'Maybe not,' I said. 'I don't know. I can't say for sure. But maybe not.'
Linda began to cry. As she cried she talked. 'For crissake,' she said. 'She's screwing another guy, she walked out and left you, and won't even tell you where she is. She hasn't even explained why she left exactly.'
'She doesn't know,' I said. 'Exactly.'
'So how long, for crissake, will you wait for her. What does she have to do to make you give it up?'
I put my soup down, and tried to keep my breathing easy.
'There's no deadline,' I said. 'And no conditions.'
'So the fact we love each other and might be happy together and she's banging some guy in California, or maybe several, that doesn't mean anything. If she comes back, you chase right home to her?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I don't know who she'll be or who I'll be, or what will come out of this. I'm saying only that I can't promise. You've known that since we started.'
'And you won't give up,' she said.
I shook my head. Linda put her hands over her face.
I reached out from the bed, but I couldn't reach her. Her eyes were red and her face was puffy when she lifted her head from her hands.
'What kind of a man accepts that,' she said. 'Allows a woman to treat him that way and keeps hanging on.'
'My kind,' I said. 'It's why I wouldn't die. I'm going to see this through. I'm going to find out how it comes out. I love you, Linda. But I . . .' It was hard to say.
The room was quiet. Linda and I looked at each other. While the hospital went about its routine we stayed poised on this silent epicenter. Then Linda stood and bent over the bed and put her cheek against mine.
'God, you're strong,' she said. 'No wonder they couldn't kill you.'
I stroked her hip with my left hand. 'What will become of us,' she murmured as she rubbed her cheek slowly up and down against mine.
I continued to stroke her hip. 'I don't know,' I said. 'The past is painful, maybe even fraudulent, the future is uncertain, maybe scary. What we have is a continuing present, honey. I think we should do what we can with that.'
She shook her head against me. 'I don't think so,' she said.
CHAPTER 47
It was a big morning for me. I didn't drink any coffee. A doctor and two nurses came in and removed the drain from my side. And an hour later Rita Fiori came in to visit me. And she wore a green tailored suit with a frilly white collar spilling out at the throat.
'Mind if I smoke,' she said.
'Not at all,' I said. 'Want to hear about how I quit in 1968 and haven't had a puff since and don't miss it?'
'Only if you promise to explain in great and graphic detail to me how bad it is for my health and how my lungs must look. I always enjoy that.'
She took some Tareyton 100's out of her purse and stuck one into her mouth and lit it with a Cricket lighter and took a big drag and blew it out away from me.
'For crissake,' she said, 'I don't even enjoy it.' She sat, crossed her legs, and put her cigarette back into her mouth while she rummaged in her purse. She was wearing white stockings. It was the current look and I hoped it would pass quickly. Her shoes had three-inch heels.
'We've been trying to figure out what happened with Paultz and Winston and the Spellman kid.'
'Sherry,' I said.
'Yeah.' Rita took another drag and looked down at her notebook. I looked at her legs. 'We had a bunch of questions and no answers so we checked back and we pieced together and sometimes we guessed. But the best we can get looks a little like this. Winston was the brains of the thing. How he and Paultz got together we don't know. There aren't many of them around to tell us.' Rita looked at me directly.
I nodded. 'Maybe there's some truth to the story he told me,' I said.
'Maybe. Anyway, they did get together and it was a natural match. Winston had missions in Turkey, in Southeast Asia, places where they can raise opium poppies. He had missionaries who could mule the raw heroin into here. Paultz had a market and he had a system for cutting and packaging and getting it into retail hands.'
'Was Winston doing this from the beginning?' I said.
'I don't think so,' Rita said. She recrossed her legs and showed me some thigh in the process. I was pleased. 'He probably started it because of religious belief and desire for power and position, and the chance to manipulate people.' She shrugged. 'You know. And then it came along. We don't know how, either. Maybe a local mission head started dealing small and Winston found out and saw the potential. Maybe it was Paultz's idea.' She shook her head and shrugged again.
'Anyway,' she said, 'Winston would sell the heroin to Paultz and then lend money back to Paultz's construction company at a little below market rates. It gave the church a nice clean income--earnings from loans to a large construction firm. It gave Paultz a way to account for his income-loans to his construction company from an established church.'
'A kind of double wash,' I said.
'Yep,' Rita said, 'reciprocal laundering. There's still more to that part and some of it is quite fancy. The accountants will be able to give you some of the more elegant nuances later. But that's the gross outline of
