Night Secrets (40 page)

Frank nodded.

“According to Virginia, these guys were really worried about that,” McBride said. “It would be a terrible thing for them. I mean, they wanted girls. They wanted them real bad, but times had gotten sort of dangerous, and so they were in the market for something a little different than the usual sort of thing.”

“You mean the usual sort of prostitute?”

“That's right,” McBride said. “They were getting sort of afraid of that, and that's when Devine figured it all out. He could give them what they wanted, you know, risk-free.”

“By testing them,” Frank said.

McBride nodded. “And these guys, they were willing to pay a lot of money to get what they wanted, but to get it safe. So what Devine did was, he set up this special service, all the girls guaranteed, you know, to be, what you might say, to be clean.” He shrugged. “And Virginia, she was one of them.” His voice grew soft and sad. “Don't ask me why. You can blame it on anything. She said she did it once, and after that she couldn't get out, and maybe she just got worn down after a while. You know, by the life.”

“Until she met Phillips,” Frank said.

“She fell in love with him,” McBride said. “They just met at a party. She made up a name for him, Virginia Harris. She made up a job. She made up her whole past. But she couldn't get rid of it.”

“But she wanted out?”

“For a long time, she'd wanted that,” McBride said. “But after she met Phillips, she got desperate about it. She went to Devine, she begged him.”

Frank nodded. “But he wouldn't let her go.”

“At first he did,” McBride said. “'Course, she had to pay and it just about broke her. But, at first, he let her go.” His lips jerked down into a cruel scar. “But that only lasted awhile, because there was this one customer that didn't want a change. Some fat cat that wanted Virginia back.”

“Burroughs.”

McBride nodded. “That sounds right,” he said. “Anyway, he put the pressure on Devine, and Devine comes back to Virginia. This was maybe six, seven weeks ago, and he told her she had to start up again. He tried to make it sound good, only one client, this Burroughs, but Virginia said no, she was out, and that was it.” He shook his head. “But Devine said that just wouldn't do, that she had to come back, and when he kept on after her, threatening her, threatening to tell Phillips, that's when she come to me.”

“What did she want you to do?”

“Put the arm on Devine.”

“Did you?”

“I did my best,” McBride said. “But he looked at me like I was some kind of bug or something, just a little thing he could squash with his foot. He said he had friends in high places, that they'd laugh in my face if I tried to pin something on him, and then, besides, he said, if it come out about him, it'd come out about Virginia too.”

“So you decided to kill him,” Frank whispered reverently, as if they were the last words of a prayer.

McBride nodded. “She come to me, and I tried what she wanted me to, and it didn't work,” he said quietly. “So I said to myself, I said, ‘There's one thing I know. I'm Sam McBride, and I don't hurt kids, and I don't rape women.' Now, Frank, that's where it could have stopped. That's where it usually stops. But this time, I took another step. I decided that if I could find a way, I'd fix it so nobody else could do those things either. And I can look you right in the eye and tell you face-to-face that no matter what happens, I'll stand by what I did.”

Frank nodded.

“But I couldn't do it myself,” McBride added. “I knew old Henry Floyd from way back when, and I knew that he could handle business like this.” He shook his head. “Hell, Frank, old Henry's killed men a hundred times better than Preston Devine with a little-bitty pistol.”

Frank thought a moment, his eyes moving away from McBride, up toward the front of the chapel where a large plaster statue of the Holy Mother stood in silent dignity above a spray of roses. She looked strangely weak and defenseless, terribly unarmed. Then he thought of the Puri Dai, the pistol in her hand, the vengeance that should have been hers but never would be, and suddenly, he saw it all in a strange and intricate patter of lost power and unnatural restraints, of that fallen dignity which had to be regained in a world that respected nothing, but paid very close attention to a gun.

He drew out a pistol and lifted it toward McBride.

McBride stared at him silently. He did not move to take the pistol. “What's on your mind, Frank?”

“Use this,” Frank told him flatly.

McBride watched him warily. “Whose is it?”

“That doesn't matter,” Frank said. “But by tomorrow morning it'll be registered under the name of Joseph Fellows at a New Jersey address. He'll be on the run by then because he killed another woman tonight. The problem is, she was a Gypsy, a nobody, and they won't really go after him for it.” He pressed the gun toward him gently. “But if he's connected to Preston Devine's murder, then they won't stop until they find him.”

“He may have an alibi for Devine.”

“He probably will, but it won't matter, because once they've got him for that, they'll have him for the other murder, too.”

McBride smiled quietly, then drew the pistol from Frank's grasp. “All right,” he said.

“And one other thing,” Frank said.

“What's that?”

“Virginia Phillips should do it herself.”

“She wouldn't know how.”

“Then she needs to learn,” Frank said firmly.

McBride looked at him intently, his eyes studying each weary line of his face. Then, suddenly, he seemed to grasp the whole desperate design, and the two of them stared at each other silently in a few seconds of wild collusion.

“So it's going to be woman's work,” McBride said as he tucked the pistol in his pocket.

Frank nodded. “Woman's work,” he said. “The way it should have always been.”

Frank walked home slowly. His eyes were aching again, along with the Puri Dai's unmistakable wound, but he didn't move to soothe either one with the rough touch of his hands.

At Forty-seventh Street, he turned east and took his seat at the back of Smith's Bar. The old crowd was motionless and silent, and for a moment, he felt as if all the world's hunched legions had died during the long pull of the night, and that he was left now with nothing but a memory of what they had meant to him, both the ones who'd sat it out, filing down their days until there was nothing left but grayish dust, and those who'd drunk it down to the last drop, men turned their glasses over and slipped away.

It was dawn by the time he left, and as he walked uptown, then turned west and headed down Forty-ninth Street, the air around him was like a fine pink mist.

The pink deepened into red inside his office, and for a moment, as he took his seat behind his desk, he felt as if he'd finally settled into some smoldering backroom where the coals glowed eternally, despite the season, and where he would never feel again, neither ice nor fire, but simply the old featureless warmth that meant nothing at all except that blood still flowed through his thin, rubbery veins.

He closed his eyes, saw the Puri Dai, opened them, and to his vast surprise, saw her daughter standing before him, Farouk's massive hand resting firmly on her shoulder.

“I have brought her to you,” Farouk said.

Frank pulled himself forward in his chair, his tired, aching eyes fixed on the wild young black ones of the little girl.

“I have prepared all the necessary papers, as well,” Farouk added.

She was dressed in a white blouse, bare at the shoulders, and a dark-red skirt that stretched almost to the floor. Her skin was very brown, but with a somewhat greenish hue, and her black hair fell over her shoulders in the wild tangle she'd inherited from her mother.

“You do not have to keep her,” Farouk said.

Frank glanced up at him only long enough to catch the quiet radiance of his smile. Then his eyes settled upon the little girl, the black eyes, the long brown neck, and he felt the still rising breath of her dead mother, heard once again the wail that he'd first heard in Atlanta, the one that had risen above that sacrificial ground he had fled so many years before.

Farouk watched him softly. “I only ask that she stay with you until you can find—if you ever can find, my friend— one who would be a better father.”

Frank felt a sudden, inexplicable tremor move through him like the steadily building waves of a nearly lost resolve.

“Will you keep her, then?” Farouk asked quietly.

She took a small, graceful step toward him, and as he rose to meet her, Frank realized that it was this, and not some mythical case, which all that he'd done wrong now prepared him to do right.

“Yes,” he said.

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copyright © 1990 by Thomas H. Cook

cover design by Jason Gabbert

This edition published in 2011 by
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