by Joseph Kanon
“Uh-huh. There was that moment.”
“What moment?”
“There’s always a moment between a man and a woman when you know something can happen. It doesn’t have to—it can just pass right on by. But it can never happen without that moment. You know, when you feel it’s possible.”
She laughed. “You’ve got cheek.”
“Didn’t you feel it too?”
“It’s different for a woman.”
“I don’t believe it. Not that part.”
She shrugged and looked toward the window, at the shaft of sunlight pouring between them on the table. “What was all that about your going away?”
“I may. I don’t know. But we can see each other. He’s not back all week.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve just come from the test site. I saw him there.”
“That must have been cozy. Look, if anything’s going to happen, you’ve got to leave him out of it. I mean it.”
“He’s not in it. I’m talking about us. You and me. You can make whatever rules you want.”
“All right,” she said softly, “but not here. No one’s ever come here.”
“Where did you go with the others?”
She looked at him. “Don’t pretend you’re jealous. You’ve no right. I never said there were others. I just said no one’s ever come here. You can see what it’s like.” She tilted her head toward the neighboring apartment.
He followed her gesture, taking in the room for the first time, a blur of terra-cotta pots and Navajo rugs draped over simple government-issue furniture. He reached across the table for her hand. “We can meet somewhere.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll find a place.”
“There’s the ranch. We could go there.”
“She left you a key,” he said, a statement.
Emma nodded. “She thought I might need it.”
“That day,” he said. “Before the drive. You thought about this before the drive.”
“No. A suspicion. I didn’t know.”
He smiled. “But you thought it might. You were ahead of me. Come here.”
She shook her head, but he gripped her hand, pulling it gently, and she followed the pull, getting up and moving to where he sat, her robe falling open as she straddled him. His face was level with her breasts and he began kissing them, barely touching them at first, then, as he felt the nipples harden, moving over them in a steady rhythm, pressing, so that she anticipated each stroke of his mouth. She closed her eyes. His mouth opened to lick the nipple, tasting her, still salty with sweat. He pressed his face into her, and her head, no longer flung back, now dropped down next to his. “No,” she gasped, “you’ll break the chair,” a last vestige of practicality. He carried her again to the couch, his mouth still on her, tasting all of her this time, slowly, making love to every part of her, teasing her sex until she held his head there, shuddering as she came under his tongue, so that when he entered her again she lay open, already his.
Mills was waiting in his room, lying again on the bed.
“You going to make a habit of breaking in?” Connolly said.
“That was hours ago, when I thought you’d need a ride. Then I just got fascinated wondering where you were. After being so anxious and all.”
“Well, I’m here now. Everything set?”
“Holliday will meet us there. Threatening to call the governor did the trick, just like you said. He’s not happy about it, though. Said you put his ass on the line and he doesn’t like it there. Christ, you’re a mess.”
“We drove all night.”
“Right.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Mills grinned. “I haven’t seen a look like that since college. Larry Rosen, the pussy king. Just like Larry. Out all night and then he’d come back too shagged out to go to class. Except he’d want to tell us about it. You have fun?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Hey, I didn’t say a thing. Better grab yourself a shower, though. The memory lingers on. Those cons down there get a whiff and they’ll start tearing the place apart.”
“Mills—”
“All right, all right. I’m just jealous, that’s all. I have to hand it to you—I’ve been here a year and I still can’t get laid.”
“How about just getting the car? I’ll be right with you,” Connolly said, stripping off his clothes.
“Okay. You sure you don’t want to get some sleep instead? This can wait, you know. They’ve got a signed confession and a witness.”
“Who?”
“The bartender in Albuquerque. Turns out he recognized him after all.”
“Was this before or after they took his liquor license away?”
“There were others. The guy was a regular. It’s him, Mike.”
“I just want to get a look at him.”
Mills shrugged. “Suit yourself. If it was me, after a big night, I’d get some sleep.”
“Well, that’s you. I don’t feel sleepy at all.”
But he slept all the way to Albuquerque, his eyes drooping as soon as they left the Hill and Mills’s cheerful voice faded into a background hum. By the time they reached the familiar highway he was out, not even disturbed by the sun on his face. They were in Albuquerque before he surfaced again, slightly groggy, and saw Holliday’s grim face.
The Albuquerque jail had none of the adobe pretense of Santa Fe; it was a streamlined modern government building in the post office pork-barrel style, official and utilitarian. Chief Hendron, on the other hand, was a throwback to the frontier one-room jail with a big key ring. He had the authority of height and carried himself with the swagger of one who was never far from his six-shooter. He was clearly put out about the interview, his natural belligerence hemmed in only by the threat of a higher authority, an even bigger bully.
“Holliday here says you got some special interest in this prisoner, is that right? You mind telling me what that might be?”
“It’s a government matter.”
“Shit, what isn’t?” He looked at Connolly’s ID and snorted. “Army Corps of Engineers is taking an interest in all kinds of things these days, aren’t they? I suppose we got to wait for the war to be over before you tell us what the hell you’re all doing here.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
The chief looked at him. “Don’t go fresh on me,” he snapped. “Don’t you do it. I’m still the law around here, and I won’t have it.” He handed back the ID. “If Holliday vouches for you, I guess that’s that. But I’m not going to have you messing with my prisoner. You want to talk to him, you’ve got to have one of my boys with you. We got a self-confessed murderer back there and I still don’t know what business that is of yours.”
“The other victim was one of our men.”
“One of your men? That’s a good one. Now just what would one of you army engineers be wanting with old Ramon back there?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Helluva thing, that kind of shit going on in the army. If it was my outfit, I’d be ashamed.”
“If it was your outfit, so would I,” Connolly said and then quickly, before Hendron could reply, “Can I see him now? I’ll have Chief Holliday with me—that should satisfy your concerns about being alone. Has he got a lawyer?”
Hendron glared at him, ready to pounce, then backed down.
“He will have. You got one hour with him, that’s it. You just find out what you need to find out and don’t come back. You interfere with this case and the governor himself won’t keep me off your ass.”
“I appreciate your cooperation.”
Hendron stared at him again. “You do that. Holliday, I’m counting on you to make sure nothing goes wrong here. We’re going for a conviction on this one.”
“I understand you have witnesses?” Connolly said.
“Bartender saw them leave together. Some of the other, uh, patrons’ll verify that. Tu
rns out old Ramon worked that parking lot before. No question he did it. We got a signed confession, you know.”
“So I heard.”
“Yeah, well, Arnold here will show you the way. You be nice and easy with him, now. Old Ramon come to a little grief the other night, so he’s probably not feeling his best.”
“What kind of grief?”
He smirked. “The kind they got in jail when you’re not too popular. Seems they don’t go for Ramon’s type back there. I guess he did better with the army engineers.”
They were left to wait in a room down the corridor from Hendron’s office.
“You’re not making any friends here,” Holliday said, handing him a copy of the statement.
“I wish I knew what the big deal was. What does Hendron care, anyway?”
“You ever step on a snake by accident? You didn’t mean to and he doesn’t want to, but he’s just got to bite. It’s the surprise of it.”
“Then what? He crawls back under a rock?”
“If you let him alone.”
Connolly read through the statement. “Kelly? I thought you said he was Mex.”
“His mother. Father probably worked on the railroad. We get a lot of that here. Mostly they don’t hang around long enough to leave a name, though.”
“Maybe it was love,” Connolly said absently, still reading through the transcript. “Christ, fifty dollars? He stuck a knife in somebody for fifty dollars?”
“That’s a lot of money to some folks. Anyway, it was just a fight. You know how accidents happen in a fight.”
Connolly looked up at him. “Manslaughter?” he said, a larger question.
“Murder second degree would be more my guess.”
“And you don’t hang for second degree.”
“Not in this state.”
“He have a fight with Bruner too?”
“No. He was defending his manhood,” he said flatly, not willing to meet Connolly’s eyes. But Connolly refused to look away. “That’s what it says.”
“You believe this?”
“No reason not to believe it. He said it, didn’t he? Machismo’s a big thing with these people.” He paused. “It’s something any jury here would understand.”
Connolly turned back to the paper, not wanting to press him. “How much did he say he got off Bruner?”
“He didn’t.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be fifty dollars. Karl would never carry that much.”
“He says it wasn’t about money.”
“That’s right, I forgot. He was protecting his honor. So he smashes Karl’s skull in. Messes up his face.”
Holliday sighed. “Just didn’t know his own strength, I guess.”
But when Kelly was led in, he seemed to have no visible strength at all. He shuffled in, careful of the guard, and stood before the table, quiet and sullen, a schoolboy brought up before the principal. He was slight but wiry, his shoulders hunched as if the handcuffs were weighing him down. His face was like a map of his mixed ancestry, the copper skin and Aztec slant of his cheekbones set off by the surprising blue of his eyes, now half lost in the swelling on one side and the deep purple bruises. A thin scraggly mustache was pushed up by the cracked puffiness of his upper lip. There was no disguising the meanness of his face, however. The discolored skin stretched across a hard mask of defiant wariness, the look of someone who’d never known a favor in his life.
“Thank you,” Connolly said to the guard. “He need these?” He pointed to the handcuffs. The guard looked at Holliday, who nodded, and reluctantly unlocked the cuffs. Kelly rubbed his thin wrists, surprised and suspicious at the same time.
“I’ll be right outside,” the guard said. “Ramon here give you any trouble, you just holler.”
“Sit down,” Connolly said, ignoring the guard and offering a cigarette. Kelly winced slightly as his cracked lip curled around it, then let it dangle from the side of his mouth, his eyes closed against the rising smoke.
“I work for the government and I need to ask you a few questions,” Connolly began.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“About what?”
“About no government. What’s this have to do with the government? Nobody told me about that.”
“One of the men you killed worked for the government.”
For the first time Kelly looked alarmed, his bruised face furrowed in concern. “I don’t know nothing about that. I didn’t kill nobody. It was an accident.”
“And with”—he searched the paper—“Jack Duncan, that’s the man in Albuquerque—that was an accident too?”
“No. Jack was different. That was a fight.”
“What was the fight about?”
He shrugged. “You know. A fight.”
“You knew Duncan?”
“I seen him around.”
“Did you have sex with him?”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Hey. I don’t do that. He had sex with me.”
Connolly looked at him, surprised at the distinction. “What did he do?”
“What, are you kidding me? He blew me, what do you think? He liked doing that.”
“Did he pay you?”
“Nah. It was for, you know, the fun of it. I let guys do me once in a while. When I can’t get it any other way. What’s the difference?”
“But you had fifty dollars.”
“He give me that. It was a loan, like.”
“So even though he gave you fifty dollars, you two had a fight.”
He shrugged again, stubbing out the cigarette.
“That where you got those bruises?”
He stared at both men as if it were a trick question.
“The fight was a while ago,” Connolly said. “Those look pretty fresh.”
“I fell.”
“Where? Here?”
“Yeah, here. I fell.” He looked away.
“What about the man in Santa Fe, did you know him?”
“No.”
“Where did you meet?”
“In a bar.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. Some bar near the plaza.”
“What were you doing in Santa Fe?”
He shrugged. “I was just there, that’s all.”
“Then what happened?”
“We went for a walk. Then he—look, I already told all this stuff. Why are you asking me again?” He took another cigarette, more confident now.
“I just want to be sure I got it right. So you went for a walk. Not a ride?”
“No. A walk.”
Connolly felt Holliday stir beside him, shifting in his seat, but he didn’t say anything. “Down to the river,” Connolly prompted.
“Yeah.”
“Then what happened?”
Kelly smirked. “He come on to me.”
“Did that surprise you?”
The question seemed to catch him off-guard.
“You just thought he wanted to talk.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Okay, I thought maybe he wanted to do me. It crossed my mind.”
“Did he talk about himself? His work?”
Kelly looked puzzled. “No.”
“So what did you talk about?”
“Nothing. I don’t remember.”
“He was a pretty big guy,” Connolly said evenly. “Did that worry you?” Again he felt Holliday stir.
“I can take care of myself.”
Connolly looked at the thin, sinewy arms, the bloated face, and wondered how often he had said this before, how often the posturing had protected him. “I can see that.”
“Hey,” Kelly said, offended. “I told you. I fell.”
“So you went for a walk and you ended up hitting him. Why?”
“He got out of hand. I told you.”
“He didn’t want to have sex with you?”
“He wanted me to do him. I don’t do that.”
“You tell him this?”
“Sure, but he
don’t want to listen, you know? And then he’s all over me, so—”
“So you hit him. With what, by the way?”
“With what?” Connolly could see his face working, sorting through answers.
“Yes. Did you just use your fists, or did you have something?”
“A branch,” he said quickly. “It was lying there right on the ground. Hey, what do you want to know all this for?”
“And you threw it away afterward?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t remember too well.”
“But you do remember hitting him.”
“Yeah, I said I did. I didn’t know he was dead, I just thought he was out, you know.”
Holliday got up then and walked over to the window.
“You must have been pretty angry,” Connolly said smoothly.
“I was surprised, you know? I just did the first thing that came into my head. I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“What surprised you? The sex?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t expect it from him? Was that because he was Mexican too?”
He could feel Holliday turn to them from the window, watching Kelly’s confused face. Kelly hesitated for a minute, then said, “No. It was just the surprise, you know.”
“Ramon, have you ever been to San Isidro?”
“What’s that? A church?”
“Yes. Ever hear of it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a church in Santa Fe. You ever go there?”
“I don’t go to church much.” Then, suspicious, “What do you ask that for?”
“The man you killed—the man you hit—used to go there. I just wondered if you’d ever gone there with him.”
“I told you, I only saw him the one time. No, I didn’t go to no church with him. What do you think?”
Holliday sat down again. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle. “You know, Ramon, the police really appreciate cooperation.”
“Yeah,” he said, not looking at Holliday. Connolly came from somewhere else; this was the devil he knew.
“Makes our job a lot easier, so we appreciate that. When you make it easier for us, then we’re more inclined to—well, make it easier for you.”
“Yeah.”
“When we understand something, we got a much better idea what the charge should be. Like here, for instance. Somebody might think first off this is nothing but a murder one, you know, but when they understand it, when they know all the facts, they might think it’s not so bad. We don’t want you to hang for something you didn’t do.”
