Magic Hour (21 page)
"And?"
"And pretend to be looking for a stamp or a paper clip, but actually go through whatever papers were lying on the desk. Oh, I just remembered. Sy had one of those pocket computer calendars. One time, I saw her pressing some buttons on it. My guess was she was reading off all his entries. I know this makes her sound like a sneak. She really wasn't. Sy was more than her lover; he was her employer. She knew as well as anyone how brutal he could be with anyone he wasn't pleased with, and he definitely wasn't pleased with her. So she was protecting her own interests, so to speak."
"Bottom line, Easton. Do you think she knew why he was going to L.A.?"
"Bottom line?" He gave it real thought. I waited. "She
was
getting curiouser and curiouser. Extra visits to his study. Checking out the fax machine early in the morning, before Sy was up, before she went to the set."
"How do you know what went on so early?"
"I liked to get in early. This is ... embarrassing."
"Listen, do you think you're the first guy in human history to get stupid over a girl? I'm your brother. You can tell me. You went in early because you wanted to see her?"
"Yes. But she never really tried to hide her curiosity from me. Either she thought I was so much a part of the household that I was like wallpaper—there, no threat—or she sensed how I felt about her, and felt safe." Easton sighed. "I think that must have been it. But in any case, what you want to know is if I think Lindsay knew Sy was going to take some action. And the answer is yes. I do."
Germy called back a half hour later. He'd spoken to the producer of
Transvaal
. They had hired some South African game warden as a technical adviser, and he'd given Lindsay a couple of hours of lessons with a rifle. The producer had no idea what kind of a shot she was, but he'd added she'd had a quickie affair with the game warden but then switched over to a black actor who was playing an anti-apartheid activist.
Gideon called around noon. He was back in his office. He'd hired Bill Paterno for Bonnie, but wanted one last talk with me. In person. Man to man. He said that without self-consciousness. Could he come back to my office? I glanced over at Robby. He was hunched over his desk, going over all the DNA and lab reports, index finger inching down the pages, lips moving, calling on the God of Science to bless his crusade against Bonnie Spencer. He looked pasty and intense and a little nuts, so I gave Gideon quick directions to the nearest diner, told him to meet me there at one-thirty, that he could have as long as it took me to finish a chicken salad and bacon sandwich and a vanilla malted—which, when I was minding my manners, took approximately four minutes.
The Blue Sky had once been a regular greasy spoon, but the Greek guy who'd bought it had done it over, so now the spoon was hardly greasy at all. The walls were paneled in lake oak, the ceilings dripped with fat-globed chandeliers and hanging plastic plants. The menu, a listing of every food product capable of being microwaved, was almost as thick as the Bible. The owner hovered over us, pad open, ready to transcribe whatever we happened to say.
I looked at Gideon. "The cook usually washes his hands after he takes a dump, so you can have the chicken salad or tuna fish and not die. The hamburgers taste like snow tires. They nuke everything else."
"Don" listen to him," said the owner. "He's a stupid cop. All my food's good. Today the special is nice flounder on a bed of spinach wit' feta cheese."
Gideon said no thank you, he'd already eaten. Just an iced coffee. I ordered, and the owner strolled off, toward the kitchen.
"Go ahead," I said. "Make your pitch."
Gideon adjusted his knife, fork and spoon and took a minute to make sure the edge of his napkin was absolutely parallel with the edge of the table. Once that was accomplished, he immediately opened the napkin and put it on his lap. I noticed that for all his clean-cut, square-jawed handsomeness, the bridge of his nose appeared to have gotten squished in the birth canal or in a fight and never popped back into place. "I was hoping this conversation wouldn't be necessary," he said quietly.
"It's not. You could have saved yourself the trip—and acid indigestion from the iced coffee. All we're doing now is neatening up a few loose ends. Probably by tomorrow we'll be arresting your client."
"Her name is Bonnie."
"I know that." My cheeks began to ache; I could feel the pressure of tears someplace way behind my eyes. I wasn't going to lose it, but if I was, it wouldn't be in front of this guy. "Let's get on with it."
"Why are you out to get her?"
"Mr. Friedman, with all due respect, you're her friend. And this is not your field. You're personalizing a criminal investigation. And you're wasting my time and not doing your client any good. Do everybody a favor, wait till tomorrow. Let Paterno handle it. He's used to dealing with us and the D.A."
The owner came back with the iced coffee and a little bowl of teaspoon-size containers of half-and-half. Gideon waited until he was gone. "You're the one who's been personalizing it," he said.
"What are you getting at?"
"I'm getting at that it is morally and ethically wrong to investigate someone you've—"
Put up the umbrella, I thought, because here it comes: a shower of shit. "I've
what
?"
"Slept with."
Heat rises. Blood rushed up to my forehead, my ears. I was so fucking furious. Disappointed too: I couldn't believe she'd resort to something that cheesy—which shows the state I was in. I'd had no trouble believing that, with evil intent, she could plan and execute a homicide. But tell a tacky lie? Not my Bonnie! "That's total and complete crap," I said.
"No, it's not crap." He was calm, at peace. Whatever shit he was dropping on me, it was shit the bitch Bonnie had made him believe.
"Your friend has a little problem in the truth department, Counselor. I never laid a hand on her. I never made a suggestive remark. Nothing."
"Now, that's crap."
"Look, you don't really want that iced coffee. Go back to East Hampton, practice some real estate law, forget this conversation." He stayed put. "Okay, the head of Homicide's a guy named Shea. Go ahead. Talk to him. Or file a formal complaint with the department."
"What happened between the two of you that makes you want to get her so badly?"
I looked up and saw the guy coming back with my sandwich and the malted. The food looked pale, puffed-up, dead—like something pulled out of the water, something that, before you can stop yourself, makes you gag. "Look," I said to Gideon, "obviously she has you believing something went on. I'm not going to try and talk you out of it." A piece of bacon hung out of the roll, dark, curled, wormy. "But I'm not going to ruin my lunch and sit here listening to you tell me I copped a feel when I was questioning her, or showed her my shield and said, 'Fuck me or go to jail.' Okay? So take a walk, Mr. Friedman."
I could hardly hear him. "I'm not talking about the investigation. I'm talking about what went on five years ago."
"What?"
"Five years ago. You ... I wouldn't call it an affair. But it wasn't just a typical one-night stand."
"Wrong guy," I snapped.
"She called me about it the next day. I remember. She sounded elated. She said, 'Gideon, I met this wonderful man!' "
"She's lying. Or maybe she's just ... Maybe this whole experience has made her a little crazy, if she wasn't that way to begin with."
"Bonnie's as uncrazy as they come."
"So maybe it's an honest mistake, and she just thought she saw me under her covers. Look, I'm sure you know it isn't any secret that a lot of guys have rolled around in that bed."
Gideon had put a lightweight olive-green blazer over his ninja outfit. Silk probably. He rolled down a sleeve, then recuffed it. "Bonnie told me, 'He grew up here in Bridgehampton. On a farm. About two minutes from here.' " I didn't say anything. I shook my head. "I remember this conversation, Mr. Brady. I'd never heard her so high. She said, 'He's a cop, of all things. A detective. Very bright. And a wonderful sense of humor. I
had fun
.' "
"Not with me she didn't." He started working on his other sleeve. "I'm sorry. I know you believe what you're saying, but it wasn't me."
Gideon peeled the top off a little container and dumped cream into his glass. "She said—"
"Please. There's really no point to this."
"Let me finish. She said, 'His name is Stephen Brady.' " I sat across from him in the booth, still shaking my head no. "I remember your name, because we had this long ... well, amusing discussion about whether Brady is a WASP or an Irish name and about the ... sexual proclivities of each group. Bonnie said she'd ask you what you were the next time she saw you." Gideon took a packet of Equal and sprinkled a dusting of the powder into his coffee. "She had no doubt that she'd see you again. That was the funny part: her absolute certainty that the night had been special. She'd been around a long time, knew the ropes. She was never given to self-deception. She knew what happens when you ask someone you meet in a bar—"
"What bar?"
"The Gin Mill. Over on—"
"I know where it is. Go on."
"What else is there to say? Bonnie knew that when you invite a man you meet in a bar to come back to your house, you don't expect him to send flowers the next day."
"She said I sent flowers?"
"No. A metaphor for romance. But she felt something had happened between the two of you. Something out of the ordinary." I rested my forehead in the palm of my hand and rubbed, back and forth. "You can't have forgotten. Or even if she had been just another pickup to you, seeing her, seeing, the house—"
"I'm telling you, I have no memory."
Gideon's young, handsome, squished-nosed face looked more uncomprehending than angry. "Why the vendetta if you have no memory?"
"There's no vendetta. She's guilty."
His spoon clanged against the glass as he stirred, but his voice was very gentle. "Why didn't you ask one of your colleagues to take over the Bonnie aspect of the investigation?"
"There was no reason to have someone else step in. I never met her before."
"But you did. It happened."
It took a very long time, but at last I said: "Look, I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober for almost four years. But there are blanks in my life. Days, maybe weeks I'll never be able to recall. Maybe ... There were a lot of women. For all I know, she might have been one of them. I had this feeling almost from the beginning that she looked familiar. I figured I'd seen her around town."
"You don't deny it, then."
"No. But I don't admit it either. Maybe I spent the night with her. Maybe I told her she was a terrific person. It was one of the things I always said: 'It's not just the sex, babe.
It's you.
You're a terrific person.' But if I did spend some time with her, I'll never know what I did or what I said."
"For the record, you told her you loved her."
"But I never saw her again, did I?" Gideon sat back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. Relaxed, conversational. "She said you were heavier then." I'd dropped twenty pounds after I'd stopped drinking and started running. "And you had a mustache. Thick, droopy." Yes. "That's why it took her a minute to realize it was you at her door. And do you know what went through her mind then? She thought: Who cares why he never called? He's back!"
"Mr. Friedman, don't you get it? Either she did a little research on me in town and made this whote thing up—or it actually happened. But it doesn't matter. They can take me off the case, put someone else in my place, and the outcome will still be the same. Bonnie Spencer will be brought to trial on—yeah, sure—circumstantial evidence. But
strong
circumstantial evidence. Most likely she will be found guilty. And she will go to jail. And whether I slept with her or gave her a line about loving her or never met her before I rang her front doorbell won't matter one goddamn bit."
"Bonnie was right. You are very, very bright."
"Thanks."
"Hear me out. You've constructed an intelligent, imaginative theory about how Sy was killed. All I ask now is that you look back at your data, put that same creativity to work again."
I shook my head.
"Try it. Build another case. A real one this time, not a myth."
"I can't."
"You have to."
I left the diner, my lunch untouched. The afternoon had turned from plain August hot to sweltering. I thought about finding an AA meeting but instead drove north, aimlessly, farther from Headquarters. I pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center. Suburban heaven, with its open-twenty-four-hours Grand Union, its nail salon, its frozen-yogurt store and its card shop featuring Charlie Brown paper tablecloths, plates, cups and guest towels.
I put the top up, locked away my gun and changed into the shorts and sneakers I kept behind the two front seats, on the parcel shelf of the car—my gym locker on wheels. I hooked my pager onto the elastic waistband of the shorts. I had used my running shirt with the Clorox-eaten sleeve to clean the dipstick, so I had to run shirtless.
The humidity was suffocating. I would gladly have taken one of those blue bandannas I'd been laughing at all summer, the kind
For the first couple of miles through central Suffolk—past tract houses sided with cheap, already-pitted aluminum, where nobody, apparently, had enough home-owning pride to stick a mailbox with a painted "The McCarthy's" up on a post, or plant a crab apple or a rosebush or anything beyond the token scraggly juniper the builder had stuck in the front lawn, past about ten acres of open grassland with a For Sale sign—I didn't think about Bonnie at all. I didn't think about anything.
I ran past a small farm, just like any on the South Fork, although here there was no sweet ocean tang in the air to obscure the harsh perfume of fertilizer and pesticides. Pretty, though: a brown field of russet potatoes, almost ready for harvest. It was edged by a border of dark-pink clover and white trumpet vines. The potatoes look good, I was thinking, A lot of Long Island farmers don't like russets because they can get all knobby, but there'd been just enough rain—
Bonnie! Not a fantasy this time. A true recollection.
Labor Day, about four in the afternoon. Inside the bar—yeah, Gideon, the Gin Mill—it was murky, and packed, like the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend. But the season was over, and the too-old-to-be-yuppies were no longer cruising loose, happy, expectant. The same hot-shit Yorkers now jammed against the bar, pushing each other. They were overtanned and overdesperate, with stiff, extended, sun-dried arms, hands grasping for their margaritas ("No salt!"), drinking too hard to hide their despair that another summer had passed without their falling in love, or at least finding someone who wouldn't humiliate them by guffawing—Har! Har! Har!—in a movie on the Upper East Side, or by being fat in TriBeCa, or by wearing brown suede Hush Puppies on Central Park South.
It was the perfect time for a local like me, bored with a June, July and August of receptionists and nurses, who wanted (for one night) a grown-up, dressed-for-success lay. Easy pickings: By that first Monday in September, I knew the thirty-five-year-old lady corporate vice presidents would have stopped playing the Geography Game, with an automatic You're Out for Hamptons hicks. I also knew all those frosted-haired, lip-glossed, scrawny-necked financiers would no longer be muttering "Really?" and then two seconds later going to the ladies' room when they heard I was a cop. These women at the Gin Mill hadn't caught themselves a banker or a doctor or even an accountant without his CPA. So now it would be: "I envy you, living here year round" and "A
homicide
detective! Tell me, how can you stand looking at ... what's the best way to express it? Looking at the dark side of the human condition day after day?"
Except instead of hitting on one of those, I spotted Bonnie. If I had to say why I chose her, it could have been because it was the Summer of the Perm, and she was the only woman without cascades of frizzles. Or because she wasn't wearing an outfit, one of those things with plaids and stripes and flowers, where nothing matches on purpose.
Bonnie leaned against the bar, foot up on the rail, standing tall among the other women. She was working her way through tissues and keys in the side pocket of a short red-and-yellow-plaid skirt, on her way to money to pay for a beer. She wore a red tank top. As I maneuvered toward her, I could see the sheen of her broad, tanned shoulders. Silky skin, I thought, not leathery. I put my hand on her shoulder. It was silky. I said: "I'll buy," and gave the bartender three bucks for her beer. She smiled. "Thanks."
But that was all that would come: an image. I kept on running, sweat dripping down onto the blacktop, for another two miles, all around the farm, then back past the grassland, into that pathetic stretch of aluminum-sided Long Island. I'd been hoping to clear my head. But all I could recollect in that killing heat was Bonnie Spencer in the crisp, conditioned air of the Gin Mill, holding her beer in front of her with two hands, the way a bride would hold her bouquet. Her hair was short then, a little choppy; maybe she'd tried to give herself a sophisticated haircut, but she'd wound up looking like a wood nymph's older sister instead. The recessed lights over the bar made her arms and shoulders gleam.
I walked around the parking lot a few times to cool down, except the air was so thick and humid all I was able to do was stop wheezing. I hung around for another five minutes, hoping for a breeze, but none came, so I got into the car and used the oil-streaked T-shirt as a towel. The pager had rubbed against my skin, and there was a dark-red bruised spot on my right side.
I got into the Jag, sprayed a little Right Guard under my arms and then contorted myself to get back into my shirt, tie and suit fast, before some housewife could peer down and catch me humping the steering wheel as I pulled up my zipper. I kept replaying the scene in my mind.
"I'll buy." Putting down my drink—vodka with a wedge of lime—and handing three folded singles to the bartender.
Bonnie's smile, so radiant that for a second I felt light-headed. "Thanks."
I went into the supermarket and bought a big bottle of club soda. My face must have been close to purple, because the express-line cashier said, "Y'oughta watch it, hon. This heat and all."
"I'll buy," I said to Bonnie.
"Thanks."
I sat in the car again, glugging down the soda, trying to re-create what happened next. Logically I would have said "Steve Brady" and she would have said "Bonnie Spencer," and a couple of minutes later maybe we would have chuckled about two Bridgehampton rubes having to meet in East Hampton, in a phony "genuine" gin joint with a bullshit ceiling fen and bartenders who deliberately didn't shave because scruffy was a Great Look, surrounded by city slickers in two-hundred-dollar sandals.
Except I couldn't remember anything more. Maybe nothing more had happened. Maybe, for some reason, she had just recalled what turned out to be an aborted pickup attempt. Being a screenwriter, she'd whipped up a littie love story around it and, casting herself in the leading role, said to her lawyer: Here, maybe you can use this. Except Gideon had remembered her euphoria, remembered hearing my name. Whatever else he was, he was a smart man, and a savvy, probably even an ethical, lawyer. I didn't think he would lie to a cop during a homicide investigation, not even to help a friend.
Well, whatever had happened with Bonnie, it was lost to me. Too bad. I would have liked to know what it had been like, screwing her. I drove back toward the farm, put the top down again, took a leak by the side of the road and got back into the car to drive to Headquarters. I put my hand on the stick.
God almighty, it began to come back.
We took a sip of our drinks and then exchanged names and discovered we both lived in Bridgehampton, although on different sides of the tracks. "You weren't born here," I said.
"Which means you must have been."
"Right. Where are you from?"
She must have said the West, or
Just as I was thinking to myself, This is one incredible woman, somebody pushed to get closer to the bar, knocking me into Bonnie. Oh my God!
Electricity. Magnetism. Whatever the hell it was, I couldn't believe it was happening. We stood there, body against body, unable to pull apart, like victims of an uncontrollable mob, crushed together. Except we could have parted, without too much trouble. We were just being jostled by a crowd of ordinary, pushy New Yorkers. But I was so aroused, and the pressure felt so good.
And clean-cut Bonnie—courteous ("Nice of you to pay for my beer"), amiable, humorous, lover of mountains and fisher for golden trout—was as hot and irrational as I was. Her hand slid between my legs. Jesus! In the dim, smoky light of the bar, in the press of bodies, in the dehumidified, perfume- and aftershave- and mouthwash-scented air, in the noise of raised voices and clanking glasses, she was tuning out everything—and going for it. Not just to provoke me, but for her own pleasure, which, of course, became my pleasure. She let out a small, low sound. She was going to be a noisy one, a wild one.
"Let's get out of here," we both said at the exact same time. Normally, when that happens, you laugh, but we had crossed some boundary and gone where there was no kidding around.
What happened next? We took my car to her house. I must have been in a white heat, because I couldn't remember any conversation or anything about her street, or the downstairs of her house—only following her ass up to the bedroom and pulling off her clothes the minute we passed through the doorway.
We were just starting, but both of us were so inflamed we tore at each other, groaning, the way people do in that moment right before the end. We parted for a second; Bonnie's hands were trembling, and she couldn't manage my buttons, so I undressed myself. She watched me, spellbound, and I became so excited by her intensity I couldn't finish the slow strip I'd begun. I threw off my khakis, my undershorts, my shoes.
Bonnie moved close to me and touched me for a second, to verify that what I had wasn't going to go away. Then she moved in even closer. She raised her hips, straddled me. No teasing, no foreplay; we were way past that. I pushed in right away and we stood, her back against the bedpost, screwing our brains out.
She came first. I lowered her onto the bed. I wanted to finish on top. Her arms and legs wrapped around me, and we became the two halves of a greater person.
I'd never had sex like that before. It wasn't that I was voluntarily letting go; it was that I had no control. Just when I thought that I'd ridden out the last wave, that I could catch my breath, slow things down, speed them up, subdue her, another, bigger wave knocked me senseless.
At last, her whimpers and moans turned to shrieks of pleasure. I joined her. I heard myself screaming so loud it scared me.
We lay there on top of the white popcorn bedspread, not knowing what to say to one another. It was that moment where my foot or my hand would inevitably begin to drift along the floor, searching for a sock or my shorts. Except I couldn't move. And I didn't want to go. Finally, Bonnie said: "Think of a way we can get over the awkward silence."
"Tell me more about fly-fishing."
"You need an eight-foot glass rod," she murmured. "Don't let them talk you into bamboo."
I held her lightly, running my hand up and down her back. Her skin was like velvet. A breeze that had a hint of autumn in it fluttered the white lace curtains.
"This is wonderful," I said.
"I know."
"I meant the breeze."
Suddenly she noticed the window was open. She sat up. "Oh, God."
"What?"
"We were kind of loud. Just watch. One of my neighbors will think I was being murdered and call the police—after she serves the carpaccio." I started to laugh. I hadn't told her what I did for a living. "You won't think it's so funny when you hear the sirens."
"Want to bet?" I pulled her back down, so she was lying facing me. "I'm a cop. A detective on the Homicide Squad."
"No. That would be too interesting. You're not."
"Of course I am." She shook her head. "Okay, what am I?"
"I don't know. You sort of have a macho style, but you probably do something adorable. Sell children's shoes. Teeny size-two Mary Janes, with a free balloon." She bit her lip. "God, I'm going to die if that's what you really do."
I forced myself out of bed and retrieved my pants from where I'd tossed them, between a little stool and one of those old-fashioned makeup tables with a skirt. Bonnie looked bewildered, then hurt; she combed her short hair with her fingers, as if preparing for a dignified goodbye. But I tossed her my shield. She caught it, too, and it had been a lousy throw. Her left hand shot out.
"Good reflexes," I said.
"I need them. You're not exactly Sandy Koufax."
We stared at each other across the room, she amazed that I was a cop, me, that she knew baseball. For some crazy reason, after all that had transpired, this was too intimate. Real fast, we began to talk over each other, she saying something pointless about loving whodunits, me asking if she had anything to drink. She offered iced tea or Diet Coke, but then I said "
drink
drink." All she had was light beer and a bottle of one-step-up-from-rotgut red wine she'd bought to use for sangria, for a picnic, but it had rained. I settled for the wine. She threw on a bathrobe and went downstairs.
The minute she was gone, I got claustrophobic; I wanted out. It wasn't the room. I knew that much. It was sizable, appealing, all white except for the old wood beams and the painted blue-green chair rail. It definitely wasn't overstuffed; there was a four-poster bed with plain wood nightstands on either side, the little stool and vanity table with its ladylike yellow-and-white-striped skirt, and a clumsy, cozy-looking club chair, covered in a shiny cotton—big yellow flowers with blue-green leaves—a stand-up lamp beside it.