The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia. Страница 21

"Ann?"

"A former cop. She owns the bar."

"Oh, that's right."

"I admit I was pretty whacked, and I told Ann to try Teun," Lucy says. "Next thing I know, Teun's walking into the bar. She pumped me full of coffee and we stayed up all night talking. Mostly about my personal situation with Jo, with ATF, with everything. I haven't been happy." Lucy glances over at me. "I think I've been ready for a change for a long, long time. That night I made a decision. The decision had already been made even before this other thing happened." This other meaning Chandonne's trying to kill me. "Thank God Teun was there for me." Lucy doesn't mean at the bar. She is talking about McGovern's being there for her in general, and I feel happiness radiating from some space deep within Lucy's core. Common psychology dictates that other people and jobs can't make you happy. You have to make yourself happy. This is not entirely true. McGovern and The Last Precinct seem to make

Lucy happy.

"And you had already been involved in The Last Precinct for some time?" I encourage her to continue the story. "Since last summer? Is that when the idea first came up?"

"It started out as a joke in the old days, in Philly, when Teun and I were driven nuts by bureaucrats with lobotomies, by people getting in the way, by watching how innocent victims get ground up in the system. We came up with this fantasy organization which I dubbed The Last Precinct. We'd say, Where do you go when there's nowhere to go?" Her smile is forced and I sense that all of her upbeat news is about to get questionable shadings. Lucy is going to tell me something I don't want to hear. "You realize this means I need to move to New York," she says. "Soon."

Righter has surrendered the case to New York and now Lucy is moving to New York. I turn up the heat and pull my coat more tightly around me.

"I think Teun's found me an apartment on the Upper East Side. Maybe a five-minute jog from the park. On Sixty-seventh and Lexington," she says.

"That was quick," I comment. "And close to where Susan Pless was murdered," I add, as if this is an ominous sign. "Why that part of town? Is Teun's office near there?"

"A few blocks. She's just a couple doors down from the nineteenth precinct, apparently knows a bunch of NYPD guys who work that tour."

"And Teun had never heard of Susan Pless, of that murder? How strange to think she ended up just several streets from there." Negativity carries me along. I can't help it.

"She knows about the murder because we've discussed what's going on with you," Lucy replies. "Before that, she'd never heard of the case. Neither had I. I guess the preoccupation of our neighborhood is the East Side Rapist, which is something we've gotten involved in, as a matter of fact. They've had these rapes going on for some five years, same guy, likes blondes in their thirties to early forties, usually they've had a few drinks, have just left a bar and he grabs them as they're going into their apartments. New York's first John Doe DNA. We got his DNA but not an identity." All roads seem to lead back to Jaime Berger. The East Side Rapist would most certainly be a high-priority case for her office.

"I'm going to dye my hair blond and start walking home from bars late," Lucy wryly says, and I believe she would do that.

I want to tell Lucy that the direction she has chosen is exciting and I am thrilled for her, but the words won't come. She has lived many places that aren't close to Richmond, but for some reason, this time it feels as if she is finally leaving home for good, that she is grown. Suddenly, I become my mother criticizing, pointing out the downside, the deficits, lifting up the rug to look for that one spot I missed when I cleaned the house, reviewing my report card of straight A's and commenting what a shame it is I have no friends, tasting what I cook and finding it lacking.

"What will you do with your helicopter? Will you keep it up there?" I hear myself say to my niece. "Seems like that will be a problem."

"Probably Teterboro."

"So you'll have to go all the way into New Jersey when you want to fly?"

"It's not that far."

"The cost of living up there, too. And you and Teun…" I hammer away.

"What about me and Teun?" The lift has left Lucy's voice. "Why do you keep picking on that?" Anger rolls in. "I don't work for her anymore. She's not ATF or my supervisor anymore. There's nothing wrong with us being friends."

My fingerprints are all over the crime scene of her disappointment, her hurt. Even worse, the echoes of Dorothy are in my voice. I am ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed. "Lucy, I'm sony." I reach over and take her hand in the fingertips of my plaster-confined one. "I don't want you to leave. I'm feeling selfish. I'm being selfish. I'm sorry."

"I'm not leaving you. I'll be in and out. Only two hours away by chopper. It's all right." She looks at me. "Why don't you come work with us, Aunt Kay?" She is out with what I can tell is not a new thought. Obviously, she and McGovern have discussed quite a lot about me, including my possible role in their company. This realization gives me a peculiar sensation. I have resisted contemplating my future and suddenly it rises before me like a great blank screen. While I know in my mind that the way I have lived my life is in the past, I have yet to accept this truth in my heart. "Why don't you go into business for yourself instead of the state telling you what to do?" Lucy goes on. "Have you ever given serious thought to that?"

"It's always been the plan for later on," I reply.

"Well, later on is here," she tells me. "The twentieth century ends in exactly nine days."

Chapter 7

IT IS ALMOST MIDNIGHT. I SIT BEFORE THE FIRE IN the hand-carved rocker that is the only hint of rusticity in Anna's house. She has set her chair at a deliberate angle so she can look at me but I don't have to look at her if I find myself in sensitive discovery of my own psychological evidence. I have learned of late that I never know what I might find during my conversations with Anna, as if I am a crime scene I am searching for the first time. The lights are switched off in the living room, the fire in its agonal stages of going out. Incandescence spreads along smoldering coals that breathe shades of orange as I tell Anna about a Sunday night in November a little over a year ago, when Benton got uncharacteristically hateful toward me.

"When you say uncharacteristically, you mean what?" Anna asks in her strong, quiet tone.

"He was accustomed to my peregrinations late at night when I couldn't settle down, when I would stay up late and work. On the night in question he fell asleep while reading in bed, Not unusual, and it was my cue that I could have my own time now. I crave the silence, the absolute aloneness when the rest of the world is unconscious and not needing something from me."

"You always have felt this need?"

"Always," I tell her. "It's when I come alive. I come into myself when I'm absolutely alone. I need the time. I must have it."

"What happened on the night you mention?" she asks.

"I got up and took the book out of his lap, turned out the light," I reply.

"What was he reading?"

Her question catches me by surprise. I have to think. I don't remember clearly, but I seem to recall Benton was reading about Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America that is less than an hour's drive east of Richmond. He was very interested in history and had double-majored in it and psychology in college, and then his curiosity about Jamestown was ignited when archaeologists began excavating out there and discovered the original fort. It slowly comes back to me: The book Benton was reading in bed was a collection of narratives, many of them written by John Smith. I don't recall the title, I tell Anna. I suppose the book is still in my house somewhere, and the idea of happening upon it one of these days pains me. I go on with my story.