I understood that, although I had far less time in as a reporter. The thought of his abilities and years of experience made me feel all the greener. A couple of hours later, with some trepidation, I handed him what I had written so far, and took a look at his own pages.
31
S HE SURPRISED HIM.
He had worried that writing together would be a trying, exasperating experience, one that would require twice as much effort to produce a story, and that he would need to constantly beware of offending her.
But when she came back from the coroner’s office, full of observations and questions about the Yeagers, he began to admire the way her mind worked, that she hadn’t taken Woolsey at face value. Hell, she hadn’t taken him at face value.
Perhaps because they were focused on the story, or perhaps because she was better at this than he had expected, it had gone smoothly. Even when she told him-brassy little bitch that she was-that he had missed something in his first draft.
“What?” he had asked.
“Katy. I don’t see her in here-not the way you described her to me. Not that girl in the portrait at Lillian’s house.”
He silently damned her for being right and went back to work.
He found himself pushing himself a little harder than he had been lately, concentrating on his own work in a way he had not done in the last few months, wanting to set an example-and aware of her scrutiny. A little unnerving, this new responsibility, but stimulating as well.
She made a few mistakes, but didn’t bridle at his suggested changes. If anything, she seemed eager to learn from him.
They wrote quickly-once he went back to work on it, the story didn’t need coaxing along-and finished in time to keep John Walters from losing a bet with H.G. that they’d make deadline.
She had looked so pleased when she handed it off to the copy desk, he smiled thinking of it.
The blend of their styles hadn’t been as jarring as he had worried it would be, either. In the most basic ways, hers was not so different from his own. He made a remark about this, and she said it wasn’t surprising. “Your writing has been a part of my life since I was seven or eight.”
That had taken him aback for a moment. The daily grind of putting out the paper made a man think about days from deadline to deadline, and not in terms of years.
She was younger than his son. He had been writing for the paper for several years by the time Kenny was born.
He wondered if her father worried about her, working in this business, seeing the hard side of the world, encountering lowlifes every day. He looked around him and frowned. Lowlifes in the newsroom as well. He resolved to have a word with the Wildman.
“Tomorrow, will you show me what’s in that box?” she asked.
“Sure. Tonight if you’d like.”
“Tempting, but I need to get home to my dad.”
They walked out to the parking lot together, not saying anything. He reached his car first and stood next to it, watching her walk to the little Karmann Ghia, seeing her fumble through her purse for her keys.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a movement near the fence of the Wrigley Building parking lot. The light in the lot was dim, and beyond it he could see little more than shadows, but he couldn’t shake a feeling that someone was there. He watched for another sign of movement, listened for a footstep.
He heard Kelly say, “Good night, O’Connor. Thanks again.”
He turned to her and saw, for the briefest moment, the image of a very different young woman, a sister lost to him one long-ago evening. On her way home from work to a waiting father.
“Let me see you home safe,” he said to her. “I’ll follow you in my car, all right?”
She smiled. “I’ll be all right.”
“It’s late. Humor an old man. It will make me feel better.”
He was convinced that she wanted to refuse, but after a moment of studying him, she shrugged and said, “If you can afford the gas and you and that old Nash can keep up with me, fine.” She laughed and said, “You probably hear that old ‘Beep Beep’ song as often as I hear ‘Goodnight, Irene.’”
“Not so often these days,” he admitted. “I’m surprised someone your age knows that old song.”
“Then we’re even,” she said, getting into the car. “I’m still amazed that you listen to the Stones.”
He had no trouble keeping up with the noisy convertible. As it pulled out of the parking lot of the Express, he saw another car’s headlights come on. A BMW. Not the kind of car one usually saw parked in the alley near the paper. The fellow in the shadows? he wondered. It seemed to move forward as she made the turn, then stopped as O’Connor’s car followed hers.
He watched for several blocks, but he didn’t see the Beemer again.
O’Connor followed her to a quiet suburban tract, one of the ones built in the postwar boom. Her street was lined with modest homes and well-kept lawns. The grass was a little long in the yard of the house where she pulled in, parking next to a red Mustang. The house itself looked neat and well cared for, so that he thought the neglect of the yard was recent. Lights were on, and as he rolled down his window to wave good night to her, he could hear the sound of laughter.
She waved back to him from her front porch, but still he waited until she had gone in.
He went to a pay phone and called Helen. She wasn’t home.
He thought of calling Lillian, decided against it, and drove back to the paper. He looked down the alley and saw, as expected, that the BMW was gone. He drove to a small Irish bar he liked, a place about five miles from the paper, and hoped that no one from the Express would trouble to travel that far to drink tonight.
No one from the Express was there, but he saw a familiar figure sitting at the bar.
“Have a seat,” Lefebvre said to him, motioning to an empty bar stool next to him. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Am I supposed to believe you’re here by luck?”
He shook his head. “No. I asked Norton where you liked to drink.”
O’Connor laughed. “And of a dozen places you picked this one?”
“I asked him where you liked to drink when you wanted to get away from reporters. He named three of them. I checked them out and took a chance that it might be this one.”
“You frighten me, Detective. And if I hadn’t shown up?”
“I’d have a drink, go home, and think of another way to find a chance to talk to you.”
O’Connor ordered a pint of Guinness on tap. “All right, Lefebvre. The luck was with you. What can I do for you?”
“It’s been a bad night for you, I imagine.”
“Not entirely.”
“Ah. Miss Kelly.”
“Now just a minute-”
“Relax. She’s a nice kid, but she’s too young for me, O’Connor. And for you, too, I assume.”
“Definitely.”
“I’m concerned about her-the Yeagers might have taken notice of her visit to the coroner’s office today. And she made Woolsey nervous.”
O’Connor smiled. “Good for her,” he said, hiding his own worry.
He took a long drink, and another. Lefebvre didn’t say anything, but the silence between them was comfortable. When O’Connor had drained the pint, Lefebvre ordered another one. O’Connor noticed Lefebvre wasn’t drinking much himself. That didn’t bother him. O’Connor knew his own head to be a damned hard one.
“You can tell me about them,” Lefebvre said. “It will help.”
