“And, maybe, has a personal grudge.”
“And knows there is no way of ever bringing Habeck to justice.”
“Yeah. Such a person might be able to justify shooting Habeck in the head. But, Fletch, think of the numbers. Over Habeck’s thirty-five-year career, the numbers of victims’ loved ones and families who have watched Habeck send the perpetrator to the beach instead of to jail must number in the hundreds, the thousands.”
“I suppose so.” Fletch took
“Bright boy.” Alston sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Instead of spending all this long time talking to you, I could have gone jogging.”
“You can still go jogging,” Fletch said, turning the pages.
“I don’t want to get mugged by a milkman.”
“Listen to this.” Fletch read:
“Jeez!” Alston breathed. “What’s that?”
“A poem called
“You and I know a little better than that, don’t we, buddy.”
“Do we?”
“That dancing beauty just isn’t there.”
“It isn’t?”
“That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. It makes me angry.”
“If I’m right, and I’m not sure that I am, it was written by Donald Edwin Habeck’s son-in-law.”
“Oh. Anybody who’d write that would do anything for kicks.”
“I read one to Barbara called
“I think you-’re right. You needn’t look any further for the murderer of Habeck than the snake who wrote that poem.”
“I think he’s worth talking to.”
“So, the newspaper wants you on this story?”
“No, Alston, they don’t.”
“Trying to prove yourself, boy?”
“If I come up with something good, do you think the newspaper will turn it down?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m getting married. I’ve got to get going in life. So far, I’m playing dumb jokes on the newspaper. And the newspaper is playing dumb jokes on me.”
“You’re taking a risk.”
“What risk? If I don’t come up with anything, no one will ever know it.”
Barbara stood wrapped in a towel over Fletch in the Morris chair.
“You want to know why we’re getting married?”
“The world keeps asking,” Fletch answered.
She dropped the towel on the floor.
She stood before him in the dimly lit beach house like a sculpture just finished.
“This body and your body moving in concert through life, in copulation and out of copulation, coupled, always relating to each other, each movement to each, however near or separated we may be, will measure our minuet in this existence, tonight, tomorrow, and all tomorrows.”
Fletch cleared his throat. “I’ve heard worse poetry. Recently.”
“Are you coming to bed?”
“I guess I’d better.” Fletch stood up, thinking of the immediate tomorrow. “It’s now, or maybe never again.”
Barbara entered the bedroom, head down, reading the front page of the newspaper.
“Dammit,” Fletch said from the bed. “Next time you house-sit, please check to make sure there are curtains on the bedroom windows first, will you?”
“Biff Wilson made the front page.”
“Of course.”
“Or Habeck did.”
“The sun isn’t even up yet.”
“You want to hear this?” Folding one leg under her, Barbara sat on the bed.
“Yeah.”
“ ‘Nationally famous criminal attorney, partner in the law firm of Habeck, Harrison and Haller, Donald Edwin Habeck, sixty-one, was found shot to death in his latemodel blue Cadillac Seville this morning in the parking lot of the
“This bedroom faces west, but still this room is as full of light before dawn as a church at high noon Sundays.”
“ ‘Police describe the murder as, quote, in the style of a gangland slaying, unquote.’ ”
“ ‘Gangland’!”
“That’s what it says. ‘Mr. Habeck’s law partners, Charles Harrison and Claude Haller, issued a joint statement before noon this morning.’ ”
“I’ll bet they did. Dropped all other work and put themselves right down to it.”
