did you mean that, what you said this afternoon about the police not wanting anything moved from this apartment?”
“Yes, for the present. I’ll have to go through everything, particularly the papers. Why do you ask?”
Shirl kept her eyes on her glass, clutching it rightly with both hands. “Mike’s lawyer was here today, and everything is pretty much like his sister said. My clothes, my personal belongings are mine, nothing else. Not that I expected anything more. But the rent has been paid here until the end of August—” she looked up squarely at Andy, “and if the furniture is left here I can stay on until then.”
“Do you want to do that?”
“Yes,” she said, nothing more.
She’s all right, Andy thought. She’s not asking any favors, no tears or that kind of thing. Just spreading her cards on the table. Well, why not? It doesn’t cost me anything. Why not?
“Consider it done. I’m a very slow apartment searcher, and an apartment this big will take until exactly midnight on the thirty-first of August to search properly. If there are any complaints refer them to Third Grade Detective Andrew Fremont Rusch, Precinct 12-A. I’ll tell the parties concerned to get lost.”
“That’s wonderful!” she said, jumping happily to her feet. “And it deserves another drink. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t feel right about, you know, selling anything from the apartment. That would be stealing. But I don’t see anything wrong with finishing off the bottles. That’s better than leaving them for that sister of his.”
“I agree completely,” Andy said, lying back in the soft embrace of the cushions, watching her delicate and attractive wiggle as she took the glasses into the kitchen. This is the life, he thought, and gri
“No, I come from Lakeland, New Jersey,” she said, “we just moved here to the city when I was a kid. The Strategic Air Command was putting in those extra-long runways for the Mach-3 planes and they bought our house and all the other ones nearby and tore them down. It’s my father’s favorite story, how they ruined his life, and he has never voted for a Republican since and swears he would rather die first.”
“I wasn’t born here either,” he said, and took a sip of the drink. “We came from California, my father had a ranch—”
“Then you’re a cowboy!”
“Not that kind of a ranch, fruit trees, in the Imperial Valley, I was just a little kid when he left and I hardly remember it. All the farming in those valleys was done with irrigation — canals and pumps. My father’s ranch had pumps and he didn’t think it was very important when the geologists told him he was using fossil water, water that had been in the ground thousands of years. Old water grows things just as well as new water, I remember him saying that. But there must have been little or no new water filtering down because one day the fossil water was all used up and the pump went dry. I’ll never forget that, the trees dying and nothing we could do about it. My father lost the farm and we came to New York, he was a sandhog on the Moses Tu
“I never kept an album,” Andy said.
“It’s the sort of things girls do.” She sat on the couch next to him, turning the pages. In the front were photographs of children, ticket stubs, programs, but he was only slightly aware of them. Her warm bare arm pressed against his and when she leaned over the album he could smell the perfume in her hair. He had drunk an awful lot, he realized vaguely, and he nodded his head and pretended to be looking at the album. All he was really aware of was her.
“It’s after two, I better get going.”
“Don’t you want some more kofee first?” she asked.
“No thanks.” He finished the cup and carefully set it down. “I’ll be around in the morning, if that will be all right with you.” He started toward the door.
“The morning is fine,” she said, and put her hand out. “And thanks for staying here this evening.”
“I should be thanking you for the party, remember I never tasted whiskey before.”
He meant to shake hands, that was all, to say good night. But for some reason he found her in his arms, his face against her hair and his hands pressed tight to the soft velvet skin of her back. When he kissed her she returned the kiss fiercely and he knew everything would be all right.
Later, lying on the crisp expanse of the bed, he could feel the touch of her warm body at his side and the light stir of her sleeping breath on his cheek. The hum of the air-conditioner seemed to make the night more quiet, covering and masking all the other sounds. He had had too much to drink, he realized now, and smiled up at the darkness. So what? If he had been sober he might never have ended up where he was. He might feel sorry in the morning, but at the present moment this felt like the best thing that had ever happened to him. Even when he tried to feel guilty he couldn’t; his hand tightened possessively on her shoulder and she stirred in her sleep. The curtains were parted slightly and through the opening he could see the moon, distant and friendly. This is all right, he said, this is all right, over and over again to himself.
The moon burned in through the open window, a piercing eye in the night, a torch in the breathless heat. Billy Chung had slept a little, earlier, but one of the twins had had a nightmare and wakened him and he had lain there wide awake ever since. If only the man hadn’t been in the bathroom… Billy rolled his head back and forth, biting at his lower lip, feeling the sweat beading his face. He hadn’t meant to kill him, but now that he was dead Billy didn’t care. He was worried about himself. What would happen when they caught him? They would find him, that’s what the police were for, they would take the tire iron out of the dead man’s head and go over it in their laboratory the way they did and find the man who had sold it to him… His head rolled from side to side on the sweat-dampened pillow and a low, almost voiceless moan was forced between his teeth.