A Cup Full of Midnight (19 page)

“Hazard of the trade,” I said.

We each ordered the buffet and piled our plates with lo mein noodles, cashew chicken, lobster rolls, and some of the best crab rangoons in town. Then Eric slid into the booth across the table from me and poured himself a steaming cup of green tea.

“I almost didn’t come,” he said.

“I almost didn’t call.”

“Why did you?”

“Call it curiosity. You know us detective types. We never know when to mind our own business.”

He made a sound like a game show buzzer. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

“All right. Maybe I don’t get how you could just walk away. I thought things were going pretty good with you guys.”

He frowned into his cup. “He’s the one who brought his ex-lover back into the picture.”

“His ex-lover is dying,” I said. “He’s no threat to you.”

“It’s not about threat. He brought this into our lives without even asking me how I felt about it.”

“He thought you’d understand.”

Eric speared a floret of broccoli. “My boyfriend is living with another man. I think that’s enough to understand.”

“Dylan’s end-stage. It won’t be long.”

“I wasn’t talking about Dylan.”

“There’s nothing between Jay and me.”

“You keep saying that and maybe someday someone will believe it.”

“Eric—”

“No, no. I know you’re straight. But he isn’t. And he loves you. Don’t you think that’s enough to deal with without bringing lover boy back into the picture?”

“That’s what this is about? You think
I’m
the threat?”

“You are the threat.” He traced invisible patterns on the linen tablecloth. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said it wasn’t a problem. But you know what? I can’t handle all this. You. Dylan. Jay being sick.”

“And if I left?”

He laughed. “Sweetie, you and I both know you aren’t going anywhere. Even if you were, what would it change?”

“I’m not going to drop out of his life, if that’s what you mean.”

“Exactly.” He pushed his rice around on his plate. “I can’t explain it. I’m not even sure that’s the problem. In a way, I’m glad you’re there. It means . . .” His voice trailed off.

“It means you don’t have to be.”

“That sounds pretty damned shallow, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t deny it.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve nursed friends through this disease. It’s ugly, it’s messy, it breaks your heart. I’m not sure I can go through it with Jay. I’m sure as hell not willing to go through it for Dylan.”

“I’m not moving out if you’re not going to be there for him.”

“I’m not asking you to.” He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m just not sure I can handle it. He lights up when you come into the room. Where does that leave me?”

“He’s crazy about you,”I said. “He’s faithful to you. What more do you want?”

His smile was sad. “He’s crazy about me and in love with you. And he still cares for Dylan. A whole damn crazy quilt of emotions. Oh yes, and he’s dying of AIDS.”

“Not for a long time yet.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.”

“He’s afraid you won’t be able to handle it when—if—he does get sick.”

He looked down at his lap. “Maybe he’s right.”

“Well,” I said. “I don’t have your experience with this disease, but I know this much: if you can’t handle it, maybe you’re right to stay away. It’ll hurt him in the short run, but better now than later.”

“That what I was thinking.”

“It wouldn’t be worth it to me, but maybe you’re made of sterner stuff.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He loves you,” I said. “Seems to me you love him too. So you run away. You miss the bad part. The ugly, messy part, as you put it. But you miss all the good stuff too. And for the rest of your life, you have to live with knowing you ran out on him.”

“I know that, dammit. Don’t you think I know that? But . . .”

“But?”

He poked his fork at a bit of water chestnut, raked the tines through the rice. “It scares me,” he said softly. “Helping my friends through it . . . that was awful, but I wasn’t involved with them. And I wasn’t . . .” His voice trailed off, and he took a shuddering breath before plunging on. “I wasn’t sleeping with them. I knew I couldn’t get it.”

I nodded. That was a fear I could understand, and there was nothing I could say in the face of it.

He slid out of the booth and picked up his jacket. “I gotta go,” he said. “I just wanted to find out how he was.”

“He misses you,” I said. “That’s how he is.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

F
rank wasn’t in the office, so I left a message and drove over to Hewitt’s with Jay’s warning echoing in my head. As usual, I ignored it.

This time, when I pulled into Hewitt’s driveway, his truck was there. From where I was parked, I could see that the hood of the maroon Grand Prix was up. I went around to the back, where he was bent over the engine, straining against a rusted bolt with a crescent wrench that seemed just a fraction too big.

Elgin was nowhere to be seen.

I lifted the latch on the gate and let myself in.

Hewitt looked up, pushed his orange toboggan farther up on his forehead. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Didn’t get all your insults in last time?”

“I was just asking a few questions,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to get so bent out of shape.”

“You practically called me a murderer.” He reached for a grease-stained towel and wiped his hands on it. “Looks like I’m not the only guy you’ve pissed off.”

“What? These?” I indicated the bruises and cuts on my face. “Love taps.”

He laughed and tossed the towel over the fender of the car. “Whatever you say.”

“Where’s your buddy?”

“Who? Elgin? At his school, I guess. He teaches self-defense.”

“I know. I got a crash course.”

He squinted at me, then leaned his hips against the side of the car and folded his arms across his chest. “You saying Elgin did that to you?”

“He told me to back off on the Parker case. Any idea why he might have a problem with my investigating Parker’s death?”

“No. Other than the general idea that whoever did Parker should get a commendation, not a jail term.”

“Deserved what he got, right?”

“You said it, not me.”

“I’d feel the same way if someone had done to my wife what Razor and his buddies did to yours.”

His tongue flicked across his lips and disappeared behind his teeth. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me she never mentioned it to you,” I said, but I saw it in his face.

The flush started somewhere below his collar and crept upward until his whole face was the color of a country ham. He pushed himself away from the car and said, “You’re a damn liar. She’d have told me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I thought you knew.”

“Hell with you,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

He turned away and slammed the hood of the Grand Prix. “Shit,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t she tell me a thing like that?”

I jammed my hands in my pockets and cast about for answers. “Maybe she thought you wouldn’t feel the same about her.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said.

“I’m just saying, sometimes that’s how it happens.”

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered again, and I wasn’t sure if he meant me or Razor.

He shot me a hateful look and started toward the back door, wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans. I tagged along, even though I hadn’t been invited.

I paused long enough to wipe my feet on the mat inside the door. Hewitt charged on, tracking bits of dried grass through the kitchen and onto the living room carpet. Judith sat curled into a corner of the couch, a Maeve Binchy novel in one hand. She looked up as we entered the room. When she saw me, a hint of alarm flickered in her eyes.

“What is it, Buddy?” She looked from him to me and back again. “What’s he doing here?”

He sat down beside her, his forearms on his knees. He looked at the floor, glanced at me, shifted his gaze back to her face. “He says . . .” His voice faltered. “He says they hurt you. Parker and some of his friends. He says . . .”

She gave me a look of betrayal that felt like a punch to the stomach.

Hewitt noticed it and swallowed hard. “So it’s true.”

She closed the book, drew her legs out from under herself, and perched stiffly on the edge of the couch. Hewitt reached toward her, then pulled back his hand and laid it on the cushion beside her. As if she might break. “Why didn’t you tell me, baby?”

“What was I supposed to say? They didn’t even leave bruises.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I didn’t even fight them off. How was I supposed to tell you what they did to me when I didn’t have a mark on me?”

“They had knives,” I said. “They threatened your life.”

She gave him a pleading look, and tears spilled down her face. “They said if I told you or called the police, they’d come back and kill us both. They’d have done it, too.”

His arms went around her. “You should have told me.”

“Why? So you could kill him?” She stopped suddenly and pulled away from him. She looked at me, and one hand flew up to cover her mouth. “I didn’t mean that.”

Hewitt looked at his feet. “I
would
have killed him, if I’d known.” He looked up at me with deadened eyes. “Do you mind? This is kind of a private thing.”

I nodded. “Just one more thing I have to ask.”

“Fuck.” He sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face.

I directed the question to Judith. “You didn’t know how to tell Buddy, but it was a terrible secret to keep. It must have weighed on you.”

She nodded, eyes lowered.

“Did you tell anybody? Anybody at all?”

A small nod. Almost imperceptible.

“Who, Judith?” I asked, as gently as I could manage. “Who did you tell?”

“Elgin,” she whispered. “He came over right after it happened. He and Buddy were going to work on the car, but Buddy wasn’t home yet.” She gave Hewitt another pleading look. “I was crying. Upset. I wouldn’t have told him, but . . . he was going to go over there and make them tell him what happened. I was afraid. They said they’d—” She blinked back tears and forced the words out. “I was afraid of what they’d do.”

“You made Elgin promise not to tell Buddy,” I said. Hewitt gave me a dark look. Judith covered her face with her hands.

“Do you know if he ever confronted Razor?”

“I made him promise not to.”

I nodded as if I’d gotten some satisfaction from the conversation, but the truth was, I felt dirty myself, as if I’d taken part in Judith’s violation. There was another question I wanted to ask. Needed to ask. But I didn’t. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear the answer.

Instead, I caught Hewitt’s attention and jerked my head toward the door. His expression was sullen, but he followed me out to my truck.

When we were out of earshot, I scrawled a name on the back of a business card and handed it to him. “Why don’t you have her give this lady a call? She’s a rape counselor, a damn good one.”

He glowered at me. “You come in here and open this can of worms and now you’re telling me how to take care of my own wife?”

“I’m sorry about the can of worms,” I said. “I wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d realized she hadn’t told you. But it doesn’t change the fact that she needs some help dealing with what happened.”

“I can give her whatever help she needs.”

“No, Hewitt, you can’t. You can stand by her and support her and let her know none of this changes the way you feel about her. But you can’t understand what she’s feeling. She’s got a lot to work through. Get the lady a counselor.”

“Go to Hell,” he said, but as he turned and walked stiffly back to the house, he stuffed the card into his pocket.

Under the circumstances, it was the best I could have hoped for.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

E
lgin Mayers ran a self-defense course called “Urban Survival: Staying Alive on the Mean Streets,” and an internet search turned up a web page complete with biography, testimonials, recaps of his adventures (the ones he could share without having to kill you), and a photo gallery. According to his bio, he was born Elgin Donald Mayers, in Madison, Tennessee. Enlisted with the Marines at eighteen, received a commendation for his service in Desert Storm at thirty-three, made master sergeant a year later. At thirty-eight, he retired with twenty years and fell off the face of the map. Five years later, he reappeared in Nashville and opened his self-defense school, claiming to have spent the missing years fighting as a mercenary in the jungles of South America.

The accounts of his adventures were vivid and witty, with an occasional turn of phrase that said either someone else did his writing for him, or he was more than the blunt instrument he seemed.

The photo gallery showed pictures of Mayers clad in combat fatigues and demonstrating various combat moves. His flyers offered to transform his clients into “The Baddest Beasts in the Asphalt Jungle.”

It made me feel slightly better about having the shit beat out of me.

An hour before Elgin’s first class, I arrived at the survival school, a squat brick building in a run-down strip mall on Dickerson Road. Beneath the lettering for Urban Survival, traces of the previous owner’s logo etched the plate glass window like ectoplasm. It said, “Ta ni g Sal n.”

The school was flanked by a shoe repair shop on the left and an empty building on the right. There was no sign of Elgin, so I locked the doors of the Silverado, swallowed two more aspirins, and settled in to wait.

I punched the radio channel button, and a burst of Christmas music filled the truck. Johnny Cash singing “Little Drummer Boy.” I half-listened while the other half of my mind worried at the case like a tongue at a missing tooth.

The logistics were simple enough. Whoever had attacked me either was or knew Razor’s killer. Elgin was my assailant. Ergo, Elgin was my primary suspect.

But if it had been Elgin, working with or without Hewitt, why had Keating lied about rescheduling his appointments on the day of Razor’s death? And why had he hung up on me when I brought the lie to his attention? Was there a connection between Alan Keating and Elgin Mayers? Or did Keating have a perfectly innocent reason for his lie?