glasses.
Corman shook his head. “No, thanks.”
They had dinner almost an hour later, everyone situated around the large rectangular table Frances had bought from an East Side antique gallery. It was made of rosewood, and the purity of the grain, its smooth, effortless flow, gave a strange comfort to the entire room. For a moment, Corman imagined himself living among such lovely things, digging for a separate treasure than the one he found in his darkroom or on his walks with Lucy. It was as if elegant, expensive things were what life offered in place of that distant, ineffable richness which began to seem unattainable as time wore on and disappointments accumulated. And so after a while, you joined in a conspiracy with things that gave you comfort, style, prestige, a sense of being more than you really were, having more than you really had. It was perfectly natural, and the trick was simply to forget that there was anything else at all.
“Lucy could spend the night with us, you know,” Frances said quietly after dinner, as the three of them sat in the living room again while the children ran about upstairs.
“Thanks, Frances,” Corman said, “but I’d rather take her home.”
Frances smiled thinly. “You like to keep your eye on her, don’t you?” she asked, as if there were something perverse in his attachment.
“Not exactly.”
“Doesn’t she sort of get in the way sometimes?” Frances continued cautiously.
“Of what?”
“Your other … activities.”
“Like what?”
“Frances,” Edgar warned. “It’s not your business.”
She gave him a scolding look, then turned back to Corman. “Well, you’re a single man, now, David, you must have … needs.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But, surely, with Lucy …”
“She comes first,” Corman said flatly. “She’ll always come first.”
Frances stared at him doubtfully. “But a man your age, without Lexie … it must be difficult to …”
“Not really,” Corman said. He shrugged. “Duty is a feeling like any other feeling,” he said softly. “As a matter of fact, it’s a passionate feeling.”
Frances stiffened somewhat and said nothing.
“Maybe the most passionate there is,” Corman added. He smiled, then stood up. “I’d better get us home now.”
Once back in the apartment, Lucy went to bed almost immediately, and a few minutes later Corman walked quietly into her room. She was sleeping as she often did, on her back, arms and legs spread, the posture of a child who had little fear. Somehow she had reached a strange concreteness, a sense of herself that came across equally in moments of rebellion and acquiescence. He realized that he had no idea where this solidity had come from, only that it was now in place, and suddenly, at the thought of her going to Lexie, riding her bike through the opulent Westchester suburbs, heading down the predictable track that would lead to the right school, marriage, life, he felt a trembling along the fissure that ran from his mind to his heart, and in that instant he decided he would fight for her, and began immediately to formulate a plan.
CHAPTER
TEN
“YOU SURE ARE quiet,” Lucy said as they made their way toward school the next morning.
“I have a lot on my mind,” Corman told her.
“About the rent?”
“That’s part of it.”
Lucy’s eyes drifted over to the opposite side of the street. “That restaurant’s changing its name again,” she said.
Corman nodded quickly. “Uhm.”
“It’s like it changes every two weeks or something,” Lucy added, almost irritably, as if such changes signaled a grave lack of resolution.
“Yeah,” Corman said dully.
Lucy tugged at his arm. “You’re really out of it,” she said. Corman glanced down at her and hoped she wasn’t right.
After dropping Lucy off at school, Corman walked quickly to the subway and took the Seventh Avenue Express downtown. On the way, he went over the murderers or victims Julian might be interested in, silently repeating the words he’d used: slow decline, incremental fall. That was what he needed, a book of pictures, something Lexie could hold in her hand, show to her friends, a Product, for Christ’s sake, that could convince her he was still worthy to keep Lucy in his care.
Once above ground, Corman hoisted his bag more securely onto his shoulder and headed south, moving quickly until he reached police headquarters.
One Police Plaza was a massive brick cube which sat like a huge red block between Chinatown and the East River. Its straight parallel lines of small square windows made it look exactly like what it represented, the inflexible authority of the law. The old police headquarters had been very different, a beautiful beaux arts building, domed, graceful, as aristocratic in appearance as some of the old chiefs had been aristocratic by birth. The developers of the new city had already turned it into a luxury condominium.
The police darkroom and photographic laboratory was in the basement of the building. Its dark green double doors faced a well-lighted corridor which was usually filled with the familiar smells of photographic work.
Charlie Barnes was sitting at his desk when Corman came into the room. Long black strips of negatives were lined up in front of him, each neatly numbered with a red grease pencil. Harvey Grossbart stood over him, peering at the negatives. “That one,” he said.
Barnes marked it, then glanced over to Corman. “You look like hell.”
Corman shrugged, said nothing.
“Lang would like something like that,” Grossbart said as he pointed to a particularly gruesome picture.
Barnes shook his head in disgust. “He stinks to high heaven, Lang does. I’d bet my life savings he’s on the pad, a big one too, a horse couldn’t swallow it.”
Grossbart shook his head. “Not in Homicide. There’s no money in Homicide.”
“Just what you can snatch from the room of the recently deceased, right?” Barnes asked with a smile.
Grossbart looked at him tensely. “You wired, Charlie? You got an IAD wire up your ass?”
Barnes laughed.
Grossbart leaned toward him slightly. “Because if you do, I’ll tell you every fucking thing I know.”
Barnes laughed again, this time a little nervously. Then he took a single photograph from the stack on his desk. “Here’s a good one from that hotel killing.”
Grossbart took the picture and lifted it slightly for better light.
“You showed up for that one, didn’t you, Corman?” Barnes asked.
“Yes,” Corman said. He stepped over and looked at the photograph.
It showed a woman lying facedown on a bed, naked from the waist up, the lower part of her body wrapped in a dark brown towel. A large red bra hung from one of the bedposts. Over the other one, a man’s hat, an old gray homburg, was tipped, almost jauntily. The woman stretched across the full length of the bed, her brown feet near the headboard, her hair pouring over the end of the bed like a wash of brackish gray water. She was somewhat overweight. Rounded folds of skin hung from her sides, tan and doughy.
From the photograph, it was easy to tell what had happened to her. Her husband had pressed her face into the mattress, probably to muffle her screams. Then, for some reason Corman could not imagine, he’d swept her hair over the top of her head before nosing the barrel of the pistol into the fleshy hollow at the base of her skull.
