True Detective (38 page)

I'd used the word "junk" to test the old boy, and he passed: he flinched as I said it.

"I didn't throw his things out, Nate," he said. "They're crated away in the basement. Except those damn scrapbooks of his. Those I burned"

He touched his face, for a moment, with a gray-gloved hand; he wasn't as strong as he liked to think. Then he excused himself, saying he'd let me get settled and come back later, and I stripped down to my drawers and got into bed. I looked over toward the window, where the moonlight was coming in. though I couldn't see the moon itself.

I thought about Mary Ann, in a room nearby: next door maybe. Part of me wanted to go looking for her: part of me wanted her to come looking for me.

And part of me didn't want anything to do with her. not tonight, anyway. Not here. Not in her brother's room. His bed. That would've bothered me, though for the life of me I didn't know why.

Thunder woke me.

I sat up in bed; rain was at the windows, rattling them, pelting them. I checked my wristwatch on the small table by the bed: just after three. I tried to go back to sleep, but the insistent tattoo of rain, and the ground-shaking thundercracks. worked against me. I got up and went to a window and looked out. That nasty sky we'd driven here under had finally kept its promise, and I was glad I was inside and not driving across Illinois in a Chevy. Then, while I was still there at the window, the sky burst open, showering hailstones; it was like a dozen Dizzy Deans were up there hurling baseballs at the house. It made an incredible racket.

"Nathan?"

I looked back and Mary Ann, still in the baby-blue robe, arms folded to herself protectively, was rushing across the room to me. She hugged me. She was trembling.

"Just a hailstorm, baby," I said.

"Please. Get away from the window."

Down on the lawn, the hailstones were gathering. Christ if they
weren't
the size of baseballs. One of them careened off the window, and I took Mary Ann's advice.

We stood by the bed and I held her.

"Let me get in under the covers with you." she said.

She sounded like a kid; there was no ulterior motive here: she was really scared.

"Sure." I said, and went over and shut the door.

She curled up against me in bed, clinging to me. and. gradually, her shaking stopped, though the hailstones kept up for a good twenty minutes.

"I'm sorry about today," she said; I could barely hear her over the hailstones.

"We were both a little childish," I said.

"I suppose maybe I am sort of a snob," she said.

"Who isn't?"

"I do love you, Nathan."

"You do, huh?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure. Do you know why you love me?"

"Besides the physical? I'm not sure, either."

"I feel safe with you, Nathan."

"That's nice," I said, meaning it.

"You're stronger than me. You see the world as it is."

"In my trade, you see it any other way, you don't last long."

"I guess I've always seen it through rose-colored glasses."

"Well, at least you know that. That means you're more of a realist than you think."

"Everybody who sees the world through rose-colored glasses is a realist. That's why they put the rose-colored glasses on."

"Come on now, Mary Ann. You've had a nice life so far, haven't you? I mean, you don't exactly seem to've had it tough. Your father appeal's to be a terrific guy."

"He is. He's wonderful."

"And you obviously got along well with your brother, or you wouldn't be going to all the trouble of hiring me to track him down."

"Yes. Jimmy and I were very close- I- would crawl in bed with him sometimes, like this. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't like- like that. I suppose we played doctor and kissed and did the silly things kids will do growing up. But I wasn't in love with my brother, Nathan. We didn't do anything wrong."

"I know."

"I
know
you know, because you're the only man I've ever been with. And you know that's true."

"I know."

"But Jimmy and I… we banded together. Daddy is wonderful, but he can be- distant. He's sort of formal. It's the doctor side of him, I guess; or the professor side, maybe. I'm not sure, exactly. I grew up aware of not having a mother. I grew up aware of her having died giving birth to me. And Jimmy, I used to cry about it, at night, sometimes. Not often- don't get me wrong- I'm not neurotic or anything. The psychiatrist I go to is simply for understanding myself better- that's only healthy for an actress, don't you agree?"

Sure.

"Did my father tell you about the accident? When he burned his hands?"

"Yes."

"It was my fault. Did he tell you that?"

"No…"

"I saw the other car. I saw the other car coming at us. and I got kind of- hysterical, I guess, and I grabbed Daddy's arm, and I think- I've never said this out loud to anybody but Jimmy- I think that's why Daddy couldn't avoid the other car."

"Mary Ann, have you ever talked to your father about this?"

"No. Not really."

"Look. The other car was driven by a drunk driver. Without any lights on, is what your father told me. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"So if it was anybody's fault it was that guy's. And even if it
had
been in some way your fault, you were a little
kid
. You got scared, and so what? You should let 20 of this."

"That's what my psychiatrist says."

The hailstones were trailing off; the rain kept at it.

"Well, he's right," I said.

"I just wanted to tell you about it. I don't know why I wanted to. It's just something I wanted to share with you… if 'share' is the right word."

"I'm glad you did. I don't like secrets."

"I don't either. Nathan?"

"Yes?"

"I know another reason why I love you."

"Really?"

"You're honest."

I laughed out loud at that. "Nobody ever accused me of
that
before."

"I read about you in the papers. I said I came to your office because you were first in the phone book.

Well, that was partially true. I also- I recognized your name. too. I remembered reading about you quitting the police, after that shooting. I asked some of my friends in Tower Town about it. and they said they heard you quit because you didn't want to be a party to the corruption."

"That sounds like the kind of high-flown horseflop that might pass for thinking in Tower Town."

"It's true, isn't it? And you told the truth at that trial, last week. Because you're honest."

I took her by the small of the arm; not hurting her. but firm enough to engage her attention. "Look. Mary Ann. Don't build me into something I'm not. Don't put your rose-colored glasses on when you look at me. I'm more honest than some people I know, but the soul of honesty, I'm not. Are you listening?"

She just smiled at me. like the child she was- or chose to be.

"Is that why you love me?" I asked. "Because I'm a detective? A private eye? Don't build me into a romantic figure, Mary Ann. I'm just a man."

She picked my hand off her arm like a flower and gave me that impish grin of hers, which she really had down pat by now. Then she hugged me and said, "I know you're a man. I've been paying attention."

"Have you, Mary Ann?"

"Maybe I am naive, Nathan. But I know you're a man, and an honest one- for Chicago, anyway."

"Mary Ann.."

"Just be honest with me. Don't lie to me. Nathan. No secrets. No deceptions."

"That's good, coming from an actress."

She sat up in bed; the blue robe hung open and I could see the start of the gentle curves of the cups of either breast. "Promise me." she said. "No lies. And I'll promise you the same."

"Okay," I said. "That's fair."

She grinned, and not impishly- not in any way contrived or calculated- a good, honest grin, and a beautiful one.

"Now," she said, suddenly serious, slipping the robe off, "make love to me."

I didn't argue with her, even if this was her brother's bed. But I did reach for my billfold, to get a Sheik, and she stopped me.

"Don't use anything," she said.

"That can lead to little Mary Anns and Nathans, you know."

"I know. You can pull out if you want, but I want to feel you in me. And I want you to feel me…"

The intensity of the rain kept pace with us. and the reflection of the rain on her ghostly pale flesh as I arched over her, driving steadily but sweetly into her, was ever-shifting, creating streaky, elusive patterns on her, and her mouth was open in a smile, in her passion, and her eyes gazed at me with an adoration that I'd never seen in any woman's eyes before; and when I withdrew from her, she had a momentary' look of pain and then she grabbed that part of me in her hands so that I would spill into them, and she cupped my seed in her hands, then clasped her hands together and held the warm seed there and looked up at me with a closemouthed smile that I will take to my grave.

Finally, back to reality, she took some tissues from the pocket of the robe and, with droll reluctance, wiped her hands, putting the robe on, kissing me, touching my face, leaving me there, as the storm dissipated.

In the morning her father had grapefruit and coffee ready for us. He wore gray again- a different suit, a different gray tone in the tie, but gray again- perhaps that was because gray seemed the least conspicuous color for the ever-present gloves.

Mary Ann and I sat on one side of the nook, her father on the other; I stayed out of the breakfast conversation, for the most part, while father and daughter filled each other in on what they'd been up to lately. John Beame dutifully reported that he had indeed been listening to his daughter's radio programs- he even took a morning break for "Just Plain Bill," in his little office at the college; and he particularly liked an adaptation of "East Lynne" that he'd heard her in on "Mr. First-Nighter."

That seemed to please Mary Ann, who was wearing this morning a feminine yellow-and-white print dress that I could not picture her wearing in Tower Town.

I took a quick look at the morning
Democrat
: hailstorm damage locally amounted to one hundred thousand dollars; one of the Scotsboro boys had been found guilty in that rape case; Roosevelt was asking Congress to approve of something he called the Tennessee Valley Authority.

"Can I give you a ride over to the college, sir?" I asked him, as the conversation between father and daughter seemed to have wound down.

"I usually walk." he smiled, "but I'm willing to be a loafer this once."

"Hope you don't mind the rumble seat." I said.

"I've put up with worse indignities." he allowed.

"That must mean I'm invited along," Mary Ann said.

"Sure," I said. "For right now."

She went mock-snooty. "Well, I like
that"
she said, getting out of the nook, going after her purse. Her father and I let her lead us out to the car, where the drive and lawn were strewn with melting hailstones; it was cloudy and a little cold. Somebody somewhere in town was burning garbage: the smell hung in the dank air like rotten fruit. Soon we were going down Harrison, cutting left on Seventh Street, and heading up the steep hill of Brady.

At the crest of Brady, across from a mortuary, was Palmer College, a collection of long rambling brown-brick buildings crowded together, taking up two square blocks. In front of what seemed to be the central building was a round deco clock on a skinny pole and a neon sign that said:

RADIO STATION

W

O C

VISITORS WELCOME

and, beneath that. CAFETERIA, inside a neon pointing arrow. From atop adjacent buildings, twin black antenna towers rose like derricks.

I found a place on the street to park and followed Beame and his daughter into the building the neon hung from. There were students in their twenties all about, mostly male, but a few female. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any college, with one strange exception: epigrams were painted in black on the cream-color plaster walls, just about everywhere you looked: over doors, on the ceiling, on the wall going up the stairs, everywhere. Their wisdom seemed a bit obscure to me, at best: "Use Your Friends/By Being of Use to Them"; "Early to Bed, Early to Rise/Work Like Hell and Advertise"; "The More You Tell/The Quicker You Sell." Was this a medical school for bonesetters, or a training school for Burma Shave salesmen? Mary Ann must've caught me making a face, and shook her head no. letting me know this was not a subject to get into with her father.

We went up an elevator to the top floor of the school, the doors opening onto the reception room of the radio station, which was even stranger than the motto-strewn floors below: it resembled, more than anything, a den in a hunting lodge. A heavy chunk of wood with wavy letters spelling RECEPTION ROOM carved out of it hung by chains from a ceiling that was crossed by several varnished tree trunks; the rustic wood-and-brick room was wall to wall with photos of celebrities, both local and national, in misshapen roughhewn frames. Visitors were apparently expected to sit on benches made of varnished tree limbs and branches; amid this rustic nonsense was an electric sign with lit-up red letters that demanded SILENCE and reminded you, vaguely, that this was the twentieth century.

This time Beame noticed me smirking, I guess, because he seemed a little embarrassed, as he gestured to the area and said, "B.J. does have his eccentricities." He meant B. J. Palmer, of course, head of the school and the station, and judging from the sotto voce Beame used, which wasn't just because of the SILENCE sign, B.J.'s being eccentric wasn't a thought you expressed openly, at least not loudly.

There was no receptionist, but we hadn't been there long when, through a rectangular window that seemed at first to be just another (if oversize) photo on the wall, a face peered, belonging to a handsome collegiate-type with crew cut and glasses, wearing a brown suit and green tie.

He came into the reception room, moving with an athlete's assurance, and Mary Ann smiled at him and he smiled shyly back at her and then the smile turned almost brash as he held his hand out to me, saying, "I understand you're from Chicago."