Not really looking where he was going, Lewis brushed into Jim Hardie, who had stationed himself unseen just outside the booth. 'Sorry, Jim,' Lewis said and would have gone by Jim and the girl, but Hardie closed his fist around Lewis's arm.
'This lady wanted to meet you,' Hardie said, grinning unpleasantly. 'So I'm making the introductions. She's stopping at our hotel.'
'I just don't have the time, I have to leave,' Lewis said, Hardie's hand still clamping forcefully on his forearm.
'Hang on. I'm doing what she asked me to do. Mr. Benedikt, this is Anna Mostyn.' For the first time since he'd met her glance at the bar, Lewis looked at the girl. She was not a girl, he discovered; she was about thirty, perhaps a year or two on either side. She was anything but a typical Jim Hardie date. 'Anna, this is Mr. Lewis Benedikt. I guess he's about the handsomest old coot in five or six counties, maybe the whole damn state, and he knows it too.' The girl grew more startling the more you looked at her. She reminded him of someone, and he supposed it must have been Stella Hawthorne. It crossed his mind that he'd forgotten what Stella Hawthorne had looked like when she was thirty.
A ravaged figure from a low-life painting, Omar Norris was pointing at him from the bar. Still grinning ferociously, Jim Hardie let go of his arm. The boy with the fiddle swung his hair back girlishly and counted off another number.
'I know you have to leave,' the woman said. Her voice was low, but it slid through the noise. 'I heard about your friend from Jim, and I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was.'
'I just heard myself,' Lewis said, sick with the need to leave the bar. 'Nice to meet you, Miss-'
'Mostyn,' she said in her effortlessly audible voice.
'I hope we'll be seeing each other again. I'm going to work for your lawyer friends.'
'Oh? Well…' The meaning of what she had said reached him. 'Sears and Ricky gave you a job?'
'Yes. I gather they knew my aunt. Perhaps you did too? Her name was Eva Galli.'
'Oh, Jesus,' Lewis said, and startled Jim Hardie into dropping his arm. Lewis plunged off into the interior of the bar before changing direction and rushing toward the door.
'Glamour boy musta got the shits or something,' Jim said. 'Oh. Sorry, lady. I mean, Miss Mostyn.'
The Chowder Society Accused
6
The Morgan's canvas top creaking, cold billowing in, Lewis drove to John's house as fast as he could. He did not know what he expected to find there: maybe some ultimate Chowder Society Meeting, Ricky and Sears speaking with eerie rationality over an open coffin. Or maybe Ricky and Sears themselves magically dead and wrapped in the black robes of his dream, three bodies lying in an upper bedroom…
He pulled up beside the house on Montgomery Street and got out of the car. The wind pulled the blazer away from his body, yanked at his necktie: he realized that like Ned Rowles he was coatless. Lewis looked despairingly at the unlighted windows, and thought that at least Milly Sheehan would be in. He trotted up the path and pushed the bell. Far away and dim, it rang. Immediately below it was the office bell for John's patients, and he pushed that one too and heard an impatient clamor go off just on the other side of the door. Lewis, standing as if naked in the cold, began to shake.
Cold water lay on his face. At first he thought it was snow, then realized that he was crying again.
Lewis pounded on the door futilely, turned away, the tears like ice on his face, and looked across the street and saw Eva Galli's old house.
His breath froze. He almost thought he saw her again, the enchantress of their youth, moving across a downstairs window.
For a moment everything had the hard clarity of the morning and his stomach froze too, and then the door opened and he saw that the figure coming out was a man. Lewis wiped his brow with his hands. The man obviously wanted to speak with him. As he approached, Lewis recognized him as Freddy Robinson, the insurance salesman. He too was a regular at Humphrey's Place.
'Lewis?' he called. 'Lewis Benedikt? Hey, good to see you, man!'
Lewis began to feel as he had in the bar-he wanted to get away. 'Yes, it's me,' he said.
'Gee, what a pity about old Dr. Jaffrey, hey? I heard about it this afternoon. He was a real buddy of yours, wasn't he?' Robinson was by now close enough to shake hands, and Lewis was unable to avoid grasping the salesman's cold fingers. 'Hell of a note, hey? Goddamned tragedy, I call it. Boy.' He was shaking his head sagely. 'I'll tell you something. Old Dr. Jaffrey pretty much kept to himself, but I loved that old guy. Honest. When he invited me over to that party he had for the actress, you could have knocked me down with a feather. And man, what a party! Really, I had the time of my life. Great party.' He must have seen Lewis stiffen, for he added, 'Until the end, of course.'
Lewis was looking at the ground, not bothering to reply to these horrible remarks, and Freddy Robinson rushed into the silence to add, 'Hey, you look kind of crapped out. You don't want to stand here in the cold. Why don't you come over to my place, have a good stiff drink? I'd like to hear about your experiences, chew the fat a little bit, check out your insurance situation, just for the record-there's nobody at home here anyhow-' Like Jim Hardie, he grabbed Lewis's arm, and Lewis, harassed and miserable as he was, sensed desperation and hunger in the man. If Robinson could have handcuffed Lewis and dragged him across the street, he would have. Lewis knew that Robinson, for whatever private reasons, would fasten on him like a barnacle if he allowed him to.
'I'm afraid I can't,' he said, more polite than if he had not felt the enormity of Robinson's need. 'I have to see some people.'
'You mean Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne, I guess,' Robinson said, defeated already. He released Lewis's arm. 'Gosh, what you guys do is so great, I mean I really admire you, with that club you have and everything.'
'Christ, don't admire
It was uttered almost casually, a merely dismissive remark, and within five minutes Lewis had forgotten he'd said it.
He drove the eight blocks to Ricky's house because it was unthinkable that Sears would have taken Milly Sheehan to his place, and when he got there he saw that he'd been correct. Ricky's old Buick was still in the drive.
'Oh, so you've heard,' Ricky said when he opened the door. 'I'm glad you came.' His nose was red, with crying Lewis thought, and then saw that he had a bad cold.
'Yes, I saw Hardesty and Ned Rowles and they told me. How did you hear?'
'Hardesty called us at the office.' The two men entered the living room, and Lewis saw Sears James, seated in an easy chair, scowl when the sheriff was named.
