Love Nest (24 page)

“All you had to do was tell her.”

“At that age it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t go on to college. I could have, but I didn’t. Instead I served three years in the army. Never left the States. I was an enlisted aide to a two-star general. I was trained for the position at Fort Lee, Virginia. I learned to prepare and serve drinks and tend to family pets, and to open and close doors after people.”

“They also teach you how to pimp?”

“I learned it on my own, for the general, a man with a voracious appetite. I also learned hookers have bigger hearts than other women, long as you treat them right. I always did. I even married one, which I never tried to hide. I’m proud of it.”

“What happens if you treat them wrong?”

“Then you don’t know what to expect.”

“Is that your situation now?”

“You’re a shrewd fellow, Sergeant, but always a little off the mark. You’d never succeed in my business.”

“You haven’t always been so successful. You got your picture in the
Herald
when those health clubs and massage parlors of yours went into bankruptcy.”

“I waltzed away with a bundle.”

“But you got busted for promoting prostitution.”

“All charges were dismissed after long court delays. The Gardella organization gives you juice.”

“He’s gone.”

“His sister isn’t.”

Dawson felt it was his turn to smile. “Is that good or bad?”

Bauer conceded the point and returned the smile. “Let’s just say it’s not the same.”

“How did you get your hooks into Rollins?”

“A town this size, it’s a formula, scientific. You find out the lawyers born and bred here, bound to know people in the right places. Then, long as he’s not stupid, you pick the one with the smallest practice. Small practice means he should be doing better but he’s got a little something wrong with him, some psychological quirk probably. Doesn’t matter what it is, it’s a weakness. You put him on a fat retainer and he’s yours for whatever you want. You become the big thing in his little life.”

“Rollins introduced you to Paige Gately.”

“Brought me to her house. Grand old place, plaster falling off the ceiling. I read her in a minute. I told her I needed weight with the planning board, and she said she had a friend. I left the rest to Rollins.”

“Who was her friend?”

“You figure it out. Shouldn’t be hard.”

Dawson reached out and laid cautious fingers on the outside of the coffee pot. “Sure you won’t have any?” he said and poured himself a cup, slopping a little.

“Nervous, Sergeant?”

The coffee was no longer steaming but was warm enough to drink black. He took a sizable swallow. “What if I told you I’m wired?”

“I’d laugh in your face. It’s not what you got me here for, and I’ve got nothing to hide from you. The moment you took Melody into your house, you canceled yourself out. You’re nothing. I look at you and I laugh. I’m doing it now. No, Sergeant, you’re not wired. I got nothing for you. All I got is a dead son and a wife who’s not the same anymore. And here I am looking at the guy who had a hand in it. What do you think is going through my mind?”

Dawson, feeling strangely at ease, said nothing.

“I wanted to, I could take you out with my bare hands. I know you’re carrying a piece. I could make you eat it.”

“For my sake, I hope you don’t try.”

“I don’t have to. You see, this town is mine. I have a future in it. You don’t. That’s going to grind you down, and something else is going to grind you more. You don’t know in your head who wasted Melody. If my son didn’t do it you figure I did, and if I didn’t do it you figure it was Harriet. I have the worst news in the world for you, Sergeant. You’re never going to know.”

• • •

He was alone again in the room, the silence deadly, as if he were the only one in the whole motel. He lifted his coat from the bed and turned back the covers on one side, the white of the pillow and sheets dazzling. He hung his coat in the open closet and switched on the television, though not loud enough to hear. With his back to the screen, he took a deep sip of cool coffee to retrieve himself from a clutch of bad thoughts. Then he picked up the phone and rang the desk. “Give me a wake-up call at seven, Chick.”

“You staying the night?”

“No problem in that, is there?”

“No, none at all, but you don’t have to stay in that room. I can get you another, I’ll bring the key right over.”

“This will do fine,” he said, loosening his tie. There was a long pause from the other end.

“What are you looking for in there, Sonny? Answers?”

“No answers here, Chick. Not even echoes.”

“Then why you staying there?”

“I’m too tired to move. It’s as simple as that.”

He removed his jacket and his holstered revolver and tossed them on the chair Bauer had occupied. Outside it began sleeting. He heard it on the window and parted the drapes a little to look out at it. On the mute television screen youths with godlike looks and girls with active and adventurous legs frolicked on a brilliant beach, the sun a blaze of gold heralding a Coca-Cola commercial. The telephone rang. It was Mrs. Gately.

“The room is fifty-five dollars. With room service and tax, the bill comes to sixty-eight-fifty. I don’t want you to be surprised when you get it in the morning.”

“Thank you for the warning.”

“I don’t need to worry, do I?”

“About what, Mrs. Gately?”

“I wouldn’t want to think you might blow your brains out.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Then have a good night’s sleep, Sergeant.”

• • •

The sleet turned to snow and gradually back to sleet and by morning was a freezing rain. Harriet Bauer was up early tramping through the woods, each twig and blade of grass a crystal, each step she took a crunch. Under her hooded rain slicker she had on her husband’s bulky Norwegian sweater. Massive mittens kept her hands warm. A man walking his dog greeted her, but she passed him without seeing him. Then she stopped in her tracks and looked back at him with a small, worldly look. “Why don’t you call me later this week,” she said.

He was a slight man in his seventies. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Beg it all you want,” she said, “it won’t get you anywhere.” She continued on with a firmer tread, a louder crunch, at times a detonation. She passed the man again on her way back but this time ignored him, as if she had never before laid eyes on him or his dog, a retriever that sniffed briefly at her legs.

When she approached the house she saw her husband staring down at her with sleep-swollen eyes from a bedroom window, his mouth set with concern, his chest bare. Inside the house she pulled off her mittens and shed the slicker. He came down the stairs on bare feet, a towel equipped with snaps fastened around his middle. Lipstick was smeared into his bare chest. When he had come home last night she had greeted him in an open negligee, a ruffled garter belt, and briefs with a lacy front and ribbon ties, and for the first time since their son’s death she had pleasured him with an expertise acquired twenty years ago.

“I was worried,” he said.

“Why was that?”

“You get up earlier and earlier.”

“I have to. December days are short.”

He stepped near her and, as if he could sense her thoughts traveling away from him, took hold of her hands and rubbed them.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “They’re not cold.” She sat on a chair and began taking her boots off.

He said, “Would you like me to stay home today?”

“Don’t do it for me.”

“You’re sure?”

She placed her boots inside the chair, neatly. “Yes.”

“I’m going to do a few laps in the pool. Will you join me?”

She shrugged, her face closing up on him.

“Think about it.”

“I will,” she said.

• • •

Late that morning she placed her son’s stereo speakers in the open windows of his room and fired rock music into the quiet of Southwick Lane. The vibrations reached Porter Road in one direction and Hidden Road in another. At least two neighbors telephoned complaints to the police station. A young officer named Hawes, less than a year on the force, was dispatched to the neighborhood. He heard the thump of music well before he reached the cul-de-sac. It sounded as if it emanated from the trees.

He rang the front doorbell of the Bauer residence but received no response, hardly a surprise. Who could hear? Since he had no right to enter the premises, he returned to the cruiser and activated the flashing roof lights. Moments later the music ceased. He was back at the front door when it opened and Harriet Bauer peered out.

He said, “You can’t play your stereo that loud, ma’am. It’s disturbing everybody.”

She regarded him quizzically while giving a small tug to her loose gym costume, which was stained under the arms and across the midriff. “You’re not the one I want to see.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am?” He cocked his head, his cap slightly too large for it.

“The detective,” she said coolly.

It had stopped raining, but the air was raw. The officer’s voice floated out ragged. “Which one’s that? We got a few.”

She thought for a moment. “The sergeant.”

“Sergeant Dawson?”

Her sudden smile showed a mouthful of handsome teeth and cherry red gums. “That’s the one,” she murmured.

“If you want to get in touch with him, ma’am, there surely is an easier way of doing it. Just pick up the phone.”

“I thought my way would be quicker. I was wrong.” She smiled once more, innocently. “You’ll give him the message.”

“Yeah, sure. If I see him.”

• • •

Officer Billy Lord, not yet on duty, settled himself with occupying force in a chair in Sergeant Dawson’s cubicle office. Dawson, his appearance rumpled, was drinking coffee at his desk. Officer Lord lit up a small cigar and said, “Did you hear about my cat?”

“Which one, Billy? You’ve got three.”

“I got four. It’s the black one I’m talking about. He was out tomming last night and got in one hell of a fight. I know he won because he came home with three eyes, one between his claws.”

“Jesus, Billy. Don’t tell me that stuff.”

“My wife went into hysterics. She kicked him out of the house.”

“Get him fixed.”

“Can’t do that, Sonny. He’s got a right to his balls, the way I figure it.”

Dawson batted the air and averted his face. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t blow your smoke my way.”

“It’s not me, Sonny. It’s the air currents. Look, no matter how I hold it the smoke goes where it has to. It’s like when you squeeze off a raunchy one. Somebody could be talking to you and be none the wiser. Downwind, of course, the person might keel over. Christ, you could go to jail.”

“Billy, shut up.”

“People are always telling me to shut up. I’ve noticed that.”

“Listen to them.”

There was a scratching on the glass of the cubicle. Officer Hawes poked his head in, his manner hesitant and diffident. His cap was in his hand. “I wonder if I might talk to you, Sergeant. Private. Alone.”

“Something personal?”

“I don’t know.”

Dawson waved him in, and Billy Lord said, “Don’t worry about me, Hawes, I’ll hide my head.”

Hawes looked at Dawson, and Dawson said, “Go ahead, what is it?” The young officer gave a quick account of events at the Southwick Lane residence, passing his cap from one hand to the other, running a finger over the visor. Then he blushed.

“I thought she might be a special friend of yours.”

“She’s special,” Dawson said, “but she’s no friend. When did this happen?”

“Little before noon.”

Dawson looked at his watch. It was after three.

“I’d have told you sooner,” the officer said, “but you weren’t around.”

“I’ve been here all day.”

“Then I guess I wasn’t. I was busy on — ”

Dawson dismissed him with his eyes and watched him leave. His bottom desk drawer was open. He closed it with his shoe. His stomach felt savage, and he rubbed it. Too much coffee. “She’s been on my mind. She must’ve read it.”

“She don’t sound sensible to me,” Billy Lord said. “I was you, I’d be careful.”

Dawson neatened his desk, slipping reports under a newspaper, tossing his plastic-coated coffee cup into the wastebasket. “I’m always careful.”

“I don’t know about that. My observation is you’re not always too clever with women. They seem to get the best of you.”

Dawson rose from his desk, straightened his tie, and slipped on his coat. “I don’t know about that, Billy. I really don’t.”

Billy Lord stirred in his chair, making it squeak. He half grinned as Dawson slipped by him. “What d’you say, Sonny? You want a backup?”

“I’m a big boy now,” Dawson said.

• • •

Despite the cold, the door had been left partly open for him. He rang the bell as he stepped inside and got an earful of chimes, along with a stark look at himself in the oak-edged mirror. He called out her name and then, closing the door behind him, followed her voice. Wonderful house. Thickest carpets he had ever walked on, not a sound from his soles. “Wrong way,” she said with a catch in her breath. “In here.” It was the study, warm from a leaping fire, perhaps too warm. He saw her face, broad with sweat under the red band. She stood in her deeply stained gym costume with her legs spaced wide, as if she had been wrenching her trunk, touching her toes. He could tell something was ticking inside her skull. “You took your time,” she said.

“I got your message late.”

“No harm.”

“I wish you’d gotten it to me a lot sooner.”

“Let me take your coat,” she said and advanced on him with a husky stride. Her hands reached out to help him. He did not want his back to her, but it was so arranged. As the sleeves of his coat slid away, she felt his arms through the herringbone of his jacket. “You have strength in those arms, Sergeant. I imagine you can take care of yourself.”

“So far.”

She stepped away with his coat and draped it over the back of a leather chair. “That’s my husband favorite chair. It’s where he reads his Kennedy books. He’s a Republican to the core, loves Ronald Reagan, but for style and class he has always admired Kennedy. Americans are finally learning to worship their dead, don’t you think?”