Nature of the Game (22 page)

“I quit trying. I'd like to see the stuff from his room.”

“I'd like to see that ID you waved at me again,” said the clerk.

When Wes passed the clerk his ID case, a twenty-dollar bill was sticking from it. The clerk slid the bill out, checked it, gave the unopened case back to Wes.

“Nice picture,” said the clerk. He crooked his finger.

The back room was jammed with boxes, suitcases, stacks of clothes, and bundled papers. The clerk found a shoebox and two unlocked suitcases, put them on a dusty table, and left Wes alone.

Nothing in the shoebox but toiletries.

The suitcases were made of battered aluminum and had once cost a great deal. The clothes inside them varied from worn-out and formerly expensive to worn-out and formerly dirt cheap. Wes assumed that any valuables Jud had left behind had long since been appropriated by the clerk.

Wes found a car key with a Mercedes emblem, left it.

In the pocket of a tattered blue Hawaiian shirt, he found two wrinkled and faded Polaroid snapshots.

The first picture was of Jud and another man, sitting on a red couch, smiling for the camera. The other man looked nervous. In the picture, the two men were probably in their thirties. Jud's companion had black hair barbered over his ears, a shirt, blue jeans. He was lean, clean-shaven.

The second picture was of a woman. A gorgeous woman, stunning even in a badly composed, aged Instamatic shot.

She had reddish-chestnut hair cascading from her head like a lion's mane. A widow's peak, like Beth's, but thicker tresses. Her face looked Italian, oval with wide lips, huge brown eyes. Her grin showed innocent embarrassment, thought Wes. She seemed small, though as she turned to be surprised by the camera, her white sweater pulled tight against heavy breasts. She stood on a dune; behind her was an ocean.

Wes kept the pictures.

It took Wes an hour the next morning to find where Jud had worked. Wes used the yellow pages, reached Angel Hardware & Lock on the ninth call, and asked for Jud. The man told him Jud had quit. Wes realized the store was close to the pay phone Jud had used and drove there.

This guy was born scared
, thought Wes as he interviewed the pudgy owner in the back workroom. As they talked, an old man with a stubbled face disassembled a lock at the workbench.

The owner chewed his lip, confirmed little more than that Jud had failed to show up for work the day after Hopkins died.

“There has to be something you can tell me about him!” Wes insisted.

“No, I, no, nothing, I …” The fat man shrugged.

“Was he a good locksmith?” asked Wes in desperation.

“Ah, yeah, as …” The owner lost his ability to speak.

“He was not locksmith,” said the man at the workbench.

Wes turned around.

“Locksmith?” said the old man, Europe thick in his words. “No.
I
am locksmith. Jud was an
artist
. He had angels in his hands. This man can manipulate safe. Do you know what this means?”

“No,” said Wes.

“Dial,” said the old man. “He could dial open a safe. By touch. By sound. By scent. Do you know how rare that is? This is a craft, demanding, ever changing. You must be trained. But few of us are ever more than technicians. To dial a safe like he can … perhaps two men in this country. Perhaps one in Europe.

“And I tell you this: wherever he learned what he knew, it wasn't to fix security systems for silly starlets.”

“He took things from me,” blurted out the owner, afraid to speak, but more afraid to be upstaged by the old man.

“You owed him,” said the old man.

“What things?” asked Wes.

“Just tools,” said the old man. “Of our trade—yes?”

The owner licked his lips, nodded.

Wes thanked the old man, left.

He went back to the same pay phone and called Jack Berns.

“Good timing,” said the private eye. “I think I got what you want: two long distance calls that may be hot.”

“Two?” said Wes. Cars whizzed by him on the street. Where had Jud gone? And how had he gotten there? Bus?

“There's one to a special number you may know at the firm where our mutual friend works.”

“I know about that.”

“I bet,” said Berns. “Plus one to Takoma Park, just over the D.C. line. Phone's listed to a Nick Kelley.”

“You did good.”

“I did more,” said Berns.

“I hired you to do what I told you!”

“Then you don't want to hear what I got?”

Wes silently cursed, said, “Go ahead.”

“Nick Kelley's a reporter. Or used to be. At my old friend Peter Murphy's column.”

“Don't jerk me around, Berns.”

“Not unless you pay me to.” The private eye laughed. “I recognized the name. Met him a few times way back. My business, you get a hit, you follow through. I dropped by Peter's office—”

“You what!”

“I see Peter a few times a year. I found out that our boy Nick quit reporting way back when to write novels. Wrote a spy book once. Think our mutual friend would like to hear that?”

“He'll hear what I tell him.”

“Be sure to tell him Nick Kelley is back on the beat.”

“Huh?”

“Peter let it slip that Nick came in, cut a deal to pick up the press pass and do a piece on spooks. He works out of some office he's got up on Capitol Hill.”

“Way I figure it,” said Berns, “you aren't experienced with reporters, so I'll take a run at Nick and scope out what—”

“Forget it!” Wes felt on fire; his voice was ice. “I told you to get me numbers and names. You went way beyond that—”

“And I scored,
Major
.”

“Your games stop now. Do you hear me? Now! And it all stays just between us.”

“Don't worry. I know where my money's coming from. I'll sit right here and wait for it. And for you.”

The private eye hung up.

Wes swore, wanted to smash the telephone. A customized 1967 red Corvette roared past Wes, honking its horn at a Japanese family car that was trying to nose its way across the intersection.

Got it!
He dropped more coins in the pay phone.

“Detective Rawlins,” said the voice that answered.

“Can I get a geographic breakdown of reported crimes with the LAPD computer?” Inspiration tingled through Wes.

“There's a guy at a terminal across the squadroom could do just that,” said the cop.

“Can you tell me if somebody stole a car?” Wes gave him the address of the pay phone, asked for a six-block-square grid search. “On that night that Hopkins died, the next morning.”

“You riding a crime wave, Marine?” said Rawlins.

But he put Wes on hold. Came back a minute later.

“You should play the lottery,” said Rawlins.

“What's the license plate and make?” asked Wes excitedly.

“You probably won't care. The Highway Patrol recovered it three days later at a rest stop up north. Vandalized, but what the hell. They didn't turn up any interesting prints.”

Wes swore.

“Why don't you drop by my office,” said Rawlins.

“Can't,” said Wes, “I've got a plane to catch.”

It's late
, Wes told himself when the taxi from the airport left him in front of his Capitol Hill apartment building. He was whipsawed by jet lag into a feeling of timelessness, though he knew that here in Washington, it was half an hour until midnight. The indigo air held a chill. A matron in a topcoat coaxed a wirehaired terrier from lamppost to fire hydrant. Neither woman nor dog looked at Wes as they worked their way down the block. His eyes scanned the parked cars lining his street to be sure they were empty, then he carried his bags of old clothes and new secrets into the building.

Dear Occupant
junk waited in his mailbox.

The white adhesive tape black-inked with
B. Doyle
had been replaced by one of the typed labels issued by the landlord.

He couldn't stop a foolish grin, climbed the stairs.

The fish-eye peephole in her door betrayed nothing of the quarters behind its convex glass. The molding made it impossible to tell if lights were on in her apartment.

Wes opened his apartment door. The lights he snapped on showed him his home as he'd left it. Another night of no surprises.

The door closed behind him with a solid
click
.

He'd hung his topcoat in the closet, draped his sports jacket on a chair at the kitchen sidebar, and was inventorying his sparse refrigerator when someone knocked on his door.

She stood in the hall wearing a blue blouse, jeans, bronze hair down to her shoulders, and a grin.

“Let me guess,” she said, “you forgot my souvenir of Hollywood.”

“I didn't forget,” he said. “I couldn't find anything perfect.”

“That's not a bad excuse.” Her face was free of makeup. She grinned. “I have an idea.”

She reached around him, turned the button in his doorknob to unlock. He smelled the clean warmth of her skin.

“Give me a minute,” she said, hurrying back into her apartment. He saw that her feet were bare.

Wes stared at her closed door, then went back inside his home. His suitcase waited by the door to the bedroom. His briefcase lay on the kitchen sidebar. The pictures he'd taken from the L.A. hotel were in the inside pocket of his sports jacket.

His door opened. She came in carrying a box under one arm, cigarettes and lighter in her other hand.

“This came yesterday,” she said.

His door clicked shut behind her.

Beth strolled into his living room. Her eyes roamed over the crowded bookshelves, the stereo system and categorized CDs, records, and cassettes. Paused at the baseball resting on its stand: he'd knocked that grand slam homer into the bleachers and his Academy teammates all autographed it. She smiled at the framed black-and-white photograph of dying Lou Gehrig making his “luckiest man alive” farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, soaked in the framed print of Edward Hopper's
Nighthawks
, a midnight diner scene so sparse and precise it was surreal.

“I like how you live,” she told him.

“Practice,” he said. Went to her. “What's the box?”

She handed it to him.

“‘Fruit of the Month'?” Surprise lined his face.

“It came for Bob,” she said. “The guy whose place I'm—”

“I know.” Wes shook the box. “Must have been a gift.”

“I'd forward it to him, but by the time it got there …”

“What do you think?”

“I don't believe in waste,” she said.

“So we should—”

“Not give the rot more than we have to.”

“Of course,” she added, “you're the lawyer.”

“Law is just some of what I know,” he told her.

“We need to celebrate your return. You owe me a surprise.”

He held the box to her. She popped the tape, folded back the lid.

“Pears,” he said. “Green pears.”

“They're ready.”

“I'll get a knife, plates,” he said, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

“Don't be silly.”

She lifted a pear from its styrofoam cradle, bit into it. Juice ran from the corners of her mouth and she laughed, cupped her hand under her chin.

“God, it's good!” she said.

She held the pear up to him. As he bent to take a bite, he fell into her gray eyes.

The fruit was sweet and wet and dissolved in his mouth. He felt its juice trickle out of his lips.

“I'm getting you sticky,” he told her, gently cupping the hand that held the pear for him, moving it away.

Beth laughed. One sharp, husky, honest burst.

The silence rose around them, a pressure roaring and swelling until Wes thought his senses would explode.

Her face tilted up to him, her lips warm. Wide. Parted.

Slowly, carefully, his fingers touched her cheek. He bent down. Kissed her.

And she let the pear fall. Her arms locked around his neck, pulled her body against his, her mouth opening. She tasted like lightning, smoky and fruit-sweet and hungry. All he knew of caution fell away: of the safety of his heart and health. Her hair streamed around his fingers, his hand pressed against her thin-boned back, her waist, the two of them turning, spinning, a
ballet à deux
in his living room.
Is the door locked'?
he wondered, and then his hand cupped her hips and she broke their kiss to sigh and arch her back, and he didn't care about anything but her, about them, about now.

She kissed his neck, his chest, her fingers moving down his shirt from button
undone
down to button
undone
down to button. His hand was massive on her chest; her breasts were flat, barely a soft, wonderfully soft, precious soft mound, her nipple stiff through her blouse.

“
Hurry!
” she whispered.

Wes ripped her blouse open and she cried out. She wore no bra and her breasts were white, soft sweet puffs of white, her nipples crimson-brown circles, swollen like pencil erasers, and he brushed his fingers across them, bent, took one in his mouth. She gripped his shoulders, pulled him close. She stood on her toes and he lifted her off the ground, lifted her high, covering her breasts with kisses as she bent over him, her hair draped over his head, panting, her leg wrapping around him.

The chair.

Somehow they were in the armchair. She was pulling off his shirt, shrugging out of her torn blouse. His hands unzipped her jeans. She twisted away without breaking their kiss, stood beside the chair as he pulled her jeans down, stepping out of them, kissing him as she hooked her thumb in her panties, pulled them off. He was half out of the chair, her hands undoing his belt, his button, his zipper. He shoved his pants and shorts off, kicked away his shoes; reached for her, but she pushed him back into the chair. Kissed him, his cheek, his chest, his flat stomach. She took him hard in her mouth and licked him and made him wet, slick. Again he reached for her, and she looked up, kissed him deeply. Pulled him out of the chair. Down. To the floor.