Magic Hour (23 page)
Migrant workers' shacks not being known for expansive rooms or cathedral ceilings, the architect-entrepreneur-loser I'd bought my house from hadn't had much space to work with, so he'd made most of the place into a "family area," one main room that served as kitchen, den, dining and living room. Then he hacked off a little at each end, so that when he was taking potential buyers around, he could make one of those
Voilda!
gestures with his hand and say, "To sleep..." then wait for the Yorkers to say, "...perchance to dream," and they could all be good friends and bask in the radiance of each other's culture, plus make a nice, civilized deal. Except I'd rather have gotten strung up by the nuts than say "... perchance to dream," and the architect had gotten real nervous because he knew I was a cop and therefore I might think the "To sleep..." meant he was making a pass, because he wore a ponytail, and this could queer the deal in every sense. So he'd just added, "The bedroom," real fast and left it at that.
The master bedroom, like the rest of the house, had come furnished—since this was to be the model for the hundreds of migrant-worker shacks he had dreamed of renovating. But the bed he'd put in was just large enough for midgets to do it in the missionary position, so I'd gotten rid of it and put in a king-size bed. Once I did that, there was just enough space to get to the closets and the bathroom.
On the opposite side of the house, he'd taken the same amount of square footage and stuck in two guest rooms, connected by a bathroom. I led Bonnie into the first, which wasn't much different from the second, except instead of scallops and conch shells stenciled on the floors and around the top of the walls, it had pineapples. Since I hardly ever went near this part of the house, I'd forgotten about them, and about the hideous lamp with a green shade and a base of some fat sticks tied together with rawhide the architect had told me was a rustic touch I might conceivably wish to change. The poor guy was such a basket case because he couldn't sell his house; I wound up putting in a bid that same day.
I pulled down the shades. "Don't get the wrong idea," I said, my back to Bonnie. "This is to make sure you're not seen."
"I won't get the wrong idea." Her voice had a tremor. That was the only sign she was as terrified as I sensed she was.
"Not that I get a lot of company, but just in case." When I turned back to her, she was sitting, primly, on a small ladder-back chair. I sat on the edge of the bed, but because the room was so small, our knees were about four inches apart. "Now, I want to hear what actually happened, right from the beginning. Every detail, from the minute you first spoke to Sy or laid eyes on him again. Unless you'd been in touch with him all the years since the divorce."
"No."
"Okay, but first, I want to clear up something."
"You mean about—"
"No."
But she couldn't let it be. "Gideon called. He told me you have no recollection that you and I ... that you and I had met."
"Look, I don't have time for that now." I was detached. Professional. "What I want to clear up is your last lie."
"You make it sound like it's the last of a hundred thousand."
"It is, give or take a few."
"If I'm such a liar, why would I tell the truth now, when the police are closing in on me?"
"Because you're desperate."
"Well," she said, in that trembling voice, "I guess I am." She dropped her head and stared down at her hands, folded on her lap. She had beautiful, long-fingered hands, with nice, no-polish oval nails, hands you would see in commercials for hand lotion.
"Okay, why did you make up the story about the eight hundred eighty bucks we found in your boot?"
"That
was
the truth."
"Bonnie, understand one thing. You shit me, you're out of here."
"Please, call him again." I shook my head. "Try to understand," she pleaded. "Vincent Kelleher is a very nervous, not-too-successful businessman who sells pot holders that look like armadillos, and size fifty-four sweatsuits in pink, aqua or lilac with appliques. All of a sudden, this nebbish gets a long-distance phone call from a detective asking him about money he slipped me off the books. An illegal payment. He was always nervous about doing it, and when you called, he must have been convinced Eliot Ness and the tax squad would swoop down and arrest him."
"You're good, Bonnie. Really good."
"No. If I were that good, you would have believed the lies I did tell. I wouldn't be in this mess now. Please, call Vincent Kelleher."
But just then my pager squeaked: "Brady call Carbone ASAP." I told her not to move, and I hurried across the house, into my bedroom, and closed the door.
Carbone asked where I was, and I told him I'd gone home after sixty hours of being on, because I was wiped, and sick of the shit he and Shea had handed me, but did he want me in for another Breathalyzer test, to make sure I wasn't sitting around with a bottle of Canadian Club and a straw? He said, Look, maybe we were too hasty, and Robby, not being a drinking man, might have misread some of the signs and ... And
what
? I demanded. There's no sign of Bonnie Spencer, he said. Is Robby hysterical? I asked. Yes, and so is Shea, and if you think the commissioner isn't shitting a brick, then you're not thinking. Hey, Ray, everybody should calm down. It's six-thirty. The cool of the evening is upon us. Maybe she's down at the beach. Maybe she's having dinner with a friend. Tell everybody to relax. Have a drink—on me. Look, you want me to check around? He said, Maybe that would be a good idea. Okay, I said, I'll surveil her place until you can get someone else over there, then I'll check around, make a few calls. Just do me a favor. Page Robby. Get him the hell away from her house, because if I see him, I swear to God I'll kill him. Carbone said all right. He was about to hang up when I inquired: They finish my pee and blood workup yet? You're okay, Steve. Thanks. Be reasonable, he said. We've got an anxiety-provoking situation here. A lot of pressure. Sometimes people make errors in judgment. I asked him if Shea realized he had made an error in judgment, or would I have to piss into a Dixie cup every day? Carbone, being patient, said, Shea knows the results of the tests, and he's not a stupid man. But let's face it: the two of you don't have a natural affinity. He let you back on the squad because he needed you, not because he liked you or trusted you, which I guess isn't news. Not by a long shot, I said. Carbone said, So do yourself a favor, Detective Brady. Earn a gold star. Bring in Bonnie Spencer.
The engine on Robby's car was running as I drove up to Bonnie's, and when I pulled over beside him, he flung the arrest warrant into my car and peeled out—as fast as an Olds Cutlass can peel—before he had to took me in the eye or hear what I had to say. He knew what it was, though: I was going to get him. And I knew what his response would be: Not if I get you first.
A few minutes later, two Southampton Town P.O. squad cars pulled up. They were supposed to hang around until someone from Suffolk County Homicide came to relieve them, so I handed them the warrant to pass along and told them I was just going to check out the house one more time. I slipped on a pair of rubber gloves carefully, ostentatiously, as if getting ready to perform neurosurgery, and went in. Five minutes later I came out with some of Bonnie's underwear and a T-shirt folded flat in one pocket, along with her toothbrush, and a Ziploc with Purina Dog Chow in the other. I swung two evidence bags with a pair of sneakers and a hairbrush as I walked down the front path, then gave a mock salute to the Southampton cops before I drove off.
Some blithe spirit. My hands were clammy, my stomach churning. Not for any rational reason, like I knew I was destroying my entire professional and personal life, to say nothing of risking two years in the can for hindering prosecution by rendering criminal assistance to a person who has committed a Class A felony—like second-degree murder. I was actually very clear about the consequences of the devastation I was bringing on myself. I remember I contemplated what a felony conviction could do to my pension rights, wondered whether they had AA meetings at the Green Haven Correctional Facility and decided that because I had a couple of good friends in the Suffolk County D.A.'s, maybe they'd only go for a misdemeanor. But the drippy palms, the twisting gut, had nothing to do with these objective considerations.
No, I drove back to my house with an unswallowable lump in my throat because I was afraid Bonnie would be gone. She'd think fast, as she had the week before, at Sy's, when she'd killed him, and do what she thought she had to do: run.
No.
She hadn't killed him. I did believe her. But she'd have visions of the jury nodding, convinced, as the People summed up its circumstantial case against Spencer, and she'd run. Or just be frightened, and want someone to hold her, comfort her, kiss the top of her head, like her friend Gideon, and she'd run. Or knowing Bonnie, be a good, chin-up American, face the music, trust in God and the Constitution, and she'd run, find a phone, call Homicide and ask, Is Detective Kurz in?
Oh, Jesus. What would I do if she wasn't there?
It was Thursday night, but weekenders were already pouring in. Traffic had gotten even heavier than when I'd left for Bonnie's a half hour earlier; it was like one endless, metallic reptile snaking its way east. And every person in those thousands of cars was an important person, with important things to do. They
had
to hear what last-minute truly fun invitations were on their answering machines so they could break the dates they'd already made. They
had
to change into the three-hundred-dollar black gauze shirt. They
had
to refresh their potpourri before their houseguests arrived. There was fresh mozzarella oozing in the shopping bag on the back seat, wetting their baguettes, an intolerable situation that
had
to be stopped.
Not a single car would defer and let me cross
Then I floored it back to my house. Except I had to stop when the guardrail went down at the train tracks. It was the longest fucking train in the history of the
I rushed into the house and tripped over Moose, who was running to greet me. I said, "Get out of my way, you goddamn bag of shit." She wagged her tail. I patted her head. Okay, I thought, Bonnie left the dog. Clever: she knew I'd take care of it. The house was absolutely silent. I trudged toward the pineapple room and called out "Hi" against the emptiness. Still a little hope. "Hello?" Not a sound. "Bonnie!" I yelled.
"Hi," Bonnie called back. Did I jump! "It's you! I heard you say 'Hi,' and I thought it was your voice, but I couldn't be sure. I thought: What if it's one of his friends, or a burglar?"
My whole body was flooded with relief, and it left me so empty, that sudden decrease in tension, that I had to lean against the wall for a minute to get my equilibrium back. Then I went into the pineapple room.
She was curled up on the bed reading
This Date in New York Yankees History
, the only book that had been in there. She put it down on the floor, then sat up on the bed, Indian style. "Who is the all-time leader for career grand slams?" she asked.
"Gehrig," I mumbled.
"It said Henry Gehrig. Is that the same as Lou?"
I nodded and said, "Here." I handed her the sneakers and hairbrush and took the underwear and toothbrush out of my pocket. I was still too emotional. I couldn't make conversation.
"Thanks."
I jiggled the bag with the dog chow. She smiled and waited for me to say something, so I told her I'd give it to Moose, take a quick shower and be back. I was amazed; I sounded so matter-of-fact. Like a normal person. Did she want something? I had a bunch of TV dinners. She said, No, thanks, she wasn't hungry.
I shoved two Hungry Man dinners in the oven, figuring when push came to shove she wouldn't be able to resist an aluminum-foil tray of greasy, breaded chicken, or worst case, I'd eat it. I got into the shower. Water, a lot of soap, the nice pine smell of shampoo. This was better. A cool, clean man instead of a sweaty, feverish, overwrought wreck. I reached out for the towel, a little disappointed Bonnie hadn't sneaked in to hand it to me; in the back of my mind, I'd been imagining getting out of the shower and having her there. I'd say, Get the hell out of here, and she'd say, Let me do your back. But then, resting her body against me, she'd reach around to the front, stroke me, murmur, Oh, Stephen.
I got dressed, took out my notebook and called Vincent Kelleher, the catalog king. "Detective Brady again."
"Yes, sir?"
"Mr. Kelleher, I don't know you, but somehow I get the feeling that you weren't being straight with me, and that makes me very upset." Silence. "Now listen, I'm not interested in your tax situation. You want to pay off the books, on the books, I don't give a damn. But I do give a damn if you lie in response to a simple question."
"Why do you think I lied?" he whispered in Flagstaff,
"Because I'm a cop. I
know
. You want to tell me about your financial arrangements with Bonnie Spencer?" Silence. "If you're straightforward with me, we'll both hang up and that will be the end of it. If you dick me around, I'll pass on my suspicions to a buddy of mine in the IRS in
"I paid her..." His voice faded. This guy had an Irish name; I couldn't believe he could be such a wimp. Fucking assimilation.
"How did you pay her?"
"In cash."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five hundred dollars. She was the one who asked to be paid in cash. I swear to you, I never offered it."