Part 32 (1/2)
After that, it had the desperation and speed of a caged bird hoping to fly. All that useless beating of wings, the smas.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.bs 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 unb.u.t.toned, 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 down 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 s.h.i.+p, tossed back and forth on the swells of the terrible sea of life.
Chapter 34.
August 9, 2001 Former Acquaintance AT 8:00, GILLIAN waited for Arthur at a table at the Matchbook, 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 cla.s.s. 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. 'You 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.
Arthur arrived then and immediately asked what was wrong. She was about to answer him frankly but she could see a significant smile drain from his face at the sight of her. Not tonight, she thought. She would not darken his mood or distract him tonight. Or any other night, for that matter. She had come to the brink of telling him too many times and then retreated. She was keeping her secret.
”You look as if something good has happened,” she told him.
”Good? It may be good. It's majorly confusing. They found Faro.”
”You're kidding!”
”That's not the half of it. Muriel wrote me a letter.”
”May I see?” She had her hand out even before Arthur had fully removed the envelope from his pocket. It was on the letterhead of Muriel D. Wynn, Chief Deputy, Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. The reference fine noted People v. Gandolph and the old criminal court case number. Even at this late stage, Muriel was reluctant to acknowledge she was stuck in the alien terrain of federal court.
Dear Mr. Raven: Over the last two months, this office, in the course of its continuing investigation of this matter, has encountered a variety of information concerning Collins Farwell. As you know, Mr. Farwell has refused to offer testimony on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Furthermore, the information received appears to have no immediate relevance to your client. Nevertheless, in the interest of full disclosure, we wish to advise you of the following ...
Eight bulleted items trailed down the page. Muriel had crafted the letter to be largely opaque, not to Arthur, who'd see through the obscurities, but to the Court of Appeals, to whom she knew the doc.u.ment would soon be displayed. But imbedded in the details of various records concerning Faro Cole, most of which Arthur had shown Gillian earlier in the week, were two matters of note: a summary of statements that Collins Farwell, Erno's nephew, had made in June while being served with a subpoena in Atlanta. And an acknowledgment that two police officers had recently identified photographs of Collins as Faro's.
”My Lord!” cried Gillian at that sentence. Her heart was racing. After a moment, she was struck by her own reactions, the fact she had no pretense of distance any longer. She asked Arthur what he was thinking.
”I'm not sure that what's going on in my head is called thinking,” he said. ”Pamela and I were just bouncing off the walls. I'll tell you one thing though: I won't be joining Muriel's campaign committee. A lot of this was pretty underhanded.” Arthur suspected that Muriel or Larry had shadowed Pamela on her visit to the Department of Registration. And he was angry about the failure to reveal Collins's statements in Atlanta. ”I'd already made a motion to give Collins immunity. In her response, Muriel claimed there was no evidence that Collins had anything favorable to say for Rommy.”
Yet his chief disappointment seemed to be with Erno, who had told Arthur that Faro was a cheap hustler who had disappeared long ago.
”We'll never touch bottom with the lies Erno told,” Arthur said. ”It's like quicksand. We just keep sinking.”
”I wonder,” said Gillian. Erno was where her thoughts had gone, too, and had lingered. ”Erno said he was out to protect Collins when he first involved Larry back in 1991. I wonder if he hasn't been protecting him all along.”
”By shooting him in the back? Some protective uncle. I think I'd rather have a gift certificate.”
Gillian laughed. He was right. But not completely.
”Even there, though, at Ike's, Erno chose not to acknowledge that Faro was his nephew. Have you wondered why?”
”I can guess. Collins walked into Ike's holding a gun. Felon in possession of a firearm is a two-year minimum mandatory.”
”So Erno did protect his nephew,” said Gillian.
Arthur s.h.i.+fted a shoulder, granting she might have some kind of point.
”I just wonder, Arthur, if at the end of it all, Erno didn't maintain his own consistency with you. Your instinct was that Erno always told you the truth about one thing.”
”Which is?”