The Most Dangerous Thing (25 page)

That’s not exactly true. But she suddenly feels generous toward Mickey, wants to balance the scales of her own mind, where she’s been running her daughter down.

“You’ll have to introduce us when she comes to visit.”

That’ll be the day,
Rita thinks, going back to her teakettle, the jar of Folgers, restarting her morning.
What did I do, Mickey? I know I wasn’t perfect, not by a mile, but if Joey can forgive me, why can’t you?
The difference, she thinks, is that Joey is a parent. He gets it, he knows how high one’s hopes and aspirations are—and how awful it is to confront the gap between the parent you want to be and the parent you are. Maybe she shouldn’t have had kids, but where would Mickey be then? Would she rather not exist at all? Rita, for all her aches and pains, for all her mistakes, thinks life is a hoot. She’d do it all over again, and the exact same way, knowing full well where she’s headed.

Coffee in one cramped, crabbed hand, she shuffles to the living room to watch the news, smoke another cigarette.

Chapter Thirty-three

G
wen has
met many people who hate journalists—they announce it happily, proudly, often at
cocktail parties where she has just been introduced—but none quite as
vociferously as the private detective who tried to contact Go-Go in the weeks
before his death. Tess Monaghan has refused to return Gwen’s calls and didn’t
even acknowledge e-mails sent to the bare-bones Web site she maintains. After
several days, she finally sent back a terse note:

I don’t talk to
reporters.

Gwen wrote back, under her personal e-mail
:

I’m not approaching you
as a journalist, but as a friend of Gordon Halloran, who died in what may
well be a suicide committed after you tried to contact him, wreaking not a
little havoc in his life.

Another day went by before she received this
e-mail:

My office, 2
p.m.

The office is in Butchers Hill, less than a mile
from the magazine’s headquarters, yet worlds away in a sense. While Butchers
Hill caught a whiff of the go-go real estate boom of the century’s first decade,
it is nothing like the glass canyon where Gwen’s office is located. It has
retained its human scale, tucking new restaurants and shops into old rowhouses.
Tess Monaghan’s office, which was virtually unmarked, sits two blocks from
Patterson Park.

“It’s open,” a woman’s voice calls out. Working
behind an unlocked door seems a little casual for this neighborhood, even during
the daytime. But as Gwen enters, she is immediately inspected by two large dogs,
a greyhound and a Doberman, and a jumpier, miniature version of the greyhound.
They circle and sniff her, apparently with satisfactory results, as they then
return to the sofa, where they arrange themselves in an overlapping lump. Tess
Monaghan, sitting behind her desk, doesn’t rise at all, but she has good reason:
she is holding a baby, who is spitting up on her shoulder.

“Way to miss the burp cloth, Scout,” she says,
clearly unperturbed by the fountain of curdy white liquid that trails down her
sleeve.

“He’s adorable,” Gwen says, making conversation.
She can’t really see much but the dark hair. She doesn’t have any real
experience with infants. Annabelle was eight months when they met her in a
Beijing hotel.

“She.”

“I thought you said scout?”

“That’s her name. Her middle name.” Tess Monaghan
has a manner of speaking that makes questions seem not only unnecessary but also
rude. The things that Gwen might normally ask—from
To Kill
a Mockingbird
? Why do you use her middle name? How old?—die on her
tongue.

“I don’t normally bring her to the office,” Tess
says. “We had a child care crisis today and I didn’t want to cancel on you.”

“No one has to explain child care crises to me.
Most of my employees are working moms. She’s so tiny, but—” Gwen stops, not
wanting to comment on a stranger’s appearance, but this woman looks pretty fit
for having had a baby recently.

“She was really early. She’s technically almost
five months old, but if she had been on time, she’d be barely three months.”
Again, it is somehow clear there are to be no follow-up questions. “So, Gordon
Halloran. Just to be sure we are on the same page—I am speaking to you
off-the-record and this is not for anything you might write, ever, on any
subject.”

“Right.”

“And by off-the-record, we both agree that means
nothing I say is to appear in print, attached to my name or to an unnamed
source?”

“I’m not here as a journalist.”

“Would you be willing to sign something to that
effect?”

“Sure,” Gwen says. “After it was reviewed by my
attorney.”

Tess smiles. “Fair enough. I just have to be super
careful.”

“Were you burned by a journalist?”

“Worse. I was one. Your magazine did once put me in
your hot singles issue, when I was neither single nor really all that hot.
Although now when I see photos of myself from back then—only a few years ago—I
think I look magnificent.”

“I’m pretty sure that was before my time,” Gwen
says, then blushes. She was trying to reference the magazine, not the issue of
Tess Monaghan’s looks, which merit the not-quite-compliment of handsome. Strong
features, hair pulled back in a ponytail, a fresh-scrubbed face. “We still do
the singles issue—it sells very well, and we make a bucketload on the
advertising—but I’ve tried to add some serious journalism to the mix.”

“I’ve noticed. That’s why I don’t want to talk to
you about Gordon Halloran in any kind of professional capacity. Besides, there’s
not much I can tell you. I’ve spoken to my client. My client prefers to remain
anonymous.”

Shit. That doesn’t assuage Gwen’s conscience in the
least.

“Could I have any nonidentifying information about
your client?”

“Such as?”

“Age, gender, place of residence. Race.” If the
client isn’t African American, there’s little chance that one of Chicken
George’s relatives has hired Tess Monaghan.

“I can ask. But my client is pretty paranoid. And
unnerved by Gordon Halloran’s death. As am I, since you told me it might be a
suicide. The news reports last month didn’t say that. At my discretion, I
haven’t passed that information along to my client yet, but I will. It—” She
pauses. “It complicates things for us, and I’m afraid it will make my client,
who is a very nice person, feel quite bad. Are you sure?”

“It’s unclear,” Gwen says truthfully, not wanting
to admit that she guilted the PI into this meeting. “It will probably always be
unclear. He had been drinking after several months of sobriety. He drove into
the concrete barrier at the foot of I-70, where it dead-ends into the
park-and-ride. He was speeding, but he was always a reckless, fearless person.
He could have been playing some silly game, misjudged the end of the
highway.”

Tess Monaghan shifted the baby on her shoulder.
Annabelle had been tiny, too, for her age. Still was. But Gwen had forgotten how
alien young babies look, with their comically smushed faces and toothless
smiles.

The detective says: “But he was a regular at
AA.”

“Was. He didn’t go to the meeting that night.”

“Right.”

“Right—wait, how do you know that? I said only that
he was sober.”

“One of my employees was attending those
meetings.”

“That’s
horrible
.”
Heedless of the lie she had told to gain this audience, Gwen is genuinely
appalled. “The whole point of twelve-step programs is to provide people with a
safe place to unburden their hearts. It’s a—desecration to send a spy
there.”

Tess surprises her by nodding. “I wasn’t wild about
it. I’m not wild about a lot of the things I do. But my client—well, my client
is an honorable person who has a right to set the record straight on a matter
that goes to the heart of my client’s very being. There was a possibility that
Gordon Halloran was someone who could help do that. I sent someone into the
meeting to see if he ever spoke about certain events in his past, if he
contradicted what my client was telling me.”

“And—?” Gwen is shocked at how nervous she feels
and hopes that Tess Monaghan can’t tell. It’s like driving down the road,
glimpsing a cop in one’s rearview mirror and starting to shake despite being
within the speed limit. No, it’s not like that, because Gwen is not without
blame.

“He never spoke at all, not during the meetings. He
was a little more open during smoke breaks.” Tess Monaghan laughs. “My poor
partner, who hates cigarettes, took to smoking clove cigarettes and now has a
bit of a penchant for them. Still, he talked only of his family, his wife and
his daughters, how he was doing this for them.”

“It’s your messages to him that got him kicked out
of the house,” Gwen says, eager to shift blame, to make someone else feel as
twitchy and uncomfortable as she feels. “Which is probably why he started
drinking again. And died.”

Tess Monaghan studies her intently. “Do you believe
that? That’s not a rhetorical question.”

“Not exactly,” Gwen admits.

“You were attempting leverage, to guilt me into
telling you things I just can’t tell you. I might do the same thing in your
position. But please understand, I am working with an attorney—a very
high-powered one, not my usual kind of gig. I have to respect the client’s
wishes or I’m in violation of the agreement I signed, and this lawyer will come
down on me like a ton of bricks if I do that. He’s a prick that way.”

“So why are you in business with him?”

The baby emits a comically large burp, delighting
her mother. “The client’s a sweetheart. And the circumstances—I almost wish I
could speak of them because it’s darn fascinating.” She laughs again, this time
at herself. “Darn! As if this lump in my arm would be shocked by my old
vocabulary, but I really have trouble cursing in front of her. Let’s just say my
client is that rare person who’s interested in justice.”

Again Gwen is feeling far from comforted.

“Can you tell me anything?”

Tess thinks for a moment. “The client lives quite
far away. New Mexico. I’m willing to tell you that one detail so you’ll
understand it’s not someone you can find.”

“At what time in his life did Go-Go know this
person?”

Tess gazes at the ceiling, absentmindedly places
her lips against her daughter’s temple. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that
Gordon
did
know this person. Or that he didn’t. When
I finally spoke to Gordon—”

“You spoke to him? His wife thought—”

“I didn’t stop trying to speak to Gordon after he
moved out, although I didn’t realize my calls had anything to do with that. And
he affirmed what I believed and what my client believes. But now he’s dead and
all I have are my notes from that brief conversation, and my notes—they’re not
enough.”

“Enough?”

“They’re not proof of anything. I will say this
much: I think my client was right in assessing Gordon’s character.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s essentially an honest person and has a hard
time carrying secrets. He very much wanted to do the right thing. Look, my
investigation is ongoing.” Gwen feels another flush of panic. “That’s why I have
to be reserved about it. And any media attention, the barest whiff, would have
horrible repercussions. You can’t imagine.”

Gwen can, though.

Tess Monaghan walks her to the door. It’s cool for
April, and she cups a hand protectively over the baby’s scalp. “I worry about
her immune system because she was a preemie. I make her wear hats to guard from
cold, no matter how balmy it is, overdress her. Like all women, I have become my
mother.”

Only Gwen hasn’t. Her mother never would have left
her, under any pretext, not when she was Annabelle’s age. Her mother waited
until Gwen was a teenager before she even dared to stake out a life of her own,
through her painting. And by then Tally had so little time left. Would she
approve or disapprove of Gwen as a parent? Could Gwen ever have lived up to her
example—the well-kept house, the perfect meals? No, she runs a magazine for
those who aspire, as she does, to be like her mother—effortlessly stylish,
abreast of things. Gwen does a fair imitation of Tally, but it requires
mountains of effort. Perhaps her mother put in just as much effort. Perhaps
beneath the sweet, serene surface she also roiled with self-imprecations and
disappointments. Still, she never let Gwen see that, whereas Gwen already has
exposed her much younger daughter to a world of doubt.

Gwen’s thoughts are derailed by the squeal of
brakes, a small but undeniable crash: an MTA bus has managed to stop before
hitting the van that is blocking the street, but a Toyota Corolla behind the bus
hasn’t been as fortunate, plowing into it. And now people are filing out into
the street, but only one or two people are peering at the Toyota’s driver, who
appears unhurt if dazed. No, most of the people are trying to get
on
the bus, prying open the doors, while the bus
driver shouts at them to stop. Tess Monaghan laughs so hard that her baby
daughter wobbles on her shoulder.

“This is why MTA buses have cameras,” she tells a
mystified Gwen. “Whenever there’s an accident, people try to say they were on
the bus in order to file a claim. And it’s why,” she says over her shoulder,
retreating back into the tiled vestibule, “that I have a thriving business.
People are always looking for an angle, another pocket to pick.”

Walking to her car, Gwen is briefly entranced by
the insight that Tess has just handed her, wonders if there’s a feature in it
for the magazine. But then she thinks about the larger meaning of Tess’s words.
Another pocket to pick
. If Chicken George’s
relatives wanted to file a wrongful death suit against someone, then Gwen’s
pockets—actually Karl’s—would be the deepest. Can she be sued under such
circumstances? Could any of them? What if she goes ahead and divorces Karl? Does
that make her more vulnerable or less?

Yet it would be a relief if money is all that
someone wants from them. Money always can be found, some way, somehow. If
someone bears a grudge toward them, if someone knows that they left a man to
die—money will be the least of their problems.