Eye Contact (15 page)

Roxanne laughs. “Both, but mostly the latter.”

To Manning’s surprise, it seems the ladies have connected. There’s actually a spark of rapport between the two, whom he presumed would have nothing in common. This may work out just fine, he tells himself. Roxanne has already broken the ice, so she stands a chance of gaining Lucille Haring’s confidence and getting into her head. Deciding that Roxanne can best work this situation alone, Manning excuses himself and forays into the crowd to mingle with other guests.

But the party is beyond mingling now. The hour has grown late, liquor flows freely, and the music is cranked high. David Bosch slumps semiconscious on a sofa, where Uncle Hector ministers to him and Neil attempts to hand-feed him a meatball. All the other guests—as well as most of the staff—are on their feet, jostling to the electronic beat.

At the center of the action, Claire Gray and Pavo Zarnik flail about in the vortex of chest-pounding sound. Younger dancers, impressed, have backed off, giving the couple more space. Claire’s index fingers jab at the ceiling à la Travolta; Zarnik adds to the din with shrill disco-blasts of his police whistle.

Manning shakes his head in mild astonishment and sideslips around the room, arriving at the sofa where David sips coffee from a cup that wobbles in an unsteady hand. Neil has spread an oversize napkin on David’s lap, hoping to protect the kid’s bare legs, as well as the new furniture, from spills. Hector sits with a vacant stare, watching Claire’s performance with the astronomer. Manning places a hand on Hector’s shoulder and leans to ask, almost shouting in his ear, “Enjoying the party?”

“Oh my, yes indeed,” Hector responds politely, though insincerely. “If the success of an evening can be judged by the level of energy expended by one’s guests, I’d have to say you’ve mounted a smashing entertainment.”

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.”

I
MMERSED 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?”