She’s got a face like a bulldog.” He clanged his way back to his big leather chair and sat down. “Now listen, you’ve got my apology. The drinking thing. The saying you’re in love with that Spencer woman.” I started to worry. What if, finally, it had all been too much, even for Bonnie? What if, now that it was over, she wanted to leave it all behind, go back to her mountains? “That fucking Robby Kurz,” he breathed.
“Robby’s in the squad room,” I said.
“I know. Did you have it out with him?”
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“No. I didn’t even go in. I’m wiped. My fuse is so short I’d blow in two seconds, and I don’t want to do that. There are more serious matters than him saying I’m a drunk. And they’re your territory, not mine.”
“The Bonnie hair,” he said.
“Yeah, the Bonnie hair.”
He picked up his phone, pressed the intercom and said,
“I’d like to see you, Robby. No, now.” He hung up and looked me right in the eye. “Listen, I’m sympathetic to what you’re going through. A family tragedy. But I won’t mince words. The Suffolk County Police Department is a paramili-tary organization. You know what that means?”
“You’re the captain and I’m not.”
“That’s right. Sometimes you seem to have some trouble with that concept. Now, you have a personal beef against this guy, and we may have a departmental beef. Guess which gets priority tonight when he walks through—” At that instant, Robby walked through the door. “Sit down, Robby.”
It was an order, not an invitation, and Robby, after nodding at me, sat. Sitting across from Frank Shea’s black-Irish, lounge-lizard good looks, Robby looked even puffier and pastier than usual; he was starting to resemble one of his crullers. “You almost ruined Brady’s career,” Shea said.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“So how come you called him a drunk?”
“Because I thought he was.”
“Why?”
“I thought he was acting in an erratic manner, and I thought I smelled liquor on him.”
“How was I erratic, you weasel son of a bitch fucker?”
“Shut up, Brady,” Shea said. Then, remembering I was in the middle of a Major Personal Crisis, he added, “Please.”
He turned back to Robby. “I won’t
444 / SUSAN ISAACS
call you a liar. But I question your powers of observation.”
“I know the tests say I was wrong. So I apologize.”
No one seemed to expect me to accept or decline the apology, so I just sat back and shut my eyes for a second. I wanted to call Gideon and find out how Bonnie was. I wanted to tell him my back door was open, so they could get Moose, who might need more water or a walk.
“Let’s get to the Bonnie hair, Robby,” Shea was saying.
“We had everyone on this case. Our best people. We examine, reexamine, re-reexamine the area where the perp stood.”
He paused, to indicate that out of deference to me he was not using the perp’s name. “We find zip in the hair department. And then the next week: A miracle! Crucial evidence!
One of Bonnie Spencer’s hairs—with a root, no less, so we can get a DNA reading on it.”
“Are you saying I planted it, Frank?” Robby asked.
“I’m saying Ray Carbone checked the plastic thing we got back from the lab and the seal looked a little funny and one hair seemed to be missing. Would you call it a plant?”
“No. Obviously the lab lost a hair. You of all people should know they’re not perfect.”
I thought: What if Bonnie doesn’t want me? What if she thinks I’m too unstable?
“Why would Bonnie Spencer’s hair be at the exact spot the perp stood if Bonnie Spencer wasn’t the perp?”
“Maybe she just passed by.” You could hardly hear Robby’s voice anymore. And he was slipping lower and lower into his chair. The only part of him holding up was his sprayed hairdo.
“That’s your explanation?” Shea boomed. “She just was taking a stroll around the six acres of grounds and her hair caught on that one infinitesimal little MAGIC HOUR / 445
spot?” Robby didn’t reply. Shea leaned forward. “Let me ask you something. Do you think you’re any better than any of the shits we lock up?”
“I deserve a fair hearing.” It sounded like Robby had already talked to a lawyer.
“I’m sure the department will give you one.”
“Thank you.”
“But as far as Homicide goes, you know what?”
“Frank—”
“Pack up your pencils.”
As far as I know, Robby Kurz did not pack up his pencils.
He certainly didn’t say goodbye. He just left for good.
I took my brother’s tinny excuse for a convertible, a Mustang, went back to my house and got Moose. She sat in the passenger seat, raised her snout and let the rush of air blow her hairy ears back. When we stopped at a light, she gave some Manhattan yuppies in a Volvo station wagon the patronizing glance of a glamorous dame who only travels top-down.
I pulled into Bonnie’s driveway. At last the bureaucratic wheels were turning: they had discontinued the surveillance.
Her Jeep was in the garage. The house was dark, and the front and back doors were locked. I rang the bell a few times, but there was no answer. I knew she had to be at Gideon’s, but I was scared. I kept thinking crazy things, like what if she’d gone home, tripped on one of her stupid scatter rugs and cracked open her head and was lying inside, dead. No.
Then my car would still be there. But what if she’d hit an oil patch and the Jag went out of control and she’d gone off a bridge, or gone up in flames? The only sounds came from wild ducks, and from the forced laughter over cocktails on the back deck at her neighbor’s, Wendy Bubbleface.
It took me about ten minutes to get Moose back in 446 / SUSAN ISAACS
the car. She was home and saw no reason
