Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (22 page)

    "Where're you going?" the Judge called after me.

    "I've got an errand to run."

    "I hope it has something to do with this case."

    "As a matter of fact," I said, as I reached the door, "it does."

    Just as I got outside, I saw the black convertible. It was parked across the street and the blonde was in it, the blonde from a couple of years ago. A fantasy blonde - so cool, so fetching. Once she'd even sent me a photo of her sitting in the car. Who was she? What did she want? She pulled away. I wished I had time to hop in my own ragtop and follow her.

    

    

    I took the road this time instead of the river. When I got a quarter mile from the Conners manor house, I put the car behind a copse of scrub pines - though not very close, the way the pines weep sticky stuff over everything below - and circled back around so I'd come out in the woods behind the house.

    Even in brilliant moonlight, the woods were dark. You couldn't see the forest animals but you could hear them, leaping, crawling, scuttling, digging. The river smelled cold, the woods smelled tart, a scent I associate with autumn. I carried the shovel I keep in the trunk for emergencies, usually winter ones.

    Lights burned everywhere in the house. They might have been having a party. I was self-conscious about crossing the back yard to the incinerator. I was even more so about dragging the bench of a redwood picnic table over to it.

    I went to work. I spent 90 percent of my time digging and 10 percent glancing up at the windows on the three floors of the manor house. I didn't see anybody.

    The incinerator was filled with ash of various weights and textures. I rarely dug into anything solid. Not long before I was sweating. Not long before I was standing on my toes so I could shovel deeper in the five-foot-tall cylinder. I could feel the ash on my sticky face. My white shirt was grimy. Shamuses should get dry-cleaning discounts.

    I went Eureka! two or three times for no good reason at all, the simple nudge of the shovel edge against anything solid filling me with hope.

    But there was no reason for hope. I had found nothing useful, not until I was about three-quarters of the way down. By then I wasn't only on tippy-toes, I was damned near hanging over the edge. I knew instantly what it was. Which was when, of course, a silhouette appeared in a second floor window. I recognized the shape of her. I had to move.

    But I didn't move fast enough. By the time I was jumping down from the bench, my find in my hand, she was bursting out the back door in her dark cardigan sweater, paint-splashed jeans, and a.38 special that she handled with alarming dexterity.

    She knew what I'd found.

    She didn't say anything and neither did I.

    She was out of breath and the.38 was trembling a bit in her hand. She kept it pointed right at my heart.

    Then she reached out and took it from me. Almost reluctantly. As if she didn't want to touch it.

    "I didn't even listen to it, McCain, can you believe it?"

    I said, "Sometimes it's better not to know the truth."

    "He worked so hard all his life to do the right thing. And then he lets some stupid woman - she might well have been a Russian agent - talk him into helping her. Slipping her a few secrets here and there. He told me all about it one night when he was drunk."

    She apparently didn't hear the back door open behind her. Or see the shadow slip silently across the stone patio.

    "I couldn't have our name destroyed that way," Dorothy said. "There's no mark worse than treason. None. And of course it had to be a woman. None of them were any good. None of them."

    "So you killed Rivers and Cronin?"

    "They'd drugged him, and he'd told them the truth." She sounded weary now. "I had to have the tape. What choice did I have?"

    "So none of us was good enough for your dear sweet son?"

    Dorothy turned and saw Dana. Both women held handguns.

    I suddenly realized what had happened.

    "You killed Richard, didn't you, Dana?" I said.

    "Dear sweet Richard, you mean? Honest Richard? Faithful Richard?" I'd just begun to realize how drunk she was. "Three different times I caught your dear sweet son in bed with somebody else, Dorothy. And I'm sure he treated his other wives the same way."

    Dorothy sounded astonished. "You killed him? You killed Richard?"

    "I wish I could say I regretted it, but I don't. And I feel sorry for you that you don't understand. He was a totally selfish, arrogant man. You loved him too much. Much too much. You drove your own husband away because of how you loved your son."

    "You killed him," Dorothy whispered, as if she couldn't comprehend the thought.

    "She was trying on dresses in one of the back rooms at Fran's," I said. "She knew just about when he'd be pulling into the garage. She was right across the alley. Very slick."

    Looking at the grotesque piece of melted plastic Dorothy held in her hand, Dana said, "God, what's that?"

    "The tape Rivers and Cronin doped him up to get."

    "The tape that would've destroyed the great Richard Conners."

    "We'll never know," I said. "The only people who heard this tape are dead. Dorothy suspects what's on it, but that's a long way from knowing."

    I stepped over to Dana, who wore a man's russet-colored crew neck sweater and jeans, and put my hand out. "I'd like the gun."

    "It's not even loaded."

    "I'd still like it."

    She said, "I'm sorry, Dorothy. The funny thing is, I've always liked you. You have a good heart and a good mind and you're very, very brave. There aren't many women around like that. Or men, for that matter. I'm not sorry for Richard. But I am sorry for you."

    I took the gun from her hand and turned toward Dorothy, which was when Dana took a few steps toward us. "Please forgive me, Dorothy."

    My sense was that she was going to embrace the older woman. She was drunk now and sounding forlorn. Her arms reached out.

    And that's when Dorothy shot her: twice, in the chest.

    I can't tell you what happened in the next minute or so. Something happened to my voice. I made some kind of animal noise I'd never heard before. And then I was kneeling next to Dana. There was blood. My own sobs. Her arms and legs were spasming. I'd never seen anything uglier or more terrifying, the way this woman was dying. I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, a desperate good-bye kiss.

    From somewhere I heard a barn owl cry and saw the moonlight make Dana's classic face oddly lovely in its horror, the light almost mythic in this relinquishing of life.

    At some time I heard the noise of another bullet being fired. No cry this time, just a moan, and I barely had time to turn to see her fall, already dead, the bullet to the temple so swift, to lie upon the land she'd loved so much.

    Sometime, somehow, I stumbled into the house and called Cliffie and poured myself a drink. There was nothing to do about the two women now, nothing at all.

    

    

    By eleven o'clock, I was tired of all the calls. You know, people congratulating me on figuring the whole thing out. Mom and Dad, Sis from Chicago ("Don't tell the folks, but I'm dating this man who's ten years older than I am," which depressed the hell out of me but I was too tired to argue), some reporters wanting interviews, Natalie and arch-enemy drinking-buddy Margo both getting gassed at a neat place called the Airliner in Iowa City, two people I'd gone to high school with but hadn't talked to for a long time ("Remember the night you got bombed, McCain, and stood up on top of the memorial cannon in the city park and took a leak?" and other such hallowed memories), and finally Mary.

    "Gee," I said. "I've been trying to get you all night."

    "Sorry. I was - out, I guess."

    "You guess?"

    Something was wrong.

    "How'd you like the blouse?"

    "Oh, the blouse." She'd forgotten. "I'm sorry. It's - beautiful, McCain. It really is. But I can't accept it."

    "Why not?"

    Long pause. "This afternoon."

    "Yes. This afternoon?"

    "Wes came up and took my apron off me and said, 'We're going for a drive.' Just like that."

    "And you went for a drive."

    "And we talked."

    "About?"

    "Personal stuff."

    "And?"

    "And McCain, he started crying. Just sobbing. I've never seen him like that. I mean, I've seen him cry but I've never seen him so - humble. He said he was sorry for all the mean things he's ever said to me and he wants us to get married right away. Just do it. Don't wait for a big church wedding or anything."

    The way things were going, I was going to be the one who was sobbing.

    "McCain?"

    "Yeah?"

    "Why don't you say something?"

    "Because I don't know what to say."

    "I just never realized before how much he loves me. I need to think things over."

    I sighed. "Yeah, I suppose that's how it's got to be."

    "It's kinda funny, isn't it? For the first time it looked like we - you and I - would get together, and then Wes comes along and - "

    "I think I'll go now."

    "You really should take the blouse back."

    "Just bring it to work and I'll pick it up."

    "It's all kinda crazy, isn't it?"

    "Yeah," I said. "I guess that's a good way to describe it."

    

    

    I was scared and I prayed. The old Our Fathers and the old Hail Marys. I was scared and confused; I felt like I was eight in terms of wisdom and eighty-eight in terms of spirit. I wish I was an old man and love was through with me. Somebody wrote that once and I've never forgotten it, but I couldn't tell you who it was.

    Thoughts like that here in the Lucky Strike-Hamm's beer darkness. TV on but no sound. Me propped up in bed. The three cats fanned out all around me. A little Miles Davis on the turntable.

    I thought of all the dead people too. And all the red scare bullshit and how I hated both sides. And Dorothy. Eyes so forlorn in death, tears collected in the corners of their sockets.

    I stubbed my cigarette out and went to sleep, clothes and all. Needing to pee. Not caring if I ever woke up again.

    And then sometime somewhere the phone rang and I groped for it, badly disoriented, wondering who the hell would call this late, and then I got scared thinking maybe something had happened to somebody in my family.

    But when I got the receiver to my ear, a voice I didn't recognize at first said, "McCain. Listen. I have to whisper. Or he'll hear me."

    "Who is this?"

    "It's Pamela, you dope. We have this big hotel suite. He's in the bathroom right now. Oh, McCain. I've made a terrible, terrible mistake. I'm going to sneak out of here tomorrow and take the train back to Iowa City. Can you meet me at the depot at seven p.m.?" Then, frantic: "Oh, God, here he comes!"

    And she hung up.

    I lay there and lit another Lucky and thought of another great line. This one I knew the source of: E. M. Forster: Beauty makes its own rules.

    It sure as hell does, I thought. It sure as hell does.