The Prudence of the Flesh (22 page)

“By the way, Cy, Pippen left a message for you.”

Phil found a note and handed it to Cy. It read like a telegram.

“Tests are in. Positive.”

On the day they discovered the body, after Fred had made the 911 call, he and Gloria had driven away, not speaking until they were a mile from the parking area. Gloria's horror had diminished enough for her to wonder what the appropriate reaction to
this dreadful event should be. For several days, she had been enjoying the sensation of being fought over by two men.

Ned, after being laid out by Fred, had gone off to nurse his injured pride, but that night he had called. “I want to talk with you.”

“We're talking.” Gloria got comfortable, preparing to enjoy this.

Ned's voice trembled with anger. “Who was that bastard who attacked me?”

“A friend of mine. I think you attacked him first, Ned. He was only defending himself.”

“I'm coming over.”

“There's no point in that, Ned. Maddie and I are going out to dinner.”

“I'll come along. I want to talk to her, too.”

Having a witness to Ned's jealousy appealed. “Maybe I should call Fred and ask him along.”

“He's the man who attacked me in front of your house, isn't he?”

Gloria still could not believe what she had seen Fred do.

“How in the world did you do to him what you did?” she had asked him.

“It's a simple maneuver. I have a black belt, you know,” Pasquali replied.

“How would I know that?”

“Now you do. He hasn't bothered you since, has he?”

“Not since you've been so attentive.”

He put out his hand and she took it.

She had also told Maddie about the way Fred had handled Ned Bunting when he threatened him in front of her house.

“Mr. Pasquali?”

“It was over before it began. He took Ned's hand and suddenly, whoops, Ned was flat on his back on the lawn.”

“I would never have believed it,” Madeline said.

Since he had insisted, Gloria had told Ned where she and Maddie were dining, the Great Wall. The helpings there were enormous. Whenever she ate there, Gloria brought two-thirds of what she had ordered home in Styrofoam containers, enough for several solitary meals.

They were already in their booth when Ned arrived, weaving among the tables like a man with a mission. He slid into the booth beside Madeline.

“We've already ordered, Ned.” He seemed to have to remind himself he was in a restaurant. Maddie was studying him for signs of injury. “Gloria tells me you've met my boss.”

“Have I?”

“Mr. Pasquali.”

“The black belt,” Gloria added.

“I have a good mind to bring charges against him, for assault.”

“No one would blame you.”

“You're my witness.”

“Oh, I couldn't do that to Fred.”

“Damn Fred!”

The waitress came, and he ordered shrimp fried rice. They would all drink hot tea.

The interruption enabled Ned to change the subject. He hunched toward Maddie. “Do you still have cold feet?”

Gloria laughed. “I had no idea you two knew one another so well.”

Ned growled. To Maddie, he said, “I have drafted the story about Barrett.”

“I don't want any more publicity.”

Ned threw himself back. He glared at Maddie, and then his manner softened. “Things have gone too far. It's no longer yours to decide. And it's no longer your word against his. Tests can be made that will show that he is the father of your child.”

“But what if he isn't?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because he isn't.”

“But . . .” Ned leaned forward, then sat back. “Tuttle found the records. It's a public matter.”

“All those records prove is that he was of help to me in a very difficult period. You're the one who assumed it had another meaning.”

“I assumed! You're the one that told the chancery office Barrett had abused you. Why would you do that if it hadn't happened?”

Madeline looked at Gloria. “We thought I had suppressed the memory.”

Ned turned to Gloria. “She's as much as saying that you put the idea into her head.”

“It sounds like you're the one putting ideas in people's heads.”

Still, Gloria sympathized with Ned. After all, she was the one who had told him about Maddie, arranged for them to meet, and encouraged him to write about it. Then she remembered.

“That book you gave me? By Harry Austin? Tell him, Maddie.”

“Harry Austin is a very prolific writer of trivial fiction, which is enormously popular.”

“And you're not Harry Austin,” Gloria said. “The library copies have the dust jackets, and his picture is on them.”

“It was just a joke.”

“That you're a writer?”

That was the unkindest cut of all. He slid out of the booth, rose to his full height, and looked down at Gloria as he had looked at her from the center aisle of St. Bavo's when she was seated in a pew—but the luster he'd had was dimmed.

“You, too, Gloria?”

And he left. Their orders came, and Gloria told the waitress to put Ned's in a Styrofoam box. With what she would take home of her own order, she would eat Chinese for a week.

Now, with Ned permanently out of the picture, she needed to talk to Fred. It had been a full day since they had agreed not to see one another for a time. When he didn't answer the phone in his office, she dialed again and asked for Maddie.

“Gloria, they just arrested Pasquali. The police marched him out the door.”

Gloria listened patiently while Maddie developed her theory: Her complaints about the library computers were finally getting some results. Gloria thought otherwise. Ned must have brought charges against Fred, and they were being acted on posthumously. How weird.

Then that night on the news, she heard that Frederick Pasquali, head librarian of the Benjamin Harrison branch of the Fox River library, was taken in for questioning in the murder of Ned Bunting, a local writer.

When he was alone with Pasquali and had him seated at a table, Tuttle took off his hat, sat across from him, then put his hat on again. “Give me a dollar.”

“What?”

“As a retainer. Then you're officially my client.”

Pasquali got out his wallet and threw a dollar bill on the table.

Tuttle scooped it up and transferred it to his hat with a practiced gesture. “Who recommended me?”

“Gloria Daley mentioned your name. It just popped into my head when the police were grilling me.”

“A fine woman. Now tell me what this is all about.”

Tuttle was used to representing clients whose guilt was certain, but in the case of Pasquali he had assumed he had a respectable citizen requiring his services. Head librarian of the Benjamin Harrison branch. How much more respectable than that could you get? He began taking notes as Pasquali spoke, but had him start over because his ballpoint pen seemed to be writing in invisible ink. He shook it, made a few squiggles, and got it flowing.
The first item was that Fred Pasquali had made the 911 call reporting the body of Ned Bunting in the river.

“That's no crime.”

“Crime! It was the act of a dutiful citizen.”

Tuttle liked that. “So you found the body.”

“Yes. I got out and walked down by the river and there it was.”

“You called and left the area.”

“Is that a crime?”

“Not that I know of. You were alone?”

“No, I was with someone.”

“Who?”

“I'd rather not say.”

Tuttle wiggled his nose and tapped it with his ballpoint. “That parking area is called lovers' lane.”

“I know that.”

“And you were with someone.”

“It was in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Time?”

“Three, a little after.”

Tuttle made a note of it. “And this other person knows you made the call to 911?”

“Of course.”

“Better tell me his name.”

“
His
name! It was a woman.”

“Gloria Daley?”

Pasquali lurched at the sound of the name. Tuttle felt that he had just pulled a Perry Mason. His elation was brief. He knew what Hamilton Burger would now spring on the jury. Tuttle had heard of Pasquali's laying out of Ned Bunting. Gloria had not been shy about telling the story of the two men vying for her affections.

“Jujitsu?” Tuttle had asked her, amused by the scene she described.

“I don't know what it's called, but you know what a big man Ned is. He made a threatening move and Fred just took his hand, flipped him, and laid him on the lawn.”

Fred Pasquali could not keep secret that it was Gloria Daley he had been with and that he had been seen decking his rival with a deft and practiced movement of the martial arts. Things were looking bad for Pasquali—and good for Tuttle. A client in this kind of doodoo would run up quite a bill before he was tried and convicted and sent off to Joliet.

“How did you know it was Gloria?”

Tuttle tapped his head with the ballpoint. He was beginning to look tattooed. “When we go back to Horvath, let me do the talking. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Like what?”

“Did you kill Ned Bunting?”

“I never killed anyone in my life!”

“You did rough him up, though, didn't you?”

Pasquali's expression made it clear that he realized it was Gloria who had told the story. He waved his hand. “That doesn't matter. Gloria was with me Wednesday afternoon. She knows what happened, or didn't happen, then.”

“She'll make a good witness,” Tuttle said ambiguously.

When they went at it in Cy Horvath's office, it became clear that the police knew what Pasquali had done to Ned Bunting in front of Gloria Daley's house. Agnes Lamb had called it in from the Benjamin Harrison branch, where she had heard it from Maddie.

Then the plastic sheet was brought in. It seemed similar to those Agnes had seen at the library, those Gloria had wrapped her paintings in when she brought them for hanging. The plastic threatened to play a similar role here. A search warrant had been obtained and a police tow truck had been sent to bring in Pasquali's automobile. Tuttle attempted to smile away the damning items that had been mentioned.

“We have a witness, Horvath.”

“His companion in lovers' lane?”

Pasquali began to say something, but Tuttle shut him off. “Her name is Gloria Daley. I suggest you talk with her and then let my client go.”

Instead Cy had a discussion with the prosecutor, Jacuzzi. It was a slack period, and the prosecutor loved to be in court. Besides that, he thought they had sufficient reason for an arraignment.

“Aren't you going to talk to Gloria Daley first?” Tuttle asked.

“We already have.”

Pasquali groaned.

So they went before a magistrate—Benny Jackson, deaf as a post—who officially decided to hold Frederick Pasquali under suspicion of having brought about the death of Ned Bunting.

“Will you set bail, Your Honor?”

“For a man accused of homicide?”

“He's not going anywhere. He wants to defend his good name. Mr. Pasquali is a librarian.”

“He sounds like some sort of gymnast to me.”

Still, bail was set, and Tuttle ushered his client out to his car. “Where do you want to go?”

“I'd like to just disappear.”

“That would be expensive.”

Pasquali asked Tuttle to drive him to the library, but on the way he changed his mind. “I'd better go home.”

“Good idea.”

“Wait, I have a better idea. Take me to Gloria.”