Manning pats Hector’s shoulder, a silent thank-you for the critic’s gracious review. He asks Neil, “How’s David doing?”
“He’ll be fine,” says Neil.
“I’ll be fine,” echoes David, slurring.
Neil continues, “He just needed a little nourishment.”
Manning steps behind the sofa and places both hands on Neil’s shoulders. “Congratulations, kiddo.” He kisses the top of Neil’s head. “The party’s a success, and your loft is a hit.”
“Our loft,” Neil corrects him.
“Our home,” says Manning, squeezing Neil’s shoulders.
More alert than before, David twists his neck to gaze up at Manning. “Sure, guys, the party’s a blast, but have you gotten any dirt on Zarnik?”
Manning is about to respond when the music stops. A moment later, a new song begins, much more sedate than the previous one. The disappointed dance crowd begins to disperse, in search of misplaced cocktails. Manning moves to the front of the sofa and crouches before it, facing Hector, David, and Neil. He tells them, “Zarnik seems to have hit it off with Claire, so I left her to do a little digging on my behalf—it’s less conspicuous. Ditto for Lucille Haring and Roxanne—they’re over by the door talking.”
“My dears,” says Claire, approaching from behind Manning with Zarnik, “what an extraordinary event you’ve staged tonight!”
Manning rises to face her. “Quite a compliment, considering the source.”
A waiter appears in their midst and asks, “Anyone for another drink?”
David raises a finger, opening his mouth to ask for something, but Hector cuts him off with a slicing motion of his hand. Manning, Neil, and Claire all dismiss the offer, but Zarnik says, “I don’t suppose another Jack-and-Coke would hurt.” He blots sweat from his brow with a rumpled handkerchief, once white, now gray.
The waiter asks, “Diet Coke, right?”
“Please,” says Zarnik. “You’ll find me at the buffet. I do hope there are more of those clever peanut butter-and-celery hors d’oeuvres.” He thanks Claire for their time on the dance floor, bids farewell to the others, and wanders off.
Mystified, Hector asks the group, “Jack and Coke—what in blazes is that?” His lips buckle as he imagines the unsavory concoction.
“Jack Daniel’s,” Manning tells him, “good old Tennessee sour mash, which I would bet is virtually unknown in Zarnik’s ‘war-torn homeland.’” Then he asks David, “JD-2L, remember? He had two liters of American whiskey on his weekly shopping list.”
Neil snorts. “If he puts away that much of the stuff, why bother saving calories on diet pop?”
The others glance at one another and laugh, shrugging a wordless reply to Neil’s query. The anemic recording that has been playing now ends, and no one bothers to play something else. The party is winding down.
Claire pulls Manning aside to tell him, “You were right about Zarnik, Mark. He’s a fraud. That pinkie-shake of his, supposedly an Eastern European tradition, is nothing of the kind. I thought it seemed familiar, and it finally came back to me. In the theater world, there are many backstage superstitions—for instance, one never wishes a fellow actor good luck. Instead, many alternate rituals have taken hold, including the pinkie-shake. So I can tell you with reasonable certainty that this ‘Zarnik’ character is no astronomer, but an actor, probably a pro. …”
Crashing glass interrupts the conversation, silencing the room. Heads turn, seeking the source of the noise. A cocktail has been dropped, near the door, Manning notices, and he’s relieved that it was only rented barware—they’ll be billed for any breakage, but it’s cheap. Then he realizes that it was Lucille Haring who dropped the glass. Her face is red with either rage or embarrassment—Manning can’t tell. She turns her back to Roxanne, opens the door, marches out, and slams it shut.
Stunned, Roxanne glances about for a moment, crosses to the door with hesitant steps, opens it, steps out, and peers down the hall.
Amid the murmur of other guests, Manning wends his way through the crowd and passes through the open doorway to join Roxanne in the hall. “What happened?”
Roxanne stares down the hallway in the direction of Lucille Haring’s abrupt departure. Then she turns to Manning, blinks. “She’s a lesbian.”
“Yeah?” Manning blinks. “I figured. So?”
“And she, uh …” Roxanne pauses before continuing. “She thought I was, too. She came on to me, and when she realized her mistake, she freaked. I think my haircut threw her.”
Wide-eyed, Manning stares at Roxanne’s newly cropped hair, trying not to snigger. Then he crows with laughter.
Exasperated, she closes the door to the loft, leaving them alone in the hall. “There’s more,” she says. “And it’s not funny.”
He catches his breath, calms himself. Warily he asks, “Yes?”
“Sensing I was … simpatico, she did a bit of soul-baring. She really needed to talk to someone, and I got elected. Sometime after her arrival at the Journal, she ran into Cliff Nolan. He took a liking to her and began to pursue her, but of course she showed no interest in him. Ultimately, there was an after-hours encounter, and he actively tried to seduce her—not quite rape, but he tried. From what she told me, Nolan was sort of a squirrelly little guy, and she had no trouble fending him off. This cold response led Nolan to correctly deduce her homosexuality, and he threatened to spite her by exposing her gayness to the military brass. For weeks, she lived in mortal fear of losing her career. Then Clifford Nolan met his untimely demise. Needless to say, Lucille Haring shed no tears.”
Sunday, June 27
IMMERSED IN THOUGHT, MANNING ambles through his neighborhood. On Sunday morning, just past ten, there is little activity on the streets, save for a few tardy souls who hurry up the stairs of a corner church, its old foundation crumbling from the toll of a hundred winters-turned-summer.
Last night was a late one for Manning and Neil. When their last guests said good-bye sometime after one, they stayed up and cleaned the loft, agreeing that they couldn’t face a mess in the morning. The whole experience left Neil exhausted, but Manning rose early today, refreshed by the few hours’ sleep he had, and he was outdoors for a run not long after sunrise. Preparing for the party had been stressful, and he was glad to have it over, secure in the knowledge that everyone (everyone, that is, with the apparent exception of Lucille Haring) had enjoyed the evening.
That run was several hours ago, when the morning air along the lakeshore was still cool—he actually felt goose bumps on his bare legs while working through his warm-up stretches. But now the heat has set in, and Manning’s lightweight chinos feel tight and clammy around his legs as he walks at a leisurely pace toward Clifford Nolan’s apartment building.
He hopes to find Dora Lee Fields at home—it seems she’s always there to keep an eye on things, but she’s the type who might be at church today. Since his conversation with Roxanne in the hall last night, his mind has been busy weighing possibilities suggested by Lucille Haring’s revelation. He needs to ask Dora Lee a few follow-up questions.
For instance, she told him she had seen a tall man in a dark suit at Cliff Nolan’s door on the night he was killed. That’s a slim lead at best. After all, there must be a million men in Chicago fitting that description. He noticed several at his own party last night—Hector Bosch and Victor Uttley come to mind. But he also noticed that Lucille Haring was wearing a suit last night. She’s tall and mannish. And he now knows that she had a compelling reason to silence Cliff Nolan at any cost. What’s more, because of her computer savvy, she knew exactly where to find him that night—in his apartment, at his desk, filing a story through his modem. So the question is: Might Dora Lee have mistaken Lucille Haring for a man?
He has arrived at the building. Locating the buzzer marked D. L. Fields, he presses the button. A few moments later, the tinny speaker in the wall asks, “Who’s there?” There’s a lot of background noise. The Christian Family Network is cranked high,
and someone’s praising Jesus with a vengeance. Dora Lee is a surprisingly modern woman, Manning concludes—with all the electronic amenities, she needn’t even leave the house for salvation on Sunday.
“Hello, Dora Lee,” he tells her. “It’s Mark Manning again. I wonder if you could spare a few minutes to talk.”
She asks, “Bring along that young-buck helper of yours?”
“Not today, I’m afraid. I suspect he’s nursing a hangover.”
“Shit.” She laughs. Coughs. “Come on up.”
The door lock buzzes anemically. Manning enters the building and climbs the stairs, arriving in a sweat at the top floor. Dora Lee’s door is already open, and the woman peers out at him. She asks, “Hot one, huh?”
He answers with a nod, mopping his brow as he walks down the hall to her.
“Come on in,” she tells him, swinging the door wide. “It’s cooler inside.”
And it is. An ancient window air-conditioner is churning away, and the sun hasn’t hit her side of the building yet. She has already muted the television; a robed choir now mouths silent hallelujahs. As they sit in the two chairs facing the TV, she offers, “Getcha something? Glass of water? Shot of something stronger?”
He shakes his head. “Thanks, Dora Lee, but no.” He slips a steno pad out of his hip pocket and flips through several pages of notes. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to pick up a few loose ends from our interview on Thursday.”
She crosses her arms. “Go ahead,” she tells him. “Shoot.”
He takes the Montblanc from his shirt pocket and uncaps it, poising it over a page. Mustering a quiet laugh, he tells her, “It’s funny you should use that expression, because I wanted to ask you about the gun in this drawer.” He glances down at the table between them.
She looks vacantly toward the ceiling. “Saw it, huh? Thought maybe you did.”
He leans toward her. “Dora Lee, do the police know you keep a gun? Do you have a permit for it?”
She looks at him as if he’s crazy. “Hell, no. Wasn’t brought up to ask nobody permission to keep a gun.” She grunts. “Ain’t the only one, either.”
“What do you mean? Do you have more than one gun here?”
Again she eyes him as if he’s from Mars. “Of course. A woman’s not safe without one—or three, or whatever. I forget.”
With blank astonishment, he asks, “You keep three guns in the apartment?”
She pauses for some mental math, then nods. “Wait,” she says, “there’s four.”
“Have any of them been fired in the last week?”
“Nah. No need.”
He persists, “Would police tests prove it?”
“Mark,” she says, leaning toward him and sliding open the drawer, “honestly can’t remember the last time that thing was used. Be my guest. Take a sniff.”
As on Thursday, he sees the pistol among the Christmas cards, cigarettes, and other drawer-junk. He’s tempted to take her up on her suggestion, but decides it’s best not to touch the gun. He tells her, “I’ll take you at your word, Dora Lee, but I’m not the one who needs to be convinced. Would the police buy your story?”
“The police haven’t heard this story, and I don’t intend to tell ’em. If you tattle, that’s your business, but it would just stir things up for nothin’.”
“Dora Lee”—Manning’s tone is growing exasperated—“you told me on Thursday that you ‘could have killed him’ yourself, and now you tell me that you own enough firepower to arm a small militia. What would you expect a person to think?”
“That was just an expression,” she insists, pulling a fresh pack of Camels from the drawer and lighting one. “People say things when they’re riled. You’re smart—you know that.” She smacks the drawer closed with the back of her hand.
Yes, he does understand that her “slip” may have been nothing more than a poor choice of words, but when those words are considered along with her stash of guns, her threats to Nolan, and her general nuttiness—well, who knows?
Sensing that he’s hit a dead end with the issue of guns, he decides to switch topics. He leans back in his chair and flips his notebook closed, a gesture meant to ease the tension that has mounted between them. He says, “I’m intrigued with your story of the person you saw at Cliff’s door on Monday night. You told me he was tall and wore a dark suit. Think back, Dora Lee. Think hard. Is there anything else you can remember about this person, anything unusual that might help us identify him?”
“Like what?” she asks, exhaling her first drag of smoke. It drifts toward the air conditioner then blasts toward the ceiling on a stream of chilled air. She reminds him, “Lights in the hall were dim till the police changed the bulbs. Wasn’t much you could see.”
“I understand,” says Manning, coaxing her along, “but I’m curious if you noticed anything that was at all distinctive, a feature like, well … red hair.”
She thinks, shakes her head. “Nah,” she tells him, blowing smoke, “don’t recall his hair.” Then something clicks. “Guess you might say his limp was peculiar.”
Manning freezes. He asks, “The man at the door limped?”
“Yeah.” Dora Lee whirls her cigarette—like Bette Davis—thinking. “Him and Clifford were talking at the door for a minute, then Clifford stood back and let the other guy in. He walked through the door with a bad limp. Or maybe he just had shit on his shoes and didn’t want to track it on Clifford’s pretty rugs!” She roars with laughter and smoke. Coughing, she wipes a tear from her eye. “Then the door shut. Never saw him again.”
Manning has opened his notebook, scribbling to keep up with her story. He tells her, “This could be an important new detail.” At the same time, he reminds himself that this could also be an invention of hers, a too-obvious “clue” intended to cast suspicion away from herself. He asks, “Why didn’t you mention this before?”
She shrugs. “Just thought of it.”
Exactly, he tells himself. Even so, it’s an intriguing detail that he cannot blithely dismiss. If she’s not lying about the limp, he needs to get to work and find a suspect matching her description—Victor Uttley, for example, but there is no reason to think that Chicago’s swishy, Rollerblading cultural liaison to the world would have any connection to Cliff Nolan or any interest in Zarnik’s claimed discovery. If, on the other hand, Dora Lee is not lying but merely mistaken about the limp, the “man” at the door could still be Lucille Haring or Zarnik himself. And finally, if Dora Lee is lying about having seen anyone at the door, she herself may be Nolan’s killer.
He caps his pen, checks his watch, rises from the chair. “Thank you, Dora Lee. I’ve got some thinking to do.”
He’s also got some housekeeping to do—cleaning out Cliff Nolan’s desk downtown in the Journal’s newsroom.
Arriving at the Journal Building around noon, Manning enters the editorial offices and walks the halls toward his own cubicle, noting the eerie weekend calm, the scarcity of staff, the anemic ring of a distant phone. Stopping at his desk to check for messages, finding none, he walks another aisle that takes him to Cliff Nolan’s desk.
Predictably, Nolan’s cubicle seems disarrayed. He hasn’t sat here in nearly a week, and there’s the clutter of messages and other memos that continued to accumulate until the news broke that he would not be returning. Gordon Smith must have phoned this morning to alert someone that Manning would be cleaning out the desk—a neat stack of corrugated boxes has been delivered to the cubicle, along with packing tape, labels, and a fat black marker. So Manning sets to work, quickly clearing the desktop, sorting its unremarkable contents into various boxes, labeling them trash, morgue, office property, personal, and such.
Moving onward to the desk drawers, he finds, as expected, that all but the center pencil drawer are locked, so he strolls out to the center of the newsroom, hoping there might be someone at the metro desk who knows where to find a key. Nothing is happening at this hour, and one of the city editors actually dozes in front of his term
inal. Manning snags a copy kid (one he’s never seen before—the new ones get broken in during slow shifts) and explains his predicament. After a bit of confused searching and a few phone calls to God-knows-where, Manning is surprised that the kid manages to produce a master key.
Back at Nolan’s desk, Manning unlocks the drawers, excited by the prospect that they may contain clues to the reporter’s murder. Manning also wonders if maybe, just maybe, Nolan’s missing laptop computer has been stored here in the desk all along. But this anticipation proves for naught, as the drawers contain nothing more than office supplies, morgue folders, files of Nolan’s own past stories, and the inconsequential junk that spawns in the dark recesses of any desk over the years.
With all of this properly sorted into appropriate cartons, Manning is ready to leave, sliding the drawers closed in sequence. The last of these, however, the big lower file drawer, slides with more difficulty than the others. Curious, Manning kneels and peers into it. Empty. But then he realizes that the drawer is deeper than it first appeared—there’s an adjustable metal divider closing off the back section of it, and there must be something heavy back there. Is it the laptop?
He extends the drawer fully, removes the divider, and finds—to his disappointment—just another stack of morgue folders, perhaps a foot thick. Grousing, he stands, closes the drawer with his foot, and carries these files to the carton that will be returned to the morgue. Placing them in the box, he is about to tape it shut when he notices that these last files are different from the others. The manila folders themselves are identical, but their labels are handwritten, not typed.
Retrieving the folders from the box, he sits in Nolan’s chair and begins flipping through the files in his lap. They contain a few photographs, copious handwritten notes (conspicuously, nothing is typed or printed by computer), and copies of old news stories, some from the Journal, but many from other sources. Each file pertains to a different person. “Oh Jesus, Cliff,” Manning mutters aloud, realizing that his colleague has been collecting the sort of unsavory information that typically serves a single purpose—extortion. Sure enough, there’s a slim, recent file on Lucille Haring. There’s another name he knows, too.
Eye Contact Page 12
