Random Hearts (16 page)

He reached over and opened the window, letting in the cold
air. She breathed deeply until she felt better.

Another car rolled into the lot, passed them, then moved to
the other side of the monument. Looking through the mirror she saw two heads
move toward each other, silhouetted against the white background. He raised his
eyes to the mirror.

"Cheating spouses," Edward said. "Last week
I might have said lovers."

"Last week I wouldn't have noticed. Or cared."

She saw the heads disengage and turn toward the rear of
their car to watch them.

"They must think we're doing the same thing," she
said.

"Why else would a couple come to this place"—he
held his wrist up—"at eleven A.M. on a weekday in winter?"

Through the rearview mirror they could see the people still
watching them. Finally the couple turned again, locking together.

"Obviously a common occurrence. We just weren't tuned
in," she said, still looking through the mirror. "Imagine the
pressure of going through life worrying about getting caught."

"It didn't seem to worry them."

Resetting the mirror, she turned to face him. In the stark
whiteness, his face was pale and his cheeks a trifle hollower than they had
been when she had first met him. Underneath his eyes were dark rings. She
wondered if he, too, saw signs like that in her. A sudden cramp gripped her
again, then passed.

"Edward," she said after a long pause.

"Yes?" A nerve palpitated in his jaw as he looked
out at the frozen Tidal Basin.

"I'm glad they died."

"Me, too."

She said nothing more, gunning the motor.

When Edward returned to the office, the Congressman and
most of the staff were out to lunch. Jan Peters sat at her desk reading a
newspaper and eating a sandwich.

"You okay?" she asked. There was no avoiding her
desk. From the moment he had arrived her scrutiny had been merciless.

"You should have taken more time," she had told
him that morning. That was before he and Congressman Holmes had had their
little chat. To the Congressman, time away from the office constituted a mortal
sin, whatever the circumstances. Not that Edward expected compassion, but the
Congressman could have dispensed with the syrupy sentiment, which was laughably
transparent. As they say, it went with the territory. Besides, what would he
have done with his day? He was not mourning Lily. If anything, he should be
mourning his own lost life, the end of his innocence. Even self-pity seemed
shallow. At least there was Vivien. Viv.

"The work will do you good, Eddie," the
Congressman had said, wearing the appropriate expression for such an occasion,
a look of earnest concern.

"Yes, I believe it will," Edward had agreed.

"I know it's rough."

How the hell would he know? Edward wondered. Before, it had
been easy to deal with hypocrisy, the little public lies and dissimulations
that were the idiom of the political trade. But now that they had spilled over
into his inner life, his real life, he could not bear it. A lie was a lie.
There were no little lies.

"If there's anything I can do..." the Congressman
had said, winding up the obligatory hearts and flowers and getting back to
business. He rattled off a string of suggestions for press releases and bills,
ideas to make public impact—his only real objective. Dutifully, Edward took
notes, illegible scrawls, but the activity gave him the look of sincere
interest.

"Exposure, Edward. That's the name of the game. A
steady drumbeat. Statewide exposure. Get the name out. As long as we've got the
frank, let's use it. It's a tenfold advantage over any challenger. Do you read
me?"

"Of course," Edward answered, offering a smile
with, he hoped, the light of devotion in his eyes. Lily would have done it better,
he thought bitterly. She had certainly proved her prowess on that score.

Vivien's deduction offered a stunning revelation. Mornings!
Perhaps every morning. It was humiliating. Yet it was odd how these crushing
events had sharpened the power of their deductive instincts. Too bad he would
have to forego the pleasures of revenge. He could not imagine how he might have
reacted to the revelation if Lily were alive. Was he capable of murder? And how
could she have lived with him under the same roof and gone through the motions
of intimacy, while living in a cocoon of hypocrisy and leading him through a
maze of falsehoods and contrivances?

He wondered if all this discovery would have the desired
effect on their lives, their future. Was it like cauterizing a wound? It
burned, but it did kill the unwholesome bacteria. The cure is in the knowledge.
This was essentially their purpose—to know more. There was no way to stop now.

But acquiring knowledge demanded ingenuity,
resourcefulness, and the kind of guile and cleverness that Orson and Lily had
displayed. Think like them! Be them. If the trail cooled, what then? He
remembered the keys. What did they unlock? Above all, they needed to know that,
needed to find their filthy rat's nest.

How did one begin? He remembered the police detective and
forced his memory to recall his name. Then he picked up the phone and dialed
police headquarters. Hadn't McCarthy found the key connection in the first
place?

"You'll have to speak up." The voice at the other
end was gruff, impatient, remarkably like Vinnie's.

"Sergeant McCarthy."

The voice became muffled, fading, inquiring elsewhere.
"Mac here?"

The pause was short, and the voice returned in force.

"He's off duty. Want to leave a message?"

He gave his name and number by rote, regretting it
instantly, then rationalizing. It was not as if he would be talking to a
stranger.

He sat in his office and stared at a blank page in his
typewriter. His thoughts were disjointed, like flashing lights. He felt
lightheaded, slightly foolish. All this is beyond my range of understanding, he
decided.

"Tell me how you feel," Vivien had demanded
earlier, just before he got out of the car. The shame of it had released a
blush of hot blood, blotching his skin with little red hives.

"Like a damned fool."

"Me, too," she had said, as if she knew how much
he needed her reassuring echo.

Jan Peters came in and she sat down.

"I think you've got lots of courage to start work so
soon after..." She paused respectfully. "Shows real class."

"Thank you," he said, typing "quick brown
fox" repetitively, feeling her eyes, watchful, mooning with mothering.

"I just want you to know you have a friend in old
Jan," she said in a throaty whisper.

"I appreciate that," he said, not looking up.

"Someone to confide in." She leaned over and
touched his arm. "I mean it, Edward."

He nodded, not wanting to create a scene.

"Remember that, Edward."

"I need lots of space now," he said, turning to
face her. He knew her offer was sincere.

"She was everything to you, wasn't she?"

"Just about."

It occurred to him that he must dissimulate, live the role
of the grieving husband. Only with Viv could he truly be himself.

"It's dangerous to let someone be everything."

He felt their office relationship disintegrating, and he
fought off the attempt at intimacy. Yet she was so utterly, undeniably female,
physically, symbolically as well, underscoring his pathetic ignorance about the
entire gender. Who are these people? He knew nothing about them, he decided,
and had learned nothing. The female as a species might have been Martians for
all he understood. Lifting his eyes, he inspected her. Perhaps she could
provide him with knowledge, insight. Dispel his ignorance.

"And you?" he asked. He felt like a babe on her
knee, a child to a mother.

"Me?" Her eyes flashed a predatory look.

"Have you many..." He paused, uncomfortable. He
wanted to say lovers. "Boyfriends?"

"More than a fair share," she answered, and her
brows knit suspiciously.

"Any of them in love with you?" It was, he knew,
unthinkable to ask such a question.

"I hope most of them." She giggled with girlish
pride.

"And you?"

"Me?" The attempt at coyness was transparent.
Learn from this, he urged himself. Trust nothing.

"I love them all."

"I'm serious."

She looked at him, pondering.

"You really are."

"I told you."

She seemed suddenly confused.

"All right, then. Nobody special."

"Ever?"

"What's come over you?"

"I want to know."

"Know what?"

"About women in love," he said, pressing. "I
want to know if there ever was anyone who moved you, moved you so profoundly
that your judgment became blind. Hurtful."

"Hurtful?" Her eyes were big saucers, fierce,
guarded, wary. "I never deliberately hurt anybody," she protested.

He could tell he had gotten to her soft center. She grew
silent, tossing her hair with a motion of her head. Then the belligerence
ebbed.

"Yes," she said, "I was moved once. For him
I would have done anything. I mean anything. Given myself to him, body and
soul. I would have died for him. That's what it's all about."

She stood up. Her pose of sexuality vanished as she
exhibited her vulnerability. Actually, he decided, he liked her better this
way.

"And what happened?"

She looked at him, her lower lip trembling. She seemed to
be gathering the shreds of a flimsy pride. "Why do you want to know?"

"I've been damned nosy," he said. "You don't
have to say. I'm just unstrung."

That part was true. Turning away, he looked out the window.
But, oddly eager to show her wounds, she did not wait the decent interval to
recover. They either tell too much or not enough, he observed, wondering if
there was some universal truth in that. Lily had deliberately kept him in
ignorance.

"It was the sweetest pain I ever felt. Problem is,
it's like fire: very hot when it's going, cold when it runs out of fuel. They
say such things can come only once in a lifetime, if ever. At least I had that.
I've got no regrets."

He thought about what she had said. Had he ever been
willing to die for anybody? Even Lily? Never. He was sure of that.

He felt her watching him, dreading any counter inquiries
from her. None came. Perhaps she has no need to know about me. Maybe men are no
mystery to her.

She ambled off.

The Congressman returned to the office in the late
afternoon. He was irritable and annoyed. All outward concern for Edward's
emotional state had vanished.

Edward handed the Congressman Harvey Mills's press release.

"It stinks," he snapped, frowning.

"I'll spruce it up before I let it go."

"There's a lot more that needs sprucing up here,"
the Congressman said, swiveling back in his chair and picking up the phone.

I may not be a good judge of women, Edward thought, but I
know this son of a bitch.

As always, he stayed late, lifting his head from his
typewriter to say good night to the rest of the staff, who left one by one.
Even the Congressman poked his head into his office.

"It'll do you good," he called, placating him.
"Get us back on the track." When he had gone, Edward continued to
stare at his typewriter. He had not turned the release back to Harvey Mills for
a rewrite and hadn't the faintest idea how to "spruce it up."

Harvey Mills came in. "All right if I check out?"
he asked. He looked neater than before. A haircut, that's it, Edward thought.
He wants my job. It wasn't paranoia, merely the recognition of a fact. So, his
instincts had sharpened. It was a comforting thought. He seemed to have lost
all sense of command over himself, over others. There's insight for you, he
told himself.

"Sure, Harvey," he said.

"The old man like the release?"

"Loved it. Gets out first thing in the morning."

It would go as is. The Congressman rarely looked at things
again, trusting Edward to get it right.

Jan came in again, freshly made-up. She was not wearing her
coat and had not come in to say good night. He realized suddenly that his
earlier conversation had set up an intimacy he had not intended.

"Buy you a drink?" she asked, reassembled now,
her full body puffed to its outer limits. For a moment he contemplated it
seriously, assailed by a flash of die old guilt.

"She's gone, Edward," Jan said.

"Gone?"

Actually, he was thinking of Viv, a new ripple for his
conscience. It confused him momentarily.

The phone rang. He picked up the receiver and swiveled away
from her. McCarthy's voice crackled over the background noises.

"There was something I wanted to talk to you
about," Edward said.

"Sure."

In the pause, the noises grew louder.

"I'm at The Dubliner, across from Union Station. You
know it?"

It wasn't far. He could cut across the park in front of the
Capitol. Pondering, he swiveled and looked at Jan again, still offering
herself. No, he decided, she wasn't part of it.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he said.

"Maybe sometime." Jan shrugged, unable to conceal
her disappointment.

From a booth in the rear, McCarthy watched Edward squint
into layers of smoke and turn his head in a slow arc. The damages were showing
now, he thought. The poor bastard had bitten the apple. McCarthy upended his
shot glass of Scotch and chased it with a flat beer, just as Edward slid into
the booth.

"What's your poison?"

He caught the man's indifference to his offer, the
indifference of shock. Like a punch-drunk fighter. So the real world had
settled back in, but it was not the original reality. Everything had changed.

"Same as you." Edward shrugged. Another symptom.
Decisions were impossible, painful. Judgment had ceased. The man was up shit's
creek without a paddle.

A blowzy waitress brought shot glasses of Scotch and beer
chasers. As Edward observed the scene, McCarthy could see it was, for his
visitor, a foreign world.

"The old ethnic tie," McCarthy said. "We
Irish always feel uprooted. That's why we need each other."

Edward followed his gaze. "Like the Italians," he
said. "My wife was one."

"Wops. Kikes. Niggers. Spics. Chinks. The family of
man. At least with your own kind you know where you stand."

"Do you?"

The man sighed and watched the shot glass, his fingers
caressing a metal ashtray. Brooding, McCarthy thought. Understandably. The
man's world had closed in on him. Hell, I did what I could for the sad son of a
bitch.

"Make peace with it, man," McCarthy said,
knocking back his drink, wiping his lips with his sleeve, then chasing it down
with a swallow of beer and wiping again.

"I'm doing okay," Edward said defensively.

He didn't look it. McCarthy wondered what the man wanted,
but he did not push. It would come. After all, they shared secrets. Not all,
but enough to bond them. The Simpson woman was tougher, he decided. Burned the
bastard. He liked that. Women were tougher, meaner. They always let men on the
ropes. Like Billie. Let your guard down once, and they're all over you,
chopping away.

While waiting, McCarthy had debated a position. He could
dispense trite advice which would be utterly worthless, or he could tell him
what he had learned, that a woman's betrayal had no known cure. He would find
that out. Everything depended on trust. When trust went out, out went the
props. The best you could do was, like him, hold yourself together and wait for
the ice wagon.

You should thank me—he looked silently at the brooding
man—for easing the pain a bit. Too much knowledge was the enemy. "Timmy's
yours," Billie had pleaded on her knees in the motel room, making the sign
of the cross across her bare breasts as if that were proof positive.
"Timmy's his." Jim sat there on the bed, mute, head in his hands,
hunched to hide his obscene nakedness. Yet even then, the real enemy was the
woman—Billie. Jim, like him, was just an instrument. A dick. He had been dead
certain then about Timmy's ancestry, and although the certainty had faded with
time, the doubt lingered, spoiling it all forever. To make it worse, he was her
image: blue eyes, fair skin, ginger hair, slight, small-boned. Wasn't a thing
about him that hinted of himself. Or Jim. As if he had deliberately played on
them both the trick of being created in her image.

"I've got some ideas that are bothering me,"
Edward said, clearing his throat.

Who hasn't? McCarthy chuckled to himself. "I did you a
favor, pal. Leave it alone," McCarthy said.

"You don't really think about these things until
later."

"That's the way it is."

"Things keep coming up."

"I kept it between us, didn't I?" Edward nodded,
but McCarthy could not detect real gratitude. "That lawyer would have
blown it out of all proportion. Wouldn't have done anyone any good. Fucking lawyers.
Then the newspapers would have had it. Better for everyone. For her, too. And
the kid."

McCarthy looked around for the waitress and held up two
fingers, scowling at Edward who had not touched his drink.

"Do you good," McCarthy ordered, motioning with
his eyes.

Obeying, Edward lifted his drink with shaking fingers. He
took it in one gulp, gagged, and washed it down quickly with the beer, leaving
a foamy mustache. You'd be taking doubles if I had told you the rest, McCarthy
thought.

"I buried her yesterday," Edward said when he had
caught his breath.

"Best place for 'em," McCarthy said, hearing his
speech slur and feeling the cold grip of anger tighten. Drink could make him
cruel. What in hell did this bastard want?

"We've been comparing notes, Mrs. Simpson and I,"
Davis blurted.

"Have you?"

"We have the keys. All we need is the place."

"Need?"

"Well, we believe," Edward stammered, "that
it's important to know as much as we can."

"What will that prove?"

Edward ignored the question. "The point is, how does
one go about matching keys to locks?"

McCarthy smiled. "They don't. Unless they're
registered like Medeco. Or there's an army out there sticking keys in locks—say
battalion-size. There are hundreds of thousands of doors."

The waitress brought two more shots. McCarthy stared at
them in their wet circles, resisting. This time it was Edward who reached first
for the shot glass, knocking it back, not gagging. He did not chase it down
with the beer.

"Loose ends gnaw at you," Edward said.

"Is the Pope a Catholic? That's my bag."

"We've been discussing it a lot. Putting it together.
They're only theories, only speculations, you understand." The color had
risen in his cheeks, and his eyes were no longer shifting but were probing now.
The man barely took a breath. "Look, we're both in the same boat, Mrs.
Simpson and I. It hit us right in our guts. I mean, how do you explain it to
yourself, no less to each other? We didn't know it was happening. We really
didn't know. You can't blame us for trying to figure it out. There are things
we should know. We
must
know."

McCarthy, saying nothing, looked at his drink, salivated,
but held back, sitting on his hands. He began to perspire under his arms. He
watched Edward swallow with difficulty, the Adam's apple bobbing in his neck.
It'll only bring more worthless pain, McCarthy thought.

"So the two of you are piecing it all together,"
McCarthy said, knowing now that his warnings were for naught.

"Just trying to understand," Edward said.
"Now, about the keys."

"Narrow the options. Look for accessibility,
convenience. Time frame."

"We think they met in the mornings."

"Do you?"

"Someplace convenient to both our places."

"In between."

Despite himself, McCarthy was warming to the idea.
"Never could resist a mystery." He reached for the shot glass,
upended it, chased it with the beer, and ordered two more. Then he took out a
pen and opened a cocktail napkin.

"Draw a circle. Say, fifteen minutes from both places.
Then ten minutes. Then five. Divide the circles into manageable segments. Then
work your way through the segments lock by lock. Look for Yales. Reject the
others."

"This could take weeks, months."

"You asked me how. What the fuck's the difference? You
got a lifetime."

"No other way?"

"You could find the damned address among their
effects."

"We've looked."

"Then you missed it."

"We were very thorough."

"There's always something."

"We're not professionals." Edward hesitated.
"They were the hares. We are just dumb foxes."

"You can say that again."

The waitress came again with two more drinks. Edward
declined his, and McCarthy drank them both.

"And when you find it?"

"We'll take it as it comes."

"You don't know nothin', do you?" McCarthy felt
his anger swelling.

"If it happened to you, you'd understand," Edward
said.

"The barn door's closed. It's over. Leave it alone.
The more you know, the more you'll shit. Accept it. They worked you over, and
they got theirs. Dumb fate did your work for you. There are millions out there
who'd like it done like that. Bam! Crash! Down the tube!"

"You don't understand."

He was seeing red now. "You think they were playing
potsy? They were fucking you over!" He felt a howl come roaring out of his
chest. "They didn't like the home cookin'. Not hers or yours. Don't talk
to me about lost trust, commitment, relationships, honesty. When I was a kid,
they talked about honor. Shit! You know what you're gonna find in that place?
One bed and ten thousand dirty pictures and sheets stained with a million lost
kids." He belched. "Except one." Hell, he had tried to do this
fellow a favor, but he wouldn't leave it alone. McCarthy felt the rising tide
of cruelty. "You've already been hit by a semi. You're about to get hit by
a tank."

A frown furrowed Edward's forehead.

Poor bastard, McCarthy thought. Why the hell should he escape
the full brunt of it? Share the pain, boys.

"She was pregnant."

"Pregnant?"

The man turned ashen and fell against the back of the booth
as if he had been pushed. McCarthy's anger drained.

"Sit next to an Irishman in his cups, and he thinks
you're a priest."

He watched as the man took deep breaths, puckering his
lips. McCarthy was sobering now, the damage done.

"So," he said, cooling. "The more you know,
the more it helps."

"Why...?" Edward began.

"Loose ends." He shrugged. "I told you I
don't like mysteries. The stewardess was also pregnant. It gave me an idea. The
Medical Examiner ran the test just before we shipped her. A lucky hunch. Hell,
it was only the day before yesterday. I might have called you." In a pig's
ass, he thought. He got up unsteadily. Case closed. Enough for one evening.

"And the ends? Are they still loose?"

"For you. Not for me. Figure it out."

He started to amble away, unsteadily. Edward came up behind
him.

"How long?" he demanded. McCarthy turned and
faced him.

"About six weeks. Tell you anything?"

The man swiveled on his heel, moving again.

"Don't blame me," he shouted after him. "I
didn't put the poison in the cup!"