I'll Cry When I Kill You

by Peter Israel

  Whether she’d have actually done it or not, I’ve no idea, but it worked. The ring parted, the Counselor’s Wife tossed her hair angrily for emphasis, and with Muffin leading the way and me bringing up the rear, we headed across the driveway and onto the grounds.

  You’d never have known there’d been a storm during the night. It was afternoon by then, the sun bright and hot, and a fresh wind scudded puff clouds across the blue Catskills sky. Still there was a feeling of mourning across the grounds, like a pall, like a vigil. The people were sparser than they’d been on Saturday, but plenty had stayed around. Some of the Hnngas and the Hnnns were still there—at least I saw the one Bud Fincher and I had recruited—but their horns and the leather helmets had been packed away and they looked just like regular people: pale, solemn-faced, silent. I spotted Malakowski and his Scribblers hunkered together in a quiet circle on the grass, as other groups were, lounging or sitting or kneeling, but quiet, like waiting for something to happen. No music. Some of the stands and booths from the day before were still up, here and there, but their display shelves were mostly empty, as though their owners had already packed up.

  Still, they hung around. Why, I don’t know. Bud Fincher (I knew) had gone over our key list with Squilletti’s people, and the police (I learned later) had checked out those they could find—but by that time nobody outside the hotel was being held against his will. And the ambulance carrying Bashard’s body had long since left, and it wasn’t coming back. Nor was anybody going to come out of the hotel and make an announcement. The event was over. The BashCon was over.

  Muffin pulled us down through pine trees to the lake. A picture-postcard affair. A boathouse, canoes and rowboats neatly racked at the open end. On the lake itself, a pair of sailboats making good time in the wind. The Counselor’s Wife said to me: “You really got yourself into it this time, didn’t you, Phil?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Poor Phil. Well, I guess you couldn’t be expected to resist her forever, could you?”

  The words were familiar enough. I mean, it was part of her routine that I was fair game and prey to anything that moved, provided it had two legs and a skirt on. True, I’d had my share of encounters with the fairer sex, and even if the Counselor’s Wife didn’t know the details, she enjoyed prying. And failing at that, making the details up herself.

  Only this time, the bantering tone wasn’t there.

  “Men are such dodos,” she went on, shaking her head. “Really. She could’ve been fourteen or forty. Or eighty. No difference. It’s what defeats you every time. It’s all in the boobs. And if the truth be known, not even the boobs matter that much.”

  Or words to that effect.

  “Maybe so,” I answered. “Only this time you’ve got it wrong. I can’t help it if she got into bed with me. I was asleep. I didn’t lay a hand on her.”

  She laughed a little, and shook her head slowly in that men-are-such-dodos way, and it irritated the hell out of me.

  “At least you’re consistent,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what Charles said you said: that you didn’t lay a hand on her.”

  “And what else did he say?”

  “He said that Raul had been murdered and that Grace was in bed with you and that the shit was about to hit the fan.”

  “And what else?”

  “He said you said you’d had trouble sleeping but that you said you’d slept through the killing.”

  We’d gotten down to the land side of a narrow wooden dock, or pier, that extended out into the lake. Muffin, excited by the water, wanted to head out to the end of the dock, but we stopped at the land end. We sat down on the dock, and the dog mucked around in the weeds by the water’s edge, sniffing for scents.

  “And what else?” I said.

  “That’s it. I’ve hardly seen him since this morning.”

  Me, too, I started to say. Instead I said: “What do you think happened?”

  “Me? I think she killed him. I bet you think so, too.”

  “It so happens I don’t,” I said. “But why would she do that? What was the motive?”

  “Rage,” she answered. “I’d call it sexual rage, but most people would find that too esoteric. I don’t know if they were screwing or not, but something was going on between them, some kind of sexual activity, and I think it drove her crazy.”

  “Crazy enough to kill him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then come get into bed with me?”

  “That’s right. And why not? For some of us, rage is the most powerful aphrodisiac there is.”

  “I don’t get that,” I said. I could, in fact, think of a better motive without hardly trying. I wondered if the Counselor’s Wife knew about the changes in Bashard’s will, decided she didn’t.

  “Maybe you don’t,” she said, “but if you heard what I hear every day, you would. You’d be surprised how many couples there are who hate each other’s guts, who fight like animals, and who have model sex lives at the same time. Rage, anger, whatever you want to call it, but it’s tempting to say that’s the ingredient that keeps them together.”

  At some point, I stood up and started to pace the dock. The fact is, the Counselor’s Wife often had that effect on me. But the cocker took this as a signal that it was water time, meaning she started tugging at the leash, trying to head up the dock. So I sat down again.

  “Yes, I think she killed him,” the Counselor’s Wife went on. “Patricide. Or grand-patricide. But I also think Charles and you will get her off. You’ll have the police running around in circles, looking for somebody else, and by the time you’re finished, they won’t be able to prove anything about anyone.”

  A real conversation-stopper, in sum. Maybe it was then that I got up and paced around. I remember seeing her legs dangling off the edge of the wooden dock. She had on a white dress with a full skirt that ended below the knees, and white sandals that strapped over her bare feet. She swung her legs back and forth, her feet crossing each other a few inches from the water.

  She asked me how long I thought we’d be stuck there. She had appointments in the city the next morning. I said I didn’t know. I was between Squilletti conversations. As to what the Counselor had in mind, I had no idea.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said to the Counselor’s Wife. “Not that it makes any difference, but what makes you so sure I had sex with her? Aside from the fact that men are such dodos?”

  She laughed, her legs swinging, then leaned back, propping herself on her elbows.

  “She’s gorgeous for one thing. The boobs. For another, you couldn’t sleep. There are statistics that show that insomnia and sexual deprivation have a very high correlation.”

  I asked myself, in passing, if there weren’t statistics to show that anything and sex (or sexual deprivation) had a high correlation.

  “Besides,” she was saying, staring at me coolly now, “I saw you last night. Remember?” She paused, waiting for me to say something. Then, when I didn’t: “C’mon, Phil. At the banquet, remember? You were ready enough. Maybe we’d all had too much to drink, but if circumstances had been different, couldn’t you and I have ended up in bed?”

  Maybe I blushed, maybe I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s okay, Phil,” she said cheerfully. “You don’t have to be such a prude. There’s nothing so terrible in thinking about it. Come on”—starting to get up—“we probably both could use a beer. I’ll let you buy me one.” The cocker led us back the way we’d come. We went up the slope under the pines, the dog first, the Counselor’s Wife second, I in the rear, wondering in spite of myself what the Counselor and his wife did in their spare time (or didn’t do) and realizing—also in spite of myself—that it wasn’t really the first time I’d wondered it. I ended up mostly disconcerted. Which was par for the course whenever I spent time alone with the Counselor’s Wife.

  Probably there had to be a correlation th
ere, too.

  I didn’t get to buy her the beer.

  When we got back to the hotel, the Counselor was waiting for me. Squilletti’s first interview with Grace Bashard, the short one, had already taken place. The second and longer one, in which I participated, didn’t happen till that evening.

  The Counselor was back in charge but kept me dangling for a while. All he told me was that at the police’s request he, myself, and Grace Bashard would be spending the night. Meanwhile, his wife had to get back to the city. I was either to rent her a car or lend her mine.

  The exchange I’d been waiting for didn’t come till later in the afternoon, but here’s how it went:

  The Counselor: “Do you know who did it, Phil?”

  Revere: “No, I don’t.”

  The Counselor: “Do you suspect anyone?”

  Revere: “Everyone. And no one.”

  The Counselor: “Do you think Grace could have done it?”

  Revere: “Could have, certainly.”

  The Counselor: “Could have, yes. But I’m inclined to think she didn’t. I also think Sergeant Squilletti disagrees. And I think he’s going to disagree more before he disagrees less.”

  Revere: “When he finds out about the changes in Bashard’s will?”

  The Counselor: “Exactly. He also suspects that you’re involved, that at the very least you’re covering up for her.”

  Revere: “That’s not true.”

  The Counselor: “If it’s not true, then you were goddamned stupid. And there’s only one way you’re going to convince Squilletti of it.”

  Revere: “How’s that?”

  The Counselor: “By finding out who killed Bashard for him.”

  Try renting a car in the Catskills, on a Sunday afternoon, in high tourist season. In the end, however much against my will, I saw the Counselor’s Wife off behind the wheel of my Fiero, with Muffin beside her in the passenger seat.

  I tried telling her about some of the vehicle’s quirks, but she wouldn’t hear me.

  “For God’s sake, Phil, I’ve driven a car before!” she shouted through the driver’s window. That was precisely my worry. Then, with a screeching of rubber and Muffin hanging out the window on the passenger side, nose into the wind, she was off.

  I went back to the hotel to await developments.

  There were two, both of a revelatory kind. At least to me. One came out that Sunday. The other didn’t until the next day, after the autopsy results were in.

  Cranial X-rays taken in the course of the examination of Raul Bashard’s body disclosed that the victim had been suffering from a brain tumor. The tumor was the kind for which there’s no treatment, surgical or otherwise, because its cancerous tissue was inseparable from the normal tissue of the brain.

  And oh yes, the Sunday revelation: According to Grace Bashard, oh yes, she and I had had sexual relations the night—or really morning—before.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The Counselor, I’ve said, was in control. Nothing demonstrated this as much as the bargain he struck with Squilletti and the district attorney that Sunday night.

  “If you’re not ready to charge my client with a crime,” he told them, “then you gentlemen have a choice to make. You can hold her under suspicion, or even as a material witness, but not for very long, and doing so will only increase the pressure on you to bring an indictment. For that matter, you can attempt to try her in the media, but with the same effect: pressure for an indictment. Either way, you will have me as a determined adversary, for I am convinced of her innocence, and I will vigorously oppose every move you make.

  “Alternatively, if you will agree to certain conditions, you will have my full cooperation. Mr. Revere here, and Mr. Fincher, his associate, who know far more about the circumstances leading up to the Bashard murder than anyone else, will assist you in every way possible in your investigation. And if, at any time, you produce evidence warranting that Ms. Bashard be charged, I will deliver her to you immediately. You have my personal guarantee on it.”

  In other words, the Counselor was setting himself up as a sort of intermediate judge and jury. I doubt he’d have gotten away with it in the city, but here he was playing on their insecurity: small-town officials dealing with a big-time crime, a big-time attorney and the bright lights of the media. He was also betting that they had no hard evidence linking Grace to the murder and that their forensic studies would turn up none.

  (He won that bet. A dozen people or more had left their fingerprints in Bashard’s suite, myself included. The vacuum cleaners sucked up similarly inconclusive evidence. The blood traces were Bashard’s only.)

  “What are these conditions of yours?” the district attorney asked when the Counselor had finished.

  The Counselor waved the question aside.

  “Let’s call Ms. Bashard in first. Ask all the questions you want. Then we’ll discuss it further.”

  We were meeting in a small private conference room off the hotel lobby. The Counselor, Squilletti, the district attorney and myself. The district attorney’s name was Harmon Waller. He was a small, spare, neat man with rimless glasses and a bony skull, close-cropped graying hair that had receded from the temples, and a high-pitched voice that sometimes squeaked. I learned later from Squilletti that the Wallers had made their pile in Catskill real estate, that Harmon Waller had once had higher political ambitions, but that he’d never gotten past the primaries.

  The Counselor went to the door and ushered in Grace Bashard. How much he had prepped her I can only guess at, and it had less to do with what she said than how she said it. If I didn’t know better, though, I’d have sworn he’d gone out and bought the outfit she was wearing.

  It was a two-piece affair, soft white, of a kind of T-shirt material, with long sleeves pushed up her forearms and a loose-fitting white skirt. It was clean and fresh-looking, as if it had just been laundered, and it made her look even younger than she was. She wore a pale pink scarf in her hair, and no makeup that I could see. Her complexion was pale, her eyes tired and a little puffy, as though she might have been crying. Her manner was composed, subdued.

  She only looked at me once the whole time.

  Squilletti led her back through the events as she’d experienced them, starting with the night before. She’d gone to bed while other people were still in the living room of the suite, her father included. She’d fallen asleep almost immediately, but she’d woken up in the middle of the night.

  Did she know what time it was when she woke up?

  No, she didn’t.

  Had something specific woken her up? A sound? A movement?

  Yes, it was the storm. There’d been terrific thunder and lightning, she’d thought. She’d tried to go back to sleep but the storm frightened her. She’d always been afraid of thunder and lightning.

  And then what happened?

  She’d gotten up and gone into the living room.

  Was there any sign of disturbance in the living room?

  She didn’t remember exactly. She didn’t think so.

  Were the lights on in the living room?

  She didn’t think so. She didn’t remember.

  Had she turned them on?

  She might have. She didn’t remember.

  Where was her father?

  She didn’t know. She assumed he was asleep in his room.

  Then what happened?

  Then she’d gone out into the hallway and into Phil Revere’s room.

  Was the door from the suite to the hallway open?

  She didn’t think so.

  So she’d opened it, and had she closed it behind her?

  She didn’t remember.

  Why had she gone into Revere’s room?

  Because the door was open.

  Was that the only reason? Because the door was open?

  No. Because she was lonely. And a little scared.

  So she went into Revere’s room. Was Revere awake?

  No, he was asleep in the bed. She
’d gotten into bed with him and cuddled. A little later he’d woken up and then he’d made love to her.

  Had this happened against her will?

  No, not really.

  Was it the first time they’d had sex together?

  Yes, it was.

  Progressively, during the questioning, her head dropped and her voice lowered. From time to time, she looked at the Counselor, as though asking whether she had to answer. The Counselor would nod reassuringly.

  “Are you in love with Revere?” Squilletti asked.

  “Yes,” she answered softly, head down. “At least I was. At least I thought I was.”

  “Was this the first time you had had sex with anybody?” Squilletti asked.

  At this point the Counselor intervened. He didn’t think the question appropriate or in any way relevant to the investigation. He advised Grace not to answer.

  Squilletti acquiesced.

  And after they’d had sex, what had happened?

  They’d fallen asleep.

  Did she know that Revere had fallen asleep, too?

  She wasn’t sure. She assumed so.

  And then what happened?

  The next thing she knew, she’d woken up in her own bed, in the suite. The doctor was there, and Mr. Camelot. She hadn’t even known her father was dead until Mr. Camelot told her.

  They had other questions for her. The district attorney asked about her father, about his enemies, about who might have wanted to kill him. The crime had been an unusually violent one; who would have hated him that much? She answered that there were a lot of people who had sounded jealous of him, mostly because of all the money he’d made, but no, she didn’t know of any one person specifically. And who would get all the money? She didn’t know. But she’d get it, wouldn’t she? A lot of it? She supposed she would. And who else? She didn’t know. And she shed no tears, she didn’t get hysterical, she spoke in low, measured tones.

  It was, all in all, a terrific performance, the more so because it seemed unplanned. I mean, you couldn’t find the seams unless you knew exactly where to look. The only trouble was that part of it, at least, was a crock.

  I could see, though, why the Counselor let it happen, whatever he really believed. It was practically impossible, listening to her, to imagine that she’d gotten into bed with a man she thought she was in love with, had made love with him for the first time, and either before or after had beaten her father to a pulp with a fire poker.