'But eventually you snapped out of that.'
'Part way. I'm still a little numb. But I came part of the way out of it,' Frank said. 'Then I was ashamed of myself. I was ashamed of what I'd let her do to me. I was such a sap, such a dumb son of a bitch. I didn't want anyone to know, not even my attorney.'
'That's the first purely stupid thing you did,' Tony said. 'I can understand the rest of it, but that--'
'Somehow, it seemed to me that if I let everyone know how Wilma conned me, then everyone would think that every word I'd ever said about Barbara Ann was wrong, too. I was afraid people would get the idea that Barbara Ann had been conning me just like Wilma, and it was important to me, more important than anything else in the world, that Barbara Ann's memory be kept clean. I know it sounds a little crazy now, but that's how I looked at it then.'
Tony didn't know what to say.
'So the divorce went through smooth as glass,' Frank said. 'There weren't any long discussions about the details of the settlement. In fact, I never got to see Wilma again except for a few minutes in court, and I haven't talked to her since the morning of the day she walked out.'
'Where is she now? Do you know?'
Frank finished his Scotch. When he spoke his voice was different, soft, almost a whisper, not as if he was trying to keep the rest of the story secret from other customers in The Hole, but as if he no longer had sufficient strength to speak in a normal tone of voice. 'After the divorce went through, I got curious about her. I took out a small loan against that certificate of deposit she'd left behind, and I hired a private investigator to find out where she was and what she was doing. He turned up a lot of stuff. Very interesting stuff. She got married again just nine days after our divorce was final. Some guy named Chuck Pozley down in Orange County. He owns one of those electronic game parlors in a shopping center in Costa Mesa. He's worth maybe seventy or eighty thousand bucks. The way it looks, Wilma was seriously thinking about marrying him just when I inherited all the money from my dad. So what she did, she married me, milked me dry, and then went to this Chuck Pozley with my money. They used some of her capital to open two more of those game parlors, and it looks like they'll do real well.'
'Oh, Jeez,' Tony said.
This morning he had known almost nothing at all about Frank Howard, and now he knew almost everything. More than he really wanted to know. He was a good listener; that was both his blessing and his curse. His previous partner, Michael Savatino, often told him that he was a superior detective largely because people liked and trusted him and were willing to talk to him about almost anything. And the reason they were willing to talk to him, Michael said, was because he was a good listener. And a good listener, Michael said, was a rare and wonderful thing in a world of self-interest, self-promotion, and self-love. Tony listened willingly and attentively to all sorts of people because, as a painter fascinated by hidden patterns, he was seeking the overall pattern of human existence and meaning. Even now, as he listened to Frank, he thought of a quote from Emerson that he had read a long time ago: The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. All men and women and children were fascinating puzzles, great mysteries, and Tony was seldom bored by their stories.
Still speaking so softly that Tony had to lean forward to hear him, Frank said, 'Pozley knew what Wilma had in mind for me. It looks like they were probably seeing each other a couple of days a week while I was at work. All the time she was playing the perfect wife, she was stealing me blind and fucking this Pozley. The more I thought about it, the madder I got, until finally I decided to tell my attorney what I should have told him in the first place.'
'But it was too late?'
'That's about what it comes down to. Oh, I could have initiated some sort of court action against her. But the fact that I hadn't accused her of theft earlier, during the divorce proceedings, would have weighed pretty heavily against me. I'd have spent most of the money I had left on lawyers' fees, and I'd probably have lost the suit anyway. So I decided to put it behind me. I figured I'd lose myself in my work, like I'd done after Barbara Ann died. But I was torn up a whole lot worse than I realized. I couldn't do my job right any more. Every woman I had to deal with ... I don't know. I guess I just.. . just saw Wilma in all women. If I had the slightest excuse, I got downright vicious with women I had to question, and then before long I was getting too rough with every witness, both men and women. I started losing perspective, overlooking clues a child would spot.... I had a hell of a falling out with my partner, and so here I am.' His voice sank lower by the second, and he gave up the struggle for clarity; his words began to get mushy. 'After Barbara Ann died, at least I had my work. At least I had somethin'. But Wilma took everythin'. She took my money and my self-respec', and she even took my ambition. I juss can't seem to care 'bout nothin' any more.' He slid out of the booth and stood up, swaying like a toy clown that had springs for ankles. 'S'cuse me. Gotta go pee.' He staggered across the tavern to the men's room door, giving an exaggerated wide berth to everyone he encountered on the way.
Tony sighed and closed his eyes. He was weary, both in body and soul.
Penny stopped by the table and said, 'You'd be doing him a favor if you took him home now. He's going to feel like a half-dead goat in the morning.'
'What's a half-dead goat feel like?'
'A lot worse than a healthy goat, and a whole lot worse than a dead one,' she said.
Tony paid the tab and waited for his partner. After five minutes, he picked up Frank's coat and tie and went looking for him.
The men's room was small: one stall, one urinal, one sink. It smelled strongly of pine-scented disinfectant and vaguely of urine.
Frank was standing at a graffiti-covered wall, his back to the door when Tony entered. He was pounding his open palms against the wall above his head, both hands at once, making loud slapping sounds that reverberated in the narrow high-ceilinged room. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! The noise wasn't audible in the barroom because of the dull roar of conversation and the music, but in here it hurt Tony's ears.
'Frank?'
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Tony went to him, put a hand on his shoulder, pulled him gently away from the wall, and turned him around.
Frank was weeping. His eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears. Big tears streamed down his face. His lips
