The Bright Spot Read online

  “I don’t think Kennemeyer was Galatea’s other man, unless she was a cross-dresser.”

  “He might be bi.”

  “They might bring back welfare. Anything’s possible. Maybe Salvador really is a spook with a time machine, and he’s living in the future. What about Salvador anyway? Have you looked for him?” I tried to keep any accusation out of my voice. It came out like a cold wind.

  “When he stiffed us? You bet. Nobody’s seen him since before the deal. He’s not any of the places he talked about us going afterward. Naturally. I didn’t ever really think we’d be going there anyway. He could be anywhere. He’s a dead end.”

  “Meaning there’s nothing there, or we should steer clear of him?”

  “Both, I guess. He’s really bad news, Nick. I’m sorry I got you hooked up with him.”

  “Are you kidding? If it weren’t for him, we never would’ve met. He fixed us up. I should thank the guy. He can have the money, if there is any.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Thanking him? No, I guess not. You’re the one I ought to thank. I mean that.”

  “You trying to make me cry?”

  “You’re a professional. You don’t need my help.”

  “Yes I do, Nick. I really, really do.”

  “Me too.”

  We cuddled for a while, still talking about the whole thing. Altogether, we chased it around the room for a couple of hours at least but never caught up with it. We fell asleep happier souls, however. We might be dumb, but we were honest, and whatever Galatea and Jim’s troubles had been so long ago, there was nothing we could do about them now—a couple of dummies like us, a couple of actors—cattle, like Hitchcock said.

  Moo.

  Lu wanted to walk Buck in the morning, in case Mr. Casual was on the prowl. I didn’t argue. After yesterday— the haul out to Llewellyn, toy cops, real cops, giving and taking confessions, some truly spectacular sex—I was totally exhausted. But it was a good tired. This Dumfries nonsense had been weighing me down for too long, and it was time to move on. I rose from my bed a new man. I gulped coffee and showered. Life was good.

  I was looking forward to getting back to work, returning to something I was good at—pretending to be someone else inside the tiny, manageable reality of a story. Like this mirror, I thought. I ran through Victor’s leers, sneers, and smirks as I shaved. Victor’s a very clean-shaven fellow, only a blade will do—the She-Creature likes a smooth cheek to caress with her long, talon-tipped fingers.

  “Ain’t you pretty, though?”

  I shifted my focus, and there were two extra faces in the mirror that didn’t belong to me. The cops were back.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dickowski, or whatever your name is. Get dressed. You’re coming with us. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you.” Jackson. His name was Jackson, as in son of a jackass. I liked him better as Lawson.

  I appealed to Murphy. “Oh, come on, guys. I’ve got work today. I’ll buy the man a new can if he wants, have it monogrammed for him.”

  “This isn’t about dog shit this time, pretty boy.” Jackson smirked.

  “Then what’s it about, ugly cop?” I was kind of hoping he’d try to hit me. I’m a good ducker, I am. Very quick. The mirror was behind me, seven years’ bad luck with Jackson’s name on it. I was grinning at him. Go ahead. Try it.

  Murphy cut in. It was his turn to dance. “Knock it off, you two. Nick, did you happen to know an Edmund Kennemeyer?”

  “Not well. I just met him yesterday.”

  “Ain’t that a coincidence?” Jackson said. “The same day he turns up dead. You got five minutes to get dressed.”

  “Where’s Lu?” Murphy asked.

  “She’s out walking the dog. Kennemeyer’s dead ?”

  “Yeah,” Murphy said. “If you move it, we can leave Lu out of this. Know what I’m saying?”

  I got dressed in three minutes while Jackson pawed the place and Murphy browsed the books. He found my detective fiction and complimented my taste. He was certainly the politest cop I’d ever met. I used my remaining two minutes to leave Lu a note telling her where I was and not to worry. At least that’s what I tried to do. It came out, Gone to jail, see you soon! Love, Little Ted.

  The police cruiser had a better ride than the limo, and we were going a whole lot faster. You could look out these windows, but I found it better not to. This thing had someplace to be and had no use whatsoever for where we were. We zipped along at top priority, the fastest bullet out of the barrel. Murphy and Jackson didn’t look out either. They kept their eyes on the suspect, to see if he was about to crack. It took me a moment to realize we were heading away from the city, away from the jail. “Where are we going?”

  “Llewellyn,” Jackson said. “Isn’t that what killers do, return to the scene of the crime?”

  “You guys don’t really think I killed the guy, do you?”

  “Why should we think that?” Jackson said. “Apparently, you’re the last one to see him alive. He had your phone number on him. We got some nice prints off a bottle of wine. Before that, we got you on the local bus terrorizing some little kid half out of her mind. Lawsuit in that one, for sure. Great laugh, by the way. We got you at the gate threatening the security officer. Some really crazy stuff—with possible domestic security issues. I’m no expert, but I listened to enough blowhards pretending to be—they’d peg you as a sociopath with homicidal tendencies at least. They got the heavy-duty ’ware for bad boys like you—once they put you on that stuff, you ain’t never coming off. We got you peeping outside the mansion at the lady of the house, ignoring serious warnings signs everywhere that the property was secured by potentially lethal force, meaning either you’re totally nuts—see the pattern here?—or you knew about the screwdriver someone drove into the security panel with a hammer approximately an hour before your arrival, or both. We got you joyriding with a stolen unlicensed antique vehicle with an eighty-five-year-old unlicensed driver at the wheel—you stop me when I get any of this wrong—after you got through plying the old queer with pot and wine. We got you trespassing on—”

  Murphy held up his hand, and Jackson shut up.

  Murphy said, “Since the DA here has seen fit to tell you our whole case, you got anything to say for yourself besides ‘I didn’t do it, Officer’?”

  “I missed the motive and the method.”

  “Don’t need a motive for a psycho. We got you cackling like a madman on a public conveyance—deliberately trying to terrify a child with a dozen shocked witnesses— each one trying to outdo the last one saying how crazy you were. You done pissed away motive when you pulled that one. Method’s nothing too complicated—drowned in the pool in a few feet of water. Anybody strong enough to overpower an eighty-five-year-old man could’ve done it. He put up quite a fight, apparently.”

  “Is this after he came back with the stolen vehicle?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you know I wasn’t there. He had to go by the toy cop and his surveillance without me in the car. Meanwhile, I was getting on the wrong bus. The 27E instead of the 27N. It was a fucking nightmare. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. Point is, there must be surveillance on those buses that’ll put me there. Have you talked to Pool Concepts? They had a crew at the pool.”

  “Yeah,” Murphy said. “We checked with them. That’s how we know you didn’t come back to the house with the old man. With the exterior surveillance down, we pulled the visuals off the ’ware workers, on the off chance they might’ve picked up something. They tracked Kennemeyer coming back all by himself.”

  “Tracked. You mean they were watching him?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “What were ’ware workers repairing a pool doing watching Kennemeyer?”

  “Good question.”

  “Did they pick up the murder?”

  “You might say that. Looks to us like the three of them did it. You know anything about that?”

  “
Did it? What do you mean—they were running ’ware when they killed him?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I was. Course, if somebody made them do it somehow, then they’d just be the murder weapon, so to speak.”

  “Look. I’m an actor. I couldn’t tell you how ’ware works, much less get pool guys to murder an old man.”

  “You say you’re an actor,” Jackson said. “How the hell do we know? You can’t even get your name straight.”

  Murphy cut him a look. It was clear who was in charge. Jackson had interrupted his flow. “Anybody accuse you of murder?” Murphy asked me. “I don’t remember that. I just thought you might know something. Kennemeyer being a friend and all.”

  Right. “He wasn’t a friend. I was researching a role, an old buddy of Kennemeyer’s named James Dumfries. I called him up, asked if he’d mind talking. He was bored, lonely, he wanted to get high, I helped him out. I mean—I wanted him to stroll down memory lane. Only, he ended up driving. The car thing was his idea. It was probably stupid to put my life in the old guy’s hands, but he just wanted to have some fun. I gather it’d been a while.”

  “Driving? Nobody drives anymore.”

  “Not just that. Everything. He was a real robust guy with absolutely nothing to do. At least that’s the impression I had.”

  “Did he indicate to you that his life might be in danger?”

  It probably wasn’t, I wanted to say, until I showed up asking about Galatea Ritsa. “No. Not unless he feared dying of boredom.” I risked a glance at the blurred world out the window. We were already getting close. After this much time yesterday, I was still on the first bus, with the Llewellyn Connector a good hour and a half into my future.

  “So, why is it we’re taking this little ride out to Llewellyn?” I asked.

  “The lady of the house wants to meet the peeper,” Jackson said, making it sound just about as smutty as he could. I was a sicko, all right, watching that beautiful naked woman running twenty feet up in the air without going anywhere. No reason to give that a second glance. Happens every day. I guess I had Kennemeyer to thank for that opportunity. Normally, I would’ve needed an expensive telescope and the even more expensive house across the lakelet to see something like that. The perimeter security’s on the blink again. It’ll do that when you drive a screwdriver into it.

  “If surveillance was down, how did you come up with this peeper fantasy of yours?” I asked Jackson.

  He was hoping I’d ask. “She saw you. She’s got a mirror. Big thing. To see the birds, she says. Leaves a window open in the virtual. Did you show her your bird, Dickowski? Birds in mirror may appear larger than they really are.” He cracked himself up with that one. He’d be telling it for years. The Dickowski Story.

  “What about the nephew,” I asked Murphy, “the lady’s husband?”

  Murphy nodded wearily. “Yeah. Trey Kennemeyer. What about him? We’re trying to track him down. He was supposed to be in Sri Lanka, but he wasn’t there. They’re checking in places I never heard of. Ever been to Sri Lanka, Nick?” I shook my head. “Me either. I never been fucking anywhere, except in this damn thing.”

  The cruiser slowed like a spent bullet and settled to the pavement in front of the big pile of stone. “Well, here we are,” Murphy said. “Big thing, isn’t it? The floor space is listed as over an acre—what is that?—four or five ordinary mansions? Two people live here, not counting the deceased they had stashed out in the pool house, and the servants, all of whom run on ’ware and live elsewhere. Under the circumstances, the lady’s given them the day off while they get checked out. The workware folks are seriously upset, as you can imagine. They’re afraid panic might set in. The economy would grind to a halt.” Murphy jabbed a thumb at the big pile we were parked in front of as if it were the economy. “Ever do the ’ware, Nick?”

  “I’ve never had the pleasure.”

  “Wish I could say the same.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Jackson said. “Riot ’ware saved my ass more than once. So why is it we’re sitting here? The house is over there, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I’ve got a few more questions for Nick here, if you don’t mind. Kennemeyer had something to do with the ’ware, didn’t he?”

  I didn’t have any idea where Murphy was going with this, but I was curious enough to go along. “In a way. He was against it—one of the leaders of the movement. He was kind of a big deal at the time, but since he was on the losing side, I don’t think too many people know who he was.”

  “Except young radicals like Clinton?”

  “Who?”

  “You’re good, Mr. Actor, but everybody knows you helped take Dell home the other night. But you’re right. No need to go there. He didn’t have anything to do with this. No speech in it for him, no radical babe on his arm, telling him what a big difference he’s making listening to himself talk. What about this other guy—the one who was Kennemeyer’s friend, the one you came all this way to talk to him about? Did he have anything to do with ’ware?”

  Murphy could look it up as well as I could, right there on the cruiser’s terminal. I didn’t see any reason not to tell him. “Basically, he invented it. During the war. But he was against all the uses it was put to afterwards. He made a fuss for a while, then just dropped out of sight.”

  “Good riddance,” Jackson said. “Maybe these anti’ware guys would like to spend their time cleaning sewers instead of demonstrating, so the poor, mistreated ’ware workers wouldn’t have to. You through now?”

  Murphy ignored him. “Nick, I’ve been checking. Do you know when the last time something like this happened—three persons running legal workware acting in concert to kill somebody they’re not supposed to kill?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Never. Not once. Even a cop like Jackson here is brave and brutal and damn near invincible on the right shit. But these weren’t soldiers or cops, they were pool repairmen. Drowning people wasn’t part of their ’ware package. They tell me they had drowning-response treatment in that package, so they could’ve saved Kennemeyer’s life if they hadn’t drowned him first. They use ’ware in prison to keep bad guys from killing each other—the shit works. But then you come calling on a big anti-’ware activist to talk about the inventor of the shit, who also was against it, as it turns out. The next thing you know, pool repairmen on ’ware start acting like some assassin squad, and Kennemeyer’s dead, and the poor fucks who did it don’t even know what happened to them. There are some people who want to prosecute them, so the ’ware doesn’t look bad. And do you know how the nephew made his fortune?”

  “ ’Ware?”

  “Give the boy a pizza. Come on, Nick. As far as I’m concerned, Lu says you’re okay, you’re okay. I don’t care if you call yourself Peter Rabbit. What did you guys talk about? Do you have anything at all for me?”

  I figured maybe he could find out something I couldn’t. I gave him the only thing I had that didn’t have to be self-incriminating. “Just a name. I can’t find out much about her except she died forty years ago—hit by an SUV while jogging. Galatea Ritsa. She was James Dumfries’ lover for a while, at least I think she was. You can’t be sure of anything with this guy. Kennemeyer wouldn’t really talk to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was scared. I don’t know of what. He was sure he was under surveillance.”

  “Probably was by somebody. Had good reason to be afraid, apparently. Spell the woman’s name.”

  I did.

  Murphy turned to Jackson. “Now I’m through.”

  A DOLL’S HOUSE

  9

  DR. RANK: At the next masquerade I’m going to be invisible.

  HELMER: That’s a funny idea.

  DR. RANK: They say there’s a hat—black, huge—haven’t you heard of the hat that makes you invisible? You put it on, and then no one on earth can see you.

  —HENRIK IBSEN, A Doll’s
House

  WE GOT OUT OF THE CRUISER AND WALKED UP THE front walk—more flagstones. They were six distinct pastels repeating a pattern in a sinuous line up to the door. I wondered where the quarries were for each color—each one pale and lovely and not from around here. It was a small world, after all, if you had the dough to dig it up and haul it around. And in all those quarries, wherever they might be, all the workers were running the same ’ware. It was almost inspiring, the progress of man. Murphy and I walked in front, Jackson behind us. The closer we got, the smaller we felt. If some guy with stone tablets and lightning bolts raved on the roof, I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least.

  “Watch yourself with this one,” Murphy said to me as we approached the door. “She’s the one who discovered the body. She takes a swim every morning at sunrise. Swam right into him apparently. Still a little ...”He twirled his fingers around his temple. I think he was actually trying to help. A helpful cop. Life was full of surprises. Something in his voice reminded me of Sylvia.

  “You wouldn’t be any relation to Clarence and Sylvia Murphy, would you?” I asked, thinking there might be some distant connection.

  “They’re my parents,” he said, then broke into a smile that verified he was his mother’s son. “You might want to pick your jaw up off the ground before the lady comes to the door.”

  He was still chuckling when the door opened, and then we all got quiet. There she was on the ground with clothes on, and she did okay with those too. Probably because she didn’t risk too many all at once—shorts and some part of what used to be a sweatshirt hacked down to size—an outfit to show off her fine runner’s legs. I don’t care about lovely women’s legs the way lizards don’t care about the afternoon sun. She was barefoot too, with painted toes on her dusty-rose threshold. I had trouble not staring. She had trouble minding. Fortunately, I figured, cops made pretty good chaperones, especially when one of them knows your girlfriend.