Big Goodbye, The (11 page)

“I’m doing the best I can,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Why are you frowning at me?”

She handed me a small slip of paper. “Lauren Lewis called,” she said, her frown deepening.

A small flock of butterflies fluttered around my stomach, and I was unable to suppress a certain twitching of my lips.

I had always thought that if I could have her just one more time, I could get her out of my system.
If I could have her and be the one to leave . . .
I couldn’t have her now, but if she wanted me and I could reject her, then maybe I could be free of her.

“I thought you were going to stay away from her?”

“I am,” I said.

“Then why is she calling you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. What’d she say?”

I looked at the small slip of paper, resisting the urge to rub my finger over her name.

“I’m not sure I can remember,” she said with a wry smile. “In fact, I may have forgotten to write her number down.”

She snatched the paper from my grasp and looked at it.

“I sure did,” she said. “How could I be so stupid? Well, I
am
just a part-time secretary. It’s not like anyone around here trusts me enough to do something important.”

At first I thought it was just because she wanted to spend more time with Ray, but I had increasingly become convinced that July really wanted to be a detective.

She then wadded up the paper into a little ball and tossed it into the small trash can behind her.

“Rations,” I said. “The war. Ring any bells? I don’t think you’re supposed to be wasting paper.”

“You’re just sore you don’t have the number.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said, heading toward my office. “It’s not like I could still remember it or find it in the directory.”

In my office, I snatched up the receiver, punched in the number, and sat down.

After two impossibly long rings, a man’s voice answered.

I hesitated a minute, then said in my most professional tone, “Lauren Lewis, please.”

“Who?”

“Lauren Lewis.”

“Wrong number.”

I repeated the number I had dialed.

“Right number,” he said. “Wrong person.”

“How long have you had this number?”

“About six months. Any other personal information I can give you, pal?”

“Sorry,” I said and hung up.

Everything changes,
I thought.
Everything has changed.

I walked around my desk and collapsed into my chair.

When Ray walked in a few minutes later, he sat down in one of the client chairs across from me without saying a word.

We sat that way for a long time, and there was far more solace in it than had we been talking.

Our building was as quiet as a library, which is what Ray said my office resembled more than anything else. Glancing around the room at all the used books, I thought he just might be right. Even July, who usually had the small radio on her desk playing as she worked, was silent.

Out on Harrison, the morning traffic moved slowly and quietly. The little shops lining it were doing a steady business, but at a leisurely pace, as if the only people shopping, the retired and the rich, had nothing to do in the world but browse and buy.

“Still no word about the big guy Clipper shot at Rainer’s,” Ray said. “Cops don’t know anything about it.”

“He’s covering it up,” I said. “Means he’s got a lot to hide.”

He nodded.

“Election’s soon,” he said. “Whatever’s going on is tied to that.”

I nodded.

“It’s not over,” he said.

“I know.”

“We’ve had this conversation, but I didn’t like your answer,” he said. “Would you let me handle it for you?”

“I can’t,” I said.

He nodded.

“But thanks,” I said.

He stood. “If there’s anything I can do to help,” he said, “let me know. I’m headed to court.”

Without waiting for my response, he turned and walked out, pausing to speak to July in the reception area.

A call came in, and July answered it. I could tell by her voice it was Lauren. “For you,” she yelled.

Chapter 23

I picked up the receiver, wishing my door was closed.

“Did you get my message?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I thought you said all you had to say last night.”

“Oh.”

We were both silent an awkward moment and I started to say something, but didn’t want to make this any easier on her. It was as if we hadn’t seen each other since our affair ended.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted last night,” she said. “I was upset and undone by everything. And it’s always confusing for me to be around you.”

“You know, I don’t think July wrote down a number for you,” I said.

“She doesn’t like me.”

“Is it the same?”

“No, actually,” she said. “I gave her the new number, but . . .”

“What is it?” I asked.

After she gave it to me, she said, “I was wondering . . .”

“Yeah?”

“If we might have lunch,” she said slowly, “perhaps tomorrow.”

I hesitated before answering. “Actually, I’m in the middle of a big case right now. Could we make it for later in the week?”

“Oh, ah, sure,” she said as if she weren’t.

“Thursday?”

“Okay.”

“Carson’s? Mattie’s? Where?” I asked.

“How about the Cove?” she asked.

That would put us having lunch just a few feet away from my room.
Is that what she intended?

“Do you get tired of eating there?” she added.

“No,” I said. “The Cove is fine.”

“Thanks for being willing to meet me,” she said.

“Oh, I eat lunch everyday,” I said. “It’s no bother.”

I sat there, the sound of my pounding heart in my head, moist palm gripping the receiver.

Finally, I slammed it down, then picked it up again and punched in the number she had just given me.

“Lauren,” I said when she answered. “Things have changed.”

She was quiet for a long moment before softly saying, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow will be fine.”

“Thank you, Jimmy.”

Hearing her say my name brought back the stirring inside I’d felt before. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but maybe it was. Was it just in my mind or was something happening? Perhaps we would go to my room tomorrow after lunch and find out.

Long after she had hung up, I sat there holding the phone to my ear, straining to remember how my name had sounded in her mouth. Knowing all the while that she was going to be the end of me, but unable to care.

“What’d that phone ever do to you?” July asked.

I turned to look at her, slowly coming out of my trance. Realizing I still clutched the receiver in my hand, I gently replaced it in the cradle.

“Huh?”

“Someone to see you,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“A guy,” she said. “Kinda handsome.”

“Send him in.”

She did.

Cliff Walton, Harry Lewis’s head of security, walked in and sat down across from me.

Without preamble, he withdrew an envelope from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me. I took it. It felt heavy, like corruption. I handed it back to him.

“Mr. Lewis is very pleased with your work on the safe return of his wife,” he said. “He wishes to thank you.”

“Tell him he’s welcome,” I said.

“He wishes to pay you.”

“Just give me a little information and we’ll call it squared.”

He put the envelope back in his pocket, probably planning to keep it for himself. “Information concerning what exactly?”

“The whole thing,” I said. “Mrs. Lewis, the election, everything.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“I wish to know what the hell is going on,” I said.

“I don’t follow.”

“Start with Mrs. Lewis,” I said. “What’s she mixed up in?”

“You know more about it than I do,” he said.

“If you weren’t gonna tell me anything you should have just said so.”

“I don’t know anything to tell.”

“Okay,” I said. “Play it that way, but there’s a string of dead bodies lined up after the lady, and I ain’t takin’ the fall for them.”

“Are you sure they’re lined up after the lady?” he said. “I understood from the police that they were left behind everywhere you’d been.”

Chapter 24

I was sitting at a table near the front trying not to look up too anxiously every time the door opened. Hoping to arrive after her, I had come a full ten minutes late, something that took restraint, but I had still managed to arrive well ahead of her.

I could feel myself beginning to break apart inside. I did okay when I was with her for the most part, but when we weren’t together I felt weak with wanting her, my mind unable to fight off the taunts and questions, the accusations, the depression.

I glanced around the room, attempting to settle myself, but everywhere I looked I was reminded of her, of our many times together here. We would often meet here for lunch, say our public goodbyes, then walk separately to my room.

Who was she doing that with now? And where? How many other men had there been since me? How many of them thought of her as
theirs
? How many of them had a regular meeting place and cooks and waiters and maids who unwittingly became co-conspirators in their duplicity?

Business men, tourists, and men on leave kept the door opening, my head bobbing. They came in small groups, usually no more than four, but never alone.

I thought about how many meals I ate alone—not because I had to, but because if I couldn’t be with her it really didn’t matter.

I could feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders tensing as anger rose from the pit of me up through them, and then . . .

The scent of Paris and the gentle touch of an elegant hand on my arm.

I turned to see her standing there behind me in a short, straight black dress and mules, the burns on her bare arms and legs more visible than I had ever seen them in public.

I stood.

Unable to avert my eyes from her body, unsuccessful at suppressing my attraction in spite of my best efforts—after all she had left me, lied to me repeatedly, put me and my friends in danger—desire gripped me like fear. I was drunk with it. It mixed with my rage and resentment and I felt clumsy and sluggish as I stumbled self-consciously to pull out her chair.

“I’ve missed this,” she said when we were seated across from one another at the table. “I didn’t realize just how much until now.”

I nodded, looking around the room and then out the window.

The molten gold glow of the midday sun covering the water made the bay shine and sparkle, its reflection forming a haze that surrounded a small sailboat in the distance as if a poorly developed picture on overexposed film.

“Well,” our waitress said as she reached the table, “there’s two faces I haven’t seen together in a while.”

“Too long,” Lauren said.

After telling us what we wanted, the waitress went off to brighten someone else’s day, and we were alone again.

“Thanks again for coming,” she said. “After the way I’ve acted lately, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t.”

I left that alone and we made awkward small talk until our food came. We ate in silence, and though I was happy just to be with her, I was experiencing conflicting emotions, and I couldn’t help but feel like a fool.

As we finished eating, I said, “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s over,” she said. “Thanks to you. I’m free of that awful sanatorium and I’m not going back.”

“Why were you there?”

“Just all the pressure of public life and the campaign,” she said. “I needed a little break, but the timing was bad.”

“Lauren,” I said. “That’s not even halfway convincing.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What does Rainer have on you? Or Harry? What did you pay Freddy for?”

“That was nothing,” she said. “Unrelated to anything else.”

“You’re lying.”

“You’re trying to make something where there is nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s going on.”

“All the dead bodies contradict you,” I said.

“I’m very sorry about them, but I didn’t have anything to do with them, don’t know anything about them.”

“If you were just going to continue to lie to me, why ask to see me at all?”

“I didn’t want things between us to end the way they did.”

She still wants us to have something we never will—a good ending.

“I asked you here,” she continued, “to apologize and—”

“You already did that,” I said.

“And to ask you to help Harry.”

“Help Harry?”

“I know he’s going to ask you to protect him,” she continued. “I just didn’t want anything I had done to stop you from—”

“Nothing you’ve done would stop me from anything,” I said. “I wouldn’t lose a job for revenge.”

“If you knew how little you had to revenge . . .”

I didn’t say anything and we fell silent a moment.

“Harry’s a good man and he’ll make a great mayor, but there are—”

“Don’t appeal to me on politics,” I said. “I’m sure mine and Harry’s aren’t the same.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “You should talk to him.”

I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “I should. We could compare wounds and war stories.”

“You don’t have to be cruel,” she said. “Everything’s not as it seems.”

I considered her. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

She looked down into her empty glass.

“Was that all you wanted to see me about?” I asked. “Helping Harry?”

She started to say something, hesitated, then swallowed hard and nodded.

“Well, we may or may not take the job,” I said. “It’s really up to Ray, but you don’t have to worry about anything you’ve done stopping me from taking money from a rich politician. And, as you already know, I have no problem taking anything that belongs to Harry.”

Chapter 25

When I got back to the office, July was frantic.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

“What is it?”

“Ray,” she said. “He’s been arrested.”

“For what?” I asked. “By who?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Some big mean guy I didn’t recognize. He came here about an hour ago. Ray had just gotten back from the courthouse. He had just enough time to return a few calls and eat a sandwich and this guy comes in with a gun, flashes his badge, tells him he’s under arrest, cuffs him, and takes him out.”