Cold Night

heard someone get up off the bed. His wife began to sob.

Paine turned and walked out of the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him.

The rain had stopped. Paine looked up through the long telescope formed by the apartment buildings around him and saw that the sky was still dark and cloudy. No Mars or Venus. But they were up there somewhere.

He left the car where it was and got on a bus. It was only nine o'clock but it was a Thursday night and the bus was almost empty. There were three girls along the back seat, in solid sweaters and new jeans and open slicker raincoats. They looked like college girls. They were laughing about something. A little later they got off. Two stops later Paine got off.

He didn't salute the night doorman because he didn't know him. He signed in and showed his ID, then took the elevator upstairs. He used his key and went in. He turned on the light in the reception area and then the hall lights, and walked down the hall to his office. He didn't open the door. The cleaning woman had left the empty refuse pail outside. He left it where it was.

He walked back up the hallway and turned on the light in Jimmy Carnaseca's office. The contraption on his desk was taller but still unrecognizable, a grid of girders that refused to take geometric shape. Paine turned off the light and walked to the end of the hallway.

He heard music. The light was off in Barker's office. Paine thought the door would be locked but it wasn't. He eased it open.

The room was empty. He saw the outline of Barker's long chair and the length of his desk. The Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto was still playing.

Fucking idiot, Paine thought. Barker had the tape on a loop; when the time came, a guy would come in and put another tape loop on, something like the Mozart Piano Concerto 21-classical music for people who knew nothing about it but wanted to think they did without having to listen to it.

Paine turned the light on on Barker's desk. He looked for a switch to turn the tape loop off. There wasn't one. He only found a volume dial set into the wall inside one of the bookshelves. He turned it down all the way, which wasn't enough but at least it was low enough so that he really couldn't tell what it was without concentrating. The last thing he felt like doing was concentrating.

He went to Barker's couch. He bunched his jacket into a pillow and lay down.

He pulled out the photos from his pocket and flipped through them, one by one. Les Paterna and two other creeps, and three pictures of barbecue folks. Who the hell were they? He lingered on the last picture, the head- and-shoulders shot of the man in a corporate pose. He was smiling slightly but his eyes looked old. He looked like he had once smiled a lot but then something had happened to him and he had never smiled like that again. He looked haunted.

He put the pictures back in his pocket. He got up and turned the light on the desk off and lay down again. He closed his eyes. As low as the Rachmaninoff was, the notes came to him distinctly now, striking one by one on his ears. But he was so tired it didn't matter.

Fucking idiot. .

The world came back.

It was still dark. He held his watch up and pushed the little button on the side that made the digital display light up. Ten twenty-five. Now with his eyes open he saw the blackness of night outside Barker's window. He saw a single star. The rest were out there somewhere, fighting to get through the buildings. The room was filled with dark shadows. Paine yawned and then froze.

Someone was walking down the hallway tentatively. The cleaning woman? No. Whoever it was stopped at a doorway and opened it. He heard the click of a light switch and then another click and the close of a door. The steps retreated.

He got up and walked to the doorway and looked out. 'Can I help you, Mrs. Meyer?'

Rebecca Meyer was out there. She still looked boyish, her hair combed to one side, a coat thrown over a tennis shirt and slacks.

She started, but quickly recovered herself. 'Mr. Paine,' she said. 'I was looking for you.' She walked down the hallway toward him. 'I was told you were up here working.'

'Sleeping,' he said. 'Who let you in?'

'The guard downstairs. He said you had signed in at nine and hadn't signed out again. I. . thought it would be all right.'

Paine went back into Barker's office and sat down on the couch. He picked his jacket up and started smoothing it out.

'What made you look for me here?'

'I called you at home. Your wife answered and said you might be here.'

She knew, Paine thought. She knew I was there. He snorted a laugh. 'Sure.'

'May I sit down?' She was standing straight in front of him.

He waved at one of Barker's interrogation chairs, but she sat next to him on the sofa.

'There was something I had to tell you,' she said. She was uncomfortably close. 'Mr. Paine, can I be direct with you?'

'Why not?' he answered. 'Everybody else is.'

'I'm attracted to you,' she said, putting her hand on his arm.

'Mrs. Meyer,' he said.

'My name is Rebecca.'

'I don't think this is something you want to do.'

He felt the heat of her hand on his arm.

'My mother taught me,' she said, 'never to be shy about getting what you want. It's something she taught all of us.'

'So here you are,' he said.

'Yes,' she said. She moved her hand up his arm to the soft part of his neck and then his face. He looked into her eyes. They had the same deepness they had the first time he'd spoken to her-direct and at the same time chameleon-like-eyes he could lose himself in.

'What about your husband?' he said.

'Gerald is not my husband,' she answered. 'He used to be my husband. And your wife?'

'Over,' he said.

She put her lips on his. It was as if something melted in him. Then he didn't know where he was. He became hands and eyes and mouth. His brain went away. His mouth was on her mouth and then her neck and then her throat and her breasts; his hands were helping but her clothes seemed to go away by themselves. There was nothing but the two of them. They were sitting on the couch and then they were on the floor. She was whispering to him, begging him, and he said, 'I have a problem there.'

Her eyes went wide and she smiled. Then the world went away again and she did something and then suddenly everything was all right.

'That's the way,' she breathed. 'That's it.'

And then he heard only her breath.

'Why do you think your sister Gloria didn't tell me she knew Les Paterna?' he asked her. He looked at his watch; it was seven o'clock. The sun had pushed the stars out of the sky. He finished smoothing his jacket and put it on.

'Gloria was pretty chummy with Les Paterna at one time. And I was sure she'd try to hush up this thing with my father and sister.'

'She already has.' He told her about Hartman.

'You think Gloria told Paterna to have you shot at?'

'I'm sure she knew that if she told Paterna I was nosing around he would take care of things in his own way. She might have told him to keep a leash on it and just try to scare me.'

'My sister is a bitch.'