Stardust

Quirk spoke to one of the uniformed cops. “You talk to the security guard?”

“Yes, sir,” the cop said. “He’s over here. You want to see him?”

“What’d he tell you?”

“Says he was making his rounds, about four-thirty this morning. Says he makes them every hour and last time there wasn’t nothing there, but at four thirty he sees the tail end of this car sticking out of the water over the pier. So he calls us.”

“Where was the envelope?” Quirk said.

“Watchman found it on top of one of the pilings there, near where the car went over. There was a brick on top of it.”

“Gimme,” Quirk said.

The young cop went to the squad car and returned with a manila envelope wrapped in some sort of clear plastic and taped along the seams. Quirk took it and looked at it and handed it to me. Through the plastic wrap I could see that it was addressed to me, care of the Boston Police Department.

“Open it,” Quirk said.

I did. Inside was a page from a newspaper, the Berkshire Argus. The headline read, “Waymark Man Linked to TV Murder.” There was an old picture of Pomeroy in his Navy uniform, and a story that quoted Waymark police chief Buford Phillips. It mentioned that Pomeroy had been married to the famous Jill Joyce and had recently been questioned by a Boston detective about the murder on the set of Fifty Minutes.

“Shit,” I said.

Across the top of the tear sheet was scribbled, Say good-bye to Jill for me.

I handed the tear sheet to Quirk. He read it. “A detective from Boston,” he said.

“That goddamn Phillips,” I said. “Couldn’t wait to go blat to the papers.”

“Tell me about this detective from Boston, ” Quirk said.

He carefully put the tear sheet back in the envrlope and rewrapped it with the plastic wrap.

“Wanted to make sure it wouldn’t get wet,” I said.

“Suicides are sometimes very careful,” Quirk said.

“Rojack told me about Pomeroy. He was Jill Joyce’s first husband, maybe only. I don’t know if they were divorced or not. He lived up in the Berkshires in Waymark.”

“Waymark?” Quirk said.

“Out around Goshen,” I said. “Ashfield.”

“Sure,” Quirk said.

“Hadn’t seen her in twenty-five years, and carrying the torch the whole time.”

“He drink?” Quirk said.

“Used to. Quit, he said, five years ago.”

Quirk looked at the stiffening corpse. “Why bother?” he said.

I shrugged. “Then she shows up in Boston,” I said. “Two hours away, on location, shooting this television series.”

Two guys from the Medical Examiner’s office eased Pomeroy’s remains into a body bag and heaved it into the back of the wagon.

“It was too much,” I said. “He started trying to see her. She didn’t want him around. She didn’t want some reformed drunk shitkicker from Waymark, Mass., turning out to be her husband, and the press hear of it. Guy was on welfare, hadn’t heard from her since she dumped him.”

“Wouldn’t help her image,” Quirk said.

“So she gets Rojack to get Randall to chase him off, which Randall does.”

“And then you talk to Rojack and he tells you about Pomeroy and you go out to see him.”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t tell us about him.”

“Guy is about two-thirds of a person,” I said. “Or he was. He’s a sober alcoholic, hanging on barely, living in the woods with three dogs, trying to get over something that happened to him twenty-five years ago. He didn’t kill Babe Loftus.”

“You might wanta let us reach that conclusion on our own,” Quirk said.

I shrugged. The body was in the back of the Examiner’s wagon. The two technicians went around and got in front. Lupo walked past us toward his car.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said to Quirk. “Anything says it isn’t suicide?”

“Not yet,” Lupo said.

Quirk nodded.

“I give you a lot of slack,” he said, “because usually you end up on the right side of things, and sometimes you even help things. But don’t think I won’t rein you in if I need to.”

“My mistake was talking to that goddamn shitkicker police chief,” I said.

“You’d have been better talking to me,” Quirk said.

“At least we agree on that,” I said.

“How come he drove all the way here from Wayfar,” Quirk said, “to take the jump?”

“Waymark,” I said. “He wanted to be sure she’d hear about it. If he did it in Waymark it might make the Berkshire Argus, and who’d know? Who’d tell her? That’s why he left the note for me too.”

“And you can’t tell her,” Quirk said, “after all that trouble, because you don’t know where she is.”

“Yet,” I said.

Chapter 32

SUSAN had on glistening spandex tights and a green shiny leotard top and a white headband and white Avia workout shoes and she was charging up the stair climber like Teddy Roosevelt. I had on a white shirt and a leather jacket and I was leaning against one of the Kaiser Cam weight machines in her club watching her. When she exercised Susan didn’t glow delicately. She sweated like a horse, and as she thundered up the Stair Master she blotted her face with a hand towel. I was admiring Susan’s gluteus maximi as she climbed. She saw me in the mirror and said, “Are you staring at my butt?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you think?” she said. I knew she was making a large effort to speak normally and not puff. She was a proud woman.

“I think it’s the stuff dreams are made of, blue eyes.”

“My eyes are black,” Susan said.

“I know, but I can’t do a good Bogart on ‘black eyes.’ ”

“Some would say that was true of any color eyes,” Susan said.

“Some have no ear,” I said.

Susan was too out of wind to speak more, a fact which she concealed by shaking her head aniti.st-dly and pretending to concentrate harder on the stairs.“You still working on the glutes?” I said.

“Un huh.”

“No need,” I said. “They get any better you’ll have to have them licensed.”

“You are just trying to get me to admit I can’t talk and exercise,” Susan said. “Go downstairs.”

“You know the only other times I see you sweat like this?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Go downstairs.”

“Sure,” I said.

An hour and a half later Susan was wearing a vibrant blue blouse and a black skirt and we were sitting across from each other at a table in Toscano Restaurant eating tortellini and drinking some white wine, for lunch.

“Did you hear anything from the police?” Susan said. “About Jill?”

“No,” I said. “Not about Jill.”

I broke off a piece of bread and ate it. “Wilfred Pomeroy killed himself.”

“The one Jill was married to?”

“Yeah. Came down to Boston, left a note for me, and drove off a pier.”

“Why?”

“Press got hold of his story,” I said. “He couldn’t stand it, I guess. As if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen.”

“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe it was his chance to make the beau geste, to die for her, rather than let his life be used against her.”

“And a chance to say, simultaneously, See how I loved you, see what you missed, see what you made me do. ”

“Suicide is often, see what you made me do,” Susan said. “It is often anger coupled with despair.” I nodded. Susan nibbled on one of the tortellini. She was the only person I knew who could eat one tortellini in several bites.

“Is tortellini better than sex?” she said.

“Not in your case,” I said. “If you eat only one at a time of tortellini, are you eating a tortellenum?”

“You’ll have to ask an Italian,” Susan said. “I can barely conjugate goyim.”

We were quiet for a time. Concentrating on the food, sipping our wine. As always when I was with her, I could feel her across the table, the way one can feel heat, a tangible co

“Poor man,” Susan said.

“Yeah.”

“Will you find her, you think?”

“Yeah,” I said.