“Proceed.”
Claire Briggs frowned and checked again for the chemical reaction.
Blue. Again. No mistake.
She was pregnant. So said her home-testing kit.
She had to tell someone, but not before Jubal. He must be the next to know.
At four o’clock Jubal was back from his two o’clock audition for the role of the sensitive hero in the Lincoln Center production of the Vietnam play Winding Road, which was set to open in three months.
“So how’d it go?” she asked, but she knew from his expression how it had gone.
He wore a light blue sweater like a cape, its arms knotted at his chest, though the weather had been too warm for a sweater when he’d left the apartment. Now he unfastened the loose knot and tossed the sweater onto the sofa in a heap.
“It went like shit!” He flung himself down next to the sweater in a similar heap and sat frowning.
“Jubal…” Claire moved toward him as he hung his head and his shoulders began to quake.
Then he looked up at her, grinning. “I got the part!”
Claire stood still and took a deep breath. “Oh, damn, you had me!”
Jubal shrugged, still with the grin. “Well, I can act!” He jumped up and hugged her, lifting her off the floor and spinning her in a dance across the room.
When he put her down, she was almost too dizzy to make her way to a chair and fall into it, gasping and laughing.
“It’s a day for good news,” she said when she could talk without choking or coughing.
Jubal was pacing, too excited to sit. “Actually, it’s only a callback, but I can be sure of the outcome. Everything fell into place, as if I trained all those years just for the part. I was last to audition. I’m one of three choices and the other two aren’t even close. One’s Victor Valentino.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He was in Back Alley last year. Guy looks like a thug, but he can act. He might wind up playing the tough sergeant.”
“Who’s the other guy?”
“Randy Rallison.”
Claire had acted with Rallison. He had difficulty remembering his lines, and many in the cast suspected he had a drug or drinking problem. “A zombie onstage compared to Jubal Day.”
“I’m positive the producer feels the same way. He gave me the wink as I was leaving. I’m sure he gave me the wink.”
Claire sighed and rested a hand on her stomach. She couldn’t stop smiling.
“We’re going out for dinner and celebrate!” Jubal said.
“We have more than one thing to celebrate.”
“I know we do! The way your career’s going. And this apartment is great! We’re lucky, Claire. Damned lucky!”
“I’m glad you think so, Jubal. But we’re luckier than you know. I’m pregnant.”
He stopped pacing and stood still. His features rearranged themselves into a mask. She had no idea what he was thinking. Doubt flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt.
“I shouldn’t have surprised you like that.” She heard the quaver in her voice and hated it. Her stomach began to ache. She knew then what she needed, what she had to have.
“You know this for sure?”
“I’ve missed two periods and my home test says I’m pregnant. I’m sure. I feel…different. There isn’t any doubt.”
Now he was grinning. “My God! You’re pregnant!”
He came to her, lifted her gently to her feet, and kissed her.
“We can turn the spare room into the baby’s room,” he said. “We can spoon-feed the kid and change his diapers-”
“Or hers.”
“Hers. And push him-her in the park in a stroller.”
“We can watch her-him take her-his first step.”
“Teach him-her how to grip a baseball.”
“And how to say please and thank you. ”
“And not spit the spinach.”
“We can get married,” Claire said.
37
“New computers,” said Sergeant Rudd, who was manning the precinct desk when Pearl walked in. He was an aging, broad-shouldered man, with white hair, a whiskey nose, and eyes the color of lead bullets. “We need to keep up with the feds when it comes to technology.”
Pearl looked over to where the clerk sat and saw him wrestling a keyboard out of a box. The computer on his desk did indeed look new, and had a monitor featuring an impressively large flat screen.
“How are they preserving our information?” Pearl asked.
Rudd stared at her.
“I mean, are they transferring all the data from the old computers to the new ones?”
“Oh, sure. I overheard the technicians talking about some kind of ZIP drive thing. Nothing to it, according to them. But far as an old cop like me’s concerned, a computer makes a good boat anchor.”
“Dinosaur,” Pearl said, walking on toward the squad room.
“You too,” Rudd said behind her. “You’re just a smaller, prettier one. ’Specially this morning.” She turned and saw his seamed face split into a grin. “There some kinda reason for that?”
Holy Christ! Was it that obvious to the trained eye? Pearl felt herself blush and pressed on, ignoring Rudd’s chuckle.
The squad room was a mess. Half a dozen technicians who looked like teenagers in pale blue blazers were setting up new computers on the old steel gray desks, or on typing tables beside the desks. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries were colliding here. There were only two detectives around, a smarmy little creep named Weatherington, and a large, potbellied man she knew only as “Big Mike.” They were both undercover vice, which as far as Pearl was concerned was exactly where they belonged.
She stood still for a moment, taking in the electronic carnage. Then she went back to the booking area.
“Looks like some kinda college frat prank goin’ on in there, don’t it?” Rudd said.
“Maybe it is.” Pearl motioned toward the squad room with her thumb. “Which of those desks used to be Quinn’s?”
Rudd returned his attention to the paperwork that occupied him. It was almost as if he expected the question; he’d been day desk sergeant for over five years and had the answers. “Second on the left as you walk in the door.”
He didn’t ask Pearl why she’d asked. She thanked him and returned to the squad room.
She went to the second desk and saw the new computer on it, but there was no old one sitting on the floor to be removed later.
“What happened to the computer that was on this desk?” she asked the young technician who was working at the desk two over.
“Didn’t replace that one,” the young woman said. She weighed about seventy pounds and had glasses the size of CD-ROMs. “It was new enough that we just ramped up the memory. Five-twelve RAM now.”
“Wow,” Pearl said. “How new?”
“Three or four years old is all.”
“Any of the others like that? New enough they were kept?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the young woman said, and began undoing a tangle of cables.
