Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (21 page)

    "You sure it was Bill Tomlin?"

    "Positive," Rolly said.

    "We seen his pitcher in the paper," she said. "It was him, all right."

    "Did he confront them?"

    "What's that mean?"

    "Did Tomlin start an argument with them or anything?"

    "Nope," he said. "Just watched, then took off."

    "And you saw him out there a couple of times?"

    "Maybe even three," she said, and spat.

    The smell was getting to me. And I figured the dogs would soon enough break out of their hypnotic spell and attack me. All the chawing and spitting was getting to me too. I wondered if they took their wads out when they ate.

    I slipped my car in gear. "Well, I appreciate your time."

    "Hope our dogs didn't bother you none," he said. "Some folks're scared of 'em."

    "Those cute puppies?" I said, and sped away.

    

    

    I pulled into my parking space. Jamie had left traces of her perfume in the office. Oh, and lipstick smudges on the speaking end of the telephone receiver. She liked to work intimate when she was on the phone. I wiped off the worst of it and starting calling around for Bill Tomlin.

    He wasn't at home, he wasn't at the small office Conners had kept in town, and he wasn't at the library where he spent most afternoons.

    I did some work on legal cases and straightened the place up - someday I'd ask Jamie to help me, which should be a treat - and then I went back to calling around for Bill Tomlin.

    Chris answered this time.

    "Is Bill around?"

    "We just got in. We were over at the funeral parlor with Dorothy. The wake's tomorrow night and that's when all the celebrities start coming. Hubert Humphrey and Jack Kennedy both said they'd be here."

    "That's because the primaries are coming up."

    "Oh, c'mon, McCain, you don't think Jack Kennedy's got any sort of chance against Hubert, do you?"

    "You never know."

    "The way he runs around? And he's not much of a thinker. Hubert and Richard went way back." Then: "I'll put Bill on."

    Bill came on.

    "You thirsty?"

    "Just had a Pepsi, matter of fact."

    "I was thinking of something a little stronger."

    Hesitation. "What's going on, McCain?"

    "We need to talk."

    "About what?"

    "A fishing cabin you visited from time to time."

    Another hesitation. "You in real estate now?"

    "This is getting awful cute. Meet me at the Home Run Club in half an hour."

    

    

    What I really wanted to do was sit there and listen to Ray Charles. They had a couple of his songs on the jukebox. Just sit there sipping a 3.2 Hamm's draft, my head against the corner of the booth, my legs stretched out in front of me, just digging the music the way I had in high school, my head not stuffed with murder and red scares and zombies who sat solemn and silent in sunny back yards, the human debris of communist brain-washing. It was after work, and the motif was relief and relaxation. A lot of pure high prairie laughter, especially along the bar, where white collar drank with blue collar and nobody noticed.

    He wasn't much bigger than I was, Bill Tomlin. He ordered a Falstaff and said, "You're smarter than I thought you were."

    "Thanks."

    "Of course, I had a pretty low opinion of you to begin with, so I'm not sure it's all that great a compliment."

    "Fuck yourself, Tomlin. Fuck your education and fuck all your celebrity friends and fuck all your bullshit arrogance. I'm ready to throw this beer in your face and you give me half a reason to and I'll do it. You understand?"

    "Wow. Counselor has a bad temper, doesn't he?"

    A second later, beer was dripping from the shelf of his brow, from his nose, from his jaw. The booth was big enough that nobody had seen me splash him.

    "You sonofabitch," he said.

    "You're the only one left, Tomlin. Conners and Rivers and Cronin are dead. And the two girls sent out here aren't worth throwing a beer at. So you're elected."

    He wiped himself off with a handkerchief. Beer had spilled onto his blue button-down shirt and tan sportcoat. I tossed him my handkerchief.

    He said, "I should put this up your ass."

    "Go ahead and try."

    Two midgets talking tough. Norman Mailer would be proud of us.

    He said, reluctantly using my handkerchief to finish the job, "I'm not your killer. And neither is Chris."

    "No? You had a good reason. Conners was spending time with your wife; and Rivers and Cronin threatened to expose your meal ticket - namely, Conners. Power is what you're all after - power and that tape Conners made when Rivers and Cronin shot him up with Pentothal."

    "He wasn't a communist."

    "He sure had a lot of nice things to say about Joe Stalin."

    "The right-wing press has vilified Stalin over here. He only did what he needed to do to hold his country together."

    "To hold power. That's what you're really saying. And that's just what Joe McCarthy's defenders say, too. He was only doing what he needed to for the country."

    "You must be a lonely man, McCain. A moderate with convictions." Contempt was clear in his voice. The only ones for him were the true believers.

    I said, "Have you heard the tape?"

    "How would I hear the tape?"

    "Do you have any idea where it is?"

    "None." He dabbed at his face.

    I said, "You were in the garage Conners rented, approximately fifteen minutes before he was killed."

    For the first time in our conversation, I'd succeeded in surprising him. It felt good. Too bad private eyes don't get gold stars for especially well-done jobs.

    "How do you know that?"

    I told him how I knew. And I also told him how I knew about his visits to the fishing cabin. By now he'd had time to recover. He no longer looked surprised, he looked angry.

    "I should've let that bitch have it years ago."

    "Why didn't you?"

    "Why do you think? Because I fucking love her, that's why. She's screwed half the men in town and I keep coming back for more. You have any idea how demeaning that is?"

    "You just keep giving me more reason to think you killed Conners."

    He sighed. He looked sad and old, startlingly so, and I was almost sorry I'd doused him with the beer. "I used to be fat." He raised his glass, but instead of taking a drink, he said, "The last several years with her - three or four pretty serious affairs, not to mention a lot of just general screwing - I've been seeing a psychiatrist. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I get these terrible migraines. And I stay with her."

    "Maybe she killed him."

    He shook his head. "No, they were alike. They both enjoyed sleeping around. She told me the sex was good."

    At the risk of sounding like a rube, I said, "She told you that?"

    "Sure. I asked her and she told me. We were having one of our arguments - this was the night Rivers was killed - and I asked her and she told me everything. I went crazy. I even started slapping her; I'm not proud of that. I might have done worse things if Dorothy hadn't gotten in late and heard Chris scream. She'd never seen me like that before - Dorothy, I mean. I think I scared her."

    I looked at him. "I don't think I could handle it."

    "I've left her twice already. She promises she'll change, and I come back. It's a little dance we do. Maybe I like it and I don't even know it."

    "There're a lot of good women around to choose from."

    He smiled coldly. "That why you wasted so much of your life on Pamela?"

    "I was thinking the same thing."

    "At least you're not smug. Nice girl like Mary and you treat her like shit. The whole town wonders about it."

    "Maybe I'm changing."

    "Pamela called, you'd go flying back. It could be your wedding day and you'd still go flying back. There're men who treat women the same way Chris and Pamela treat us. Neither sex has a monopoly on breaking hearts."

    I said, "I'm sorry I threw that beer in your face."

    He shrugged. "Somebody should've done it a long time ago. I tend to be insufferable. I don't have any balls, I just have poses. Richard said that to me once and I hated him for it."

    I said, "I need to find the tape."

    He nodded. "And what would you do with it?"

    I hadn't thought about that before. "I'm not sure."

    "If it reveals he was a communist, you'd destroy my meal ticket, as you called him. Nobody'd want a biography about a communist, not these days, they wouldn't. I have a big stake in that tape. It could cost me a lot of money. I probably have the biggest stake of all." He looked at his watch. "I wasn't planning on going back home. There's a concert in Iowa City tonight. Chamber music. Now I'll have to change. Chris wouldn't want to be seen with me looking this way. She's very particular about how her men look."

    Neither of us made the effort to shake hands. I'm not sure why.

    

    

    I stopped by the office thinking to call Mary and see if she wanted to have dinner. Nice family-style restaurant that always served Swiss steak on mashed potatoes. Then a movie. There was a Robert Mitchum Western and a Doris Day romance at the second-run house. One for me; one for Mary. I kept thinking about what Bill Tomlin said - about spending your whole life at the mercy of somebody else. He'd managed to scare me. Mary wouldn't be hard to fall in love with at all.

    The moment I reached for the doorknob, I heard a noise inside. I shouldn't bother to lock my door. People just let themselves in. The bus depot could lease space from me. We could put in a few chairs and lockers and maybe a hot dog stand.

    The scent of the smoke was unmistakable: French. Gauloise. Judge Whitney.

    She had made herself to home, as folks out here like to say. Parked her trim behind on the edge of my desk, one hand holding her French cigarette, the other a Peter Pan P-nut Butter glass filled with whiskey. My bottle of Jim Beam was open on the desk.

    "This stuff," she pronounced, "is swill."

    "Glad you're enjoying yourself. Most burglars are real nervous when they break into somebody's office."

    "Hilarious as always, toots," she said. "Happen to see The New York Times this morning?"

    "Afraid I didn't." She put her P-nut Butter glass down long enough to toss me the front section of the Times. "I thought it might interest you."

    Not hard to find what she was so irritated about. Small Iowa town devastated by "red scare" murders, other strife. I tossed it back on the desk.

    "My guests have been having fun with me all day," she said, "and it's terrible. Fun at my expense is something I'm not used to. 'Oh, look, is that a commie over there behind that bush?' 'Oh, look, is that a commie submarine coming up out of the Iowa River?' They've even taken to making fun of Ayn Rand, which is really hard to take. Now, just when are you going to solve these damned murders and get this stuff off the front pages?"

    "I'm doing what I can."

    "Obviously it's not enough."

    "How come you have all these liberal friends?"

    "They play tennis and go yachting and spend half the year in Paris and London. They're fun to be around. So when I want fun, I go to them."

    "What about conservatives?"

    "Well, they have different things to do. Like count their money. Or complain that Dick Nixon is too liberal. They're just not quite so amusing." Then she said, "No word from our friend Pamela?"

    "I'm not sure she's our friend. Not where I'm concerned, anyway."

    "I told you long, long ago, McCain. Mary Travers is the one for you. You look cute together. Nice wholesome midwestern people. I'm afraid Pamela is a little out of your league. That's why you want her, of course. But that's exactly why you'll never have her."

    "I think the subject's sort of moot," I said, "now that she's run off with Stu."

    She sighed and took up Gauloise and whiskey once again. "God, I need some good brandy after the day I've had. I had to supervise all these trucks being unloaded."

    I laughed. The prospect of Esme Anne Whitney being within three miles of a truck being unloaded struck me as hilarious. "You had to supervise what?"

    "That damned charity I agreed to head up this year. I had to sit in this freezing warehouse while they unloaded the trucks. I had to tell them if their merchandise was something we wanted to offer at the sale next weekend. And then Dorothy Conners deliberately tried to scare me - pretended she didn't see me sitting there and damned near ran over me. She's a tough old broad. Communist women usually are. You should see her throw heavy things around."

    The image came unbidden. A panel truck with a body in it. Dragging the corpse of Rivers up my back stairs to hide it in my closet. And then I thought of something else. "Excuse me a minute, Judge."

    I called the motel where Rivers had been staying. Esther Haley, the woman I'd spoken with the other day, was on the desk. She had to think a minute before she answered my question. But then she said, "Now that you mention it, McCain, I think you're right. I think there was."

    While I was talking, I could feel Judge Whitney watching me, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a puff of smoke hanging in the air.

    After I hung up, I headed for the door.