Void in Hearts Page 6

  “This place looks great,” I said.

  “Different, huh? I had a designer plan it for me. She drew the specs, picked out the carpet and the furniture and everything. It’s my office, all deductible. Here, peek into the darkroom.”

  She opened the door to where the little bathroom had been. Now it was a large rectangular room, with a double stainless steel sink, a counter of trays, shelves of chemicals, enlargers, and lots of other machinery I didn’t recognize.

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Why don’t you relax out there and I’ll get to work. There’s a bar in the cabinet beside the desk. Help yourself.”

  She closed the door, leaving me alone in the rumpus room. No, Gloria’s office. I looked around for an ashtray. There was none. I went to the bar. I found it well stocked, although there was no Jack Daniel’s. Just like Gloria, I thought, not to have my favorite sour mash Tennessee sippin’ whiskey on hand. All the booze struck me odd, at first. Gloria had never been much of a drinker. A little wine with a meal, perhaps, and an occasional gin and tonic on a summer’s evening. But then I remembered that this was her place of business. She met clients here. It was hard for me to visualize Gloria meeting with clients—conferring, bargaining, selling. That wasn’t the Gloria I had been divorced from eight years earlier.

  I poured two fingers of Wild Turkey—not a bad bourbon, but not Jack Daniel’s—into one of the expensive glasses I found stacked there. There was a built-in icemaker. I fished out a small handful of oddly shaped cubes and dropped them into my drink. Then I wandered around the room. It was, in part, a gallery.

  After our divorce, Gloria began to do some portrait work. Children, mostly, the occasional wedding and bar mitzvah. She had a knack, I knew, for persuading people to look natural.

  Eventually she moved into the magazine work. She specialized in photographing architecture. She did a big job on Newport a few years earlier, a lot of color work on the changes that were being wrought on the grand old buildings along the waterfront: Several of the pictures were framed and hung on the walls of my old rumpus room.

  I studied Gloria’s work. It looked very good to me—technically sound, but more than that, she had a gift for capturing the spirit of a building by clever use of angle and light.

  I sat in one of the Scandinavian Design chairs and riffled through a photography magazine. It took me a while to identify the source of the uneasiness I was feeling.

  There was no trace of me left in this house. None of my coats hung in the closets upstairs. The furniture I used to lounge on in the living room was gone. The paint I had painfully spread over the moldings and baseboards had been covered. The carpets I had trod upon had been replaced.

  Now it was Gloria’s place. Not mine. She had cleared me away. I guessed she had done with her mind and her heart what she had done with her house.

  That insight should have relieved me. It was what we both wanted to happen when we split. But now, seeing the evidence, I felt sad.

  I poured myself another drink and settled down with an article that described how to photograph constellations. This was not something I expected ever to try.

  Gloria had been in there for a little over half an hour when she opened the door to the darkroom. “Why don’t you come in?” she said.

  There were a dozen or so eight-by-tens laid out on a table. “Don’t touch them,” she said. “They’re still damp.”

  I looked them over. “They’re not that good, are they?”

  She nodded. “Without a tripod you just can’t get quality stuff with a long lens.”

  “The man who took these wasn’t especially interested in quality.”

  Gloria shrugged. “His exposures are all okay. Probably used a programmed camera. But there’s a definite tremor, and the focus is shaky. I’d guess he was using a fast film. It’s pretty grainy. What are these for, anyway?”

  I pointed to one of the pictures. “This man, I think. I wanted to know what he looked like.”

  The photograph showed a man and a woman seated close together. The woman was in quarter profile. The man was nearly full face. “Do you see this man in any of the other shots?”

  We looked them over together, bending over the table, our shoulders touching. Gloria pointed to one of the pictures with the eraser end of a pencil. “Here. This is the same man.”

  This shot was taken from a distance. The camera seemed to be aimed upward, as if the photographer had been lying on the ground. It showed a number of people entering and leaving a building. One of those who was facing the camera did indeed appear to be our man. He wore dark-rimmed glasses. He had a long, thin face. He was bareheaded, revealing a broad forehead and light, receding hair.

  “Let’s find another shot of the woman,” I said.

  Again we pored over the pictures. The woman appeared in most of them, but there was no full-face shot. In profile she appeared to have a slightly upturned nose, dark hair cropped close at the nape of her neck and brushed back on the sides so that her ears showed. I picked out the best of them. “Can you blow up her face on this one? And this one of the guy?”

  Gloria nodded. “Sure. They’ll look pretty fuzzy, but I can do it. Anything else?”

  She was standing close beside me. I touched her cheek with the back of my hand, and she tilted her face up to me. “That’s all,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  She smiled quickly and turned away. “Sure. Go away.”

  I went back upstairs, put on my coat, and went out to the front steps to smoke a cigarette. All of that history, and yet Gloria seemed a stranger to me. An attractive stranger, I admitted. I tried to push away the quick flash of her smile, the hurt that dwelled in her eyes, the touch of her skin. She would make my pictures for me and I would thank her and leave. All the rest was reflex.

  The afternoon sun had already sunk behind the row of expensive suburban homes across the street. The cloudless sky was the color of ice. A short winter day, quickly passed, like so many of the days in my life. Gone and forgotten in that great headlong rush toward the end of it.

  I snapped my spent Winston toward the snow and went back inside. A chill had penetrated to my spine, and I wasn’t sure that it was only the dry January air.

  When Gloria emerged from her darkroom, she found me sitting at her desk looking for photos of nudes in her magazines.

  She stood in the doorway, leaning her hip against the jamb. “Want to take a look?” she said.

  I stood and moved toward her. She watched me, her eyebrows arched perhaps a millimeter, her lips parted as if she were about to speak. I held out my hand to her, palm up. She reached out slowly and took it, her eyes never leaving mine. Then she moved against me. She tucked her chin and put her face against my chest. “Don’t,” she mumbled against me.

  I touched her jaw with my finger. She lifted her face to look at me. “Please, Brady.”

  “Shh,” I said. I touched a finger to her lips.

  Her eyes frowned into mine. Tiny vertical lines etched themselves between her brows.

  “What do you want?” she whispered.

  I gripped her shoulders and pushed her gently away from me. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

  I saw her hand rise, as if in slow motion. It touched my jaw, fingertips first, then palm. Then it slid around to the back of my neck as she moved against me again, and her mouth angled up and I bent to meet it. It was the mouth of a stranger, a woman I had never kissed before, awkward, exploratory, before it slid away. Her arms went around my chest and she burrowed against me. I felt her shudder. I laced my fingers in her hair and urged her head back so I could see her. There was a little smile there, now, tiny crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Fire danced in her pupils before her lids dropped and her mouth lifted again, full of sweet, sad memory and familiar pain.

  “This isn’t good,” I said into her hair.

  “Come to bed with me.” A whisper against my throat.

  Becca Katz had said exactly the same thing to me two days earlier. I had
complied, out of what motive I didn’t want to know. I had then regretted it.

  “No,” I said.

  “Brady—”

  “Come on,” I said. I took her hand and led her across the room. We sat in chairs beside each other.

  “Why?” she said.

  I shook my head. “It’s not right.”

  “That is no answer. Don’t you—”

  “I feel it. Of course. That’s the problem.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  I smiled. “Me neither. Let’s have a drink.”

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “I do.” I got up and poured some Wild Turkey into my glass. I fumbled for the ice cubes, grateful for an activity that occupied me. I went back and sat beside her. “Listen,” I said, “it’s too easy. There’s a big pit there that we could fall into. We’d hurt ourselves. Don’t you see it?”

  She nodded, fixing me with her eyes. “Sure. I see it. Maybe I wouldn’t mind falling.”

  “The falling part might be okay. Hitting the bottom, that would hurt. You know it would.”

  “You’d catch me.”

  I nodded. “If I did, that would be the trap. Maybe I wouldn’t, though. I could hurt myself, too.”

  “Ah, Brady. Maybe I just don’t care.”

  “One of us has to.”

  She smiled quickly. “You’re the one. You always were the one who knew where the pits were.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. For the ten-millionth time. It’s my fault. Forget it. Please.”

  She touched her lips with the tips of her fingers. “It’s just not that simple.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  She sat there staring across the room. I watched her face. It revealed nothing. After a minute, she turned. “Do you want to see the pictures?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  I followed her back into the darkroom. She had made two eight-by-tens, one each of the man’s face and the woman’s half profile. They were, as she had predicted, blurry and grainy. But the faces could be recognized by anybody who knew them, I felt certain.

  “This is great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a very long story. I’m hoping I can figure out who they are from the pictures.”

  “How in the world do you expect to do that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Charlie can help me.”

  She found a big manila envelope and slipped all the photos she had done into it. I tucked it under my arm and we went upstairs.

  “Stay for another drink?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I had a couple already. No, I better get going.”

  She picked up my coat and held it for me. “What I don’t understand,” she said as I slipped my arms into the sleeves, “you must know a lot of compliant women.”

  I thought of Becca Katz. She had been compliant. But somehow the word didn’t work for her. She had been lonely, empty, desperate. “I suppose so,” I said.

  “And I bet you don’t go through great moral debates before you go to bed with them.”

  “It depends.”

  I hunched my shoulders into the topcoat and then turned around to face Gloria. She was frowning. “It depends on what?”

  “On whether I like them or not.”

  She turned her face so that she was peering at me out of the corners of her eyes, a sly, almost flirtatious look. “Just so I understand,” she said, “do you go to bed with the ones you like, or the ones you don’t like?”

  I smiled. “The ones I like, of course.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Then,” she said, “I deduce that you don’t like me.”

  I reached for the doorknob. “No,” I said. “That’s not it. With you it’s much more complicated.”

  7

  CHARLIE PICKED UP A pencil and tapped at the photographs I had spread out on his desk. “Maybe if you could give me some names I could help you,” he said to me.

  “If I had the names, I wouldn’t need your help.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t recognize these people.”

  “I didn’t really expect you to.” I sighed and lit a cigarette. “I just figured, you’ve been in prosecution for a long time. There must be some tricks.”

  “Legwork. Paperwork. Cooperative witnesses. Plea bargains.” He waved at the smoke. “No tricks, counselor.”

  Charlie had a lavishly furnished office high in the Federal Building in Government Center on the back side of Beacon Hill. I gazed past his shoulder at the slate-colored winter sky. The big floor-to-ceiling window looked out toward the arches of the Mystic River Bridge. Uncle Sam had spared none of the taxpayers’ funds in providing thick carpeting, chrome and teak furniture, and fancy electronic gear for his employees in the Justice Department.

  Charlie lounged back in his Moroccan leather swivel chair. He tapped his teeth with his pencil. “Actually, when you think about it,” he said, “it’s all pretty farfetched anyway. So this guy”—he pointed with the eraser end of the pencil at the photograph of the man—“knew that Katz had found out about him and his lady friend. Katz sells him the pictures. The guy doesn’t trust him to keep a secret.” Charlie shrugged elaborately. “Hardly a motive for murder.”

  “I’ve heard less impressive motives.”

  “Oh, sure. You want to talk about wackos, that’s a whole ’nother thing. For instance, guy’s sitting in a movie theater. Suddenly he jumps up, turns around, yanks out his thirty-eight Police Special, and pumps five slugs into the chest of the fourteen-year-old girl sitting behind him. Know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “The guy tells the police, ‘She was crunching popcorn in my ear.’ Like that explained it perfectly. Or the broad in Queens who had the barking dog. Her neighbor calls her on the phone to complain the dog’s keeping the family awake. So the broad burns down their house. Said she didn’t like being harassed by those phone calls. So you’re right. There are less impressive motives. With crazy people, it’s unproductive to bother trying to understand motives. They’ve just got some weird logic twisted around inside their heads. Look, Brady. I’m not sure what you want to do even if you actually do identify this guy. You plan to have him arrested or something?”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “I don’t know. That’s something else I’m asking you, I guess.”

  He began to doodle on a legal pad. “Okay. Maybe you do a little sleuthing. Find out where whatever-his-name-is was on the night in question. Sneak a look at his automobile, see if there’s a big dent on the right front fender. Or see if he’s had it in the body shop recently, go talk to them. Say you turn up this lady.” He touched her photograph with his pencil. “Run a trick on her. Grill her a little. See what she knows. Hell, Brady. You can grill both of them. Do the separate-room routine on them. Or try hot needles under the fingernails. Hook electrodes to the guy’s balls. Slap the broad around a little.”

  “Come on, Charlie. I’m serious.”

  “Me, too,” he said. Then he smiled. “Look. Frankly, I don’t see how you expect to identify them anyway, so it’s pretty academic.”

  “I went through a lot just to get these pictures.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you you wasted your time.” He slid the photos together into a pile and tapped the edges even. He picked up his half glasses from the desk and pushed them onto his nose. Then he flipped through the photographs again. He shrugged and put them down. “Sorry, pal. I get nothing out of this.”

  “Isn’t there anything your computers can do?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.” He picked up the stack of pictures again. One by one he went through them, studying them more closely, placing them side by side on his desk. When he had them all spread out again he began to shake his head. Suddenly he pushed at his glasses with his forefinger and bent closer. He picked up one of the photos and held it to his face. “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “What?
What is it?” I stood up and moved around Charlie’s desk so I was standing at his shoulder.

  He was holding the photograph that showed a crowd of people entering and leaving a building. “Look at this one,” he said.

  I did. “That’s the guy, right there,” I said, touching the face with my finger.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said impatiently. “What else do you see?”

  It was little more than a dark vertical line with a lump on top of it. “I don’t know what it is,” I said.

  Charlie sketched something onto his yellow legal pad. The sketch resembled a lollipop. “Does it look like this?”

  “Yes. Nice sketch. What do you think it is?”

  “I know what it is. A streetlight.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Yes. That’s what it looks like. So?”

  “So?” He swiveled around to peer up at me. “So now we know that this guy was at a place that maybe you can find. Where do they have streetlights like this one?”

  “Up on the Hill?”

  “Those are a little different. Come on.”

  I smacked my fist into my palm. “Quincy Market, right?”

  “Sure. Now see what you can tell about the building.”

  We studied it together. It was severely out of focus, but the shape of the windows and the broad details of the facade were recognizable. “Think you could find this place, counselor?” said Charlie.

  “It would be a place to start.”

  “It’ll cost you, of course.”

  “Fresh swordfish at the No-Name?”

  “Deal.”

  A ten-minute cab ride took me from Charlie’s office to Quincy Market. Produce trucks still congregate at Haymarket Square in the wee morning hours to peddle their fruits and vegetables, and bums sleep in abandoned doorways, and bag ladies pick over the rotting litter on the streets, just as they always did. Only now the out-of-towners don’t see it. In the headlong rush toward urban renewal during the reign of Kevin White, the squalid old marketplace was shunted out back. New brick walkways and chrome and glass edifices were erected out front. Good for business, good for tourists. The New Boston. Good for Kevin White. Now the folks from Kansas City can purchase pizza wedges topped with tofu and bean sprouts, stuffed teddy bears and plastic lobsters made in Taiwan, framed prints of the Paul Revere statue, and other remembrances of quaint old colonial Boston. And they miss the real thing just around the corner.