She stormed out. I watched her go, thinking it was nice to end the day on something we all could agree on.
14
Two’s company, indisputably. Two’s company, irrefutably.
Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden, “Two’s Company”
(London Weekend Television and A&E)
THE ENTIRE GATHERING ATE dinner in a wordless snit. Even Bats Blefary, who wasn’t especially mad at anybody, gave up conversation as a bad idea after a few sallies.
“How’s the food holding out?” he asked Aunt Agnes brightly. Not the most tactful question, you’ll notice, but maybe he’d caught it from me.
“Plenty of everything except fresh vegetables,” she said. “We did plan to have you people up here for ten days, if necessary.”
“Good,” Bats said. “That’s good.”
I wasn’t mad at anybody, either, just distracted. I think it was safe to say, though, that I was the least popular person in the room. Roxanne, Carol, and Bats might have been willing to lift a finger to save my life, and Ralph, of course. But judging from the looks I got from the others, I would have been a fool to eat any of the roast beef or mashed potatoes or gravy or string beans if I hadn’t seen them served from a common dish.
I was glad when it was late enough to go to bed. Keeping in mind my injunction about traveling in groups of three or more, I went up with the Normans, which made for a jolly trip. Before I went, I told the gang to remember what I’d said about fortifying their doors.
I took my own advice, propping a conveniently sized antique chair under the doorknob and backing that up with a Samoyed who knows how to watch a door. Then I took a shower, dried off, and lay down on the bed.
So. What have I accomplished today? Besides making everybody mad at me, I thought. Well, we taught Haskell Freed a little humility. Proved Jack Bromhead really had sprained his ankle.
Or had we?
I thought it over. I’d taken a picture of every other damned thing today. I wished I’d taken a picture of Jack Bromhead’s ankle. Could he have done the nasty business to Gabby Dost and then hurt his ankle? I didn’t think so. That greenish tinge Bromhead showed around the edges of his bruise only set in after a few days, in my experience. But then, what the hell did I know? I wasn’t a doctor. Suppose Bromhead had some kind of condition that made the green show up early.
Forget it, Cobb, I told myself. Forget it. You can only wait until the people with the right resources get here. They’ll worry about the answers to questions like that, and you’ll be in jail for impersonating an officer and tampering with evidence and God knows what all, so you’ll have other problems on your mind.
Thinking of Bromhead’s bruises led me to remember the bruises on Dost’s back. Dammit, I’d forgotten to ask the widow if she knew how they’d gotten there; if flailing yourself on the back with a stick like some medieval monk was part of Dost’s idea of a good time.
I didn’t really think that was the explanation—the marks were too few and too symmetrical—but it was the only thing I could think of when I saw them, and I should have at least asked. I should have asked Jack Bromhead, too.
Wonderful, I thought, now I have an agenda for tomorrow. Maybe Dost would flash me the answer from a Higher Plane.
Meanwhile, I reflected on today’s really big achievement—catching Aranda Dost in a whacking great lie. The question presented itself: What, if anything, did this lie mean? And, assuming it does mean something, what do I do about it?
By the door, Spot rose to a crouch and growled low in his throat. A half-second later, there was a knock on the door. I rolled out of bed and stuffed myself into the red gym shorts I’d been such a hit in this morning. I had visions of angry villagers out there with torches, but if they didn’t like my attire, they could lump it. Whoever it was could lump it.
I walked to the door and grabbed the chair with both hands, both to get it out of Spot’s way, if necessary, and to pick up as a weapon, if Spot turned out not to be enough.
The knocking was louder, this time.
“Who is it?” I demanded.
“It’s me, Cobb, Roxanne. Open up.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Nobody.”
“Is that the way you listen, you little twerp?”
“Yeah. Well, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition to keep me out here in the hallway.”
My line was “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” but I didn’t feel like going into it. Instead, I said, “I’m not dressed.”
“I’ve seen you naked, Cobb. Come on, let me in.”
I called off Spot and moved the chair away from the floor. Roxanne bounced in wearing a bright-yellow pair of fuzzy Dr. Denton’s, complete with feet. She looked like a five-foot, three-inch teddy bear. She sat in the armchair and said, “Hi!”
“Hi, yourself. To what do I owe the honor?”
“I was lonely. I wanted to see Spot.” She was ruffling the fur of his neck, something he loves more than steak.
“Would you like to borrow him for the night? You’re old friends, after all.”
She thought it over for a second. “Well, as long as I’m here, I might as well talk to you. You look like you could use a friendly face.”
“As if I could use a friendly face.”
Roxanne nodded. “That’s a good way to get one, too, correcting people’s grammar.” She leaned forward. “Seriously, though, Cobb, I’ve never seen you so weird. And that’s saying something.”
“I don’t like sharing a roof with a murderer.”
“You’ve been at close quarters with murderers before.”
“Claustrophobia, then. I don’t like the idea of being in a place I can’t leave. I think we’re all starting to get a little nuts on that score.”
“I sure am. But it’s more than that, with you. Could it be you were bracing yourself to take a run at Carol Coretti, and now you’re left with a set of frustrated hormones?”
“I’ve gone years with frustrated hormones,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Too late. You should have said that three minutes ago, if you wanted it to be believable. Not that I would have believed it then, either. I know you too well, Cobb.”
“All right. Maybe I was going to suggest to Carol we get together when we got back to the city. Maybe I did get saved by an eyelash from having my nose pushed in, however gently. That should make me glad, right? I don’t even know why I’m discussing this.”
“Something about me,” Roxanne intoned, “compels honesty from those weaker of intellect. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I was just trying to poison your mind against her this morning. I was just going by instinct. It was, you know, badinage. The only way we seem to talk anymore.”
“I have the same problem with Bats Blefary.”
“I’ll let him worry about that. I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I said again, but I didn’t mean it.
“You don’t mean that,” said the little psychic. “I know what your problem is.”
“Oh, tell me, Doctor, please.”
“Not so fast. Do you think I’ve been spending all this money on colleges just to tell people things? Not at all. If we don’t use the Socratic method, it won’t work.”
I figured, what the hell. I’m a product of my time, a child of the Me Generation. Why shouldn’t we talk about Me for a while? Especially if worrying about Me would take my mind off the image of Gabby Dost bleeding into the virgin snow.
“May I relax while we talk?”
Roxanne was gracious. “By all means,” she said. I lay down on the bed and laced my fingers behind my head.
“All right, then,” she said. “How old was I when you met me?”
“Not quite sixteen.”
“What condition was I in?”
“You were a wreck. Strung out on heroin. Dirty, scared, and sick.”
“Who got me to the hospital? Who helped me kick? Who ran the pimp out of town when he tr
ied to take me back? Who let me have two more good years with my father?”
“I did. I was doing my job.”
“Your job was to find me. None of the rest of that stuff. Now, your girlfriend at the time was Monica Teobaldi, famous actress, correct?”
“She wasn’t so famous then, and it was more complicated than that, but that’s basically true.”
“And what happened to Monica?”
“She got a part she’d been up for, and took off for L.A.”
“She left a message on your machine. She dumped you like a hot brick without even saying good-bye.”
“Right.”
“How old was I at the time?”
“Nineteen.”
“What happened between us the night Monica left?”
I sat up. “Look, Rox, this isn’t much fun—”
“Shut up,” she ordered. “It isn’t supposed to be fun. What happened?”
“You came to my apartment.”
“Yeah. I came to your apartment. What did we do, play Parcheesi all night?”
“You know what we did. Rox, come on ...”
She was implacable. “Say it.”
I said it. “We made love.”
“We made what?”
“Love.”
“Thank you.” She batted her eyelashes. “Was it good for you, Darling?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I remember fine how it was for me. We’re talking about you. On a scale of one to ten.”
“Twelve,” I said.
“Don’t joke, Cobb.”
“It was terrific. You were there. You turned me into a gibbering idiot. What more do you need?”
“We’re making excellent progress.”
“Oh, goody.”
“Now let’s talk about the women you’ve been involved with since then.”
“Dammit, Rox, I am not going to rate every woman I’ve ever slept with on a scale of one to ten just to satisfy your curiosity.”
“I don’t want you to. I just want to know what happened to the relationships. Llona Hall?”
“Are you serious?”
“I have never been more serious in my life.”
“She connived at murder. Unprovable. She left the country with some incredible amount of money and bought an island somewhere. I don’t know where.”
“Okay. Morally lacking. You dumped her. Now that lawyer upstate. Well, downstate from here, but you know what I mean.”
“Eve Bowen. She’s the D.A. there now. She’s going to run for Congress. She said she couldn’t be having an affair with a campaign going on.”
“So why didn’t you get married?”
“She didn’t think the voters would understand the kind of work I do.”
“So she dumped you, because you dripped sleaze on her ambitions.”
“How poetic.”
“Thank you. How about Wendy Ichimi, who, incidentally, is exactly one month younger than I am?”
“She’s always traveling the world with an ice show.”
“Dumped you because of her career.”
“Right.”
“And finally, the librarian, Kenni Clayton.”
“How the hell did you know about her?”
“A person named ‘Schick’ can always get answers at the Network. What happened to her?”
“She got weirded out,” I said.
“Too kinky for her?”
“No, it was something I did.”
“I’m waiting.”
“I—set a friend of hers up to be killed. I didn’t mean it that way. She was a murderer and a drug dealer, the friend was, and she’d admitted it to me, but there was no way to prove it for the law unless she cooperated. So I wanted to put pressure on her to make her confess. One of the people she killed was the nephew of a Mafia don, and I told him where she was.”
“So he killed her.”
“Not exactly. She mistook a cop I’d also told about her for a Mafia hit man, ran into the subway trying to get away, and fell off the platform in front of an uptown Number One train.”
“And you felt guilty.”
“No. I didn’t feel one tiny little bit guilty. That’s what weirded Kenni out. She was always looking at me funny.”
“She’s got a lot of nerve,” Roxanne said, suddenly indignant.
“What happened to the Socratic method?”
“My mother killed somebody, and you pushed her over the edge from psycho to total mental vegetable, and I never looked at you funny.”
“Yeah,” I said. I’d never thought of Memory Lane as such a bumpy road. “Well, Kenni’s life has been populated by nicer people than yours or mine.”
“Still, what did she want you to do, let her get away with it?”
“No. She just couldn’t understand why I had to be the one to stop her.”
“What a wimp.” Roxanne went on in this vein under her breath for a few minutes, while I considered the question. I had to be the one because I was the only one who could. If I hadn’t done anything to stop Kenni’s friend, then the harm she inflicted on anybody else (and this woman had an infinite capacity for harm) would be at least partially my fault. That would make me feel guilty. I know that there are millions of decent, honest people who feel differently, including, I suppose, every defense lawyer alive, but that’s my point of view, and I like myself better for it.
“Anyway,” Roxanne said, as though we’d never digressed at all, “here comes the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: Is it not true you could have made it work with any of those women if you’d really wanted to?”
I was indignant. “No!” I said. “How could I possibly have made it work with Llona?”
“Okay, okay, forget her. What about the rest? All you had to do about Monica or Wendy Ichimi was quit the Network—you always say you hate this damn job, anyway—and go along and be their manager or something. Women in show business have supported their men for years. It’s like a tradition.”
“A better tradition is when everyone supports himself.”
“Touché,” she said.
“Oh, hell,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about you. Of course it’s okay to take care of your children.”
“That’s swell. But children like me grow up, and we’ve still got the money. Then what happens?”
“They take over the family business. Or they take up Hare Krishna or radical politics. Or they become philanthropists, or patrons of the arts. Depends a lot on character.”
“Okay, enough about me. Back to you. You could have made the politician happy by delivering a whole lot of leverage on Network personnel to her. Nothing like good media coverage to further a political career.”
I sat up. “Do you really think I would do that?”
“Would she want you to?”
“No!” At least, I didn’t think so.
Roxanne just made a skeptical little “mmmm” and went on. “The librarian would have been easiest of all. All you would have had to do was pretend a little remorse over what happened to her friend. White lies are a time-honored way for most people to keep a relationship on an even keel. But not for you. Not with her. Why not?”
“I thought you were going to tell me why I’ve been so grouchy.”
“We’re getting to that. Right now, I’m offering to tell you why you keep failing to make these romances last. Do you want to know, or not?”
“Is there any way in the world, short of breaking your jaw, that I could keep you from telling me?”
She shook her head. “And even then, I would write it down.”
“Then, please, do, tell me.”
“It’s me. You’re in love with me, and that’s what keeps you from doing anything final with anybody else.”
I sat up and looked at her. “No problems in the ego department for you, are there?”
“Oodles. I just know the truth when I’ve spent a few years studying it. I’m the reason you’re so uptight here, too. I told you we’d get around to it. Y
ou’re afraid I’m in danger, and you’re wondering how the fact that I’m not going to be able to sell the Network is going to affect me.”
“Both those things could be true without my being in love with you.”
“Ha! You’ve just got it in your head that I’m too young and too rich and you love me too much to take advantage of me, when maybe I don’t really love you.”
“You don’t,” I said.
Roxanne’s voice was deadly. “Don’t say that, Cobb. Never say that.”
“That may be what it seems like to you, Rox, but it’s not. I pulled you out of that hellhole you’d run away to, and I’m glad I did it: You were a kid, then, though, and you saw me as this white knight. Ever since, you’ve been telling me how great I am, how you owe me your life, you’d do anything for me. That’s not love. Love is loving somebody in spite of his faults and weaknesses, not pretending they don’t exist. Being perfect is too much pressure for a man to take.”
“I know you have faults. For one thing, you’re a complete asshole when it comes to women. For another thing, once you make up your mind about something, you never notice when things change.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I came to the same conclusion you did about three years ago. About praising you too much, making you uncomfortable. I stopped, but you never noticed. I’ve even tried being a sarcastic little bitch to get your attention, which did no good at all. Now I’m trying a direct approach. I don’t know what’s left, except maybe hitting you between the eyes with a two-by-four.”
“What do you want from me, Rox?”
“Be honest with yourself. Am I right in what I’ve said here tonight, or not? And don’t treat me like a kid. I’m long since a grown woman and I’m fighting for the man I love.”
I looked at her again in the sleeper blanket. “I grant that you are a woman, and a hell of a one, if I may say so.”
“Thank you,” she said primly.
“But if that was the point you wanted to make, why did you come dressed like a one-year-old?”
“I didn’t want to vamp you into anything.”
“All men are sex-crazy,” I said.
“Close enough.”
I flopped back on the pillows and let out a breath. Be honest with myself, she said. I forced myself to be. And she was right. I’d been running from her for years now, for no damn good reason at all.
Killed on the Rocks Page 12
