thought- and that’s saying some-” He looked over my shoulder, at Clare coming out of the bathroom. She was wearing a long towel, and her hair was loose and wet.
“Bad time?” she asked.
David laughed and looked at me. “If that’s not the story of my fucking life! Here I am with my whole world on fire, and you’re lounging around with her, getting blow jobs!”
I hit him. I didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t even think once. I just whipped my forearm into the side of his head and down he went. A spray of orange juice covered the kitchen wall, and the glass broke into three neat pieces at his feet.
Clare looked at me, and looked at David, and looked at me again. Her face was blank and her eyes were cold and empty. “Jesus Christ,” she said softly. She shook her head and went into the bedroom and closed the door. Shit.
I knelt by David, and he moaned and brushed my hands off. He muttered something and got his legs beneath him and caught hold of the countertop. I tried to help him, but he jerked away.
“Get off me, you fucking psycho,” he said, leaning against the counter. One side of his face was red and there was a cut at the corner of his mouth.
“Let me get you some ice.”
He waved a hand. “Fuck you. You fucking stay away from me.” His voice was trembling; tears were welling in his eyes. Shit.
“Sit down and put some ice on that, and I’ll get you something to drink.”
He waved some more. His sleeve was soaked with juice. “You go to hell,” he said, and lurched toward the door.
“Just sit down, dammit!” I reached for his arm; he shrank back.
“Or what- you’re going to hit me again?”
I put my hands up and took a deep breath. I softened my voice and spoke slowly. “I’m sorry that I hit you, David. I’m not going to do it again. I just want you to please sit down.” His lip was swelling and his eyes were red, and he said nothing for a while, but finally shuffled to the table.
I took his coat and fixed an ice pack, and I poured him another orange juice. While he drank, I checked his head for cuts. David tolerated my ministrations without a word, but his eyes followed my every move. I was pouring him a second glass when Clare appeared. Her black coat was on her arm. She didn’t look at David as she crossed the room, and she barely looked at me. She stopped at the door.
“Are you boys going to be all right on your own?” Her smile was thin and her tone was chilly. I nodded. “Let’s hope so,” she said, and left.
I threw away the broken glass and poured myself a seltzer. I drank it, and David and I looked at each other over the kitchen counter. And said nothing. He was hunched in his chair, tugging absently on a scrap of skin at his neck, when the phone rang. We both jumped. It was Mike Metz.
“I got a call from Stephanie,” he said.
“If she’s looking for David, he’s here with me. I was-”
“She’s not the one looking. She’s at the house in East Hampton, and the police are executing a search warrant there right now. They’re doing the same at the apartment, and they want some of David’s DNA.”
37
There shouldn’t have been traffic. It was early Sunday morning and the sky was bright, and I should have been doing an easy seventy instead of grinding through a three-lanes-into-one merge. I crawled a few feet forward and rocked to a halt. In the car ahead, the driver pounded his steering wheel and slapped his palm on the dash. The guy behind me pulled at his hair and mouthed obscenities. There was a Mercedes SUV on my right, angling sharply into the front bumper of my rent-a-car. There was a doughy blond guy at the wheel, and he looked over with what he thought was a hard stare. Then he glanced into my car, at the passenger seat, and blanched. He hit the brakes and someone leaned on a horn. I reached over and covered the Glock with my notebook. Taillights flared as far ahead as I could see. I took a slow, deep breath and told myself that I was nearly there.
My mistake had been in not starting at the beginning, with the DVDs in the plastic sleeve labeled “Interview #1.” If I had, I might have made this drive yesterday. As it was, I didn’t watch those disks until seven on Saturday night.
I’d ridden uptown with David after Mike’s call, and he was silent and blank-eyed in the back of the taxi. We met Mike on the sidewalk in front of David’s building.
“They’re up there now,” Mike said. “McCue, Conlon, a lab guy, and a uniform. They’ll be a while.”
The doorman watched through the glass, staring at David’s swollen lip and bruised face and rumpled clothing. We went inside and he nodded nervously. “Mr. March,” he said, and he explained, in low, anxious tones, about having to let the police in. David walked past him and into the elevator with no sign of having heard a word. Mike followed, and I did too, but when I tried to step into the car, David put a hand on my chest.
“Not you,” he said quietly. Mike raised an eyebrow and began to speak, but I shook my head. David pressed the button and the elevator door slid closed. I watched the numbers climb until they reached David’s floor. When I turned around, the doorman was looking at me and scratching his jaw. I’d walked slowly home from there.
It was midafternoon when I got in. The light had begun to wane, and the apartment was empty. The phone was ringing. It was Mike, and he’d sounded tired.
“They just left,” he said. “David’s lying down.”
“How did it go?”
“Slowly. They collected stuff for comparison- fiber samples, hair samples, paint samples- and they swabbed David. Mostly, though, they were looking for a gun. They didn’t find one.”
“How did David take it?”
“Like a mannequin- a mannequin with a fat lip. What happened to his face?”
I ignored the question. “How did it go out in East Hampton?”
“Pretty much the same way. I sent an associate to be with Stephanie, and he told me Vines was running the show out there.”
“And…?”
“And no gun.”
“That’s something.”
“Barely,” Mike said. “In case we had any doubts, the warrants mean Flores is serious- pretty much, as serious as it gets. Worse still, she’s managed to convince a couple of judges that there’s probable cause.”
“Shit,” I said.
“And plenty more where that came from. So if there are unturned stones out there, I’d get to turning them goddamn quick, because I expect a call from Flores Monday morning- a formal call.”
“Shit,” I said again. Mike was quiet, but stayed on the line. “What is it?” I asked.
“I have to go soon, and…you may not want to leave David alone just now.”
“Stephanie isn’t coming back to town?”
“Not tonight, she told me, and I got the impression she meant not tomorrow, either, and maybe not the next day.”
“I’ll call Ned,” I said, and I did.
I explained what I could, as briefly as I could, to my brother, who said he would go right over. I hung up the phone and looked at the black nylon case, still on the table, and at the DVDs- all the unturned stones- still inside. I wondered whether the cops had yet discovered unit 58 at Creek Self-Store, and said “Fuck it” again. I flicked on my laptop and opened another sleeve. It had taken me hours to make my way to the “Interview #1” DVDs, and to the unlabeled disk that was tucked into the sleeve with them.
A tow truck eased by on the shoulder, and ten minutes later, traffic began to dissolve. Ten minutes after that, I was doing seventy. The sun climbed in the empty sky, and my head filled, yet again, with thoughts of family: brothers, sisters, David’s bruised and empty face, his words in the elevator. Not you.
I got to the house before noon. I’d called the night before, and I was expected, but something prickled on my
