I called Doug MacEwan from a pay phone. He answered, and I rang off without saying anything.
He lived with his wife and son in one of the new buildings in Washington Heights. I walked across town and took a subway up to his place. I was getting over the nervousness of being among people now. After the shower, when I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, I looked less like me than ever before. It wasn’t just the gray hair. My face looked older. In just a few days I had lived some new lines and creases into it. Ones that wouldn’t wash off.
I didn’t want to ring MacEwan’s bell. I didn’t want to give him the chance to call the police while I rode the elevator to his floor. So I waited into the shadows until a woman was opening the door, and then I moved after her, holding my hotel key in my hand. I must have looked as though I belonged, because she held the door for me. We took the elevator together, and told each other what a nice evening it was, and how we hoped it would stay warm and clear for the rest of the week. She got off at the fifth floor. I rode on up to the sixteenth, and knocked on Doug’s door.
He answered it in pajamas and a bathrobe. Evidently I looked enough unlike myself to put him off balance for a second or two. Then he did a take and stepped nervously backward, and I followed him inside and closed the door.
He said, “Oh, Christ.”
“I need help, Doug.”
“Yes, I’ll bet you do. Jesus, you look awful. Did you go gray overnight or what?”
“It’s dyed.”
“I thought you’d be out of town by now. Or caught I looked all over that corner for you last night, I had the money, and I couldn’t find you. What the hell happened?”
So evidently he had kept our date. I felt momentarily bad for not trusting him.
“There were cops around,” I said. “I got rattled, I ran.”
“You want the dough? I’ll-”
“It’s not important. Not right this minute.” I took a breath. “We have to talk. What I said last night was serious. I
“The police-”
“The police won’t look any farther than me. I’ve got to come up with something more than what I know myself. Once I do that, then I’ll go for the police on a dead run. Until then I’ve got to do it on my own.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Information. There are things I have to know. Somebody did it to me, then somebody must have had a reason. I can only think of two reasons so far. There might be more, but I can only think of two of them. The job and Gwen.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“They were the only two things I had that somebody might want to take away from me. My job and my wife. What do you know about Gwen s new husband?”
“Absolutely nothing. She met him in California, that’s all I know.”
“Oh?”
“She went out after you were sent to prison. Sublet the apartment for the remainder of the lease period, sold everything except a few things she put in storage, then took a plane to the coast. Awhile after that Kay got a note from her. We exchange Christmas cards. That’s about all She hasn’t been back since then, as far as I know.”
I lit a cigarette. “Suppose she knew him before.”
“It doesn’t seem likely.”
“Nothing seems likely. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. Kay would know-”
“Is she home?”
“Sleeping. She went to sleep about an hour ago.” He looked down at his pajamas and robe. His feet were bare. “I was reading, just about ready to turn in myself.”
“Sorry to bother you.”
“Don’t be silly.” His eyes met mine. “I think you could use a drink. What can I get you?”
“Nothing for me.”
“Well,
He found a bottle of Scotch and carried it into the kitchen. I followed him. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes, added a jigger of Scotch, then filled the glass the rest of the way with tap water. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to join him.
“Maybe some coffee,” I said.
“Instant all right?”
“Sure.”
We waited while the coffee boiled. We sat at the kitchen table, he nursing a drink, me working on the coffee.
I said, “The name.”
“I don’t remember it, Alex.”
“Wake Kay.”
“I can’t do that”
“Why the hell not? Christ, Doug, I don’t have an abundance of time. I can’t afford to wait until things are convenient for people. The time’s too short as it is.”
“I can’t wake her.”
“Why?”
“She’ll panic. She’ll want me to call the police. She thinks-”
“That I’m a killer?”
He shrugged, drank, nodded. “You know women.”
“The hell I do.”
“Well I don’t know what to do. You really think this guy-”
“I don’t think anything, but it’s a place to start.”
“You figure he and Gwen-”
“Uh-huh.”
He got to his feet “No. Not a chance.”
“She wouldn’t have to have known what he did. She could have thought it was all straight, that I really killed Evangeline Grant.”
“But you figure she was having an affair with him.”
“That’s how it would read, yes.”
He shook his head. “Not Gwen,” he said.
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“Dammit, I am! She loved you-”
“And I loved her. But it didn’t keep me out of Evangeline Grant’s bed, or too many other beds before that. People are unusual animals. They don’t always do things for the right reasons. They don’t always do things that make a vast amount of sense.” I lit a cigarette. “I need that name, Doug.”
“Kay has an address book. I’m not sure where she keeps it, but I could dig it up.”
“Do that.”
He sighed, set his glass down empty. “All right,” he said. “Wait here.”
I waited while he went off to hunt for the name and address of my wife’s current husband. I waited, smoking my cigarette, drinking my coffee, listening very intently. At first I didn’t realize what it was that I was listening for. Then all at once I did. I was waiting for the sound of him making a telephone call to the police. The sound never happened, and he came back with a red leather book in his hand, and I wondered when if ever I would be able to start trusting people again.
“This is it,” he said.
The entry, carefully inscribed in Kay MacEwans’s small neat hand, read:
