“What'd you tell him?”
“That as far as I knew you still were.”
I shook my head. “I'm not in hiding. We've got a phone in and everything now. You've got the number. So does Slick.”
“Does it ever ring?”
“Last week,” I said. “It rang last week.”
“Did you answer it?”
“I was outside and by the time I got there they'd hung up.”
“Have you got a cigarette?” she said.
“I'll roll you one.”
“God, you're quaint.” She rose, found a carton in a cabinet, tore open a pack, and lit the long, brown cigarette with a paper match. She blew some smoke out and said, “That suit. Are you supposed to be dressed up or something?”
I looked down at my suit. “What's wrong with it?”
“It's ten years old. At least ten.”
“Eleven.”
“What's the occasion?” she said. “The last time you dropped by you were wearing your Big Mack overalls and your shitkicker high-tops.”
“Somebody wants to pay me a whole bunch of money for two weeks' work. I thought I should look neat and earnest.”
“I liked the overalls better. Who's paying you the bunch of money?”
“Roger Vullo.”
Audrey made a face indicating that she didn't think much of Roger Vullo.
“You know him?” I said.
“We've met. He's weird. What're you supposed to do for him?”
“Give him my opinion about what happened to Arch Mix.”
She took it well enough. There was a slight tremor in her left hand as she raised the cigarette to her lips, but I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been looking for it.
“You're a real son of a bitch, aren't you?” she said.
“Probably.”
She got up and went over to the sink and ran the burning end of her cigarette under the tap and dropped it down the disposal. She switched on the disposal and let it run for a while, for much longer than was really needed. Then she turned back.
“It's funny,” she said.
“What?”
“How much alike you and Slick are.”
“Sure.”
“When Slick called last week he wanted to know all about the kids and me. He must have talked for fifteen minutes about that. I thought he'd never shut up. He even offered to take the kids to the zoo. I told him they hated the zoo. Well, he dropped the kids and switched to me. How was I feeling? Was there anything he could do for me? Maybe we could go to dinner soon. And thenâever so casually, he even lapsed into Frenchâhe said, by the way, he was just wondering whether I had any idea of what might have happened to Arch Mix. And that was going to be your next question, too, wasn't it, Harvey?”
“Sure,” I said again.
“Well, I'll tell you the same thing I told Slick before I hung up on him. I don't know what happened to Arch. We broke up six weeks ago. He vanished or disappeared or dropped out of sight four weeks ago. He's dead by now, I guess. He must be dead.”
“It lasted quite a while, didn't it?”
Audrey turned and started opening and closing cabinets. She finally found what she was looking for, a bottle of Scotch. She poured some into a glass, drank it down, and made a face. She seldom drank. She poured more Scotch into the glass, added water this time, and sat back down at the kitchen table across from me.
“You know how long it lasted,” she said. “A year. Then when he broke it off I came running to my big brother for whatâsolace? Comfort? A pat on the head? Well, I suppose I got as much from you as you've got to give. But Ruth made it worth the trip. She let me talk.”
“I let you talk.”
“You let me talk for fifteen minutes and then started fidgeting.”
“I made a mistake,” I said. “I didn't know how serious it was. Mix wasn't the first married man you'd busted up with.”
“I keep forgetting that I'm the whore of the eastern seaboard.”
“I said I made a mistake. A bad one.”
“I reckon that's as close to an apology as you're capable of,” she said. Sometimes my sister used reckon, sometimes guess. The reckon came from the South and the guess came from the North. Her voice was much like our mother's which had had a French tinkle to it although, unlike our mother, Audrey had no accent except upper-income, undefinable American.
She drank a swallow of her Scotch and water and made another face. “How do people drink this stuff?”
“Practice,” I said. “It helps if you don't start before breakfast.”
“They came to see me.”
“Who?”
“The cops.”
“How were the cops?” I said.
“Polite. Firm. Thorough. And puzzled, I reckon. Or maybe that's just how they try to appear. I haven't had too much experience with the police.”
“What about Mix?”
“What about him?”
“I mean how did he seem the last time you saw him?”
Audrey lit another of her long brown cigarettes. This time it seemed to taste better to her. “Noble,” she said. “He was being noble. Sad, noble and nervous.”
“You mean about going back to the kids and the little woman?”
She nodded slowly. “It's strange how some men get after they turn forty or maybe fifty, especially if they marry early. They find something younger and perhaps prettier and they think it's going to be their last chance so they grab it. But then they get guilty or scared or both and go back to where it was safe. Dull, perhaps, but safe.”
“You said he was nervous. Was there anything else that was worrying him?”
“If there was, he didn't talk about it. We talked about Us and Art and Literature and Life. I tried to capitalize all those things, but I'm not sure I made it.”
“You did all right.”
“And sometimes he'd talk about Her. That's capitalized, too.”
I nodded.
“Well, one time he said that shortly after he'd turned forty he woke up, rolled over, and realized that for fifteen years he'd been married to a stranger.”
“That's not very noble.”
“But think of the sacrifice he made by going back to her.”
“She's not all that bad.”
“Mother would have said coarse.”
“Mother was a snob.”
Audrey shrugged. “So am I.”
“You can afford to be.”
“It's funny, but he was never interested in that. The money, I mean. I can tell. Jesus, how I can tell.”
“Well, rich young widows are rather popular.”
“He mentioned you a couple of times,” she said. “In passing.”
“Oh? He spoke well of me, I trust.”
“Not very.”
“What'd he say?”
“He said that you were a man with principles but no purpose and that he felt sorry for you.”
“You defended me, of course.”
“I said I wasn't too sure about the principles.”
CHAPTER FIVE
T
HE BLACK PLYMOUTH
sedan was still parked across the street from my sister's house and a few doors down. It had been there when I had driven around the block three times looking for a place to park an hour before. Although it was still there, the man behind the wheel was different.
I crossed the street and moved down the sidewalk until I reached the car's front bumper. Then I stopped, took out my tin box, and started rolling a cigarette. The man inside the car watched me. I nodded at him and smiled. He didn't nod back. He didn't smile either. When the cigarette was rolled I walked around to the driver's side and smiled down at the man. He gave me a bleak look.
“Got a match, mister?” I said, all friendly and country.
“I don't smoke.”
I patted my pockets, grinned like a fool, took out some matches, and lit the cigarette. Then I gave the Plymouth the look of a man who knows his automobiles.
“Nice car, a Plymouth,” I said. “It's the Fury, ain't it?”
The man nodded, but only once. He was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine with a round, plump face, light blue eyes, not much of a nose, and a mouth that was much too harsh and cruel for the rest of him. His hair was a sandy blond and long enough to lap over his shirt collar.
“Bet it's got the big engine in it though,” I said in the
knowing tone of one who can't be easily slickered. “Probably uses a lot of gas.”
The man made himself look exasperated.
I looked around carefully and then bent down so that my forearm rested on the door sill. I grew a confidential look on my face. “You wouldn't be a kidnapper, would you?”
“A what?”
“My sister lives in that house right over there,” I said and pointed. “In about ten minutes her kids are gonna be comin' home from the park. Now my sister's got a little money so I just thought that if you and your buddy, the one who was sittin' right here about an hour ago, well, I thought that if you all were kidnappers, maybe I'd just better go call the cops.”
“Aw shit, fella,” the man said, reached into his shirt pocket, and brought out a folding case and let me look at a badge and the ID card that went with it.
“Don't reckon you'd mind, would you?” I said and reached for the case. The ID card said that he was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department and that his name was James Knaster. It also said he was thirty years old. I studied the card and then handed the case back.
I gave him a huge wink. “Keepin' an eye on her, huh?”
“What's your name, friend?”
“Longmire. Harvey A. Longmire.”
“Why don't you just run along, Mr. Longmire?”
“You vice?” I said and before he could reply I went on with my rube act, which even Ruth says isn't bad. You know what she's doin', don'tcha? She's sittin' up there in a fancy wrapper you can see right through drinkin' Scotch whiskey and hit not yet noon.”
“Look, fellaâ”
“Reckon the best thing I can do is go tell her that you're out here keepin' an eye on her sinnin' ways. Dear Lord, I'm just so glad our old Mom and Daddy ain't alive to see this.” I shook my head sorrowfully and patted the sill of the car door. “Well, Detective Knaster, it sure has been pure inspiration just talkin' to you.”
I turned and started back toward Audrey's house. Behind me I could hear the Plymouth's engine start. I looked back as Knaster pulled the car out from the curb and drove off. He didn't look at me. I waved anyhow.
Like Georgetown, Washington's Foggy Bottom was once a slum. A black slum. But now it's home for the State Department and there isn't much fog to speak of, although there are those who will argue that it has increased markedly since the State Department settled in.
What's left of the Foggy Bottom residential area is still rather fashionable, and therefore expensive, and Jean-Jacques Le Gouis, my Uncle Slick, wouldn't have dreamed of living in any other kind of neighborhood. Home to him was a small house on Queen Anne's Lane where it was even more difficult to park than in Georgetown. However, I found an empty slot after only fifteen minutes and perhaps two quarts of gasoline. Taking the gasoline into consideration I estimated that the free parking space had saved me approximately thirty-five cents. Somehow I resisted the temptation to jot it down.
The house was a narrow, two-story, flat-front frame building painted a light pastel blue with cream trim. The front yard was about the size of your average living room rug and a lot of painstaking care had been spent on turning it into a Japanese garden. There was even a little pool with a little bridge that had a little stone troll on guard. The troll looked faintly Asiatic. I had been assured that the garden was quite authentic, but I could only think of it as precious. I refused to think of it as cute. After all, he was my uncle.
I rang the bell twice and while I waited I admired the thick old wooden door that had been cut down from one that once had provided entrance into a century-old Presbyterian church that had been razed to make way for a McDonald's. My uncle was always scouting demolition sites for fine old wood, stained glass, marble, and other interesting doodads that he somehow incorporated into his decorating scheme that included an all-marble bathroom with a huge stained glass window depicting Moses in the bullrushes.
I was about to ring again when I heard his voice ask, “Who is it?” He didn't open the door to just anyone. Not many people in Washington do, other than my sister. But Slick had grown especially wary since the time he reluctantly had opened it to a soft-spoken young couple who claimed to be Jehovah's Witnesses. They had promptly bopped him over the head and made off with about $2,000 in cash and valuables.
When he said, “Who is it?” again I replied, “It's your poor nephew, Uncle. Come to seek a boon.”
He opened the door then. “Well, dear boy.”
“I'm forty-three, Slick.”
“Almost a child. I'm fifty-six.”
“You don't look it.”
“Don't lie to an old man, Harvey.”
I wasn't really. He still had all of his hair and it was thick and glossy and black on top and silver at the sides. He had kept his weight down and there wasn't much sag to his lean face that had some interesting lines that a stranger might have taken for character. It was, all in all, a handsome, faintly hawkish face that easily could have passed for fifty or maybe even forty-nine and if I hadn't known that he couldn't see three feet in front of him, I would never have suspected that his green eyes were covered by contacts.
My uncle's living room was furnished with antiques that he had collected over the years so I sat down gingerly on a couch that looked to be the sturdiest of the lot.
“Have you had lunch?” he asked.
“Audrey fed me.”
“Well. How is Audrey?”
“All right.”
“I was about to have a martini, but since you've eaten perhaps you'd like something else.”
“A beer would be fine.”