The Hours of the Virgin (13 page)

“She was recognized.”

“By whom? You?”

I had my hands in my pockets. I felt the triangle of the platinum earring in the right, but it didn't come out. “I don't need to convince you. Let's concentrate on why her luggage came home from Cajun country without her.”

“Don't you mean how? Who could have put it on the plane if not she?”

“We can fill in who later. How is easy: She ships the bags to a contact there, along with a ticket in her name. He or she checks them in at the curb using her ticket. That wouldn't work during terrorist season, but in heavy traffic a busy skycap might easily pass it on without asking to see identification. When the bags arrive in Detroit, everyone's convinced she intended to take the flight; what woman sends her clothes on without her? Now you're looking for her in Louisiana while her real trail grows colder by the minute.”

“How do you know she never went down there?”

“How do you know she did? Who drove her to the airport on the way out, or did she drive herself?”

“She took a cab. The company will have a record.”

“It might prove she went to the airport. It wouldn't tell whether she left it on a plane or in another cab. The passenger manifest would tell whether she made the flight, but you wouldn't be checking that right away because of the charade with the luggage. She still has her head start.”

“Obviously you don't know Laurel. She isn't that devious.”

I grinned. “For someone who made his pile undressing women, you don't know a lot about them.”

“So bitter, so young,” he said. “You must be divorced.”

“I prefer to call myself a monodependent. Where did she tell you she was staying down south?”

“With friends. She called me from there twice. That's how I know you're mistaken.”

“Do you have Caller ID?”

“Of course. I average two death threats a month.”

“Then you should have a record of where she called from. Unless she used a cellular telephone.”

“I'm afraid she did.”

I dealt myself a Winston.

“Please don't smoke in here,” he said. “It voids my insurance.”

“Mine too.” I put it away. “Let me know when I get too personal. If my wife's clothes showed up at Metro Airport without her in them, I'd have been on the horn before this, starting with the friends in Louisiana.”

“You became too personal the moment you made me aware of your existence. It so happens I believe in my wife's ability to take care of herself.”

“I hope you're right, for both your sakes. Whatever she's into, she's in it up to her eyes that don't match.”

“That was the feature that first caught my attention.” His watery smile was unconnected to the rest of his face, bloodless now under the tan. “When you've spent as much of your life as I have in the company of feminine perfection, it's the mistakes of nature that intrigue you. Laurel's soul is her perfection. You can't improve upon that with crowns and implants.”

I waited. After a moment he threw the scooter into gear and circled the table, coming to rest half a foot from where he'd started. I couldn't see any sense in it, unless he was a born pacer; one of those cinched-in Tommies you see in old war movies, stalking up and down the command center smacking their boots with a leather crop.

“I'm a crippled lion, Walker. I roar and shake my mane, but I can't carry off the bluff. Something happens to a man when he acquires an attractive young wife whose needs he cannot fulfill. He becomes reasonable.”

I took my hands out of my pants pockets and slid them into those of my jacket, leaving the thumbs out. That would be in the script. “You're afraid of who might answer if you call the number.”

“God knows why I'm sharing this with a blackmailer.”

“It's easier with a stranger. And you don't believe I'm a blackmailer.”

“No,” he said. “I don't know what you are, but I'm sure you're not that.”

“Does your wife have a history of disappearing?”

“No.”

“Does she have any boyfriends you know about?”

“No. She's either completely faithful or absolutely discreet. I'm grateful for the second. In my position I'm reluctant to hope for the first.”

I let the ancient books around us age five seconds more. “What's your relationship with Earl North?”

It was a stab in the dark, and it drew blood. His pupils shrank a thirty-second of an inch. On him it was the equivalent of an epileptic seizure. “Why bring him up? Is he involved?”

“Where do you know him from?” I kept my hands in my pockets. I've done harder things, but not since Saigon fell.

“Here. This room. I employed him to catalogue and assess the library. I'd had dealings with Harold Boyette—nothing financial, just picking his brain on some acquisitions I was considering; it was before the scandal, and he was one of the leaders in his field. He recommended North to me. They were both working at the DIA then.”

“When?”

“Last June. We'd only been in the house a month. The books were still in crates and I decided it was time I had someone in to develop a computer system. North was efficient. His familiarity with manuscripts and books was strictly general, but he was a wizard with a keyboard. He came in twice a week and remained for several hours, sorting the books into categories and sub-categories and cross-referencing them into the computer. He finished just before Thanksgiving. The machine's in the next room if you care to see his work. I wouldn't have it in here. The telephone is twentieth century enough.”

“Seen him since?”

“No. I paid his fee and he left. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't heard from him.”

“Why?”

“I promised him a reference if he ever needed one. I heard he left the DIA last month.” He smiled his watery smile. “Perhaps he thinks a letter of recommendation from a notorious sex merchant would bring him more harm than good. Perhaps he's right. What a world. Schools give out condoms to fifth graders, but a grown man has to whisper a request for one of my magazines to a clerk before he'll take it out from under the counter.”

“Boyette said North was fired for stealing.”

“If that's true, they did a better job keeping it secret than they did with Boyette. I never heard a thing.”

“Ruddy at the DIA said he fired him for going through the files of patrons.”

“Ruddy's a dry old bird and a penny-pinching Scot besides. But he doesn't spread false gossip. I'm inclined to believe him. All I can say is North behaved himself all the time he was here.”

“The Boyette scandal broke while North was working here. He recommended North. That must have caused some concern.”

“It did,” he said. “I considered having him investigated.”

“What stopped you?”

“What makes you think anything did?”

“If you'd had him investigated, you would have heard my name before your lawyer gave it to you and you'd have known I wasn't here to bleed you. Earl North and I are old acquaintances.”

“I'm old school, Walker. In the absence of evidence of guilt I'd rather be betrayed by someone I trusted than betray myself by being too damn smart to trust someone I should. By the time I learned the circumstances of Boyette's dismissal, North had proven his worth to me. I asked him straight away if he was involved in any of the frauds. He said he wasn't. I chose to accept that.”

“You're a liar, Mr. Strangeways. An old-school liar, but a liar just the same.”

It was the first color his cheeks had shown in some time. I was impressed. Any man who still thinks being called a liar is an insult is worth getting to know.

He used the telephone again. “Ben, Mr. Walker is ready to leave. Please show him to his car.”

“You don't trust Earl North,” I said. “You don't even like him. You've spent more time at conference tables than Winston Churchill, and you're pretty good at keeping the lid on, but I'm just as good at prying them off. I saw your eyes when I mentioned North. I see the same thing in mine every time he comes into my head while I'm looking in a mirror. You'd like to knock him down and run your electric moped back and forth across his face. What made you decide not to have him investigated?”

Ben appeared, silently as before. This time he had on his leather jacket and cap. Strangeways looked at him. I'd made up my mind not to be so impressed with him if he went through with the bluff.

“Thank you, Ben. I've managed to talk Mr. Walker into staying a bit longer. I'm sorry I disturbed you.”

The welterweight hesitated, then took himself away. He was as light on his feet as anyone in the ring or the ballet.

“It was Laurel,” Strangeways said. “She made a joke of it. She said if I insisted on being a suspicious old spinster she'd knit me a shotgun. Didn't I tell her myself I'd still be setting type in Mossel Bay if some cynical old Tory hadn't taken a chance on me. It was most convincing.”

“How long did it last?”

“I'm disabled, not blind. They were too formal with each other whenever I was in the room, and Laurel was spending entirely too much time at her vanity on days when he was expected. There were other things, too small and too many to go into now. But I didn't admit to myself that I knew what was taking place beneath my nose until the moment she spoke up for him. I backed off.”

He spread his hands. He was eloquent with them; compensation for the loss of body language elsewhere. “Understand, Walker, I'm not a coward. I can't work up a fine melodramatic rage over the circumstances of my wife's orgasms when I'm incapable of giving her one myself.”

“It's not something you give.” I took my hands out of my pockets. “Offering your wife's lover a work reference is carrying self-sacrifice a long way.”

“I was curious to see if he'd have the nerve to take me up on it.”

“If he did, you'd have killed him.”

“Worse. I would have destroyed him.”

I looked at him, a man stuck on wheels in a big house on a wooded hill where predators swooped and slew twenty minutes from the heart of a great city. I wanted a cigarette. I took a walk. I stopped and turned my back on a row of crumbling Bibles.

“Where's North now?”

“I don't know,” he said. “His office number was the only one I had for him.” He adjusted his aviator's glasses. “You haven't yet told me what his connection is with your quest.”

“Boyette said he thought North stole the Hours and set up the ransom drop.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I'd believe anything of North.”

“Just how are you acquainted?”

“Not intimately. I only saw him once. That was the day the People of the State of Michigan decided not to prosecute him for my partner's murder.”

“Ah.”

“I'm disappointed,” I said. “I was holding that back for the surprise.”

“Murder is the easiest crime to commit. The only one that's almost always committed by amateurs. Anyone is capable of it.” He breathed in and out. The sound was the same as the one the machine made changing the air in the room. “In a little while—after you leave—I shall find the courage to lift that telephone and call the number in Baton Rouge. If the person who answers is indeed an innocent friend of Laurel's, and if she doesn't know where she is, I may call you to request your professional services.”

“Save your money for books, Mr. Strangeways. Finding your wife is part of finding Boyette and North.”

He nodded. “If you should happen to discover something I'd just as soon not know, I hope I can count upon your discretion.”

“If I do, you won't.”

He offered his hand then. I took it.

As we broke contact, a woman entered the room in a scarlet slack suit and black all-weather coat tied around her waist. She was almost my height in flat heels, with red-gold hair combed straight back from an even line high on her forehead and chopped off square at the base of her neck. She had Scandinavian cheekbones and could pass for thirty, but not in this light. She stopped when she saw us. “Gordon.”

“Amos Walker, Jillian Raider,” Strangeways said. “I believe you met over the telephone.”

“Your lawyer has a key to your house?”

“Why not? After fifteen years in litigation she's practically a partner. Nothing new, I suppose?”

She shook her head. Her chill gray eyes were on me. “You two appear to have become quite friendly. I hope you didn't discuss anything important in my absence.”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Good books and travel.”

15

The things you remember.

Dale drank his whiskey without water in bars that had no name, coffee you could float a shoe in, Pepsi with all his meals, and rusty water in smeared glasses with old exoskeletons bobbing on top. He sent back a steak if it showed signs of having passed within twelve feet of a stove, and when his bladder was full and his plate empty he picked fights with the biggest and ugliest thing in the room that didn't plug into the wall and play records. But the item he knew the most about after sleuthing was comic strips.

He knew Superman's childhood name and which color Kryptonite did what to him. He could rattle off the names and fixed ages of all the kids in the
Family Circus
and the date of the
Thimble Theater
strip that introduced Popeye the Sailor to Castor and Olive Oyl and the world, and once won fifty bucks off a precinct commander over the color of Beetle Bailey's eyes; or so he claimed. He was the only person I ever saw laugh at a cartoon in
The New Yorker
. I was still coming across buried booty he'd clipped and stashed in the desk in the office, fragile as sloughed skin but still funny. He'd killed two men as a foot patrolman and a third in private practice, defending himself against a missing person who objected to getting found, but he giggled like a troop of Brownies whenever Lucy jerked a football out from under Charlie Brown's foot.