An hour later he looked up from the remains of chilis rellenos and beef burritos and chicken enchiladas, poured us each another margarita from a frosty pitcher, and said, “Arriba! Arriba!”
“Olé,” I said, grinning stupidly.
“So you speak Spanish too. I didn’t know that. You feeling any better about things?”
“No, but you’ve taken my mind off it all and I appreciate that. But I’m still worried sick about Jack. And … you know, scared.”
He nodded.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said slowly, not knowing if I was trespassing on his privacy, “about your book—your version, not Harry’s. Someone gets murdered in your book … it’s a little spooky, isn’t it?”
“Life imitating art,” he said. “But I haven’t written the book yet.”
“But it’s as if you almost expected something like this to happen—that’s what gives me the shivers. That and the way Tony Chalmers told me he always sort of thought the top might come off the Ruffians.”
“Tony said that? Hmmm. Well, he should know—he knows more about us than we do, I guess.”
“But did you expect some act of violence? Once all the Ruffians were together again?”
He shrugged. “Well, we didn’t spend all our time sitting around singing ‘Ten Thousand Men of Harvard,’ you know. Every so often we’d work off some steam … but remember, I’m a writer. I make things up. And in my story the perfect girl was going to be the killer.”
“And you said she’d have a reason. And I’ve been thinking about that, too …”
“Fiction,” he said. “But I’ll tell you something if you’ll just keep it to yourself. That interviewer asking me that crazy question, then listening to you recount what you’ve heard from both Peter and Jack—it all convinces me that Venables was killed by something from the past, something stemming from a long time ago. It goes back to first causes. This murder didn’t just happen, it’s the culmination of something that’s been building all along.”
“Now you’re being a writer again.”
“You think so? I think we’re all the sum of our pasts—life is a kind of process of addition and subtraction, and at any particular time you total something. That night Peter totaled something and the killer totaled something and it added up to a murder. Hmmm. That sounds a bit corny, but you get the idea. And we all came together and the result is somebody murders Peter. I don’t believe he died because of something that happened last week or the night he died.” He looked mournfully at his empty plate and the nearly empty pitcher. He dabbed at his mouth, then spotted a bit of sauce on his jacket lapel and dabbed at that too. “Jesus, I need a bib. Thank God my personal hygiene is so impeccable.”
We were eating in the Village, so we walked south toward SoHo and the loft. Past the Leverett Gallery, where Hacker insisted on looking at the display of my work in the window. I stood back at the curb watching the strollers on the hot night, listening to the endless babble of chatter. People were crowded at the big corner fruitstand. The sidewalks were crowded with moist, lightly clad women and men who were looking on interestedly.
“Have you got a girlfriend?” I asked as we walked on. Well, why not ask? Just making conversation about something but murder.
He did one of those little double-takes, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone else was standing there. “You talking to me?”
“Idiot!”
“No, no girlfriend. I’ve consecrated my life to my work. How about you?”
“No, I haven’t got a girlfriend either.”
“Lucky thing. You never know these days.”
We stopped at the downstairs doorway to the loft building. He was smiling at me as if he found my every observation hugely amusing. But then, Hacker probably smiled at everyone the same way. Including the woman who interviewed him.
“So,” I said, “you’re saying that whether or not it’s Jack, it’s a Ruffian who killed Peter.” For some reason that was an unnerving possibility that hadn’t occurred to me before.
“Is that what I said?”
He leaned forward, touched my right cheek with the fingertips of his left hand, and brushed his lips across my left cheek. It felt like a shadow slipping across my face.
“Sleep tight, Belinda. And be careful.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Work on my novel. Good night for it.”
He waited in the street until I came to the window and waved and then he strolled off down Prince Street, parting the crowds as he went.
Chapter Twenty-eight
IT WAS ANOTHER HELLISH NIGHT. I kept hearing street noises, the kind you only seem to hear on stifling summer nights when your fellowman has decided he’s staying up all night no matter what. I lay in the damp sheets, my legs all tangled up and my hair sweat-plastered against the back of my neck, fading in and out of sleep. I thought for a while that I could still smell the yellow roses, in the air, in the sheets and the pillowcases, as if I hadn’t changed them.
I woke again, kicked my way free of the sheets, and sat up wiping my face, still groggy, shaking my head at the thoughts invading my sleep. Carlyle Leverett had been talking to me; I’d been standing alone before the gallery windows looking at my paintings and he’d peeked out from behind one of them, Adam’s apple bobbing. He’d started telling me again what villains the Ruffians had been in the old days and how glad he was that somebody had started killing them—the more that got killed, the better: somebody ought to get a medal. Villains, villains, one and all … He’d been laughing in my sleep.
Then I was back in Central Park, floating on the lake, but I was alone and I didn’t seem to have a boat, and it was dark as night. I could hear the carousel music in the background, but when I looked at the bank there were the wooden horses bobbing up and down without benefit of the carousel itself I floated closer, hearing laughter, and there on the horses were Sally and someone I thought was Harry, laughing and leaning across to kiss, and I felt this immense sense of relief. Then I realized something was wrong and floated closer. It wasn’t Harry after all. It was Peter Venables, blood spattered down the front of his white dress shirt, and while he laughed with Sally he looked up, caught my eye, and winked. …
I looked at the clock beside the bed. Nearly one. The night was too hot, too humid to be believed. Someone shouted in the street. The glow of the fruitstand filled the windows with an eerie light. A siren worried about something far away. I padded across the floor, stood at the open window, proved unable to convince myself there was a breeze. I went back and adjusted the fan and peeled the top sheet off the bed. Then I lay down gingerly, reducing movement to a minimum, put my arms straight at my sides, and waited for sleep to claim me again.
The clock said it was almost three.
I squirmed around, reached for a glass of once-iced water, now tepid, and gasped. I knocked the glass off onto the floor.
There had been a noise, something in the loft had moved. Something somewhere.
Blinking, rubbing my eyes, panicking, aware of my nakedness, I searched the shadows of the room. “Who is it? Who’s there?”
Someone moved at the far end of the loft, in the darkness, in the shadows near the wheel-of-fortune.
A cry caught like a bone in my throat.
A man stepped into the gray light from the window, he was coming toward me …
Frantically I fumbled with the bedside lamp. My mind was guttering like a candle in a strong wind, about to go out. It was him, he’d come for me …
“Belinda,” he said.
I flicked the light on and saw him.
“Belinda, for Chrissakes, relax. It’s me. Just me.”
“Jack,” I said.
I sank back on the bed clutching a pillow across my chest, sighing and laughing, gasping for breath, half-hysterical, but not afraid. He was right. It was just Jack.
He sat on the stool at the worktable. I retrieved the discarded top sheet and wrapped myself, leaned back against the
headboard. I watched warily as he toyed with the junk on the table. Erratic, misbehaving, angry, frustrated—he was all those things but it wasn’t the same as being crazy. Or being a killer. He yawned.
“Damn air conditioner went out on me tonight,” he said. “Good thing I insisted on our exchanging keys—you’ll always be welcome to visit my little hellhole. Two windows six inches from a sooty airshaft. To know it is to love it. I miss it already. Anyway, the air conditioner went blooey and I got the hell out. Went to a movie. Revival of Vertigo. God, how I love that movie … Believe me, I needed a movie. It’s been a pretty weird couple of days.” He sat staring into space for a minute and I kept my mouth shut. “Then I started walking. Went past Harry’s place, the lights were on, I damn near went up and rang the bell … but then I got to thinking about this cop, oldish guy, well he seems oldish, Antonelli—well, he said he’d talked to Harry and Sal and you—this Antonelli’s been talking to me the better part of these two days and he told me a lot of stuff Harry and Sal had said to him, and while I may have a lock on being an asshole, I’m not an idiot. So I figured maybe Harry and Sal wouldn’t be all that happy to see me.” He rubbed a knuckle along his jaw. He hadn’t shaved and his shirt was none too fresh. “I mean, they seem to have gotten this Antonelli character on my case about the late El Creepo. Which is not to say that I thought he was worth killing, mind you.” He shrugged. “Well, let’s say it’s close, it’s a judgment call. Anyway, I took a pass on the Granger residence. I thought about Mike, but somehow, I don’t know, but I’ve got this funny feeling that maybe I’m on his shit list, too … is that crazy, Belinda? Or would you say I’ve put my finger on something rather cogent?”
He slid off the stool and meandered out to the kitchen and I heard him pouring from a bottle of wine. He asked if I wanted any and I said no. He knew me. He brought me a glass of ice water. “Funny, you don’t have much to say once you stop screaming.”
“I’ve been listening. You tell quite a story.”
“I’m almost done with my picaresque tale. I thought about my old chum and fellow scrivener, Hacker Welles. But the problem is, I’m officially bitter about his making a hit show out of my—our—lives. Seeing the fat bastard would just depress me—”
“He’s not fat. He’s large. Ample.”
“Ample? Oh, shit, does this mean you’re getting it on with Hacker?” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “What kind of a wife are you, anyway?”
“Departing. And no, I’m not.”
“Well, at this point it doesn’t make much difference. He’s probably got me ticketed for the big house too. So I just kept walking and sweating and finally I realized my feets was taking me home. Sort of like Lassie.” He grinned sheepishly. “So, tell me, what’s going on?” His voice suddenly cracked and he whispered: “It’s killing me, Belinda. What’s going on? Why have they turned on Me? Harry? Sal? Do they really honest-to-God think I killed Peter?”
“I think maybe they do,” I said.
“Jesus, you’re awfully calm. Or do you think so too?”
“I didn’t say that, Jack.”
“Yeah. And you didn’t say you didn’t, either.”
“There’s no point in getting angry with me—”
“Don’t tell me that. I feel angry. And I feel like I’m about to get fucked over but good. Life may be punishing me for my past sins, but this is ridiculous. Do you think I killed the bastard?”
“I don’t know.”
“Terrific!” He drained his glass and went back to the kitchen and filled it again.
“Jack, listen to me. When two men have as much trouble as you and Peter were having and then one of them gets killed—well, the question does arise. You’re the natural suspect. What did you tell Antonelli?”
He came back and ignored me. “I must admit I didn’t expect the warmest reception in the world, but this—well, I’m amazed. Marital discord has not previously added up to a willing acceptance of a murder charge.” His hand was shaking.
“I’m scared of you, Jack.”
He frowned at me. “Oh, by the way … I really am sorry for slugging you. But what’s a quick right between a homicidal maniac and his wife? You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off too. Come on, Belinda, get serious—we’re talking murder here, not my being a dickhead. There’s a difference.”
“God, I hope so. I hope you can prove it.”
“Proving it to Antonelli is one thing. But why should I have to prove my innocence to the goddamned Ruffians? And to you? That’s what baffles me.”
Slowly, like a rather worn-out doll, he came over and slumped down on the end of the bed, hands on his knees, head down. It was Harry’s study all over again. And I wanted to help him, comfort him, make it all better. His shoulders were shaking. I remembered the football hero. The novelist in the flush of success too soon. The guy coming apart and losing his wife. Just Jack.
He lay back across the foot of the bed and put his palms over his eyes. His jaw was clenched. He was struggling with all the demons and he was for the moment holding his own.
“I don’t think I did it, Belinda.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“I got loaded. Really loaded. Somehow I got up around Gracie Mansion … maybe Mayor Koch can give me an alibi. I woke up on a bench with the sun coming up over the East River right in my eyes.” He rubbed his eyes and took his hands away. They were red and empty. “It’s a miracle I didn’t get killed. Anyway, I don’t know any more about what happened that night.” He coughed, exhausted. “I don’t think I killed him, Belinda. That’s all I can say.”
I reached down and touched his hand, felt his fingers tighten around mine.
“The shotgun, then,” I said. “If you didn’t go home, the gun must be clean, or dusty—dusty, that’d be perfect. Unfired—there must be tests. It’s the gun, Jacko, that’s what made it all seem so plausible … the gun will prove you didn’t do it.”
“No, I don’t think it will, honey.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“It’s gone. The gun’s gone.”
I just sat there looking at him, and finally he turned over on his side and went to sleep. I felt like all the horrors of the night were closing in on us.
Chapter Twenty-nine
JACK LEFT EARLY, AFTER A piece of toast and a cup of coffee. He went quietly. He said he had no idea when the shotgun disappeared from his apartment: it had been there the day Harry had stopped by. He never paid any attention to it and wasn’t at all sure if he’d have noticed it absence. He shrugged, said he knew it looked very bad—but what else could he say? Antonelli was drawing his own conclusions and Jack just didn’t have much more to tell him. Que será, será. I told him I didn’t know he spoke Spanish. He laughed weakly and left.
I took a sketchpad and made a list. I had to try to get things straight in my mind or I’d go under for sure.
Sally. I wanted to know how she was. And I had to try to figure out if she was in shock because (a) she’d been horrified at finding the body or (b) that it was the body of her lover. I couldn’t begin to imagine how I might dig that out.
The Past. If Hacker was right about the killing of Venables stemming from the events of our joint past—and therefore that the murderer was a Ruffian—then how best to excavate the past? How secretive would the Ruffians be about reasons only they might know for a murder so many years later? Bloody damn secretive, if I knew my Ruffians. If only I could remember more!
Jack & Venables. What did their words mean? What about that “thief” conversation? What about Venables saying it was his “turn”? This probably related to The Past.
Betrayal. Were the Ruffians betraying Jack or was that no more than an illusion in my overly protective mind? Was Jack as dangerous as they thought? Or was he the pussycat he’d seemed last night? Or could he swing between those two poles? I had felt myself being lulled by his condition during the night but I’d also been down that particular garden path with Jack be
fore: the next time I saw him he could give me that white-hot stare as if he wanted to kill me.
I scribbled some marginalia and drew some arrows and made some connections and wondered if this was how Hacker worked on his plot.
The mind works in curious ways. One moment I was working on my own list, the next I was thinking about Hacker’s novel … and the next Id had a stroke of genius.
Jack’s novel! That stack of pages that Harry had casually touched and Jack had rushed to protect. He was writing again. And Jack had always written about his own life, had worked and reworked his own experience, both in the first successful novel and in the later unpublished work. The past. Jack’s version of the past. And something he didn’t want Harry to see … So far as my inspiration could carry me, it seemed like a wonderful source of information. Well, if not wonderful, it was a source, and I couldn’t seem to think of any others. All I had to do was get a glimpse of it.
“He was really down,” I said. “You can imagine how he felt. He’d spent two days with Antonelli’s hinting he was a murderer and he figured Harry, Mike, and Sally had thrown him to the wolves. And his air conditioner broke—I mean, he was in the pits. The least you could do is try to reaffirm his faith in his fellow Ruffians. Call him, take him to lunch—”
“I thought you said I was on his shit list too. He won’t go.”
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