19
Jim Parr got outside, then, noting the weather, immediately went back in and up the stairs to his place to get his heavy peacoat. And so by less than a minute he missed his first chance to catch the N-Judah bus to downtown. As he rounded the corner to the bus stop, he saw it pulling away and took the opportunity to dust off several of his favorite underutilized profanities.
The next bus put him in the thick of the last- minute crowd rushing into the War Memorial building. He was standing in the middle of the crush of humanity at the bottom of the stairs when word traveled down that the Green Room had reached its capacity and that no one else could be admitted. Over the next twenty minutes, those members of the crowd who chose to remain, including Parr, managed to push themselves upstairs, where they got backed into the hallway that led to the doors inside of which the memorial was to take place.
Jostled back and across the entire hallway and now near the entrance to the elevator, Parr had just about decided to call it a day when he saw his old acquaintance and successor Al Carter approaching him, shouldering his way through the mass of people gathered between his spot and the Green Room’s door, his arm protectively around a tearful and perhaps frightened Alicia Thorpe.
“Al!” he called out. “Alicia!”
Carter raised a finger in acknowledgment.
On an impulse, Parr pressed the button for the elevator. When it opened, he stepped back into it and held the door open as a few of the overload of mourners filed in before Carter and Alicia finally made it too.
“Going down?”
“Anywhere,” Carter replied, his arm still around Alicia’s shoulder wrap.
Though she was clearly shaken, Alicia’s hooded expression barely allowed her to nod at Parr before she leaned her head against Carter’s chest. The doors closed in front of them and the elevator began its descent.
On the ground floor, Carter stayed around long enough to exchange a few pleasantries with Parr. Then he turned to Alicia. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’d like to kill Ellen,” she said, “but otherwise…”
“You got a way home?” Carter asked.
“I’m good,” she said. “I drove myself down.”
Parr cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t by any chance be going back my way, would you? Save me another Muni adventure.”
“Sure,” she said. “Done.”
Carter had made sure the guard at the door he’d exited upstairs knew he’d be coming back in. He was certain that he’d be readmitted, so he could afford these moments of pleasantries with Jim and Alicia, but clearly he wanted to get back up. After a few last encouraging words to Alicia, Carter left them both in the lobby and disappeared again into the elevator.
When he was gone, Alicia turned to Parr. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Now they were speed-walking together on Van Ness into the teeth of the misty north wind. Alicia had parked a few blocks away and the walk to her car wasn’t much conducive to conversation.
Once they were both in her car, the doors slammed shut and quickly locked behind them, they sat for another moment in silence, breathing heavily. Alicia fumbled in her purse, found her keys, turned the ignition on, and blasted the heater and then the fan all the way up.
Parr still wore his heavy coat over his dress suit and it had cut the wind and cold to some extent. But Alicia-in her flimsy dress and woolen shawl-hugged herself with her hands up and down on opposite arms and took deep breaths and long exhales until she had gotten herself back to some sort of comfort.
Eventually, she reached out and put her hands on the steering wheel, then gave Parr an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so cold.”
“I’ll forgive you this time. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Just cold.”
“Maybe not just that, huh? What happened back there?”
For an answer, she just shook her head. Her hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, her knuckles white. She turned away from Parr to study a green light’s worth of traffic as it passed outside her window. Slamming the car into gear, she released the parking brake, turned the wheel, again checked the traffic.
Then, abruptly, another shudder of cold or something else went through her, and she shifted back into neutral and set the parking brake. She stared into some middle space somewhere out in front of her. “Fucking Ellen Como,” she said.
“What about her?”
“She saw me and went ballistic and kicked me out of there. She thinks I had a thing with Dominic.” She paused. “Which I did not. Thanks for not asking.”
Parr shrugged. “None of my business.”
“I’m not that kind of person, not with married men anyway. I just don’t get involved that way anymore. It’s nothing but trouble, you know?”
Parr chortled. “Full disclosure. It’s not a big problem in my life.” “And Dominic wouldn’t have been any part of that anyway, no matter what. That wasn’t who he was either. You knew that, too, didn’t you?”
Parr stopped looking at her. He folded his arms over his chest.
“What?” she asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
He hesitated. “People can change,” he said. “I believe that. I did.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the Dominic I knew maybe wasn’t the Dominic you knew.”
She brought her hands down off the steering wheel, onto her lap. “You’re saying he used to play around.” Her startling green eyes took on a glassy brightness, as if tears were starting to form in them. She turned to face him. “Regularly? Often?”
Parr shrugged.
“And if that’s true, you don’t believe me, do you?”
“Listen to me, darling. You tell me to my face that you walk on burning coals, I’m going to believe you. I’m just saying that for Dominic, the Dominic I knew, it might have been a little out of character if he didn’t even try.”
She took a long beat and waited. “Did Mickey know that Dominic too?”
“Mickey? I don’t know where Mickey-”
She shook her head in impatience. “Come on, Jim. What I’m asking is if Mickey is assuming that I slept with Dominic too? The way everybody else is?”
“Well, first, not everybody else is.”
“That’s not an answer!” Her voice taking on a panicky tone. “Did you tell him that you thought I probably was?”
“Easy, hon, easy. Mickey and I never talked about it. Not at all. I had my business with Dominic and Mickey has his life. He never asked about my opinion on any of this we’re talking about, and I wouldn’t have told him anything because I didn’t know anything. Now I do, but only because you’ve told me. And it’s still none of my business. Or his.”
“No. I think it is his.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s just that Mickey’s investigating who killed Dominic. And I already told him what I told you, that Dominic and I were close but not that close, and if he thought that wasn’t true, then not only would I be a liar, but I’d have a motive, you see?”
Parr reached over and patted her on the hand. “You’re overthinking this, darling. Mick’s not that complicated. You want an old man’s opinion, I’d say that he’s thinking about you and him, not about you and Dominic. And I
