Reversible Errors (49 page)

She held no illusions now. It would have maddened her if she'd lived a life isolated from power. But looking down the hill, she still revered the best of the place, the centeredness, the sense that you lived your life and tried to move half a step ahead, do more good than bad
,
and love somebody. The desire to reconnect with all that was part of what inspired the hour she spent in church each week where her heart almost flew from her body straight to God. Those babies she'd never had were there in church, unmet strangers, like the lover you figured was waiting for you somewhere in the world when you were thirteen. The future. The life of her spirit. In prayer, she still reached toward them as lovingly as she had for years in dreams. With the tingle that arose from Larry's presence in the quiet house she had a sudden sense of the wholeness that might have been possible in the love of a man.

He was waiting for her in an add-on family room at the back of the house. Originally, it had been done cheaply, and Larry said he'd tried to dress it up with nice carpeting. Almost to rebuff the strength of what she'd just been feeling, she returned to business.

"Larry, it's time to throw all this stuff about Erno and Collins on the table. I'm going to write Arthur a letter tomorrow."

He asked what she knew he would: "Why?"

"Because they're clearly desperate to find Faro. And it's a capital case, Larry, and I shouldn't hide stuff when I know it's material to them."

"Material?"

"Larry, I'm clueless about exactly what all this means and so are you. But bottom line, Collins was stealing tickets with Luisa, right? Don't you think that has something to do with why he knew enough to dime out Gandolph?"

"Muriel, sure as you're standing here, Arthur'll be in court trying to open everything up again. You know that. He'll be screaming about giving Collins immunity."

"That's his job, Larry. That doesn't mean he gets his way. The Court of Appeals will never force me to grant immunity. But I want to lay it all out for Arthur-Collins being Faro, and the shooting. And what Collins told you in Atlanta, too. I should have disclosed that a while ago, but I can act like it just dawned on me."

Larry stood still with his eyes closed, simmering a little in the stupidity of the law.

"We don't even know 100 percent that Collins is Faro," he finally said.

"Come on, Larry."

"Seriously. Let me get back to Dickerman, see if he gets a fingerprint off the gun. Then maybe we'll know it's Collins for sure."

"Call Dickerman. Tell him it's back on and we need fast answers. But I can't wait to tell Arthur. The longer we hesitate, the louder he'll moan about me withholding favorable evidence. Arthur has a few more days to file one last motion for reconsideration in the Court of Appeals, and I want to be able to say we got him this information in a timely way, as soon as we saw any relationship to the events surrounding the murders. That way he gets a clean final shot and the Court then can tell him they've considered everything, and it's over."

"Christ, Muriel."

"It's just the last hurdle, Larry."

"Oh," he said, "how many times do we have to win this fucking case? Sometimes I want to go down to Rudyard and shoot Rommy myself, just to put an end to all of this crap."

"Maybe that's our fault. Maybe something's keeping us from putting an end to it." She, of course, knew what 'something' was and so did he, but that, apparently, was part of the crap he wanted over and done with. Stepping closer, she lifted her hand to his shoulder. "Larry, trust me on this. It'll come out okay."

That was just proving his point, though. The Point. The case never was about the victim, or the defendant, or even what happened. Not really. For the cop and the lawyer and the judge you could never keep it from being about you. And in this case, them. Averted from her, Larry was taut in frustration.

"Really, Larry," she said. "If you didn't want to do anything about this, why go down to Ike's? Why bother calling me?"

He cast his gaze down, but finally reached up and clapped the back of her hand as a mode of assent. Even contact so brief swept her into the tide between them. She peered up at him with a brimming look, one that recognized damage and time. Then she squeezed his shoulder again and, with whatever reluctance, let go. She giggled an instant later when she saw her hand.

"What?" Larry asked.

She lifted her palm toward him, whitened all the way across by a layer of plaster dust.

"You left your mark, Larry." "Did I?"

"Pillar of salt," she said.

His blue eyes shifted for a second, as he went after the reference.

"What was it that gal did wrong?"

"Looked backwards," Muriel answered with a wrinkled smile.

"Yeah."

Much as she'd promised herself in Atlanta not to be the first across the boundary line, she knew she wasn't going to stop. It didn't matter if it was auld lang syne or stardust or libido-she wanted Larry. Whatever bell he'd sounded had never been rung by anyone else. A decade ago, she hadn't seen it, but their relationship was, in large part, an altar to her, an appreciation of her power. It was unique in that way. Larry knew the strongest in her and, unlike Rod or Talmadge, didn't cherish it for his own use. He just wanted peace on their own terms, a full-blooded companionship, hard-nosed but not hardhearted, two for the world. She had forsaken an enormous opportunity years ago, and knowing that, she needed to be sure there was no chance today. She held up her palm.

"Is this God's way of telling me to keep my hands to myself, Larry?"

"I don't know about that, Muriel. I don't get much direct communication."

"But that's how you want it, right? Bygones as bygones?"

He took a long time.

"I don't know what I want, Muriel, to tell you the truth. I know one thing. I don't care to go back on the suicide watch."

"So where does that put you? You're saying no?"

He smiled faintly. "Guys aren't supposed to say no."

"It's just a word, Larry." She looked again at her palm. The pale dust clung on the high points, leaving the creases distinct. The love- line and the lifeline that the fortune-tellers read were marked as clearly as rivers on a map. Then she reached up and found the ver
y s
pot on his shoulder where a vague positive image of her hand had been left behind.

the thought that he could resist passed through Larrys mind as nothing more than an abstraction. The essence of Muriel was having her way. And as always, she had the jump on him. Why call her, she'd asked, if he wanted her to do nothing? He'd brought her here. And now she was making it as easy as possible. Little and fearless, she rose to her toes and placed one hand on his shoulder, bringing the other tenderly to his cheek, drawing him near.

After that, it had the desperation and speed of a caged bird hoping to fly. All that useless beating of wings, the smashing about. In the heat, there was a salty taste to her flesh, a smell, eventually, of blood that he was slow to identify. His heart pounded along in frightened spurts and it was, as a result, far briefer than he might have liked. And unexpectedly messy. She was just at the start or end of her period and had been urgent about having him inside her, as if she suspected he might think again.

She had ended up on top and clung to him afterwards as though he were a rock. The feeling of her resting there was far more satisfying than anything else. He searched her form with both hands and felt a desperate pang at how near it had remained in memory, the defined knobs in her spine, the ribs prominent as the black piano keys, the ripe turn of her behind, which he had always found the most becoming part of her anatomy. In the time since they'd split, he had wept only once, when his grandfather, the immigrant wheelwright, had died near the age of one hundred. Larry had been overwhelmed by how much harder life would have been for the old man's twenty-three children and grandchildren were it not for the blessing of his bravery in making the journey here. The example of a heroism that spread itself over so many lives bolstered Larry against any tearful mourning for his own sake now. But the safest harbor was humor.

"How am I going to explain to my guys why we have to clean a brand-new rug?"

"Go ahead," she said, "complain." Her small face perked up in front of him. At her collar, she'd worn a pin that, in their haste, had remained fastened, so that her dress, otherwise unbuttoned, flowed around her like a cloak. Her shoulders were sheathed with the filmy black polka-dot fabric, while her bare arms were crossed now under his throat.

"Are you sorry about this?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. I may be."

"Don't be."

"You're tougher than I am, Muriel."

"Not anymore."

"Yes, you are. At least, you know how to keep moving forward. When it comes to you, Muriel, I guess I can't."

"Larry. Don't you think I've missed you?"

"Consciously?"

"Come on, Larry."

"I mean it. You don't let yourself look back and see stuff. It's only hitting you now."

"What's that?"

"You should have married me."

Her blackish eyes were still; her small nose, decorated with tiny summer freckles, flared as she inhaled. They stared at one another, their faces only inches apart, until he could feel the strength of his conviction begin to wear her down. He could see then that she knew it already. But how do you walk back through the door at home, once you've said that out loud? And even so, he sensed the vaguest acknowledgment, a gesture with her eyes, before she again laid her head clown on his chest.

"You were married, Larry. You are."

"And just a cop," he answered.

He'd never had the gumption to swing this hard at her, not at close quarters. And she never would have taken it. He could feel her laboring to come to the new day.

"And just a cop," she said finally.

He could not really see her, but merely with his hand on her skin he could feel the pulse of emotion. She felt fragile, narrow and small, briefly returned to the truth of nature, and Larry, large as he was, surrounded her. Lying on the pale rug, he rocked her for quite some time, as if they were aboard a ship, tossed back and forth on the swells of the terrible sea of life.

Chapter
34

august 9, 2001

Former Acquaintanc
e a
t 8:00, Gillian waited for Arthur at a table at the Matehbook, sipping bubble water. He was almost certainly with Pamela. Their motion for reconsideration was due in the Court of Appeals soon.

In the last week, with the exception of their Tuesday night dinner with Susan, Gillian and Arthur had been out every night-a play, the symphony, three movies. Arthur was a man set free. Leaving the apartment relieved Arthur of his anxieties about Gandolph's case in which neither of them had found much new encouragement. When he was walking with her down the street, Arthur even exhibited a trace of macho swagger. Whatever. There was very little about Arthur she did not find endearing.

Across the room, Gillian felt a glance light on her. This was not an unaccustomed phenomenon-she was, after all, the notorious Gillian Sullivan -but when she peered that way a dark pretty woman, a few years younger than she, ventured the faintest smile. Not a lawyer.

Gillian knew that at once. From the woman's tony looks-she was wearing a silk, funnel-necked top they sold in the store for more than $300-Gillian might have thought she was a customer, but Gillian sensed that the memory under retrieval had far more dust on it than that. Then it returned in increments. Tina. Gillian did her best not to recoil, but it was only the fact that Arthur was probably on his way that allowed her to disregard an immediate impulse to flee.

They had never dealt in last names. This woman was solely Tina, poor little rich girl in a high-rise on the West Bank, who supported her habit by selling. The maid actually answered the door when Gillian came by to score. She had entered a unique society-junkies of the professional class. The manners were better and the danger less, but this milieu was nearly as porous as the street. People sank out of sight or into the depths, and Tina was gone abruptly. She had been busted. Terrified that she herself would be named, or had already been detected by a police surveillance of Tina, Gillian vowed to quit. But the drug now had first claim on everything inside her body. Like dealers in every trade, Tina had never introduced her to an alternative source. There was an actor from a local theater whom Gillian had seen going in and out several times. But it was too insane to call him. Thirty-six hours after her last fix, she donned a scarf and walked due west from the courthouse into the North End and copped on a street corner. In the event of arrest, she planned to say she was doing research for a sentencing, or on potential changes in the administration of drug cases. She had the good sense to approach another woman, a working girl in a leopard micro skirt and matching boots. Tou see Leon,' the girl told her, but looked Gillian over, shaking her head all the time, as she teetered between pity and reproof.

So, Tina. They stared at each other across a distance of forty feet, trying to make sense of the crazy turns of life and the burdens of the past, then Gillian broke eye contact first, pained almost to the point of laughter by the wisdom of her reluctance to be seen in public.