Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) (16 page)

"How did you find me?" he asked thickly.

"Bob Petty said you'd be at your friend's wake. I found you in a pool of your own blood. I thought you were dead."

"I am."

He looked into her brown turbid eyes that he already knew so well. He was very tired. She was speaking slowly, but he couldn't hear her. He looked at her mouth, and it looked like she said, "Oh, shit," and, as the blurry world of unconsciousness claimed him yet again, he was sure he fell into her arms.

H
is body was not young anymore. He had taken worse beatings, but this time his body did not let him heal easily. Perhaps his mind was healing, too, letting the world spin while accountings were made, checks and balances restored. He felt like a drained bottle, not only empty, but not even knowing what he had been filled with to start.

He awoke the first morning in a bed facing the largest picture window he had ever seen. The night cold he had felt had not been an illusion; there was a sprinkling of early white snow on the leveled lawns down to the tennis court and, beyond that, the Hudson River was bathed in autumn fog.

The house itself was not cold. The fireplace in the second-floor bedroom he occupied filled half of one stone wall. Above the fireplace was the proud antlered head of an elk. The opposite wall was dominated by a Turner oil flanked by the heads of a cheetah and black leopard.

Paine tried to move and nothing happened. His body felt as real as that of the elk over the fireplace. Bandages shifted under the covers.

The morning passed. He watched the fog evaporate over the Hudson, and the tenuous dusting of white snow turn back to green lawn. He watched the gardener inspect the trellises along the path to the tennis courts for frost damage.

She came to him when the sun was high over the river. She sat on the end of the bed and looked at him for a long while. Her hair looked longer, brushed back over her eyes.

"I'm in love with you," he said.

"I know," she said.

She laid her head on him, on a place where it didn't hurt. Outside, the world turned from summer to autumn.

The next day he felt better. Four of his ribs had been taped. He still felt like a punching bag after a workout, but he sat up and looked through the window as rain fell on Westchester. In the afternoon the clouds cleared out and the sun burned through. It was in the 70s by late afternoon. He watched Rebecca and Gerald play tennis. As the sun went down he brought the telephone from the nightstand onto the bed and dialed it.

"Bobby?"

"Where the hell are you, Jack?"

"Somewhere. What's going on?"

"I have a warrant for your arrest. Were you in California two days ago?"

"I was in California. I put my fingerprints all over that house and left my card. Then someone came in and hung the two of them."

"Great. Should we extradite you to California or would you rather go on trial in New York first?"

"Isn't murdering two California creeps more serious than beating up one former employer?"

"Not if your former employer is owed by the police commissioner. Barker wants your balls in a paper cup."

"Can you handle him?"

"I can try."

"Great. Anything from your friend on Steppen and the FBI? I found out that Steppen, Druckman and Paterna were all the same creep."

Bobby whistled. "It makes sense. Ray found that Steppen was a paperboy for the FBI—he could get any kind of document you wanted. He was involved in witness relocation but he was pretty much a rotten apple from the beginning. Got into a couple of jams early in his career, mixed up with loan-sharking, but he was good and they needed him, so they kept him around as a free-lance. Finally they just kicked him out in 1968."

"That explains how he turned from Steppen into Druckman into Paterna, but it doesn't explain why. Or what he had to do with Morris Grumbach."

Petty sighed. "Where are you, Jack?"

"Can't tell you."

"Dannon's really heating things up here over you. And the way things are now, nobody would mind if you came in DOA."

"Fine."

"Come in and talk, Jack. It might be the only way I can
protect
you."

"Talk to you soon, Bobby."

"Jack—"

Paine hung up the phone.

"Can't tell you where I am, Bobby."

They had dinner in Paine's room, by light from the table lamp next to the bed. Outside, there was blackness interrupted periodically by the red and green blinking lights of an airplane passing up the river. There weren't even drapes to hide the picture window at night.

"This was my father's bedroom," Rebecca said. "My sisters and I used to play in here when we were little, when my father was away. We made believe the animals on the wall were real and might leap out at us any minute."

"Where did your father get the animals?" Paine asked.

"Oh, he was a hunter when he was younger. He knew Hemingway, went on safari with him once or twice. My father knew a lot of people. You never saw his name in the paper, but he was always near power."

"Did your mother and father always have separate bedrooms?"

His question drew her back from memory. "Oh, yes. Always. My mother's bedroom is down the hall. It's all in blue and silver. No picture windows there. Everything is closed tight against the world."

There was wine on the tray which lay on the bed, and she filled their glasses.

"What about you, Jack?" she asked. "Do you have painful memories?"

"Are we talking about painful memories?"

"All memories are painful." She smiled distractedly. She seemed to take more solace in the darkness outside the window than in his face. "Now I think they all are."

Yet again, Paine almost knew why she affected him so strongly; why he was so drawn to her. And yet again, the reasons danced away and fell beyond him.

"Tell me your most painful memory," she said abruptly, turning from the dark window to look at him and pin him with her eyes.

And then, suddenly, he wanted to tell her what he had never told anyone.

"I've never dreamed about it," he said. "I've dreamed about other things but never this."

She looked into him, over the rim of her wineglass, red liquid sliding back and forth in the glass like blood, like waves against the dark banks of the Hudson.

And then he told her.

It was a Saturday afternoon. His father had to work an extra shift, so his Uncle Martin volunteered to pick him up after his Little League game. His father hesitated, but finally said yes.

His uncle came about the fourth inning and sat in the stands and watched. Jack got two hits that day, a double and a triple that was almost a home run. He was thrown out at the plate. It was a good game, and he felt good because it was summer and he didn't have to work mowing lawns for another two weeks and there were still two ball games between now and then. The sun was out every day. It was warm, but he never felt the heat; it rolled off him and into the green grass.

His uncle watched the game, and Jack looked over every once in a while to make sure he was enjoying it. He was sitting quietly in the stands, with a fisherman's hat pushed back on his head, his elbows splayed out on the bench to either side of him. He sat in the upper tier, in a corner where no one else was.

Jack didn't know much about his uncle; he'd been around, off and on, and once he'd bought him a windup boat—a huge thing with a good slow-working spring in the mother that he and his brother, Tom, used on the artificial lake in the park. Another time he brought both Jack and Tom books about space. But Jack hadn't really seen him that much, and he and his father didn't seem to be all that close. His uncle had been in the Army for a long time, in the war and then overseas in Germany. He was an M.P. His father used to talk about him every once in a while as his big brother, but there was about six years' difference between them and it seemed like they never got to know each other very well.

So his uncle watched the game, smiling or squinting against the sun. Jack couldn't tell which.

After the game was over, after Jack's team won and gathered in a circle and threw their hats into the air, his uncle stood at the bottom of the grandstand with his hands in the pockets of his bright blue jacket and he smiled. He put his arm around Jack and said, "How you been, kiddo?"

They got in his car, and Uncle Martin talked about getting something to eat. Jack said he thought they should go back to the house; he was supposed to meet Tom there to play some more ball in the backyard.

His uncle looked over at him and smiled. "I'll get you back before you know it, kiddo."

He kept driving. They drove for a long time. His uncle kept making excuses for why they weren't going to Jack's house. "We'll get there soon," he said.

They drove about an hour outside the city, then they stopped at a hamburger place. They sat outside and ate on one of the round white enameled-metal tables. Uncle Martin spread a map out and began to study it. He pushed his fisherman's hat farther back and scratched his head. "No," he said, once or twice. Then he said, "That's it."

"What's it?" Jack asked.

Uncle Martin folded the map and smiled. "A surprise," he said. "Your father didn't want me to tell you till we got there."

Jack stared at him, and Uncle Martin gave a hearty laugh and reached across the table and slapped Jack's shoulder. "I'm taking you on a trip!"

Jack regarded him blankly. "What do you mean?"

"We're going to go someplace, you and I."

"But what about my father and Tom?" Jack protested. "I don't have any clothes."

"Your dad said it was fine. Said you needed a treat after the school year you put in. Where we're going there are clothes and everything. Do you like to fish?"

Through his perplexity, Jack's eyes brightened.

"That's right, kiddo—we're going to fish, and camp out, we're going to do all kinds of things. You know," he said, "I've been waiting a long time for this. Did your father ever tell you what a good fisherman I was?"

He searched his memory and found nothing, but his uncle had such an earnest, expectant look on his face that he nodded. "Yes."

"He did?" Uncle Martin said. His face lit up. "Well, I'll be damned."

Uncle Martin became thoughtful again, and suddenly he got up and cleared the table and said they should be going. "Got a long ride ahead of us," he said.

They got into the car and Uncle Martin reached under the driver's seat and took out an open pair of handcuffs. "Darn seat belt doesn't work very well, kiddo," he explained, snapping one of the cuffs around Jack's right wrist and the other to the door handle. He did it so quickly and solemnly that Jack didn't question it. "I believe in safety," Uncle Martin said, and then he started the car.

They ate up a lot of highway. They crossed New Jersey
into Pennsylvania. Jack slept for a while. When he awoke they were in the Poconos. His uncle was humming to the radio, which was tuned to a station playing 101 Strings. Jack's wrist hurt where the cuff had tightened into it. His uncle saw him try to loosen it and reached over and pulled his left hand away.

"Leave it be," he said seriously. "Safety, like I said."

They drove up into the Poconos, through and beyond the summer communities, into an area as lonely as Eden. Macadam turned to dirt, then to trail. Then without warning the car found a short flat driveway that curved to a dead stop in front of a cabin. It looked like any other vacation home, with a short deck out front.

Uncle Martin got out of the car and jogged around to Jack's side. He opened the door, deftly unlocked the cuff from the door handle and pulled Jack out of the car by it. Jack yelped a protest, but Uncle Martin ignored him, still humming. Now, suddenly, Jack was afraid, and started to resist the cuffs, but Uncle Martin only turned to him and told him to be quiet. "The fishing tackle is inside," he said.

Uncle Martin brought him into the house, through a big living room with a huge stone fireplace and attached kitchen, and up the stairs. There were two closed doors off the stairway, and Uncle Martin opened the first one.

There was balloon wallpaper on the walls. A brand-new Sears bed butted one wall, with a rodeo pattern coverlet turned down. The sheets had Roy Rogers's face on them, with Trigger's profile next to him from the neck up. Roy smiled wryly, like he always did, eyes squinting. There was a new Sears chest of drawers, too, the tag still on it; on top of it was a hand mirror, an ebony-handled hairbrush, an old coin bank in the shape of a baseball made out of printed tin. The closet was open, filled with new jeans, shirts and a blue suit. There were pajamas and white shirts and socks still in their bags, the shirts folded around flat pieces of cardboard to keep them stiff, with pins stuck in the collar to keep them in place.

"This is your room," Uncle Martin said quietly, pulling Jack gently in by the cuffs. Behind the door was a long package wrapped in brown paper. Uncle Martin picked it up and handed it to Jack.

"Open it," he said.