Milk and Honey (27 page)

“About,” Decker said.

“Amazing.”

“It’s like this, Rina,” Decker said. “No matter how old you are, the minute you step into your parents’ home, you become their kid. And you play into it, too. Mom serves you, scolds you for putting your feet on the table. And no matter how independent you are, you sit there like a lump and take it all. That’s how it is with Abel and me. We met each other as adolescents, and we act adolescent together.”

She threw up her hands. “Is he gone?”

“No. He wants to play some basketball down at MacGrady Park—”

“You’re kidding!”

“He thinks we’re still twenty.”

“You told him no, didn’t you?” Rina said.

Decker smiled at her, asking for approval without asking her directly.

She let out a small laugh. “Have fun, boys.”

Decker smoothed his mustache, tried to figure out how to say what was on his mind. “You know, as a kid I didn’t always have the swiftest of judgment.”

Rina didn’t answer.

“Even our forefathers weren’t immune,” Decker continued. “The commentaries tell us that Joshua married Rahav the whore—”

“Oh, Peter, don’t get
biblical
on me. You don’t have to justify what you did.” She laughed again. “You mean I wasn’t the first?”

“Hate to tell you, kid,” Decker said.

“And all this time, I thought Cindy was hatched parthenogenetically.”

Decker said, “She was hatched just like your boys.”

Rina smiled, lowered her head, her eyes suddenly drifting away.

Decker had seen the look before—sweet nostalgia for her late husband—and it bothered him. The first time he and Rina had slept together, she’d been extremely shy. Decker had known part of it was modesty, but he’d mistakenly thought that part of it had been innocence. After she’d become used to their nakedness, it had become painfully obvious to Decker that he had no new tricks to teach her. Suddenly, the roles had reversed, and now she was the one playing him like a virtuoso; all she’d needed had been a little practice to get her fingers nimble. As a matter of fact, he ranked Rina as one of his best, sharing the spot with such notables as a Vegas call girl and a twenty-five-year-old nympho named Candy he had once busted on a soliciting charge.

Rina’s expertise
really
bothered him.

It also put her late husband, Yitzchak, in a completely different light. Until he and Rina had sex, Decker had always assumed that the soft-spoken Talmudic scholar had lived a boring, modest life. Now, Decker found himself wondering about the duality of the guy. A Jewish Superman—a studious
bochar
by day, a stud by night.

Rina certainly knew her way around a man’s body. And Decker knew there had been only one other man in her life. He was dying to ask her what Yitzchak had been like, but knew that was just the old ego begging for reassurance.

Unsolicited, she had told Decker he was wonderful. But
everything he did she said was wonderful. Decker hoped his lovemaking wasn’t as mediocre as his woodworking.

The faraway look still held fast in Rina’s eyes. Decker’d had enough. He said, “You want to come with us?”

“Huh?” Rina answered.

“Yoo-hoo, space cadet.” He waved his hand in front of her eyes. “Want to come with us to the park? It’s not a great offer, but I bet it beats peeling potatoes.”

Rina said, “Sure. Why not?”

It took Abel a shorter time to deal with the horse than it did for Decker to deal with Rina. Twenty minutes later, Abel saw Decker and Rina come out of the house. He was carrying two six-packs of beer, she was carrying the car keys. She had pinned her hair under a kerchief, but her face was still as radiant as ever. She stopped in front of Abel and gave him a feigned sour look. It was all he could do to keep from laughing.

“I’m coming for two reasons,” Rina said.

“What’s that, ma’am?” Abel said.

“One is Peter intends to consume beer, and I don’t want him drinking and driving at the same time.”

“Fair enough,” Abel said. “And what’s reason number two, ma’am?”

“Peter just taught me CPR,” Rina said. “That means I’m still a novice, so don’t test out my skill, please?”

“No, ma’am,” Abel said. Meanwhile, all he could think about was her lips plastered to his, her breath filling his lungs. The image made him hard.

Opening the envelope,
Decker frowned. Last Friday he’d requested all of Linda Darcy’s credit-card receipts. Visa had been the first to respond, sending him photocopies taken off of microfilm. The print was small and smeared, and Decker knew it would take him the entire morning to sift through the list. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass, unsure what he was looking for. But he trusted his intuition. If there was something of note, he’d note it.

After three hours of hunching and squinting, Decker stretched and poured himself a cup of coffee, wishing it were Friday instead of Tuesday. But at least something interesting had turned up.

Linda Darcy had paid for a room at the Sleepy-Bi Motel on Foothill Boulevard six times during the last year—the same motel she and Byron had gone to once upon a time. And a corollary pattern had become apparent. She had also purchased gas from the same service station—a Shell—on the same day she had paid for the motel room.

She’d
paid for the room.

Let’s hear it for women’s lib.

Decker sipped his coffee, then dialed the Sleepy-Bi Motel. A desk clerk with a nasal voice answered. Decker intro
duced himself and his mission, described Linda, and gave Mr. Nose Voice the dates of the trysts. The desk clerk reported back that a Mr. and Mrs. Smith had checked in all the given days, in room 211.

Big surprise. Decker kept up the questioning.

“Do you remember what this Mr. and Mrs. Smith look like?”

“The missus sounds like the woman you described. Sexy little thing.”

“And the man?”

The nasal clerk punted the question, saying that in his line of business he tried to forget faces rather than remember them.

Decker described Byron Howard, Rolland Mason. The clerk said he wasn’t sure, but as best he remembered, both those men didn’t sound like the man she was with. Decker thanked him and hung up.

A washout.

Ten minutes later, Decker dialed up the Shell station Linda had used. Maybe one of the pump boys remembered Linda and her anonymous beau. The man who answered the line identified himself as Grains. Decker started his pitch, mentioning Linda Darcy, and received an immediate unexpected reaction. Grains became defensive, dropped his voice to a whisper and asked,
What
about
Linda
?

Bingo!

Decker pressed on. Grains’s voice became edgier and edgier. Finally, Decker announced he was coming down to pay Grains a visit. Grains pleaded for a half-hour delay. He owned the station, one of his men was out sick, and he was up to his neck in work. Decker agreed to the grace period, and they arranged to meet at the McDonald’s across the street from the service station in thirty minutes.

Grains was sitting at a corner table when Decker walked in. The service-station owner had a long face, sparse blond hair, bulging blue eyes, and callused hands with nails full
of grease. He seemed to be around forty, thin, with a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed whenever he swallowed. He was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with the name Jim embroidered in red thread over the breast pocket. Decker sat down in the chair next to him. Grains didn’t bother to look up.

“This is my only break.” He was on his second Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. Besides the burgers were two salads, two helpings of fries, and a chocolate shake. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

“Get what over and done with?” Decker said.

Grains regarded Decker and sighed. He ran his hand over his face. “You’re a real cop, right? Not some snoop from a private agency?”

Decker took out his badge and showed it to him. Grains seemed to relax a little. Decker said, “Why did you think I’m a private investigator?”

“I thought maybe my wife found out.” Grains chomped on his sandwich. “Maybe I’m still a little paranoid. A lot paranoid. After all, I haven’t seen Linda for over six months.”

“How’d the affair start?” Decker asked.

“Linda had been having her car fixed at the station for six, seven, eight years, who the hell remembers. About a year ago, she started acting different toward me, real friendly.” He popped a half-dozen french fries in his mouth. “My wife and I…we were going through some bad times. I fell for it, and I fell for her. Actually thought I loved the broad until she up and left me. I not only lost her, but I lost her business as well. Teach me to mix business and pleasure. I’m just lucky my wife never caught on. That’s all I’d need. My wife’s Mexican and comes from an old-fashioned Mexican family. Know what her brothers would do to me if they found out I was messin’ around on her? God knows, if they didn’t finish me off, a divorce would. Alimony and
child support. I’ve got six kids. My wife is also a Catholic. I had to get dispensation to marry her. Jesus, don’t ever mess around on a Mexican woman.”

He spoke as if only Mexican women grew irate at their adulterous husbands. Decker said, “Let’s go back to Linda Darcy.” He pulled out his notebook. “What exactly did you mean by ‘she started acting friendly’?”

“Well, for years she’s all business. Lube the car, change the belts, flush out the radiator. Sometimes she drove the pickup, sometimes she drove the Dodge. That was a honey of a car. A two-tone job—”

“Jim, how did she act friendly?” Decker said.

“Well, she just changed. Smiled when she spoke to me, touched my shoulder as we looked inside the hood together. Then, out of the blue, she said she had a little time and suggested grabbing a cup of coffee at this very McDonald’s. One thing led to another, next thing I know, we’re in bed together.” Grains paused. “But that’s all in the past. What’s this all about, anyway?”

“Linda Darcy’s been murdered,” Decker said.

Grain’s eyes bugged out even farther, then he began to choke. Decker stood up and gave him a sharp rap between his shoulder blades. Grains coughed, spit out a mouthful of food into a napkin. Decker waited for him to settle down, but Grains kept uttering “goldam” over and over.

Decker finally said, “How long did you and Linda have the affair?”

“Goldam,” Grains said. “Murdered? How?”

“Shot,” Decker said. “How long did you and Linda—”

“You don’t suspect
I
had anything to do with it!”

“Please answer the question, Jim,” Decker said.

“You aren’t going to tell my wife, are you?”

“How about we start with me asking the questions, and you answering them. How long had you and Linda had your affair?”

“Goldam,” Grains said. “Six months.”

“When did it start?”

“A year ago.”

“And it lasted for six months?”

“Yes, sir, it did. Only saw her six times, actually. But man was she a tiger.”

Decker thought, Six receipts from the motel. Six times. Made sense. He said, “And you haven’t seen Linda since?”

“No, sir,” Grains said. “Like I told you, lost her and her business when the affair ended.”

“She give you any explanation why the affair ended?”

“Nope,” Grains said. “That was the hardest thing to get over. She just said it was time to move on. Like I was nothing but a piece of cattle. Pissed me off. I asked her what she meant by that, and she didn’t answer me. Just left the motel and I never saw her again.”

“Did you try to contact her?”

“Hell, no,” Grains said. “She paid for the motel room and for her gas, but I was giving her a ton of freebies—tires, oil, transmission and steering fluid, spare parts, belts that I think her husband was using on his machinery. A free spare gas tank filled with super unleaded gas. Man, she was costing me plenty. I guess at the time I thought it was worth it. I don’t think so anymore today…like that matters now that she’s…goldam, that’s bad. Good goldam!”

Decker flipped his notebook closed and placed it in his suit pocket. He stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Grains.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You ain’t gonna tell my wife, are you?”

“Don’t see why I should have to,” Decker said. “Unless, of course, you had something to do with Linda Darcy’s demise.”

“Shit no!” Grains said. “I don’t know a goldam thing about it.”

Decker said, “Just stick around for a while.”

“I’ll do anything you say,” Grains said. “Just keep it from my wife.”

Decker said he’d do the best he could.

“The good news is you got an envelope from Manfred,” Hollander said to Decker as he entered the squad room.

“What’s the bad news?” Decker asked.

“Your ex is on line two,” Hollander said.

Decker scanned the room for a private corner. Nothing. He depressed the blinking light and said to Jan, “Can I call you back? I want to find a private phone.”

“Private phone?” Jan answered. “This sounds ominous.”

“Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

Decker hung up. “Be back in a minute.”

“Where’re you going?” asked Marge.

“Upstairs,” Decker said. “I need some space.”

He was in luck. The locker-room phone was vacant, the place practically empty. The change of shift was still three hours away. Two uniforms—Hunter and Bailey—were bitching to each other, quieting when they saw Decker.

“Just came to use the phone,” Decker said.

Hunter smiled widely. He was a strapping man of 6'2" with thick, swollen lips. His grin was conspiratorial.

Decker felt defensive. “Calling my ex, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Sergeant,” Hunter said.

“Can I have a little privacy?” Decker said.

“A little?” Bailey said. “No problem.”

Decker glared at them. They moved to the next aisle. He quickly dialed, waited for Jan to answer.

“What is it?” she asked.

“First, why’d you call?”

“I’ll show you, if you show me?”

“Please, Jan.”

She said, “Cindy called. She’s in Paris. She’s coming back to the States in two weeks. She said she’ll probably stop off in New York for another couple of weeks. I thought Allen and I could meet her there. You’re not planning a trip back East, are you?”

“I’m not planning one, no.”

“Good,” Jan said. “I know…I know you have business back there. I think it would be awkward if we were all there at the same time.”

“No problem,” Decker said. “Have fun.”

“Okay,” Jan said. “Now what’s up with you?”

Decker said, “It’s about that business you were referring to. I wanted you to hear it from me. Rina and I are getting married. I don’t know exactly when, probably within the next couple of months. I just thought you should know.”

Without missing a beat, Jan said, “Nothing like a young filly for breeding.”

Decker felt his face go hot. “Well, thanks so much for your good wishes, Janet. I really appreciate them.”

There was a rare silence on the other line. Finally, she managed to say, “You’re right. That was awful.”

Decker was aware of his heart beating. “Forget it,” he said. Knowing the reason behind the barb, he meant it.

“No,” Jan said. “I’m sorry. I hope you do have kids. Cindy could use another sib.”

“Cindy is basically an adult,” Decker said. “I think a sib would have little impact on her.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jan argued.

“Fine,” Decker said. “We’ll see…if it even happens—”

“What do you mean?”

Decker cursed his loose tongue. Then he thought, What the hell? Maybe it would soften Jan’s opinion of Rina if she knew they had this sore point in common. He said, “We don’t talk about it, but I know Rina has had several miscarriages.”

A second of silence. Then Jan said, “But she’s so
young
.”

“You were young, too,” Decker commented.

Another silence over the phone. This one full of palpable tension.

Cindy’s conception. At that time, it had been a low point in his life. Four months past twenty-one, his mind still agog with bad memories, a rookie on the force. His first assignment had been the riot squad. In 1970, Nixon had sent U.S. forces into Cambodia. The protests had been hard and furious, had influenced even traditional party schools like the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Jan had been one of his first arrests.

The pregnancy had been a terrible accident.

Shit
, she had said as she paced.
To be knocked up by a
pig.
I’m not going to keep it, that’s for sure. I’ve already made an appointment with the doctor. I think you should pay for half, Pete
.

He had simply said,
You do anything to my kid, and I’ll kill you
. His intensity had scared her into listening to him. Maybe he had reacted that way because he had been adopted. If his mother’s pregnancy had occurred later in the century, he might have ended up a pickled fetus in someone’s laboratory.

Four months after Jan’s announcement, they were married, to everyone’s displeasure.

Five more tries for children. One ended in a tubal pregnancy, three had been spontaneous miscarriages.

And one stillborn.

Seeing Jan being prepped for an emergency C-section. Him being whisked out of the labor room. An hour later, he stood there, listening impassively while a ghoul in a white coat told him the baby had died during birth. But the mother was fine, thank God.

Thank God
, Decker had repeated. Then, his only words:
What was it?

It was a boy, Mr. Decker
.

Jan had again retreated into her shell. When she finally did speak, the first thing she stated was a willingness to start again.

Decker had blurted out,
Jan, give it a rest
.

She didn’t speak to him for six months.

Now, her voice escorted him back into the present. “I was young, wasn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Decker said. “Look, I’ve got to get back—”

“I’ve often thought, Pete,” Jan interrupted, “not to get too metaphysical, but I really think that the purpose of our marriage must have been Cindy.”

“Probably was,” Decker said.

“You know,” Jan said, “your stoic,
goyish
manner used to really aggravate me—”

“Really now?”

Jan laughed. “But I’ll say one nice thing for you. During all our most horrible, heated fights, you never threw my wanting to…my wanting to abort in my face.”