Magic Hour (33 page)

I should stand up, take her in my arms. Say, Someone else? With you around? Of course not! I sat, paralyzed. "Yes," I said at last.

"Who is she?"

"Someone I knew a few years ago."

"Have you been seeing her?"

"No. It's nothing like that. I just ran into her again recently and realized."

Lynne started to cry. "Realized what?"

"I don't know."

"Realized
what
, Steve?"

"That I want to be with her all the time."

At last, I was able to make myself move. I got up and put my arms around her. I wish I could say I was filled with grief. But I didn't feel anything except sadness that I was hurting her. She was such a decent person and she loved me, or at least loved the man she thought was me, and loved the idea of loving someone who needed her help in getting through life.

She pulled away and gazed up at me. Everything she did was so pretty, even her crying. Two lovely, parallel tears coursed down her cheeks. She swallowed and regained some control. "You don't love me?" she asked.

I took her back into my arms. "Lynne," I said, into her glorious hair, "you're a wonderful person. You're beautiful, kind, patient—"

"You don't love me."

"I thought I did. I truly thought I did."

"Are you going to marry her?"

"No. I don't know. I don't know a lot. I don't feel in control anymore, that I understand anything that's going on. It's all just happening. When I came here, I was only thinking I'd spend a few minutes with you, touch base. In my wildest dreams, it didn't occur to me that we'd be having this conversation. I wish I'd been better prepared..." She started to cry again. "I wish I could have made it less painful for you."

She pulled out of my embrace. "My mother ordered the invitations."

"I'm sorry." What was I going to do? Tell her that her parents, Saint Babs and the Scourge of Godless Communism, would be breaking out the champagne, tearing the invitations into confetti, throwing it into the air in jubilation?

"Is she prettier than I am?" Lynne wiped her cheeks.

"No."

"Younger?"

"No. Older." Then I added: "Older than me." Her beautiful brown eyes grew big with disbelief, as though beholding a Medicare card in a liver-spotted hand. "Not too much older," I added.

"Does she have a good personality?"

"Yes." It was gutless, but at that moment I wished more than anything that I hadn't told her there was someone else, only that it wasn't working out and the blame was all mine. I was a too-old sad case, simply not the marrying kind. But Lynne would be tolerant, compassionate, like a nurse with an invalid who has a long convalescence before him. She'd wait, helping me recuperate, helping me become a better person.

"What does she do?"

"She's a writer."

"Is she from the city?"

"No."

"Is she rich?"

"No."

"What is it? Sex?" I didn't respond. "Is that it?"

"It's a factor."

"It was fine with us. It
was
."

"Yes, it was."

"You owe me an explanation, Steve."

"I know. I know I do. Forgive me." What the hell could I tell her? The truth. Not the whole truth, but at least no lies. "You're everything I admire. When we first started going out, I couldn't believe you were for real, because I thought: No one can be this decent; it's some sort of an act. But it wasn't. I came to understand that you're everything any man could want in a woman."

"Then why don't you want me?"

"Because you
are
so wonderful. Because I'm a messed-up guy and I can't live up to your high standards."

"But I'm not telling you to be anything except what you are."

"But see, Lynne, what I am doesn't necessarily want what you want. I can't live the life that would be right for you. I thought I could. I thought: If I have a good and beautiful wife and nice kids and a comfortable house, I'll be at peace. That's all I ever wanted. But I've got too much damage, and too many needs. Putting a white picket fence around me won't make me into a whole person."

"What will?"

"She will."

"Why?" Lynne asked.

And I finally answered: "Because ... we have fun."
 

Carbone had me beeped three times in two minutes. I pulled off at a too-cute lobster restaurant and used the pay phone. "What's so urgent, Ray?"

"Robby's got her nailed."

"Her?" Lindsay. He'd say Lindsay.

"Bonnie."

I knew I couldn't sound the way I felt: crazy with terror. I had to sound solid, sensible, the tough, experienced cop weary of Kid Robby's asshole antics. "Jesus, is he still pulling stupid shit? I've been killing myself. I've got great stuff on Lindsay. We've got to start concentrating our resources—"

"Steve, listen to me. He went back to Sy's house late yesterday. To that area underneath the porch where we found the footprints from the thongs."

"And?"

"He found another dark hair."

"Stop it!"

"Like the ones on the pillow, Steve. It was caught in one of those crisscrosses of the latticework that covers the crawl space under the porch. She must have leaned against it for a minute. He drove it up to the lab in Westchester personally this morning. He's waiting for the test results, but you know and I know: It's got to be Bonnie. Now we've got her in bed with him
and
at the exact location where the shot came from."

She lied, I thought. I stared at the phone, at its idiot instruction card for placing phone calls. That I'd believed Bonnie's explanations wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that I could go back to the house, kick furniture, throw things, pound walls, roar at her, You goddamn lying bitch, and she'd touch my arm, look me straight in the eye and say, Stephen, I wasn't there. I
swear
to you I wasn't there. Then how did your hair get there? She'd say, Someone put it there. That detective who's after me. You
said
he was out to get me, and he is. I'd say, You expect me to believe that, bitch? And she'd say, Yes, I do.

And against all reason, I would.

"Ray," I said, "you're not having any trouble with this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You don't think there's a chance that Robby got a little too enthusiastic?"

"Come off it. He wouldn't go that far. You know he wouldn't plant evidence. Face facts. Face what she is." For a second it got so quiet I could hear water bubbling in the lobster tanks. "Steve? You there?"

"I'm here."

"What are you going to do now?"

"What do you think I should do?" I asked.

"Go find her."

I happened to glance down toward the shelf in that dingy corner by the pay phone, with its ancient American Express application forms curled from the humidity, and the ashtray with someone's fat, ugly cigar ash. And all of a sudden, in that stinky, dreary corner, I got a gift—a flash of memory from that night five years before.

We'd finished eating and moved into the living room. It was sunset, and Bonnie left the lights off so we could see the horizon, royal blue, deep orange. Then she lit a couple of candles and we sat back in the flickering light. She told me how she'd come to love the South Fork, the vast and beautiful sky, the ocean, the marshes, the birds—she said she was one of those creeps who clomped around with boots and binoculars—but that she missed the mountains. Not just for fishing, hiking, skiing. Growing up in Utah, she'd look out the window in school, bike to the store to pick up a quart of milk for her mother, lie in her bed staring at the stars—and the mountains were always there.

"You sound a little homesick," I said.

"Yes."

"You ever think of going back?"

"None of my family's there anymore. It would just be me and the mountains and the Mormons."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I wish I could go home," she said, very quietly.

And I whispered: "I'll teach you to love it here, Bonnie."

I threw in another quarter and called my pal in the D.A.'s office, Sally-Jo Watkins. From the name, you'd expect one of those exhausted Appalachian women with fourteen children you see on Malnutrition U.S.A. documentaries. But Sally-Jo was strictly Canarsie and unexhausted. She came from a very old but extremely undistinguished Brooklyn family. She always walked double-time and barked rather than talked. She was a career prosecutor, Chief Assistant D.A. for Suffolk County.

"What do you want? I'm busy. This about the Spencer case? Ralph's doing that. Talk to Ralph."

"I have to talk to you."

"Why? We got channels here, same as you guys. I'm drowning in a sea of motions, Brady, you stupid, insensitive mick cop moron. Whatever you want, I can't do it. Call Ralph."

"He's too inflexible. I can't talk to him."

"Well, I can't talk to you."

"Sally-Jo, I saved your ass at least three times when you were in the Homicide Bureau. You fucking owe me."

"I bought you a steak dinner. Remember? When you got sprung from the bin? I had to wait till you dried out, otherwise it would have cost me a year's salary, the way you drank."

"Yeah, well, I put at least twenty thousand calories of cheeseburgers into you over the years, so let's say you still owe me the equivalent of one more extremely large lunch."

"Shoot, schmuck. And shoot fast."

"Hypothetically, say I did everything right: preserved a crime scene till after the autopsy, had my men go over everything with a fine-tooth comb. No rain, no high winds. Nothing to dirty the samples we took, nothing to make our job difficult. Ideal conditions."

"Keep going."

"Not much stuff except some circumstantial evidence good for making a DNA case. Hair. The victim's lover's hair in the bed where they'd been making it. Okay. Then a week later, four days after we take down the tape, I find another hair. Looks like the lover's. Let's say the lab says it is."

"Where do you find said strand of hair?"

"Caught between two crossing slats of wood. If the lover had been firing the murder weapon, that crisscross would be exactly where this lover of unspecified sex's head would have been. Now, as a prosecutor, would you buy this suddenly appearing new piece of evidence? Would you use it?"

"Okay. Generally, all relevant evidence is admissible at a trial. But the circumstances under which the evidence was found are admissible too. In a case like this, the defense would argue that since you did such a bang-up job under ideal conditions the first time, it's passing strange that you didn't find that extra hair when you were so busy being meticulous."

"They'd argue it was planted."

"Right."

"A lawyer like Paterno would argue that."

"A lawyer like Paterno would cream us on that. We'd claim it was an oversight. Human error. Cops are human, and what in the world would be our motive for trying to frame this lover? Because we believe with all our hearts and souls that the lover is guilty? Ridiculous!"

"If you were prosecuting a case like this, what would you do?"

"I'd spend a couple of days scaring the shit out of the cop who says he found the hair, telling him that if he's not a hundred percent sure that one of his colleagues didn't plant it—I wouldn't accuse him directly—he should forget about it because it could jeopardize our case, give the defense something to fight about. Then I'd sit back and think about it. Chances are, I wouldn't risk introducing it unless the rest of our case was very, very flimsy—but then I'd question the whole proceeding. But if our case was semi-solid, I'd still avoid using it. Look, that one hair makes the DNA testing an issue, and that would put our good evidence—the hair from the bed—into question. And who needs a lawyer like Paterno making the jury wonder how come a miracle happened after a week? From the D.A.'s point of view, a wondering jury is a dangerous jury. Reasonable doubt is a terrible thing."

"Thanks, Sally-Jo."

"So, imbecile, is it your hypothesis that Bonnie Spencer shot Sy Spencer or not?"

"Not."

"That isn't what I hear."
 

It was touch and go whether Bonnie would let go of the phone or I'd break her wrist trying to get it out of her hand. She finally let go, but the next, thing I knew, she was making a dash for the door, frantic to get to the cops, turn herself in.

"Stop it!" I shouted. I had her in an armlock, but it was like trying to restrain a powerful guy, and her natural strength was reinforced by hysteria. "You didn't do it, so what the hell are you—" She said something, but her words were swallowed up by huge, loud gasps and gulps of air. I held her, waiting for tears, followed by her fervent plea: Stephen,
please
believe me. Instead, I got an elbow to the solar plexus. It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I let her loose. I bent over, hugging myself, trying to catch my breath. Jesus, did it hurt.

At which point Bonnie asked, "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry." Except I couldn't speak. "Stephen? Are you okay? Where does it hurt? Oh, God." Actually, the shock of sudden pain—and pain inflicted by the woman you've just declared to your now ex-fiancee is the woman you love—just lasted for a second. But I didn't reassure Bonnie. I let her lead me to my bed, step by compassionate step, and ease me down. "Take it slow," she warned. By the time I was flat on my back, she was under control again. "Can you breathe all right?" She peered into my eyes, maybe checking to see if the pupils were dilating. "Stephen?"

"No," I muttered, "it's over." She had to bend down to catch my words. "You broke my rib and there's a huge splinter of bone that's piercing my heart. I'm a dead man, Bonnie. Goodbye." I reached out, grabbed her hand and pulled her so she was sitting beside me on the bed. "One last kiss." She threw me a dirty look. "All right," I told her. "Get hysterical again. Run. I'm not going to fight you. You're too big."

"Listen to me. I
have
to turn myself in. That Robby—I guess it's Robby—is out to get me. If I stay here, he'll pull something else." Her voice started to rise again. "Let me go in now, while my lawyer still has a chance to make some sort of a decent case."

"Get a grip on it!" She took a deep but tremulous breath. "You can do it. I need you a little while longer. Once you're arrested, there may be a problem with bail. Second-degree murder, and your roots in the community aren't all that deep. You'll probably wind up in jail. Understand that?"