Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (10 page)

As soon as the record ended, Rae announced that she and Willie had
better be going. He'd fallen asleep with his head on her lap five or
six songs before, and she had to shake him awake. They thanked Hank and
went down the stairs, Willie leaning heavily on her.

I took my half-full bowl into the kitchen, dumped its contents down the
disposer, and rinsed it before Hank could discover my lack of
appreciation. Then I debated staying for another glass of wine, but
thought better of the idea. Hank followed me into the hallway, and was
just reaching for my coat when the sudden explosive noise came from the
street below.

It sounded like a gunshot.

He froze, hand stretched toward the hall tree. Then a
woman—Rae?—screamed outside.

I whirled and ran down the stairs. Yanked the door open and looked out.

Willie lay face down on the sidewalk near the bottom of the steps. His
arms were thrown over his head, and he was frighteningly still.

 
Rae was running toward Willie
from
the corner, where her old Rambler American was parked. Under the
streetlight her face was white; her breath came in ragged gasps. I
scanned the street, saw no one except people peering through the doors
and windows of nearby houses. Then I rushed down the steps to where Rae
was now bending over Willie.

As I knelt beside her, he groaned
and uncovered his head. He wasn't wounded or hurt, I saw with relief.
And when he struggled to sit up, I saw that he had been scared sober.
Rae said, "Thank God you're all right!" and started to cry.

"Good thing old habits die hard,"
Willie said shakily. "I heard that bullet whine by and hit the dirt as
fast as I ever did in Nam."

Footsteps came up behind me.
Hank. "Anne-Marie's calling nine eleven," he said. "You okay, Willie?"

He nodded. "Help me up, would
you?"

Slowly other residents of the
street—some of them clad in nightclothes—had begun to come out of their
houses and off their porches. They glanced around fearfully, afraid of
more violence. A low murmur started
and swelled to a clamor of questions and exclamations. I heard a man's
voice say shakily, "Jesus, it must of been another of those random
shootings!" As Hank and Rae got Willie to his feet, I asked the people
near me what they'd seen. Most had only heard the shot, although one
man had been standing at his front window and glimpsed a figure running
toward Church Street, where the J-line streetcars operate all night
long.

Anne-Marie pushed through the
crowd. "Was anybody hurt?"

"Willie's reflexes saved him,"
Hank said.

"Reflexes, hell! If I hadn't been
drunk, I'd be dead right now. First time I ever got any benefit from
that.
I was real unsteady, so Rae went to get her car. Guess I staggered
right when he squeezed off the shot. I heard that bullet up close
before I hit the dirt; sucker couldn't of gone past more than a couple
of inches from my head."

"Who
fired at you?" I
asked. "You get a look at him?"

Willie shook his head, then
glanced at Rae and said, "Come on, honey, quit crying."

Rae wiped her eyes on her sleeve
and grabbed his arm. He patted her hand absently.

"Did
you
see anyone?" I
asked her.

She shook her head. "No, nothing."

"Willie, where was he?"

He gestured vaguely at the other
side of the street.

"Can't you pinpoint it more
exactly?"

"Christ, McCone, I was dog shit
drunk!"

I looked over there, thinking of
the random shootings—and of my earlier feeling of being watched. And of
Hank's similar feeling at All Souls the previous week.

Anne-Marie suggested we wait for
the police in her flat, then led us through the crowd, fishing her keys
from her jeans pocket. Sirens were audible in the distance now.

I followed on Willie's heels.
"Can you think of anyone who would want to take a shot at you?"
 

"No. Maybe. I don't know. I
suppose somebody might of taken a dislike to one of my commercials." He
meant the words humorously, but they came out flat.

"Well, you
are
something
of a public figure."

Anne-Marie got the door open and
we trooped inside.

"Willie," I said, "will you try
to think—"

"McCone, just lay off. My mouth
hurts, my head hurts, and now I'm gonna have to talk to the cops. You
know how I feel about cops."

"But—"

"Just
lay off!"

We went into Anne-Marie's living
room. Willie collapsed on her pale yellow sofa and stuck his booted
feet on the white French Provincial coffee table. She didn't protest.
Rae hovered behind the sofa.

I glanced at Willie. He had an
odd expression on his face, as if remembering something disturbing.
"McCone," he said, "come to think of it, I've had the feeling lately
that somebody was following me."

"Did you actually see someone?"

"Nope. It's like I sense
somebody's there, but when I look, nobody is."

"When? How often?"

"Couple of weeks now. Maybe six,
seven times. Always at night."

"Where?"

"Outside my house, or All Souls
when I go see Rae. I—"

There were footsteps on the
porch. Hank and two uniformed officers entered. Reluctantly I stepped
aside so they could speak with Willie.

By the time they finished getting
preliminary information from all of us, the plainclothes team arrived.
I wasn't surprised to see Greg Marcus, since he was heading the
investigation into the snipings and had told me that morning that he'd
been working long hours. He had an inspector named Bridges in tow, and
looked as fresh and alert as if he were just beginning his day;
Bridges looked sleepy and cross. Although the set of Greg's mouth was
grim when he entered the room, his lips twitched in amusement as he
surveyed us.

"This is about as wretched as
I've ever seen this crew," he said. "Can't you people even stay out of
trouble when you're having a dinner party?"

Willie frowned, trying—I
thought—to decide whether he ought to take offense at Greg's levity.
Rae had no reservations on that score: she glared at him. From their
expressions I knew that Anne-Marie and Hank shared my relief; Greg's
comment had injected a note of normalcy into a frightening situation.

Quickly he turned to the
uniformed men and instructed them to go outside and see if they could
locate the bullet. Then he asked Anne-Marie, "Is there someplace where
Inspector Bridges can take statements from you folks, while I talk
privately with Willie?"

She nodded and motioned for
Bridges to follow her. Hank and Rae went out behind him, Rae looking
back over her shoulder at Willie as if she were afraid he might vanish
in her absence. I lingered near the door.

"You, too," Greg told me.

"Can't I—"

"No."

I folded my arms and set my jaw.

"Don't look at me like that," he
said. "You know I hate it when you look at me like that."

I remained where I was.

"Dammit, stay then. But don't
interrupt. One interruption and you're out of here."

I nodded and sat down on a
spindly chair by the window bay.

Greg sat next to Willie and
began to question him about the shooting. Basically he asked what I had
asked previously, and received similar replies. But when he came to the
subject of people who might have wanted to harm him, Willie retreated
into shrugs and
near silence. It wasn't, I thought, that he didn't like Greg
personally; Greg was also an old friend of Hank's, and that was enough
to exempt him from Willie's general distrust of the police. It was more
likely that he was embarrassed to mention anything as ephemeral as a
feeling of being followed—bad for the macho image he likes to cultivate.

Finally I said, "Willie, tell him
what you told me."

Greg glanced my way, eyes
narrowing.

"I said I wouldn't interrupt, and
I'm not—neither of you is saying anything. Besides, this is important.
Tell him, Willie."

Willie sighed and repeated what
he'd said before.

When he finished, Greg looked
thoughtful, rolling his ballpoint pen between his fingers. It was a
gold Cross pen that I'd given him the first Christmas we'd been
together, and the fact that he still used it touched me in an odd way.

Finally he said, "What's
interesting here is that it's the first time we know of that the
sniper's missed.
If
the
person who shot at Willie is the one
who did the other killings. I wonder if the four victims felt as if
someone was stalking them."

"If someone
was
stalking
them," I said, "what does that do to the theory that the killings are
random?"

He shrugged. "Could be he just
picks his victim and bides his time until he finds a good opportunity."

"But he also might have a
motive—however irrational—for picking those particular victims."

"I'd like that better. It would
give us more to work with."

Willie scowled. "What if he tries
again?"

"We'll put a man on your house
right away."

"I can't stay in my house the
rest of my life!"

"Willie, we'll do what we can.
For now, that's all I can promise you."

Willie nodded—still scowling—and
got up. The way he strode out of the room made apparent his displeasure
at what he interpreted as a
too-casual attitude on Greg's part.

Greg said to me, "Where were you
when the shot was fired?"

"Upstairs, in the hall."

"And you were the first person
down on the street, I suppose."

"Unless you count Rae. She was at
the corner when it happened, getting her car. She didn't see anything,
she said."

"Did you?"

"No. But when I arrived around
ten, I had the same feeling of being watched as Willie described. And
Hank says he's had it, too—last week, at All Souls. And there's a link
between Hank and one of the sniper's other victims." I explained about
the Hilderly case.

Greg jotted down some notes as I
spoke, then said, "I'll talk to Hank about this."

I remained sitting, studying him.
Now that the interview was over, he looked tired. He ran a hand over
his gray-blond hair, rumpling it, and stretching his long legs out
under the coffee table. Oddly enough I found I wasn't thinking about
the sniping or its implications; I was thinking about how far Greg and
I had come in the years we'd known each other— from adversaries, to
lovers, to friends. Of the three, this latter stage suited us best.

I said, "I'm sorry if I kind of
bullied you into letting me sit in."

He shrugged. "I'm used to your
bullying by now. And as usual, you've done me a favor. Willie wouldn't
have talked frankly without your prodding." He rubbed his eyes and
added, "Send Hank in here, would you?" I nodded and stood up.

"And if you remember anything
later that you haven't told me, give me a call right away." I nodded
again.
 

"Or if Willie tells you anything
he might not have wanted to mention in front of me."

Once again I nodded—I was
beginning to feel like one of those tacky dashboard ornaments with its
head on a spring—and backed out of the room.

When I arrived at All Souls at
eight the next morning, Ted Smalley sat at his desk, tapping away on
his computer keyboard. I checked the chalkboard for messages, then
said, "You know, you really could have taken the day off."

Without stopping he replied, "I
need to keep busy. Besides, I've got a law co-op to run. What with
people being all excited and upset about last night's sniping, I've got
my hands full."

Ted is convinced that All Souls
would cease to function without his constant attention; half the time I
suspect he's right.

I remained by the desk. After a
moment Ted lifted his long-fingered hands from the keys and dropped
them in his lap. "All right—what?"

"I'm sorry about Harry, and I'm
here if you need me."

He nodded and briefly closed his
eyes, compressing his lips. Despite his anglicized last name, Ted, a
slender man with short black hair and a goatee, is of Russian-Jewish
ancestry. His ascetic features make
me
think of a poet or
composer, rather than an efficient and dedicated legal secretary. This
morning they were honed fine by pain; his skin had the waxy,
translucent quality that comes from lack of sleep.

I went around the desk and gave
him what I intended to be a brief hug, but sudden panic engulfed me and
I clung tightly to his shoulders. What if Ted contracted AIDS? How
could any of us bear that?

He seemed to sense my fear,
because he patted my arm—the bereaved comforting the comforter—and
said, "Don't worry. I'll be here to get
your phone messages garbled when we're both in our dotage."