The Blue Last

“Don’t I know it. What gets to me more than anything is that they probably won’t have the opportunity to find that out.”

“But they will.”

Mickey shook his head. “Not without the right schools. Not without Oxford.”

“Come on, Mickey. Is this what you dragged me away from my Christmas dinner for?”

“Sorry. No, of course not. Waterloo Bridge.” Mickey sighed, as if the same nostalgia that had rushed Jury were rushing him, too. “I was sure you must’ve caught on at the Liberty Bounds that night.”

“ ‘Caught on’?” Jury frowned, started to say something else, but didn’t because he didn’t know what he was responding to. Then it came to him. “You know who killed Simon Croft.”

Mickey watched the water, nodded. “I did.”

Jury stepped back. Plant’s message hit him right between the eyes. The grocer. The one person Masaccio knew he could trust. Mickey was the person he had known he could trust. In another moment of standing there, staring at Mickey, Jury felt something leave him. It could have been courage; it could have been reason, or rationality, or sanity; it could have been faith. He didn’t think it was any of those things. He thought it was hope. And it was gone for good. If he lived, something that looked like it would come back: a poor imitation, a shadow, but not the real thing. He thought all of this in exactly three seconds.

And why wouldn’t he live?

Mickey took a few steps back from Jury. He had always been so fluid in his movements that Jury didn’t see the gun until it was in Mickey’s hand.

“What in hell are you doing, Mickey?”

“I’m really sorry, Rich. Sounds meaningless, but I really am.”

“For Christ’s sakes, you’re pointing that at me!” Jury took three furious steps toward Mickey. The shot spun him around, but it had only raked his shoulder. His other hand flew to the place. Blood, but not much. Mickey was one of the best shots in the City police. He hadn’t tried to kill him. That time. “What… Why?”

“Because you’d sort it, Rich. You’d work it out. I’m surprised you haven’t. But that’s only because you’re my friend.”

He said this in a tone of such demonic innocence, Jury wanted to weep. “Mickey, look-” When an answer comes, there is no orderly procession of facts-first this, then this caused this, then this… Jury thought it was more like one of those kaleidoscopes he remembered as a kid, where all the little bits of colored glass or plastic fly together in a pattern. The vanishing point. When you see it, it’s too late; it’s gone.

Mickey said, “You only had one more step to take, and you were about to. Elizabeth Woburn. They named her after the aunt.”

Liza, thought Jury. My God, Liza. We were all orphans…

He had said it aloud without realizing it. Mickey said, “When you started all of that stuff about the film-I mean, Waterloo Bridge-I was sure you knew. Myra and Roy. How much Alexandra looked like Vivien Leigh, and how much Liza did. I thought you were trying to warn me off. To do what, I don’t know-” Mickey shrugged, almost absently.

The waters of the Thames undulated as a speedboat rushed by. The dock swayed.

“Can you reason for a minute, Mickey? If I found out Liza was Tynedale’s granddaughter, what possible harm could it do? If I told Tynedale, the man would be ecstatic!”

“Oh, that’s why I got you on the case. I don’t know how long I’ve got; I needed you to carry on. It would be even more convincing coming from you. Except you worked out a little too much. If Tynedale discovered Francis Croft was the father, no, he wouldn’t be ecstatic. You know it. Do you really think he’d welcome Liza into the family knowing that? It would be the ultimate betrayal.”

“I don’t think so. Tynedale’s an unusual man. I don’t think he has a strong impulse toward revenge.”

“Could I take the chance? Liza will come into millions.”

“Does she know?”

“Of course not.” Mickey laughed. “But she will. I’ve left documents with our solicitor.”

“Simon Croft knew.”

Mickey nodded. “I had to take the laptop, the manuscript-”

“To make it look as if he were killed because of the book. Croft wasn’t paranoid.” Jury felt lightheaded; he was still bleeding, could feel the blood slick beneath his hand. “You made it look like an amateur trying to make it look like a robbery. That was very clever, very subtle. You’ll never get away with this, Mickey. Think.”

“Thinking is all I’ve been doing for six months. I’ll get away with it.”

The second shot slammed into Jury’s side as if he’d had a head-on collision with a train and drove him to his knees. The impact pushed him back, driving everything in its path, flesh bone tissue. It jerked him sideways, knocking him against the pilings, cutting his head. The third shot threw him back as if the train he’d just hit kept right on going. He saw his own blood for a second burst upward and fall like rain. More blood in a sea of it. The fourth shot hadn’t been aimed at him, wasn’t meant for him. He heard the thud, felt the dock shudder. He couldn’t see because he couldn’t raise himself.

Moments passed. He waited. For what?

Had somebody come? Here was hope in its cheap new clothes again. Jesus, he thought, we’re weak. We’ll hang on to whatever old lies we want to just as long as we can go on living. Why didn’t whoever had come speak? He felt himself being lifted a little way off the dock; it must be a stretcher they’d put him on. He felt something-a sheet? A blanket?-lowered to cover him. He kept his eyes closed because blood from a cut on his forehead trickled into them. He was glad he was on the stretcher under a cover, even if it was so thin he could barely feel it. Thin as air it was. Then he thought: no, it would take two people to carry the stretcher. His forehead no longer felt blood wet and so it was safe to open his eyes. Strange how the night sky was exactly as he’d left it. The stillness was implacable. He couldn’t even hear the water lapping against the pilings. He wondered how much blood he’d lost. The pain had lessened or become at least less acute, as if it had liquefied.

He was unyieldingly sleepy, but he must stay awake. Could be concussion, after all. It was taking the police a long time. Who would have called them to come? Mickey would have; Mickey wouldn’t, in the end, have left him to die here. No. Mickey was dead.

He heard a voice.

Mr. Jury, Mr. Jury!

“Benny?” Where was he? “Benny?”

And a clicking sound, nails tapping against the dock. Sparky?

But what had been close, the voice, the nails tapping, now receded into the indifferent distance. No one was near; no one had been. Death holds no surprises. Hold on to that notion, Superintendent.

A star fell. He thought about Stratford-upon-Avon and the little park near the church where Shakespeare was buried. There had been several of them, schoolchildren smoking in the darkness of a small, colonnaded building, their words flung into the night like the bright coal ends of their cigarettes.

My God. He wanted to laugh aloud. Bleeding his life away and he was thinking about a smoke. But then they had always been more than just cigarettes, hadn’t they? He remembered the schoolgirl flicking hers away into the darkness-(Always loved doing that, Rich… watch them arc and fall)-and the arc it made, sparking like a star shower. Brightness falls from the air. The things of this world, he thought. In the distance, through the frosty Christmas air, he heard a dog bark.

Sparky

MARTHA GRIMES