“Jerry?”
“My father’s relationship with that woman is none of your business. I won’t have him upset. Do you understand?”
“Jerry, I called you, not your father. I’m not trying to harm him. I just want to know about Nadine Preston.”
“No good will come of this,” he said. “Leave us alone.”
He hung up.
I was disappointed, but figured his father’s illness had placed him under a strain. Maybe he’d settle down and talk to me later.
I took my pager out, saw that it still had Ivy’s old message on it, along with all the others I had received. I tried to clear them. All the functions on the pager were handled by pressing two buttons, both made for someone with fingers the size of a chipmunk’s. I pushed the buttons in frustration, ultimately succeeding in my task by default-I have no idea which combination of button-pressing did the trick.
Feeling that unparalleled sense of satisfaction that comes to a conqueror of electronic devices, I dropped the pager into my purse. (The manufacturers should give out karate-type belts: yellow belt, can use memory dial on the phone; brown belt, can use all the functions on a VCR; black belt, can install peripheral devices on home computer.) I told Lydia where I’d be, grabbed the fax envelopes, and took off.
“HERE YOU ARE,” Charlotte said, handing me a section of black fax ribbon that was about two feet long.
“Ray said that if you could make anything of this, you were welcome to it. I just think it’s sad, myself.”
I held the ribbon up to the light. The first page was a cover page with Ben Watterson’s letterhead on it. Written in the same handwriting I had seen in his calendars was a brief note:
The next page was the note to Ben from Lucas, the one I had already seen, saying that what followed was Jeff McCutchen’s note.
McCutchen’s note began in a tight, careful hand and ended in a loose, erratic scrawl:
33 44 30
118 9 36
Charlotte was watching me. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s sad that anyone should have ever felt this way.” I didn’t say more because I didn’t want Charlotte or her boss to believe they were giving me something important. No matter how rambling or affected by drugs Jeff McCutchen’s words were, these were his last. I’ve yet to read an unimportant suicide note.
I tucked it into the envelope which held the other section of fax ribbon, asked Charlotte to give Ray my thanks, and left.
I thought about the note as I drove to meet Keene Dage. “How are you with numbers?” McCutchen had asked. What could they represent? A pair of combinations for a safe? Was the second set “118 and 9” or “11 and 89”? Perhaps these were some kind of computer passwords. If Ben Watterson had so quickly understood their meaning perhaps they were terms of a loan, or dollar figures. But what had only cost a quarter? The more I thought about the note, the less sense it made to me.
“WHAT HAPPENEDto your window?” Keene asked when I stepped out of the Karmann Ghia. I told him and he shook his head. “Supposed to rain tomorrow. I know a guy not far from here that does good work. Reasonable. Come on, follow me over there and we’ll get it fixed.”
I was about to protest, but figured the time I’d save in answering questions about my broken window would make up for whatever it’d take to drop the car off. Besides, I didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot with Keene.
He was right, the shop was close by, and the one he had in mind not only specialized in VWs, Porsches, and Audis, but was in a sort of minimall of repair shops, including a glass shop. One way or another, I’d get a new window. “I built this place,” Keene said, with not a little pride. “Lots of special considerations in this kind of building, but the auto guys appreciate the thought that went into it. I never have vacancies here. Minute a shop opens up, someone wants to rent it.”
The owner greeted Keene like a long-lost cousin, quoted me a price that was just above being suspiciously low, and said he could have it ready for me the next day. I called Frank, but he was out, so I left a message on his voice mail saying where the car was and taking him up on an offer for a ride home.
“Come on,” Keene said, after I had signed the paperwork. “I want to show you my city.”
“WHAT’S IN THE ENVELOPES?” he asked as I settled them under my feet in the big Mercedes.
“Some stuff for work,” I said.
He laughed. “Not exactly a two-way street with you reporters, is it?”
“No, so don’t take it personally.”
That seemed to amuse him, too.
He started talking about O’Connor, the man who had taught me most of what I know about reporting. They were drinking buddies, Keene said, which put him in a group that might not fill a stadium, but which would probably sell enough tickets to allow a home game to be shown on TV.
“That was before I quit drinking,” Keene said, “almost thirteen years ago. I still spent time with O’Connor-early on he let me know he wouldn’t try to tempt me. He’d call me up and say, ‘Let’s have lunch, you rich and sober son of a bitch. You buy the sandwich, I’ll buy the water.’ Good man. Everybody knew it. Had his faults, but he was a good man.”
He was silent for a time, and I didn’t ask him any questions. I was thinking my own thoughts of O’Connor.
He took me downtown, and until he drove past the paper, I worried that he might have changed his mind about talking to me, that he was going to take me back to the
“Corbin Tyler did a great job on that restaurant design,” he said, pointing to a popular eatery. “My company did all the work. Lovely building to start with-a Schilling. You don’t know of him, I suppose, but he was very popular in his day. Lots of work in Las Piernas. Corbin studied all of the old prints, drew his lines to complement the original design. Owners were pleased.” He pointed to the monolith that was the BLP. “We did the new bank building, of course. There was an abandoned drugstore there before. And here-this clothing store? That was a massage parlor. Not much of a building there before, so we didn’t save it. The masonry was unreinforced, so it
