'Detective Johnson thinks we were there on purpose.'
'Johnson? He talked to you? When?'
'Tuesday. Day before yesterday.'
'I thought he was done, I thought that was all over.'
'I think it's just starting, Bryce.'
'But why? You know I didn't have anything to do with Lucie's death!'
'But I don't know it,' she said. 'Nobody knows it, because nobody knows what really happened. They'll find out, the police will find out, and then maybe it'll be all right again. But now… Bryce, you're frightening, with those dreams, your shoulders moving, punching under the covers, muttering, frowning. And when you're awake you're depressed, there's no joy in you. Not since we came back from California.'
'That's why I want to go away for a while,' he said. 'Somewhere warm. It doesn't have to be Spain.'
'I can't go away with you,' she said. 'I can't live with you. I'm sorry, Bryce, I've been thinking about this all week, and I think about moving into that apartment with you, and it's like I'm moving into a grave.'
'Oh, God, Isabelle, don't say something like that.'
'It's what I feel.' She put down her coffee cup at last and held his left hand in both of hers. 'We have to stay away from each other for a while,' she told him. 'There's something you have to work through, I don't even know if you know what it is yourself but you have to work through it, and I can't be there. Later, when you feel better, when Detective Johnson knows what really happened, then maybe we can get back together. I'd like to. We had fun a lot of times. The weekends…' She trailed off, looking away from him, but still holding his hand.
He'd never told her he loved her, because he wasn't sure he did, and he was afraid of what the word might entail. He almost said the word now, but stopped himself, knowing it wouldn't be real, it would only be a tactic to try to hold on to her. And knowing, too, that she would see it for what it was, and turn away from him even more.
He said, 'Isabella, the idea of not seeing you—'
'For a while.' She looked at him again, squeezed his hand. 'I hope, for just a while.'
He looked around the small characterless room. This is where she preferred to be. He said, 'We were going to have lunch.'
'I'm not really hungry, Bryce, I'm sorry.'
He smiled a little and shook his head. 'I don't think I am, either. First time in my life, I bet, I'm not hungry for lunch.' He looked at her again. 'I'm going to miss you.'
'I already miss you,' she told him. 'The you from before.'
Suddenly restless, realizing he was becoming angry, not wanting to be angry, not wanting Isabelle to know he was angry, he pulled his hand from hers and abruptly stood. 'I miss the me from before, too,' he told her. 'God knows I don't want Lucie back, but I want something back. Is it okay if I phone you sometimes?'
'I hope you will,' she said.
He nodded. 'Maybe we could date, after a while. Dinner and a movie.'
'And a kiss goodnight,' she said.
He laughed. 'Oh, I think just a handshake at first.'
She stood. 'I wish you'd kiss me now,' she said.
He kissed her, holding her too tight, aware of her struggle to breathe, and finally forced himself to let go. Her eyes looked frightened, but she still smiled as she said, 'I'll see you.'
'See you,' he said, and left, knowing, at the end there, he'd wanted to hit her. The way Lucie was hit.
•
Three-thirty. He sat at his computer, in the apartment, trying to think of a story. Two Faces in the Mirror was virtually finished now, once he did the little Henry-Eleanor insert and a few other things. Half a day's work, he'd probably do it in Connecticut this weekend. Alone in Connecticut this weekend, but to be alone here would be even worse. He had weekend friends, sometimes dinner invitations on the Saturday. Nothing this weekend, but somebody could still call. And in the city, on the weekend, nobody would call.
What he had to do now was think of the next book. It had been over a year and a half since he'd written anything — the rewriting of Wayne's book didn't count — and he felt all those muscles were stiff now. He had to get limber again.
Most books began for him with a character abruptly being put into motion. Sometimes the setting was important, too, but the main thing was to find a character, somebody he could stay with for six hundred pages, and give that character a reason to get moving. So what he was doing at the computer now was trying to find that character, the entry, the starting point.
A doctor? He'd have to do an awful lot of research, but that was all right. He'd never written about a doctor before.
A doctor who finds a disease where it shouldn't be, something that's only found above the Arctic Circle, say, and his patient has never been north of Tarrytown, and…
Not a doctor.
He hadn't known he was dreaming about Lucie, but Isabelle must be right about that. Beating Lucie in his sleep. And then the dreams were always gone in the morning, leaving nothing but a sense of heaviness, weariness, sorrow.
Life was supposed to be better without Lucie, that's what it had all been about. And it was better, the financial crunch was over, the aggravation was over, the book deadline had been solved. He was the only fly in the ointment, he was the only reason things weren't better. He was doing it to himself.
A real estate salesman finds drug money hidden in the basement of a house he's offering, and the drug dealers want it back. No; older money. Prohibition money from the thirties, a third-generation private eye has been looking for it, like his father and his grandfather. Yesterday and today, linked. Neither of them has any right to the money, so both of them have the same right. But the private eye is tough and ruthless, and the real estate agent is just an ordinary guy, trying to keep from being swallowed up.
Is the real estate agent a woman? No. Bryce didn't think he'd ever successfully written from a woman's point of view, not for more than a few pages at a time. He'd get too many things wrong. He didn't even want to think about the sex scenes.
He and Isabelle hadn't had sex for almost two weeks. He hadn't even noticed, not till this second. Nothing in Connecticut last weekend, nothing here since, nothing here last week. Connecticut, two weeks ago. Her idea. And he hadn't noticed.
These characters weren't characters, they were wallpaper. He breathed on them, and they failed to stir into life.
Maybe he should just take the train to Connecticut today, not wait till tomorrow, see if the change of scene—
The phone rang. Isabelle, he thought, though he knew it wouldn't be. He picked up, and it was Wayne. 'Oh, hello,' Bryce said.
He'd felt strange today in Joe's office, with Wayne, almost as though he were jealous, as though he didn't want them to get along. It was irritating they lived in the same neighborhood, he wasn't sure why.
Wayne said, 'I just got home, and—'
'You and Joe got along great, I see.'
' — your Detective Johnson was on my answering machine!'
Oh. Isabelle was right, Johnson wasn't finished. Bryce could hear panic in Wayne's voice, and panic was the last thing Wayne should do right now. Making himself sound calm, unconcerned, Bryce said, 'Yeah, he's making the rounds, Isabelle told me, he talked to her on Tuesday.'
'But what does he want with me? Why does he even know about me?'
'Well,' Bryce said, 'my guess is, he talked to Janet whatever her name is, who directed that play—'
'Higgins.'
' — and from there to Jack Wagner, and Jack would have said he'd introduced you to Lucie at the play, so now he wants to know what you and Lucie talked about, and did you ever see her again, and you never did.'
'I never did.'
'Have you called him back?'
'Not yet, I wanted to talk to you.'
'It's not a big deal, Wayne,' Bryce said. 'He's following every lead, that's all, that's what his job is. You won't give him any reason to look twice at you, and he won't look twice at you.'
'I guess so.'
'Ca
ll him now, Wayne. If you don't call him back, he will look twice at you.'
'All right. I'll call him now.'
They hung up, and Bryce continued to sit at the computer, but he'd stopped trying to think of a character. He was thinking about Wayne instead.
Wayne had done what Bryce had sent him out to do, and it was supposed to stop there, but it wasn't stopping there. Wayne kept moving, acting, and Bryce didn't like the ways he was going. Cozying up to Joe Katz. And now, going into a panic, just because a cop wanted to talk to him. Cops had talked to Bryce, cops in Los Angeles and cops here, and he'd handled them all with no problem, no problem. Why can't Wayne do the same? Johnson's just following his leads.
But Johnson was a good detective, Bryce was sure of that. Would he smell something on Wayne, see something, sense something? Don't the good detectives begin with that sixth sense, the feeling that something's wrong, not yet knowing what?
Wayne had a power over Bryce that Bryce hadn't truly appreciated until now. When they'd made their agreement, that day they'd met at the library, they'd put themselves in each other's hands, they were absolutely dependent on each other's solidity and reliability. Bryce was solid, Bryce was reliable, God knows he'd proved that.
Is Wayne going to be a problem for me? Bryce wondered. If he's going to be a problem for me, what do I do about it?
16
The appointment with Detective Johnson was for eleven the next morning. Normally, Wayne didn't like to dose himself indiscriminately with drugs, but this morning, after Susan left for work, he took half a Valium. It was her prescription, rarely used, for those times when her job became too stressful. Wayne had almost never taken one, and didn't want to be zoned out when Johnson got here, but that would be better than being hopped-up, manic.
He hadn't mentioned Johnson to Susan yet, because what was the point? She'd have all day to worry about it, for no reason. When it was all over, he'd tell her what had happened. With, he hoped, a relieved laugh.
Johnson was exactly on time, and when he came in he didn't seem threatening at all. A moderately dark black man, tall and not too heavy, mild in his manner, he seemed more like somebody who worked in a bank or for some bureaucracy than a homicide detective. 'Thank you for seeing me, Mr Prentice,' he said, as though Wayne had had a choice in the matter.
'Anything I can do,' Wayne assured him. 'Would you like a cup of coffee?'
Johnson smiled. 'Oh, I better not,' he said. 'I drink coffee all day long sometimes, I think I'm putting the people at ease, the end of the day, I got the heebie-jeebies.'
Wayne grinned, liking the man. 'Then I guess we just sit down,' he said.
They sat in the living room, and Johnson said, 'You know what this is about.'
'Lucie Proctorr.'
'You met her fairly recently, I believe,' Johnson said. He wasn't taking notes, seemed just to be having a casual conversation.
'I guess it must have been the weekend before she died,' Wayne said. 'Or the Thursday, really.'
'It was at a play?'
'Yes. The playwright introduced me. I asked him to.'
Johnson was interested in that. 'You asked him to?'
'I'm an old friend of her husband's,' Wayne said. 'Bryce. We knew each other twenty years ago, more than twenty years ago, here in the city, we were both trying to make it as writers.'
'You did some novels yourself,' Johnson suggested.
'Yes, sure,' Wayne said. 'When the first one was published, I went to Italy for a year, research for the second book. When I got back, I'd lost touch with some of the people I knew, including Bryce. Then he became famous, and I didn't' — Wayne shrugged — 'it seemed awkward to get in touch with him, after a while.'
'But you did it, finally.'
'No, he called me. What I think it was,' Wayne said, 'when his marriage broke up, I think maybe he was lonely, or the friends they'd had were mostly her friends. I think he looked up people he hadn't seen for a while, including me. We met a couple of times, we had coffee — ' Wayne broke off, and laughed, and said, 'Not too much coffee.'
'No, that's good,' Johnson said, and smiled. 'But how did you get from there to this play?'
'Well, Bryce really talked against Lucie,' Wayne said. He'd been working out this story in his mind since yesterday afternoon, and thought it was solid now. 'Any time her name came up,' he explained, 'there was more from Bryce about how rotten she was. You begin to wonder, can anybody really be that bad? I finally said it to him, I'd like to meet her, see for myself, he said be my guest.'
'So he's the one who knows Jack Wagner, the playwright.'
'I don't know any of those people,' Wayne said. 'I went there, I didn't know a soul. Usually there's at least somebody you know vaguely, but not there, no. Bryce couldn't go because Lucie was going, because the director was a friend of hers, so Bryce called Jack Wagner and asked if I could go instead, and Wagner said yes. I don't think Bryce said I wanted to meet Lucie, but I told Wagner that myself, at the party.'
'And that it was curiosity.'
'Sure. An old friend's horrible marriage, what does it look like?'
'Like rubbernecking at an auto crash,' Johnson suggested.
Wayne laughed. 'Guilty,' he said. 'That's just what it was. You know, like when Tom Sawyer charged his friends to look at his wounded toe. Everybody wants to see the really icky things.'
'Yes, that's true,' Johnson said.
'Which in this case,' Wayne said, 'was Lucie Proctorr.' And without warning there came into his memory, as clear and vivid as a movie poster, that final moment when Lucie Proctorr had been the icky thing. It stopped his breath, it stopped time, it almost destroyed the flow of the story he was telling, but then, desperate, afraid Johnson would see something, guess something, he used it, sitting back, letting the shock show on his face, crying, 'My God, what am I saying? That's horrible!'
Soothing, Johnson said, 'That's okay, Mr Prentice, I know what you mean. The question is, what did you think of Lucie? As bad as you thought?'
'No,' Wayne said. 'She couldn't have been as bad as Bryce was saying, nobody could, but she wasn't very good, either.'
'You didn't like her.'
'Not at all. I'm sorry to talk about her like that when she's dead and all, but I thought she was just negative, and a put-down artist. I mean, it was her friend who directed the play, and she's there as a guest, drinking their wine, and all she wanted to do was talk about what trash the play was, and how her friend Jane deserved better than that, she should be directing at the Public Theater.'
Johnson smiled. 'I take it you didn't talk with her for long.'
'Maybe five minutes. Then I thanked Jack Wagner for inviting me, told him what a great play it was — it wasn't really very good, but you don't say that—'
'No, you don't.'
'And I came home and told Susan about it. My wife.'
Johnson looked interested. 'She didn't go along?'
'No, she didn't want to,' Wayne said. 'She wasn't interested in Bryce's ex-wife, in fact she's never met Bryce. And she didn't care about the play, and she has a full-time job, so she didn't feel like coming out with me. She had dinner that night with a woman friend of hers, and was home before I was.'
'When Lucie left the theater that night,' Johnson said, 'do you have any idea who she was with?'
'Not at all,' Wayne said. 'I was gone by then. I was probably the first one to leave the party.'
'You didn't know anybody,' Johnson suggested, 'and the mission was accomplished.'
'That's right.'
'Did you discuss Lucie with Bryce Proctorr, later on?'
'Not really. I mean, just a little bit. I told him what I thought, what I just told you, that I more or less agreed with him that she wasn't a very nice person.'
Johnson nodded. 'I guess Bryce must have felt Lucie mistreated him quite a bit,' he said.
'I guess so.'
'Did he ever tell you he wanted revenge against Lucie?'
Startled, because everything had
been so easygoing, Wayne said, 'Revenge? No, all he ever said was he wanted it over with, the lawyers were dragging it out.'
'But he wanted it to end.'
'He sure did.'
'Did he ever suggest there might be any kind of shortcut to end it that he might take?'
'You mean, like killing her?'
Johnson grinned. 'Well, that's one way, sure,' he said. 'But I was thinking, some of these rich fellas, they just pack up everything and leave the country, and tell the wife, 'Catch me if you can.''
'I don't think that idea ever even occurred to Bryce,' Wayne said. 'He's got his life here. Besides, whatever money he gets paid, that's here, too, in New York. I don't think it would do him any good to go to Europe or anywhere.'
'That's probably true.' Johnson seemed to consider for a minute, and then he said, 'Do you think of Bryce Proctorr as a good friend?'
'In a funny way, yes,' Wayne told him. 'We hadn't seen each other for years, whenever I thought about him or saw his name in the paper, what I mostly felt was jealousy, because he was so much more successful than I am, but now that I've seen him again for a while I like the guy. He isn't stuck-up or anything like that. I don't say we're close, but we get along. Yeah, I like him.'
'You didn't mind his success.'
'It's his. He isn't stealing anything from me.'
'Well, that's true,' Johnson said. 'And what are you doing these days, Mr Prentice, if I may ask?'
Acting surprised, Wayne said, 'Still writing.'
'Really? Novels, like before?'
'Sure. I've been using a pen name, the last few years,' Wayne told him, 'but I'm thinking of going back to my own name with the new one.'
'You're working on a book now?'
'I'm always working on a book.'
'To tell the truth, Mr Prentice,' Johnson said, 'I'm something of a wannabe writer myself. I won't inflict anything of my own on you, don't worry about that, but I wonder. Could I take a look at what you're working on?'
'Sure,' Wayne said. 'Come along.'
As they left the living room, it occurred to Wayne that he might actually be a suspect in the case, even if just in the way that everybody is a suspect at first. Or had Johnson recognized some element from that drawing of the suspect in Wayne's face? Susan had finally seen some similarity in the eyes, but not enough, she thought, to lead anyone else to the likeness.
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