“Darrow’s an old radical, like my father. He hates the police.”
“Your father?”
“Darrow.”
She frowned, trying to sort it out. “Your father
“Hell, he hated them worse than Darrow.”
“Is your father dead, Nate?”
I nodded. “Year, year and a half now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“So Mr. Darrow wants you to quit the police force and work for him. As his investigator.”
“Something along those lines.”
She squinted in thought. “So it’s all right, being a detective…as long as you’re not a
“That’s it.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”
“The cops represent a lot of bad things to people like Darrow and my father. The government abusing citizens. Graft, corruption…”
“Aren’t there any honest cops?”
“Not in Chicago. Anyway…not Nate Heller.”
“What did you do, Nate?”
“I killed my father.”
Alarm widened her eyes.
“You know that gun you asked me about the other night? That automatic on the dresser?”
“Yes….”
“That’s what I used.”
“You’re scaring me, Nate….”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Look, I did something that disappointed my father. I told lies in court and took money to get a promotion, then I used the money trying to help him out…his store was in trouble. Shit.”
Her mouth was trembling, her eyes wide not with alarm but dismay. “He killed himself.”
I didn’t say anything.
“With…with your gun?”
I nodded.
“And you…and that’s the gun you carry? You still
I nodded again.
“But, why…?”
I shrugged. “I figure it’s the closest thing to a conscience I’ll ever have.”
She stroked my cheek; she looked like she was going to cry. “Oh, Nate…. Don’t do that to yourself….”
“It’s all right. It helps remind me not to do certain things. Nobody should carry a gun lightly. Mine’s just a little heavier than most people’s.”
She clutched me, held me in her arms like a baby she was comforting; but I was fine. I wasn’t crying or anything. I felt okay. Nate Heller didn’t cry in front of women. In private, deep into a sleepless night, awakened from a too-real dream of me finding my father slumped over that table again, well, that’s my goddamn business, isn’t it?
Taking my hand, she led me across the sand into the surf and we let the soothingly warm water wash up around our ankles, then let it up to our waists, and she dove in and began swimming out. I dove after her, cutting through water as comfy as a well-heated bath.
She swam freestyle with balletic grace; rich kids get plenty of practice swimming. But so do poor ones, at least those with access to Lake Michigan, and I knifed my way alongside her, catching up, and thirty feet out or so we stopped, treading water together, smiling, laughing, kissing. We were buffeted gently by the tide, and I was just about to say we’d better swim back in when something seemed to yank at our feet.
I lurched toward Isabel, clutching her around the midsection, as the undertow sucked us down under, way under, in a funnel of cold water, fourteen feet or more, flinging us around like rag dolls, but I held onto her, I wasn’t giving her up and the riptide tossed us around in our desperate embrace, until finally, after seven or eight seconds that seemed a lifetime, a wave thundering up from the ocean’s floor deposited us on the shore, and I dragged her onto the beach and onto dry sand, before that wave could withdraw and pull us back out to sea, and down again into the undertow.
We huddled on one towel, teeth chattering, hugging each other, breathing fast and deep; we stayed that way for what seemed a long time, watching an incredibly beautiful wave crash onto the shore, reminding us how close we’d just come to dying.
