Random Hearts

by Warren Adler

Davis wrinkled his forehead. He turned his head toward the woman.

  McCarthy resisted telling them that any loose end could be exploited by insurance investigators, the airlines, law enforcement people, anyone looking for a cause other than an accident. People were known to go to great lengths to knock off a faithless spouse. In his gut, watching these two living victims, he was certain of their innocence, although he was trained to distrust such hunches. He had been wrong before.

  "I don't..." Mrs. Simpson began, then sighed.

  "Lily Corsini Davis," McCarthy repeated, watching the woman struggling to respond. Had there been a tremor of recognition? The woman lifted her head; her eyes drifted to Davis, then to McCarthy as she struggled to comprehend.

  "You knew Lily?" Davis asked, clearing his throat.

  "Lily?"

  "My wife."

  Mrs. Simpson frowned with uncertainty, her eyes squinting in confusion.

  "Mrs. Davis was also killed in the crash," McCarthy explained gently. They're in the dark, he decided, the old pain rising sharply.

  "I'm sorry," the woman said in a barely audible whisper. Sorry for Mrs. Davis or sorry for not knowing, McCarthy wondered. Or just sorry. Sorry for living. If the names were not familiar, then perhaps the faces would be. No, he decided firmly, I will not put them through that. Tell it straight, he directed himself. Like a professional.

  "They were traveling on a ticket"—McCarthy cleared his throat—"that purported them to be man and wife."

  "Man and wife," Davis repeated, suddenly alert as if struck by a sharp blow. The woman shook her head.

  "They were traveling under fictitious names," McCarthy continued, "Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Marlboro." He waited for a response.

  "Something is wrong," Davis said, rising to his feet. "Maybe..." He drew in his breath in a long pause.

  "It wasn't my wife," McCarthy completed the sentence, adding for himself: "Would you like to see the body again?"

  Instantly deflated, Davis shook his head and sat down again.

  "No mistaking her?" McCarthy asked gently. "There was a great deal of trauma."

  The reminder turned Davis dead white. McCarthy wondered if he would faint. Slowly, what little color could be mustered returned to his face.

  "It was she," he whispered.

  McCarthy turned to the woman. "No doubts, Mrs. Simpson?"

  The woman shook her head and tried to speak, then gave up.

  "It can't be," Davis said, with little resolve left.

  "I have the ticket," McCarthy said. "It could only be them." He watched their reactions. It was a cruel business. "The reason you were not notified earlier," McCarthy said crisply, "was that we didn't know." He directed his next remarks to the man. "Mrs. Davis's body has been here for four days, but she simply could not be identified. It was only when we found her handbag..." Swallowing hard, he felt himself faltering. "Mr. Simpson's body was one of the last to be recovered. Only the names of Mr. and Mrs. Marlboro were left on the passenger list."

  "Are you saying..." Davis began. He tried to rise from his chair, then collapsed back into it.

  "I'm sorry," McCarthy said.

  The woman was shaking her head, as if she were denying the truth to herself alone. He felt compelled to put it to them again.

  "You had no knowledge of this, either of you?" He was certain of that, but he pressed on. "No hint, no clue, no knowledge of why..."

  "There must be some mistake," Davis said with little conviction left. He looked at the woman, whose glance had drifted toward him. "Could have been a company thing," he said, grasping at obviously flimsy possibilities. "A way to save expenses. Something like that. Besides"—the man waved his hand in the air—"it's only a ticket. Just a ticket." McCarthy let the man talk. "You just don't know Lily. It's not like her..." He wound down.

  "No," the woman said, her hands held tightly in her lap, the knuckles white.

  McCarthy allowed them a long silence, letting reality sink in. "There's more," he finally said, sighing. He was about to explode the last shred of hope. He reached into his pocket and brought out the man's key case and the woman's key ring. Both sets of eyes flickered with recognition. And fear. "Actually, there is nothing other than the ticket to connect them to each other. Just these." With a deliberate sense of spectacle, he removed one key from the man's set and one from the woman's. Then he held them together, placing them both between thumb and index finger. "A perfect fit." There was no reaction from either of them, as if the new blow were incapable of stunning them. "More than likely the keys to some place in which ... I doubt very much that they are the keys to your respective homes."

  The man and the woman looked at each other and turned away. I know exactly how you feel, McCarthy thought, feeling a stab in his bowels.

  "Look," he said gently, "everything here is circumstantial. I really don't want to pry into your personal lives. Frankly, I'm just trying to head off any problems for both of you." He looked at the woman. "Your husband's law partner was opening up a can of worms that would be better off left in the can. If he wants to be helpful, let him concentrate on the insurance claims." He checked himself. He had suddenly grown angry. "I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I believe any decisions to carry this further should be left entirely in your hands." I'm on your side, guys, he wanted to say. An ally.

  "Sergeant..." Mrs. Simpson began. She was obviously calling on all her reserves.

  "McCarthy."

  "Must I deal with this now?"

  "No. There's really nothing to be dealt with. I just felt that anything further must be left to you." Was it really magnanimity on his part? he wondered. Or a desire for others to suffer what he had suffered—to know the horror of betrayal? He stood up. "Have you understood what I have been saying?" he said gratuitously, officially.

  The woman nodded.

  "I suppose," the man sighed.

  "There was just no way to ignore it," McCarthy said quietly, deliberately trying to create an emotional distance.

  He replaced one of the keys on the woman's key ring and handed it to the man. Then he replaced the other key in the dead man's leather key case and gave it to the woman.

  "That's all I wanted to say," he said.

  "That's all?" Davis asked with forced sarcasm.

  The woman said nothing.

  14

  The bright afternoon sun bled through the closed blinds. Fully clothed, Edward lay on his bed, their bed. His eyes were open. He was afraid to close them, afraid of the nightmares he would encounter in his dreams. He had tried to drink, upending the Scotch bottle and swallowing half of the burning liquid in the bottle as quickly as he could. Not being used to it, he had vomited it over the side of the bed.

  A police cruiser had returned him to his apartment, along with Lily's possessions in their plastic bags. Almost immediately on entering the apartment, the telephone had rung, and he had picked it up by rote. It was Lily's sister.

  "Edward."

  He cleared his throat, the sound of which must have passed for acknowledgment. Until then the dread of informing her family had not surfaced in his mind.

  "No word?"

  No need to soften the blow. Hadn't he seen her remains? "Lily's dead," he said abruptly. He was surprised that the words did not come out with a sob. Blinking, tears fell onto his cheeks, and he wondered who they were for, Lily or himself. His sister-in-law had screamed in response, a primitive female shriek of mourning, he supposed. Looking blankly at the telephone receiver, he waited until the odd sound abated, while tangled thoughts rolled around in his mind. Was the Lily he had seen really Lily? Was the Lily they had talked about really Lily? Could he have been mistaken? Could that policeman be mistaken? He felt compelled to explain.

  "She went down in the plane crash last week. I didn't know." He was deliberately evasive. Had he resolved not to tell them the truth, not to tell anyone? The truth? Was there a real truth? Then, suddenly, the screaming ceased, and his sister-in-law's voice was clear and stern.

  "
How come you didn't know?" she snapped. Her tone was sharp, accusatory. "You said she was going to L.A."

  "She must have changed her mind at the last minute."

  "How could you not know that? You're her husband."

  "I was." He felt foolish, defensive.

  "How could a husband not know where his wife was going? How is that possible? What kind of a man are you?"

  That fact had been challenged as well. Indeed, he thought, what kind of a man am I? Obviously a stupid one. And worse.

  "I didn't know," he said, feeling the full impact of his impotence.

  "How am I going to tell Mama?"

  "I don't know."

  "Lily was her favorite." He heard the familiar hint of sibling rivalry. "You'd better bring her home. She wasn't married Catholic, but she'd better be buried Catholic." A threat was clearly implied, summoning an image of Vinnie, their brother.

  "Of course," he said, relieved in a way by the sense of direction being offered. Up to then a paralysis of action had set in. "I'll make arrangements."

  "How am I going to tell Mama?"

  "I suppose I should." He felt the sheer terror of it.

  "No." There was a long pause. "I wish she had never met you. How could you not know where your wife was going?"

  He felt a tiny urge toward maliciousness. I'll tell them what she did, he thought. Then he rejected it. Out of shame? he wondered. He could not deny his humiliation. What did it matter? To Lily's family he had always been the enemy. "I'll make the arrangements," he repeated. "What is the name of that church?" Saint something, he thought.

  She told him, and he scrawled it on a notepad.

  "How am I going to tell Mama?"

  "Let Vinnie."

  "Vinnie! Vinnie will bust your balls."

  He heard the click and shrugged. They've already been, he thought.

  Through some miracle of concentration, he managed with the aid of telephone information to find a funeral parlor near the family home in Baltimore. The man on the phone instructed him on costs and details. Then Edward gave him his sister-in-law's number. He was sure the family had cemetery plots. They had lived in the area for two generations. The man from the funeral parlor asked for a deposit, and he promised to send it immediately. He wanted the whole matter to be disposed of as quickly as possible. He went to his desk, took out their joint checkbook, wrote a check, addressed the envelope, and pasted the stamp on it. All so banal, so ordinary, he thought.

  When the telephone rang again, he let it ring until he could not bear the sound. It was the Washington Post. They wanted a picture of Lily.

  "I don't have one," he lied. He couldn't bear the idea of it in the paper, visualizing it next to—what was his name?—Simpson?

  "Surely you have a picture."

  "Bug off," he said, slamming down the phone.

  He had never experienced this kind of emotion. When each of his parents had died, he had known terrible grief. The loss seemed overwhelming at the time, unbearable. For a while in the Medical Examiner's office, before the sergeant had brought them into that little room and told them about Lily and that man, he had felt a familiar sense of grief, a recognizable and understandable emotion. Now it had become confused with anger, which created other feelings, feelings with no frame of reference.

  Yet what the sergeant implied was incredible. A fantasy. An absurd concoction. Perhaps his own hysterical mind had conceived it. He had absolutely no perception of Lily as other than what she was, the loyal, devoted, loving wife. But this new perception, despite a conscious effort to deny it, forced its way into his consciousness. Still, logic challenged memory. Not Lily. How could it be? When the sharp knife of reason had done its work, a single lie blocked his path, one among what was surely many. It loomed, a giant presence, too overwhelming to escape: Lily had embellished the L.A. trip with such a wealth of detail—the design festival, the time the plane would leave, the time of return. He had barely listened. Now it gurgled up at him with the stench of stale lies like a backed-up drain. He had trusted her. He had believed in her. To doubt her then would have been inconceivable.

  "You dirty lousy bitch," he muttered aloud, his body stiffening. Then the image of her mutilated face intruded. "God punished you," he cried. "How could you?"

  Where was his compassion? he wondered. Forgiveness? So far he had found only anger, bitterness. Humiliation gnawed at him. What had happened to love? When he looked further inward, he found only a heart that raged with hate.

  He wondered if there were those among her colleagues who knew: Mr. Parks, Milly Halpern, others? Surely someone had to know. It was one thing for them, the spouses, not to know, but could they have fooled the entire world? He remembered the identical keys. Suddenly he began to cry, losing all control.

  "It can't be. It simply cannot be," he moaned.

  Stripping away his soiled clothing, he got into the shower and stood under the spray until the hot water had cooled. Still wet and dripping, he stretched out on the couch, soaking the pillows, feeling the chill; he was utterly bereft of self-worth, of dignity. Along with Lily, his own persona had surely died. Finally, he took a Valium and drifted into semiconsciousness. Sometime in the middle of the night he awoke. His skin felt icy. His teeth chattered, but it was not from the physical cold. He had no doubt about its source. He was alone, brutally, cruelly alone. To survive, to be saved, he needed to touch someone, someone who would understand the heart of his anguish. A woman's face, ashen but whole, surfaced in his memory. She would understand.

  He had forgotten the man's first name, but a search through the various area directories had triggered his memory. Orson Oscar Simpson. He had no idea what the woman's first name was, nor could he recall her features distinctly, only her pale face. For a brief moment their eyes had met. Had they both seen the similarity in their mutual pain? They had turned away simultaneously. With a shaking finger, he dialed the numbers on his telephone.

  "Yes?"

  A woman's voice made an urgent effort to respond. He heard her breathing, hesitant, quivering.

  "Mrs. Simpson?" he asked tentatively.

  "Yes."

  "Forgive me. I'm terribly sorry. I'm Edward Davis."

  He felt her tension in the long pause. Had she remembered?

  "I wasn't sleeping," she said hoarsely.

  "I..." he began, suddenly forgetting what he might have said. No sense larding it with politeness. "Had you any idea, Mrs. Simpson?"

  "Idea?"

  "About them."

  "Them?"

  He felt a flash of anger. "This is Davis. The woman's husband."

  "I know."

  "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "Of course."

  "I must ask it. Please don't be offended." He swallowed. The bitter taste of phlegm rose in his throat. "Did you really not know?"

  There was another long pause, then a sigh. Her breathing seemed troubled.

  "How could I know?" she asked, struggling to control her indignation.

  "I didn't know either. It came as a complete shock. I'm stunned."

  "Only that?"

  "Do you believe it?"

  "I don't know what to believe. About anything."

  He wanted to hear more, to say more, to break the barrier of suspicion. We have common enemies, he wanted to say. Instead he asked: "Have you ... made arrangements?"

  "Please," she began, "is this necessary?"

  "I'm sorry. Please don't misunderstand. There is simply no one else to discuss this with."

  "Why must it be discussed?"

  "I don't know."

  He started to drop the receiver into its cradle but then put it to his ear again.

  "Mrs. Simpson?"

  She did not respond, but she had not broken the connection.

  "Maybe some day we can talk about this," he said into the silence. "I don't mean now. Now is not the time." He felt the words racing on under their own power. "It's bothering the hell out of me. The person ... the woman they referred t
o, the woman I identified." The memory of her broken face intruded, and he suppressed a sob. "The woman they talked about wasn't her at all." The words choked him finally. "I can see that this is not the time. Look, I live in Georgetown. Edward Davis. If you feel like calling ... Please forgive me."

  He hung up. Was it an irrational act? He had, of course, lost his moorings. Looking toward the window, he searched for dawn breaking. No sign. He got up and looked out, shivering. His teeth continued to chatter. Daybreak would soon arrive gray and gloomy. There seemed to be a hint of more snow in the black sky.

  When the telephone rang again, the sound seemed different, ethereal. Lily, he thought, his logic totally disoriented. She's calling to apologize. He picked up the phone.

  "All right," Mrs. Simpson said, as if the previous conversation had not ended, "I'm willing to discuss it."

  "I'm really grateful."

  "I can't imagine why."

  "Who else is there?"

  "There's something in that," she said gloomily.

  "I'm not sure it will do either of us any good."

  "We won't know until we do it." Was it sarcasm or aggression in her tone? He wasn't certain.

  "Not on the phone. I can't bear the phone," she said.

  "I'll meet you anywhere you say."

  "What time is it?"

  He looked at the digital clock.

  "Five-thirty. You mean now?"

  "Well, neither of us is sleeping." Now it seemed to be she who was pressing. "And my maid's here for Ben."

  "Ben?"

  "The boy."

  It sounded odd, and he wondered if the "boy" was her child.

  "There's an all-night coffee shop on Lee Highway." There was no mistaking her resolve now. She was leading him. "Say..." She hesitated. "Where did you say you lived?"

  "Georgetown."

  "Forty minutes, then."

  He made her repeat the location of the coffee shop, then hung up. Compulsion, he decided, was writing its own scenario. It frightened him.

  She was wearing jeans and a beige turtleneck sweater, which emphasized the fullness of her breasts. He felt slightly ashamed that such a detail should arrest him at that moment. In his mind she had seemed neutered, like him. Her skin was as white as alabaster, as smooth as polished marble. The air of vulnerability which he had observed about her at the Medical Examiner's office was gone. Instead, a tightness in her pursed lips hinted of resolve. It made him curious. Where had she found the strength?