Gladyss of the Hunt (39 page)

“Sueee—” I suddenly heard.

The cry was cut short, as if Maggie had abruptly covered his mouth. It couldn't be Crispin. Both he and Noel were out of town, though they were supposed to return later today for Fashion Dogs on the Catwalk. Yet it had to be Crispin. Who else could it be? Then I remembered her asking about dating Noel. Maggie just didn't seem like Noel's type. But then I recalled her saying she was going to break up with Crispin and clearly remembered her confidently asking if she could sleep with Noel, as if he had already made advances.

As her bed hammered against our common wall, the fear was driven deeper into my skull that she wasn't with Crispin at all. I recalled Noel's astounded face when I mentioned that Maggie had asked me if she could sleep with him and suddenly realized it wasn't outrage he was displaying but restrained joy. As her groans of ecstasy grew increasingly louder and shorter, I found myself bouncing
between terror and fury.

It would explain why Maggie had told Noel about my brief encounter with Eddie O'Ryan. More particularly it accounted for her sudden change of style: until recently she'd been a shapely brunette who never made too much of it. Suddenly—
voilà
, she'd transformed herself into a flamboyant blonde, more in the Venezia Ramada mold.

What was wrong with me? Wasn't I sexy enough? Or feminine enough? Too tall? Too tomboyish? If I got electrolysis and coconut-shaped implants, perhaps then I'd hold onto Noel.

I had a sudden impulse to clean and organize my clothes right now, but before I could act on it, I heard Maggie's front door creak open. By the time I raced to my door and peeped through the eye-hole, her lover was gone. I rushed to my window in time to see a cab zoom off. I returned to bed pissed and lay there for about an hour, churning and stewing in my own angry juices. Finally I just tried breathing, Kundalini-style, in a series of short shallow breathes, to release my anguish. This must've been the reason that Artemis, who I'd learned was the Greek equivalent of Diana, had asked Zeus to spare her the temptations of the flesh and grant her a life of serene spinsterhood.

The hyperventilation must've stirred Bernie, because he suddenly turned over and pulled me firmly toward him. I was about to shove him away, but it felt surprising good to be held tight, despite the strong smell of cheap alcohol.

Bernie was a decent, sensitive guy masquerading as an asshole—most men were just the opposite. Although for some reason I trusted him, I couldn't help but think that the IA boys had a point. Either he was going to wind up hurting someone, or he would get hurt himself. With his partner's death and his own impending divorce, he must've felt humanity itself had left him high and dry. He was long overdue for a break. Maggie's lusty moans were still ringing in my ears, which was undoubtedly one reason why I felt as sensitive as a blister about to burst.

As I reached around into his boxers and felt his coiled masculinity, I knew I was making a massive mistake. Still I gently rattled it like a roll of quarters until it outgrew my hand.

“Huh?” he uttered as I rolled him onto his back. “What's going on?”

I knelt and pulled my underwear to one side, then stretched over him and slowly took him in.

“You?” He squinted at me.

“If you don't mind. . .”

“Uh, well . . .” He didn't resist.

As I continued working him into me, he said, “Hold it a minute. If you keep doing that, I mean, I won't be able to . . .”

“You want to . . .”

I shifted positions so I was on my back, and let him slowly assume the dominant position. Once his bad foot was carefully placed like a scaly tail behind him, so that he was safely on his knees, he started moving quickly, breaking out in a sweat like spring rain.

He pounded away for a few minutes then suddenly had to dismount. Before I could towel off all his sweat, he stumbled out of the room and quickly returned with his inhaler. He took three deep breaths from it, then got back to work as though he had just taken vaporized Viagra. In addition to enjoying the wonderful sensations, I loved the fact that the head of
my
bed was slapping against
Maggie's
wall for once. I let out some retaliatory moans.

Given how much booze Bernie must have drunk, as well as his reduced lung capacity and sore hoof, I was really impressed with his stamina. As he hastened toward liftoff, I couldn't resist shouting: “FUCK ME BABY!”

Then I suddenly realized I didn't have protection: “Wait! Don't come in me!”

He pulled out and, one jerk later, spewed his DNA all over my belly. Then he collapsed next to me, covered in sweat. We both lay still for a few moments as if after a car crash. Then, through the wall, I thought I heard the muted cry, “Fucker!”

I wiped off and listened intently.

“Everything okay?” Bernie asked, watching me listen to the wall.

“Glorious,” I whispered and went into the shower.

Afterward, as I toweled off, I felt reluctant to go back into the bedroom. When I finally took a deep breath and opened the door, wrapped in a towel, Bernie had pulled on his boxers and was sitting on the end of the bed.

“If the world wasn't spinning, I'd hold you in my arms and tell you how gorgeous you are,” he said, which didn't make me feel any
better.

“I just figured we could both use a little pick-me-up,” I replied with my back to him, pulling on my bra and panties.

In another moment, he lumbered into the shower and I was already dressed.

I couldn't make eye contact with Bernie as we put on our coats. He joked that it was “a good foot day” as I rushed us out the door and along the slippery intersections to a nearby diner on Seventh Avenue. Bernie grabbed a booth. Without looking at him, I asked the waitress for a black coffee, even though I always had tea in the morning. He ordered a full egg-and-sausage breakfast.

“Either you've inexplicably fallen in love with me and want to go to City Hall right now and get married, or you'd like to pretend nothing happened and never mention this again. I'd be fine with the former, but by the fact that you can't make eye contact I'm sensing you'd prefer the latter.”

I didn't utter a sound.

“Sooo . . . Since nothing interesting happened lately, what shall we talk about?” he said calmly.

“Actually there is something that's been nagging at me for a while.”

“I can't imagine.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“How did I know who was who?”

“We dragged O'Flaherty to the precinct, locked him up, checked his room, and got zilch. Then, based on a brief conversation with a Con Ed worker, you had us go over to his room, wait several hours, and stake it out. What made you do that?”

He shrugged. “Intuition.”

“See, that's the kind of thing that drives me nuts,” I said. “I've been trying to sharpen
my
intuition, but all I came up with was this insane idea.”

“What insane idea?”

I knew I shouldn't bring it up, but since this was our final day working together, it didn't seem like I had anything to lose.

“Do you remember that postcard he had on his wall, of the
goddess of the hunt?”

“Yeah, the
not
Evelyn Nesbit statue.”

“Well, the killer's name, O'Flaherty's first name, is Nessun.”

“So? It's a typical Irish name.”

“Except there's a Greek myth featuring a centaur called Nessus. He was responsible for the death of Hercules.”

“Oh God, you're not going to say he went to the Hogwart Academy or some crap like that?”

“No, I'm just saying there was similarities between the Greek myth and—”

“Only I'm not Hercules and he didn't try to kill me? No, wait!” He was mocking me. “He tried killing you, so that means you're Hercules.”

“Actually, it was your old partner I was thinking of.” No sooner had I said that than I remembered Annie had asked me to keep the story from Bernie.

“How'd you know that?” he said, surprising me.

“Know what?”

“Did you go through the boxes in my office?”

“No. You mean, the files from your old cases?”

“Not just
my
old cases. In fact, they were mainly Bert's. The man always made copious notes. After we first interviewed O'Flaherty, I was going through the files and happened to find something Bert wrote about the son of a bitch long ago.”

“What did he say?” I wondered if Bernie had already learned what Daisy had told us about Juanita Lopez, whom his partner would eventually marry.

“He didn't
say
nothing, he simply underlined the man's name three times. But for Bert, I knew that was it. He knew the man was dangerous.”

“How long ago did he write that?”

“Decades ago, before O'Flaherty even went to jail. But Herbert Kelly was the real deal. Talk about intuition—that man had a super-human power. On that night when the Con Ed man mentioned him, I just thought this is worth following.”

“Amazing.”

“But he didn't kill Bert,” Bernie said.

“Yeah, it just all struck me as odd.”

“But how did
you
know that Bert knew O'Flaherty?”

“I didn't,” I said simply and sipped my coffee.

“Why do I sense that there's something more to this that you're not telling me?”

“Okay, there is,” I bullshitted. “But it's not easy to talk about.”

“Just say it.”

“All right,” But there was no way I was going to try to launch into all the myth stuff again. I took a sip of coffee and said: “If you don't cut the shit, you're going to get into big trouble.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Two cops from IA interviewed me yesterday.”

“I warned you. Everyone saw that news item about you at the fashion show—”

“Actually, they were asking me about you.”

“Huh?”

“They said they'd racked up a bunch of complaints about you.”

Without looking at me, he slurped down the remainder of his coffee as though it were hydrochloric acid. He'd completely forgotten about Nessun and his old partner.

“I told them you were fine, but you're not, and you know it.”

“Okay, my foot makes me a little cranky and—”

“It's not just your foot, or your cough, or Bert's death, or your wife leaving you . . .”

Without hearing another word, he dropped a crumpled ten on the table without even breaking his victory yolks and stomped out the door.

I pulled on my coat and ran after him. We walked together in silence for a while. After a few blocks, I was surprised to hear him listing a number of tasks he wanted me to finish up with Alex and Annie. I'd assumed he knew.

“Bernie,” I interrupted him. “This is it.”

“This is what?”

“Today's my last day.”

“What?”

“I'm leaving in five minutes for my ophthalmologist's appointment. And tomorrow I've taken a personal day to have my eye surgery.”

“Okay, when you come in on Monday—”

“My thirty days are over,” I interrupted. “Monday I'm back in
Neighborhood Stabilization.”

“Oh fuck, I meant to extend your assignment,” he muttered. When I didn't respond, he added, “Look, all the bullshit aside, you've become a significant part of this task force. And there's still a killer out there.”

“Bernie, I know you've recently gone through a lot, and now your department's trying to push you out, but I'm just saying, maybe if you considered going to AA or anger management—”

“Arrivederci, kid,” he said and limped away faster than I would have thought possible. It must've hurt like hell.

I watched him hopping north toward the precinct and felt bad that in trying to help, I'd only added to his pain. I headed east and caught a subway uptown.

Twenty minutes later I was at my doctor's office. His assistant brought me into an examination room and told me to sit in an upholstered chair. The doctor put drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils, then swung a large black armature plate over my face that was fitted with a series of lenses. Through a tiny eyepiece he seemed to stare into my very soul, seeing all the guilty little secrets I had accumulated there. As he carefully measured the different parts of my eyes, I couldn't stop thinking about the events of the past month.

“Try to take it easy,” he said. “Stay away from bright lights until your pupils have time to return to normal.” He gave me a pair of sunglasses to wear that looked like they were meant for welders.

I went home and lay down for a few minutes. Without intending to, I dozed off. I was briefly awakened by my cell phone's chime, but I saw it was Carl and let it go to voicemail. When I awoke, it was six p.m. and I realized I was late for the fashion show.