Die A Little Part 16

He sighs and looks down at the photo hard. "I can't promise I won't need to contact you. But I won't push you."

I breathe in fast.

"Edith Ann Beauvais." It is a chance. I take a chance.

He writes the name down. "Who's she?"

"She was someone who ... I saw her with them a few times."

"Davalos and the victim?"

"Yes." I am losing track of my own distortions.

"Where does she live?"

"She's dead." "Convenient." "She killed herself." "We'll see how what you say checks out. Does she have any surviving relatives?" "I guess. I mean, her husband."

"Name?"

"Charlie Beauvais."

"Where might I find him?"

"He s gone."

"He's gone. Of course. Where'd he go? Hop a s.h.i.+p to the Orient?"

"No one's sure. Maybe Mexico."

"What are you doing to me?"

"Telling you the truth."

He sighs again, looks out the window for a minute, then turns back to me.

"Don't you want to ask me something?"

I look at him.

"Don't you want to know how I found you?"

I swallow hard, although I'm not sure why. "How did you find me?"

"Police business.

"Oh."

"But you might think about this: I found you by accident. Because I was following someone else. Imagine my surprise. You get it?"

"I'm not sure."

He gestures with his eyes to the Avalon photo. "Watch your back, Miss."

Like out of a movie. Like out of a movie, and I clutch my chest. I clutch my chest and shake my head. I didn't see it coming, but I should have.

The next day at school, I keep worrying about when I will see Alice for the first time, for the first time since this most recent conversation with Detective Cudahy. These days she seems to be lurking around every corner.

As I make my way down the stairs after fifth period, I am surprised instead to see my brother standing in the front vestibule, kicking his foot in short strokes against the blasted brick of the wall. My brother, I almost say it aloud.

He must have heard my approach, or somehow sensed me descending, because he immediately turns to see me.

His face has a pinched, anxious look I know very well. It is the face he wears when he feels helpless. Seeing it, I stop short. I can't bear to move closer.

"What's wrong, Bill?"

"Nothing's wrong, nothing. Why do you ask?"

I am still a few steps from the bottom, but somehow I can't get any closer. Why is he here? Has something happened? Has he found something out?

I can't say anything. It is long past saying anything.

He runs the back of his hand over his face. "It's nothing. It's nothing. It's just- When you drove Alice to school today, did she seem all right to you?"

I make the words come out. "I didn't drive her today. I had an early meeting. I've had a lot of early meetings lately."

He turns toward the wall, touching it with his fingertips. Suddenly, he is nine years old again and facing the profuse tears of his sister, who doesn't want to leave for girls' camp the next day.

"What is it, Bill?"

"And she's not here. She hasn't been here all day. They said she called in sick. They called me at work to see if I could pick up her students' a.s.signments and take them home. They ..." He trails off.

"She's probably at home in bed. A misunderstanding-"

"Yes." He lifts his head. "I'm sure. Obvious. Thanks, Sis. You know me, overreacting as usual."

I try for a smile and walk the final steps, moving toward him.

"She's just been a little sick, so I've tried to keep a close eye on her."

"Yes, of course. I'm sure she appreciates it." Then I add, touching his arm lightly, "It's what you do."

He turns his head and looks at me, his eyes fastening on mine, my eyes. "That's right, Sis. You always know. You always knew."

After he leaves, I shut the door to my cla.s.sroom and lock it. I sit at my desk for ten minutes, ignoring the students gathering in the hallway. I don't even hear their rising clatter. I sit at my desk, hands folded, looking out the window, thinking, knowing things. Things I will have to do.

He wouldn't tell me. He'd just make it go away.

I haven't seen him in ten long days, since before seeing Lois's body. Have been avoiding him, not wanting to feel tempted to tell him about Lois, afraid, in part maybe, that he might already know. I haven't returned the calls he's left with the front desk of my apartment building. I don't let myself think about it. If I start to think about it, I remind myself who introduced us.

At night, when I'm trying to sleep, pictures of them together gather in my head. Mike and Alice in the far corner of the room, her head thrown back in laughter as he talks in her ear. Mike and Alice smoking on the back porch at one of her parties, each making droll faces, telling old jokes. Who knows how many conversations? Who could guess all that had pa.s.sed from his wry mouth to her tilted ear? Then from her mouth to ... anywhere. There is something so horrible in the thought of that, so horrible that I shut it all down. I shut it all down until I feel nothing.

And then there he is.

Standing in the hallway in front of the door to my apartment. His hat is pushed back, and he is fis.h.i.+ng through his coat pocket.

He looks up and sees me, eyes dancing. "So what, you're finished with me, is that it?" But smiling, always smiling.

I don't say anything. I reach into my purse to retrieve my key.

"Kind of a shabby way to let me know. Hearing from the building manager that I'm no longer allowed in when you're not here."

Leaning his shoulder against the wall, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it.

It is true. Two days before, I told the manager not to let him or anyone else in. After what Detective Cudahy said, I couldn't take any chances.

I unlock the door and walk in, leaving it open for him to follow.

I turn on a lamp, and he sets his hat down on a table.

"Why would you want to be here when I'm not here?" I say as I walk around the back of the sofa and flip on two more lights.

He sits down and returns to his cigarette. "To wait for you. Like you do at my place. Or like you used to do."

I sit down on the arm of the chair across from him, folding my hands in my lap.

"And now you don't even offer me a drink." He throws his hands in the air and shakes his head. "That's how it is, is it? I gotta tell you, King, this is not something that happens to me all the time."

"Not with someone like me, you mean."

He meets my gaze and talks through the cigarette. "That's right. That's exactly right."

"If you wanted to get in my apartment so badly, what stopped you? Don't all you press agents have ways to get in places you're not supposed to be?"

"I didn't know it was a place I wasn't supposed to be," he says, blowing a gust of smoke at me. "I guess if I had, I would have brought my set of pick locks and just- You think I'm a real snake, don't you? Jesus, Lora, how could you have sullied yourself so long with me?"

He is good. His face displays genuine injury. Of course, I remind myself, putting on a first-cla.s.s front is his bread and b.u.t.ter.

"Why would you want to be here when I'm not?" I say again, my mind continually rotating back to his connection with Alice, his history with Alice.

He twists his head from side to side with irritation. "I told you, King. I came to see you. You weren't here. I was going to wait. Scandalous."

"Why would you think I would be here? Did you call first?"

"I guess I didn't give it all that much thought," he says, with more than a little annoyed sarcasm. "Call me irresponsible."

"What did you think you might find?"

"Find?" His eyebrows lift.

"I'm not as naive as you think."

"Jesus." He punches out his cigarette. "Okay. If that's how you want to play it. If I wanted to come when you weren't here, why would I be waiting for you?"

"How do I know you were waiting for me?"

"This could go on forever. I don't know what dark secrets you think your apartment holds for me, but to tell you the truth, I'm not that interested. Maybe it's me who should be asking you questions. Why don't you just tell me who the guy is?"

"What guy?" I say.

"The one you're tossing me for. I hear he's a badge."

"A badge."

"A cop, or a police detective. Which makes for a kind of poetic justice." He pushes out a faint wrinkle in his gabardines and leans back, folding his arms behind his head.

"Poetic? ... I don't ..." Has he seen me with Detective Cudahy?

"What, did you think Alice wouldn't tell me?"

I feel a cold blast across my chest. She is always so many steps ahead.

"Alice ..." My mind reels. I slide down off the arm onto the chair cus.h.i.+on. How much could she know about Detective Cudahy? I realize suddenly that whatever she has figured out, or guessed at, she is determined to make sure that I know about it. Know she is watching.

"So when did you decide you preferred hot dog stands and chop suey joints to Ciro's and Mocambo?" Mike continues.

Alice. I try to pull myself together. I close my eyes, place a hand on either side of my head, and try to focus. Don't think about it now, don't think about it now, just find out how, why, anything you can.

"What are you so upset about, King?" I hear him get up and move over to the bar cart. "I'm the one who got played."

He pours me a short drink and walks it over to me before getting one for himself.

I gulp it and look up at him.

"Who's being played?" My voice sounds funny. "For G.o.d's sake. Are you just some kind of spy? A snitch? Did she tell you to take me out, seduce me just so she can keep tabs on me?" It doesn't sound like me. It sounds fast, hard and crackling, my teeth chattering with nerves.

"Seduce you?" He chortles. "King, is that really how you remember it?"

"What, do you tell her everything about me, about us?"

He stops laughing and throws me a severe look I've never seen on him. "That's right. I tell her everything. Let's see.'' He looks up, as though trying to recollect and begins counting off on his fingers. "I told her how I had you in my bed within three hours of meeting you. I told her how you'd come by my place for a late-night f.u.c.k after you'd been on dates with other men. Told her how you liked to be flipped in bed and how you like it when I push your face into the pillow. I told her how-"

"You're a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"King." He shakes his head. "I didn't tell her a thing. I don't know where you got the idea that I'm such a cad. The worst you could say about me is I don't mind keeping secrets. Including yours."