“The coroner says it was an accident.”
“The coroner also said he was drugged.”
“The guy was a hype. Whaddaya expect?” Torres blew a cloud of cigar smoke across the small, windowless room, then tilted back in his swivel chair revealing an enormous stomach that poured over a heavy metal belt buckle fashioned from the letters USMC. The desk between us was piled high with papers but he had cleared enough space for the plastic nameplate that identified him as Samuel Torres, Detective, Homicide.
Torres and I went back a long way. I had once dissected his testimony on cross-examination in a murder case on which he was the investigator. He was lucky the jury hadn’t hissed him when he got off the stand. Neither of us had forgotten his humiliation. Now he studied me with small, dark eyes. On the wall, above his pitted, jowly face, there was a calendar distributed by some policeman’s association. It was a drawing showing two cops standing against a flowering tree of some kind. They were dressed in black uniforms, riot helmets on their heads, jaws adamantly set against the future. Fine art, cop style. That calendar drawing spoke volumes to me about the cops — they were menacing and paranoid, and not very bright.
“A hype knows how much he can handle,” I said, resuming my conversation with Torres. It was three in the afternoon, and I had not been home since I was brought to the morgue that morning from my apartment.
“Hey, everyone makes a mistake. The guy was just partying. And anyway, counsel” — he said the last word sneeringly — “we got this one figured out.”
Now it was my turn to sneer. “Right. You have him wandering around the university at ten at night, shot up with dope, losing his balance, tumbling down the embankment and drowning in three feet of water. It happens every day.”
“You’re wasting my time,” Torres said.
“I don’t think that’s possible, detective.”
“Watch it, Rios. This ain’t a courtroom. No judge is gonna take your punches for you.”
“I’m terrified.”
“Ormes, get him out of here.”
The only other person in the office, a woman who had been quietly listening to us, rose from her desk and came over to me. Her nameplate identified her as Terry Ormes, also a homicide detective. She was tall and slender, and she wore a dark blue dress cut so austerely that I had thought it was a uniform at first. She had an open, plain face made plainer by the cut of her hair and the absence of makeup. It wasn’t the kind of face that compelled a second look, but if you did look again you were rewarded. Her face radiated intelligence. She studied me for a second with luminous gray eyes.
“Come on, Mr. Rios,” she said in a friendly voice, “I’ll walk you out.”
I shrugged and followed her out of the office, down a bright corridor, past the crowded front desk to the steps of the police station. It was a cool afternoon, cloudy.
“Your colleague’s an asshole,” I said out of frustration.
“Sam’s been around a long time and he’s set in his ways. He’s not a bad cop, just tired.”
The mildness of her reply knocked the air out of my anger. “Well, thanks — Detective.”
“Terry,” she said, extending her hand.
“I’m Henry,” I said, shaking hands.
“I think you’re right about Hugh Paris,” she said. “I think someone killed him. I just can’t figure out who or why.”
I looked at her. “Can you talk now?” She nodded. “Let’s get a cup of coffee, then.” I gestured to a Denny’s across the street.
“You look beat,” she said, once we were seated in an orange vinyl booth. I took a sip of coffee, tasting nothing but hot.
“It’s been a long day and it started at the morgue. Why do you think Hugh was murdered?’’
“I was the first one from homicide at the scene this morning,” she said. “Are you familiar with the footbridge?”
I said yes. San Francisquito Creek ran along the eastern boundary of the campus at the edge of the wood that fanned out in both directions from the entrance to the school. As the creek flowed north into the bay, it descended, ultimately becoming subterranean as it crept into town. By the time it reached the edge of campus, there was a six-foot embankment down to the water.
Across from the creek was the edge of a shopping center. The footbridge forded the creek at this point, allowing pedestrians access to the shopping center from the walking paths through the wood. The area around the bridge, some of the densest wood on campus, had a bad reputation since it had been the scene of a couple of rapes a few years earlier. It wasn’t the kind of place people visited at night.
Terry Ormes was saying, “I was there before they lifted the body out of the water. It was just at dawn and I was watching from the bridge. I swear I saw footprints down there on the bank, and they weren’t made by just one pair of shoes.”
“How many pairs of shoes?”
“At least two pair. The sand kept the impressions pretty good.”
“Anyone take pictures?”
“I went back to my car to radio for a photographer,” she said, “but by the time I got back, the paramedics had gone charging down the embankment and pulled him out of the water. They walked all over the place. There was no way to tell.”
“That doesn’t help much,” I said glumly.
She lowered her coffee cup. “That’s not all. I walked up that embankment six or seven times. I didn’t see anything, not a scrap of clothing or blood or hair or even any broken grass. If Hugh Paris slipped down the embankment, he was awfully careful not to leave any traces behind. And there’s one other thing. You saw the body?” I nodded. “Did you see his back?” “No.”
“There were bruises around his shoulders. I think someone held him face down in the water until he drowned.”
All I could manage was, “Jesus.” There was a long, still moment between us. “Did you tell any of this to Torres?”
“Sure,” she said, “but it didn’t make it into his report. Like I said, Sam’s tired. This one just looked too tough to make out a murder.”
I sighed. “Well, he’s right, maybe. A jury wouldn’t convict a guy of a parking ticket on the evidence we’ve got.”
She gazed at me, coolly. “Why do you care?”
“Hugh was my friend. He told me someone was trying to kill him, but I didn’t believe him. Now I owe him the truth, whatever it may be.”
“Is that all?”
“You really want to know?”
“No,” she said abruptly. “If it’s personal, keep it to yourself, but if it’s something I can use to investigate, don’t hold back. Is that fair?”
“Very fair, detective,” I said. “I need more time before I can tell you anything else.”
She took out a business card and scribbled a number on the back of it. “My home number,” she explained. “This investigation is officially closed, so don’t call me at the office.” She handed the card to me. “I’ll help you if I can.”
“Why?”
“I’m a cop,” she said, a little defiantly. “We’re not all like Sam.”
I finished my coffee then found a phone and called the coroner’s office to ask when they’d release the autopsy report and their official findings. I was informed that the body had been claimed by the family and there would be no autopsy. The preliminary findings — death by misadventure — would stand. It was hard to get additional information from the sexless bureaucratic whine on the other end of the line but, finally, it told me that Hugh’s body had been turned over to his mother, Katherine Paris, who gave a local address and listed the university as her place of employment.
It was dark as I drove home. The tree-lined street where I lived was still and from the windows of my neighbors’ houses came the yellow glow of light and domesticity. My own apartment would be dark and chilly. For a moment I considered driving past my building to the nearest bar but I was too tired. I felt the weight of the day and its images like an ache that wracked my brain. Surely we were never meant to live in the appalling circumstances in which we so often found ourselves, alone, fearful, mute. I parked, got out of my car and stood indecisively in the driveway. With whom could I share this loss?
I could think of no one. I walked to my apartment and slipped the key into the lock. I pushed the door open, walked through the living room into the bedroom and lay on the bed, fully clothed. Despite my exhaustion I made myself relive the last day I spent with Hugh, scouring my memory for clues to his death. He’d risen early, put on a tie and blazer. He said he was going out on business and asked me to meet him at the St. Francis around noon. I’d become accustomed to Hugh’s solitary comings and goings and once I was satisfied they didn’t involve drugs, I relaxed.
I’d arrived at the St. Francis early and had just turned the corner from Geary when I spotted Hugh, his back turned to me, engaged in emphatic conversation with a tall old man. They’d talked for a moment and then the old man got into a silver Rolls.
Uncle John. John Smith.
That’s how Hugh referred to the old man, as Uncle John. But he wouldn’t tell me anything more and we argued over lunch about it.
“I’m protecting you,” I heard him say. Uncle John. That afternoon we made love. And then I woke up four hours later, rolled myself over onto my back and sat up. I was certain someone else was in the apartment. I switched on a lamp and made a lot of noise getting out of bed. Then, like a frightened child, I went, noisily, from room to room talking to the darkness as I turned on every light in the apartment. Eventually, I found myself standing in the middle of the living room. I was alone. I stood there for a few minutes, not feeling or thinking anything, not knowing what to do. Then, my stomach, which had been patient all day, roared and demanded food.
I rummaged through the refrigerator coming up with a shriveled apple and a carton of spoiled cottage cheese. In the end, I made my meal out of a bottle of Jack Daniels and a packet of peanuts left over from some long-forgotten airplane trip. I sat down to think. It seemed a waste of time to devise fancy theories about a crime when the evidence was barely sufficient even to establish that a crime had occurred. I believed Hugh had been murdered, but the basis of my belief consisted of Hugh’s unsupported assertions and Terry Ormes’ unrecorded observations. Clearly, I needed to know more about the Paris family and Hugh’s last few months.
The latter I would leave to Ormes — with the resources of the police department behind her, she could tap into the paper trail that we all generate as we go through life. As for the Paris family and Hugh’s relations with it, two names immediately came to mind, Aaron Gold and Katherine Paris. Then I drew a blank. Finally, a third name did occur to me. Grant Hancock. I turned the name over in my mind and mentally wrote beside it, “last resort.” Then I poured another drink.
The law office of Grayson, Graves and Miller, Aaron Gold’s firm, occupied the top three floors of the tallest building in town. A carpeted, wood-paneled elevator whisked me up to the twentieth floor and deposited me in a reception room the size of my entire apartment and considerably better furnished. A middle-aged woman sat behind a semi-circular desk, beneath a Rothko, manipulating the most elaborate phone console I had ever seen. Wading through the carpet, and between the heavy chairs and couches scattered around the room, I approached her and asked for Aaron. She took my measure with a glance and invited me to wait.
Instead, I walked over to a huge globe of the world and spun it. She cleared her throat censoriously and I drifted to the window. The window faced south to the foothills and beyond, where behind rustic stone walls and elaborate electronic alarm systems, the firm’s rich clients kept the twentieth century at bay.
Grayson, Graves and Miller was just another weapon in their armory. The receptionist called my name and directed me through the door beside her desk and down the hall. I went through the door and found myself looking down a seemingly endless, blue- carpeted corridor lined with closed doors. I heard a lot of frantic voices coming from behind those doors. The refrigerated air blew uncomfortably as I made my way down the hall looking for Gold’s office. This, it occurred to me, was my idea of hell. Just then, a door opened and Gold stepped out and came toward me. The stride was a touch less athletic today, I noticed, and the stomach muscles sagged a bit beneath his elegantly tailored shirt. He was tired around the mouth and eyes and his shaggy hair looked recently slept on.
As we stepped into his office, he instructed his secretary that we were not to be disturbed. On his desk was yesterday’s paper turned to the story of Hugh’s death. I sat down on a comer of the desk while Aaron stood irresolutely before me.
“I was going to call you,” he said.
“I’ve saved you the trouble.” I lifted a corner of the newspaper. “Hugh told me he was in danger of being murdered. I didn’t believe him.”
Gold said nothing.
“He even told me who the murderer would be, his grandfather, Robert Paris. A client of your firm.”
Gold shook his head.
“That can’t be true,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Then what were you going to call me about?”
Gold wandered over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself some scotch. He held the bottle at me. I shook my head.
“You got Hugh’s letters from someone,” I continued, “presumably the recipient. If Robert Paris is involved in Hugh’s death and you’re protecting him, you’re already an accessory.”
“Don’t lecture me about my legal status,” Aaron snapped. “I just want to talk.”
“I’m listening.”
“Judge Paris’s account is managed by the two most senior partners in the firm,” he began, “but there’s enough so that some of it trickles down to the associates. I’ve done my share of work on that account and I’d heard of Hugh Paris, knew he was the judge’s grandson. I’d heard he was bad news,” Aaron shrugged. “I really didn’t give it much thought.”
He sipped his drink.
“Still,” he continued, “when you told me he was in jail, I thought that was important enough to mention to one of the partners on the judge’s account. I thought we might want to do something for him.”
You did, I thought, but said nothing.
“I got the third-degree,” Aaron said. “The two partners questioned me for more than an hour. When they were satisfied I wasn’t holding back anything they explained to me that Hugh had made threats against the judge’s life. I was shown the letters and asked to report back to them anything else that I might learn from you of Hugh’s activities.”
“And did you?”
“Of course I did,” he replied, emptying his glass. “The partners had me convinced that Hugh was dangerous. They told me that he was a drug addict, that his father was crazy. There were disturbing reports from private investigators who’d been hired to keep an eye on him in New York. I not only believed Hugh was a threat to his grandfather but also to you.”
I shook my head. “You never met him.” Aaron wasn’t listening.
“But the more they confided in me,” he said, “the stranger it seemed that the judge would go to such lengths and to such expense to keep track of Hugh. It seemed completely out of proportion to any possible threat Hugh may have posed to Robert Paris.”
“And now Hugh is dead.”
“Yes.” He rose from the couch and went back to the liquor cabinet, pouring another drink. “Three days ago I had a meeting with the partners on the Paris account. They asked me a lot of questions about you — questions that contained information they could have got only by having had you followed.”
“What kind of questions?”
“They wanted to know the nature of your relationship with Hugh.”
“And did you tell them?”
“No, but I think they already knew.”
We looked at each other.
“Three days ago,” I said, “and the next day we had lunch and you tried to talk me out of seeing Hugh. And that night he was killed.”
“I swear I had nothing to do with that,” he said.
“But your client — the judge did.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Aaron said. “I’ve been doing some research. Something’s going on that goes back a long time and involves a lot of people.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“I can’t speak more clearly — yet.” He looked at me. “I’m going to stay here,” his gesture encompassed the entire firm, “until I find out. But I don’t want to see you. It’s not safe for either of us.”
“This is no time to split up,” I said.
“They’re watching you, Henry. But they’re not worried about my loyalties. You’re my diversion.”
“Why are you doing this, Aaron?”
“I won’t be an instrument of crime,” he said. “I either have to clear my client of this murder or urge him to turn himself in. That’s my obligation.”
“Then our interests are different,” I said, “because I want justice for my friend.”
He nodded. “I’ll be in touch, Henry. Wait for my call.”
“You have to give me something, Aaron. Something to go on.”
“All right,” he said. “Robert Paris inherited his wife’s estate after she was killed in a car accident. She had a will but she died intestate.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“If you can make sense of it,” he said, “you’ll know who killed Hugh Paris.”
I heard the tremor in his voice and I was frightened for both of us.
I was sitting on the patio of the student union at the university having left Gold’s office an hour earlier. I had come to find Katherine Paris. I stared out across the empty expanse of grass and pavement. Misty light hung from the branches of the trees. A white-jacketed busboy cleared away my breakfast dishes.
School had not yet started for the undergraduates so there was none of their noise and traffic to shatter the stillness. I was thinking about Hugh. The same money that raised this school was responsible for his death. The money was everything and nothing, something that overwhelmed him and which, perhaps, could only be contained by the institution. It had not done Hugh any good, but was merely the background noise against which he played out his unhappiness.
I got up and walked across the plaza to the bookstore. It was a two-story beige box with a red tile roof, a far cry from the excesses of the Old Quad. But then, as the campus moved away from the Old Quad the architecture became purely utilitarian as conspicuous displays of wealth, whether personal or institutional, went out of style. I entered the store and stopped one of the blue-frocked salesclerks, asking where the poetry books were shelved. I was directed to the back wall of the second floor. The poetry books covered a dozen long shelves and it took me a minute to figure out that they were arranged alphabetically.
There had been a brief time in college when I wrote poetry. It was, like most sophomore verse, conceived in the loins rather than the mind. It was a notch better than most such verse, perhaps, but it was no loss to literature when I stopped writing. My brush with poetry, however, left me with a permanent respect for those who wrote it well. Seeing familiar names again, Auden, Frost, Richard Wilbur, took me back to sunny autumn afternoons when I sat in my dorm room writing lame couplets.
Katherine Paris had published a half-dozen slender volumes over the past twenty years and one thick book of collected poems. Each book was adorned with the same photograph I had seen at Hugh’s house and beneath it was the same paragraph of biographical information. She was born in Boston, graduated from Radcliffe, took a master’s degree from Columbia and currently divided her time between Boston and San Francisco. Her work had won the National Book Award and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She had been translated into twelve languages — they were listed — and had once been mentioned by T.S. Eliot who found her work elliptical. Nothing about a crazy husband and a homosexual son; apparently, that information was private.
I struggled with about a dozen of her poems before I saw Eliot’s point. Her work was indeed elliptical, she left out everything that was essential, including logic and meaning. Her words neither described nor observed things. They were just words scattered across the page. This was braininess of the highest order, the verbal equivalent of the white canvas passed off as a painting; so abstract that to have expected some sense from it would have insulted the artist. As my attention wandered from the poems, it seemed to me that I was being watched. I closed the book and looked around. The boy standing next to me quickly directed his attention to his feet.
He wore a baggy pair of khaki shorts rolled up at the bottom over a long sinewy pair of legs. He had on a white sweatshirt with a red paisley bandana tied around his neck and a small button with the lambda — the symbol of gay liberation — on it. He had a round cherubic face, short hair of an indeterminate dark color. He looked about twenty. He raised his eyes at me and I realized that I was being cruised, not spied on.
“Hello,” I said, pleasantly.
Pointing at the book in my hand he said, “I took a creative writing course from her last quarter.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “My name is Danny.”
“Henry,” I said. “Did you like the course?”
“Actually,” he confided, pushing his hair with slender fingers, “she’s a good poet but a very neurotic woman.”
“Don’t the two go together?”
“No,” he said, “I reject the notion of the doomed artist. I mean, look at Stevens, he sold insurance and Williams was a doctor.”
“Sorry,” I said, “It’s been a long time since I read poetry. Who are Stevens and Williams?”
He looked slightly shocked. “Wallace Stevens? William Carlos Williams?” I shook my head. Looking at me intently he said, “Aren’t you a student? A grad student maybe?” “I’m a lawyer and my interest in Katherine Paris is professional, not literary.”
“A lawyer,” he repeated as though describing a virus. “Don’t lawyers wear suits when they’re working?” I was wearing a pair of jeans and a black polo shirt.
“Not on house calls,” I replied. “Where can I find Mrs. Paris?”
“Third floor, English department in the Old Quad. I’ll walk you there if you like, okay?”
“Sure, just let me pay for the book.”
Between the bookstores and the Old Quad I learned quite a bit about Danny’s tastes in poetry, his life and his plans as well as receiving a couple of gently veiled passes. I steered the conversation around to Katherine Paris.
“She had this great lady persona,” he was saying, “but don’t cross her.”
“You did?”
“Anyone with any integrity does sooner or later. Her opinions are set in stone.”
“Not writ in water?”
“That’s Shelley. That was pretty good. Anyway, she doesn’t let you forget who has the power.” We had reached the English department. He smiled at me, sunnily. “What do you want with her anyway?”
“Her son was killed on campus a couple of days ago. He was a friend of mine. I want to ask her some questions.”
“You mean the guy that they found in the creek?” I nodded. “That’s too bad. Was he a good friend?”
I reached out and touched the button on his chest. “We were good friends.”
His look said, “And here I’ve been cruising you.” Aloud, he said, “You must think I’m a real jerk.”
“How could you have known?” I asked, reasonably. “And thanks for the help.’’ We shook hands, he a little awkwardly and I remembered how rare the gesture was among students. “The poem with the phrase writ in water, that was about Keats, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Shelley wrote it when Keats died. He called it ‘Adonais.’” He started to say something else, thought better of it, smiled again and walked away. I watched him go and then turned and climbed up the stairs to the third floor.
Katherine Paris did not look like a woman anyone ever called mother. Her small feet were encased in gold slippers and she wore a flowing white caftan that obliterated any sign of a body beneath it. The string of blue beads around her neck was probably lapis lazuli. It was the only jewelry she wore. Her face had the false glow of a drinker but none of a drinker’s soft alcoholic bloat. It was a hard angular face I saw as I entered her office; deeply wrinkled, deeply intelligent. She instructed me to sit down. I sat. She continued writing.
The walls of the office were bare. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon light and the only source of light was her desk lamp. She worked at an elegant writing table whose spindly legs hardly seemed able to bear the weight of the books piled on top. At length, she looked up at me from beneath half-glasses evidently surprised to find that I was still there.
I introduced myself, to her obvious pleasure, as an admirer of her work. She accepted the volume of her collected poems and signed it for me.
“How were you introduced to my poetry?” she asked. Her voice was a low, whisky rumble.
“Your son, Hugh,” I replied and, at once, the pleasure vanished. Her eyes narrowed.
“I see. Tell me, Mr. Rios, which of my poems is your favorite? Or have you actually opened this — brand new book?”
“In fact I have, Mrs. Paris, but you’re right, I didn’t come here to discuss them. I’m a lawyer.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Mrs. Paris, I was Hugh’s friend “Hugh was rather generous in that regard. He had altogether too many friends. Were you one of his — special friends?” she asked archly.
“I cared for Hugh,” I said.
“Mr. Rios,” she said, mockingly, “spare me the homosexual sentimentality. What is it you want from me?”
“I believe Hugh was murdered. I’m not sure by whom but the first thing to do is determine the exact cause of death. The body was moved before an autopsy-”
“That’s enough,” she said. “You walk in from nowhere, tell me someone killed my son and ask permission to cut open his body?” These last words were delivered in a tone of rising incredulousness. “Just who the hell are you? One of his boyfriends? Do you think there’s money for you in this?”
Unable to suppress my hostility, I said, “Mrs. Paris, I sympathize with your deep grief, however, I’m talking about a crime.”
“My deep grief? Getting himself killed was the most unselfish thing Hugh ever did. As for the body, it was cremated yesterday. As for crimes, Mr. Rios, you’re now trespassing and in one minute I’m going to call campus security and have you thrown out.” She picked up the phone.
“Why was he cremated?” I asked, rising.
“That is not your business,” she said, “now get out.”
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Paris.” She put the phone down and went back to her writing.
Sitting on my patio an hour later, I finished a gin-and-tonic, watched clouds move in from the ocean and counted up my leads. They amounted to about nothing. There were Hugh’s allegations against his grandfather and the coincidence of his death under odd circumstances. Gold knew more than he was saying, but either he could not say any more or really believed that our interests were sufficiently different for him not to confide in me. Katherine Paris was a dead end. I needed something tangible. It seemed to me that Hugh Paris moved through life like a nomad, using life up as he lived it, and leaving very little behind.
And then I remembered the letters. They were still in the pocket of the coat I had worn three days earlier. I finished my drink and went to the closet to retrieve them. Even as I spread them out on my desk a voice within begged me not to read them. I was afraid of what they might contain. I made myself another drink and circled my desk, vaguely, looking at them — thirteen in all, arranged from the earliest, in June, to the most recent, only a couple of weeks earlier. Finally, I sat down and started reading.
They were not exactly the rantings of a lunatic. On the other hand, there was little in them that could be called civilized discourse. Mostly, they were excruciatingly detailed invective of a psycho-sexual nature — literate but profoundly disturbed. I refolded the last letter and tucked it back into its envelope. It seemed impossible these could come from Hugh, but the details told. I said to myself that I was now his advocate, not his lover, and an advocate accepts revelations about his client that would send the lover running from the room. It’s part of the masochism of being a criminal defense lawyer to want to know the worst, in theory so the worst can be incorporated into the defense, but in actuality to confirm a blighted view of humanity. If I believed that people are basically good, I would have gone into plastics. People are basically screwed-up and often the best you can do for them is listen, hear the worst and then tell them it’s not so bad.
It wasn’t so bad, Hugh, I said, silently. I’ve seen worse. And the letters contained solid information. Hugh believed his grandfather was responsible for the deaths of his grandmother and his uncle, Jeremy. He also accused the judge of imprisoning his father, Nicholas, in an asylum. Finally, he accused the judge of depriving him of his lawful inheritance. There wasn’t much elaboration since, obviously, Hugh expected his grandfather to understand the allusions. It wasn’t evidence but it was something. A lead. A theory. Hugh’s death was part of a cover-up of earlier murders. All right, so it was melodramatic. Most crime is.
I collected my thoughts and called Terry Ormes. Her crisp, friendly voice was a relief after the dark muttering voice of the letters. I told her, briefly, editing out the lurid details, what the letters contained.
“That’s still not much,” she said.
“Well, it’s something. Apparently, Hugh’s grandmother and his uncle were killed up near Donner Pass on interstate 80 about twenty years ago. Can you contact the local police agency in the nearest town up there with a hospital?”
“Sure,” she said, “but if it happened on 80, it was probably a CHP case. What am I asking for?”
“Everything you can find out about the circumstances of their deaths. Any reports, death certificates, anything. And find out anything you can about Hugh’s life the last six months. Rap sheets, DMV records, any kind of paper.”
“Call me in two days,” she said. “What will you do?”
“I have one other card to play,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead. I gathered up the letters and buried them beneath a pile of papers in the bottom drawer of my desk. I closed and locked it. For a long time I sat, nursing my drink, thinking about the hole where my heart had been.