No Way Home (36 page)

He rose from his desk. Meg O’Brien was gone. She had left early to do some shopping in Andover, and Bertha Skagg, whose ankles had receded to near normal, had come in early but did not look pleased about it. She said, “Where will you be?”

“Blue Bonnet,” he said.

Lieutenant Bakinowski joined him there, which was becoming a habit. The lieutenant was working on a case in Andover. A mother of three had been done in, and the suspect was not her husband but her father-in-law, with whom she had been having an affair. “You’re not doing anything,” Bakinowski said. “Maybe you’d like to work with me on it in your spare time.”

“Not on your life,” Morgan said.

“Too bad,” Bakinowski said, lifting his coffee cup. “I could learn something from you, you could learn more from me.”

They were quiet for a while, each with his own thoughts. Bakinowski had developed a noisy way of breathing. He said, “You’ve never met my wife. Why don’t you come over for supper tonight?”

“No,” Morgan said.

“Why not?”

“I’d be jealous.”

When they stepped out of the Blue Bonnet, the air awaiting them was cool. Dark clouds looked as if they had been hammered into the sky. A woman was sitting alone in the passenger side of a Rolls parked nearby. “Excuse me,” Morgan said and went over to her. Her blond hair was in a ponytail, accenting the wholesomeness of her face. “Where’s Crack?” he asked.

“Around somewhere. I’m waiting for him. Guess what, I’m going to have a baby.”

Morgan smiled. “Congratulations.”

“Well, I’m not pregnant yet, but Crack and I are working on it practically every night.” Her smile was that of a very young girl. Then it vanished into the woman’s face. “Thank you, James. For everything.”

“Everything’s fine?” he asked. “Silly question. It must be.”

“Crack’s thinking of joining the professional golf circuit. People say he’s good enough.”

“I bet he is.”

“He also wants to become more involved in the town. He might run for selectman next year.” The little girl’s smile was back. “He could become your boss. I bet he’d make you toe the line.”

“That might not be so bad,” Morgan said and started to ease away from the car. “He’s coming.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “Don’t worry, James. He thinks you’re the greatest.”

• • •

Clement Rayball sat in the patio bar under the Miami sun. A moment of weakness had put him in a mood and led to the meeting with the man who was sharing his table. The man, a former army buddy now working out of Washington, had put on pounds and taken on the look of a state secret. He said to Clement, “I don’t know where you’re coming from, but it’s not good thinking.”

“It was just a thought,” Clement said.

“You’re not down and out, I know that. Sounds to me like you’re looking for a home.”

“Maybe I miss drinking army coffee out of a canteen.”

“The president waves the flag, you gotta jump. You want that?” The man sat back. “You’re going through something, let it pass.”

Clement clasped his drink. “You’re right, of course.”

“Let the young guys do the fighting, Clement. We’re too old, I’m too fat.”

“You always did make sense.”

The man looked at his watch, a Swiss one like Clement’s. “Gotta go.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Glad you listened.”

He finished his drink alone and left. He drove into the heated parts of Miami, where the streets vibrated with zealots, exiles, smugglers, intriguers, junkies. Whores flashed their legs. It was a world of stucco and displaced Spanish, through which he passed without fear and approached cool, palm-fringed streets where the stucco houses were bigger and defended by walls. Then he entered an area of small professional buildings and parked in front of one.

He rode an elevator to the fourth floor, which was the uppermost. The elevator doors opened almost into her office suite. The walls of the reception room were the soothing blue shade of a robin’s egg. The large potted plants were not overwhelming. The receptionist said, “She won’t see you without an appointment.”

He said, “But she might.”

He went into her office, where she was smoking a cigarette and reading a journal that looked forbidding. Her tight curly hair had the frosty shimmer of moonlight and her tanned face the luster of women half her age. She removed her reading glasses.

He said, “My name’s Chico. Actually it’s Rayball — Clement Rayball. Do you remember me? We had a drink together.”

“Strangely enough, I do remember you,” Dr. Rosen replied easily. “You’re the one who doesn’t wear underpants.”

“I lied.”

“I see.” She put her cigarette out. “I won’t ask you how you found me. I suspect you have your ways.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” He took a chair. “So you’re a shrink.”

“That’s what some people call us. What’s your problem, Mr. Rayball?”

“What’s your modus operandi, Doctor?”

“I try to recognize my client’s essential contradictions and restore the balance, put him back on the beam, so to speak.”

“What if he’s never been on the beam, so to speak?”

“Then we work from scratch.”

“That could take awhile.”

“Yes, it could. And it would cost you money.”

“Money’s not my problem.”

“What is your problem, Mr. Rayball?”

“Two problems. The little one is a lady named Esther. The bigger one takes telling.”

She glanced at her watch. “All right, let’s begin.”

• • •

The sermon was written. Randolph Jackson had been and gone. Still in the garden, Reverend Stottle dropped his head back and closed his eyes. He should have enjoyed a pleasant catnap and instead had a nightmare in the afternoon’s fading light. Jesus appeared in white robes that gradually darkened with blood the way red roses in the final flicker of day become the gore of the garden. But it was all right when he woke. A drop of rain touched his face like a child’s tiny kiss, and Mrs. Stottle was smiling down at him.

“You’d better come in, dear.”

• • •

Randolph Jackson returned exhausted from his visit with the Reverend Mister Stottle. He went up to the master bedroom, slipped off his calfskin loafers, stretched out on the bed, and listened to the rain. He was nodding off when his wife came home. He heard her call his name and mount the stairs. Her abrupt weight on the edge of the bed rocked him.

“That chief of yours,” she said, “is up to his old tricks.”

He rubbed an eye. “What tricks are those?” he asked and watched her remove wet pumps. Her hosiery was translucent blue.

“He was seen in front of Tuck’s kissing some bimbo from the Heights, and I saw him myself with that baseball player’s wife. I told you to get rid of him, you didn’t listen.”

“You’re right, Suzy. One of these days.”

She thrust an arm across the bed and leaned over him, her damp hair redolent of the rainy outdoors. “It’s been a long time, do you know that?” Her eyes caressed. “Usually it’s me that’s tired.”

He looked at her with great interest. “Suzy, you surprise me,” he said and watched her dress come off. In a short while she surprised him more. “Goodness me,” he said and reached down to stroke her head. With his other hand he tickled her bare back, the skin as pink and smooth as the day he married her. Playfully he said, “I hope you’ve never done this to the chief.” Her lips popped off him, and she winked through her fallen hair.

“Only in my imagination.”

The rain ran into the night. It was steady. It clattered on Chief Morgan’s car, which was parked under a streetlight. The green gloom of the rain bloated shrubs, aggrandized trees, and obliterated the For Sale sign Lydia Lapham had authorized some weeks before. Morgan, relaxed behind the wheel, had listened to the news, stuff about a possible war, and now was listening to music, his fingers tapping to the melodic time-lessness of Peggy Lee’s voice.

He glanced toward the house when the porch light went on. Then the front door opened, and in the next instant Lydia Lapham was running toward him in her sloppy robe under an umbrella, which nearly slipped from her grasp. She nearly slipped too. He did not begin cranking down the window until she banged on the glass.

“For God’s sake, come in!” she shouted.

His look was undecided. “What have you got on under that thing?”

“Nothing.”

“OK, I’ll come in.”

This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1992 by Andrew Coburn
All rights reserved.

Cover Images ©123rf/Engin Korkmaz, Viacheslav Votchitsev, alhovik

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4506-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4506-1