She pointed me to a wooden chair. She took the sofa. She folded her hands between her knees. She leaned forward, watched me with her sharp, bright eyes. “You said on the phone you had some questions you wanted to ask.”
“Yes,” I said. I hesitated. I wasn’t really sure now why I had come. “I thought maybe you could give me some … some idea, some insight into the way your husband thought.”
Mrs. Colt leaned forward a little more. “Thought about what?”
I ran a hand up over my head. “Mrs. Colt, I’ve been looking into your husband’s murder,” I said. “And the more I find out, the more I become convinced it had something to do with the time he spent in Sentu.”
She was too smart for that. The corner of her lips curled. “That’s not what you mean, is it? Not really. You don’t mean something to do with Sentu. You mean something to do with Eleanora. Don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
Then she startled me with a quick peal of laughter. The sound ran up the scale and drifted away like the last chord of a song. When she laughed like that, I could imagine her as a young girl. An easy, spirited kind of girl who could do things to you with a backward glance. I could see the girl that Colt had fallen for.
“I need to know more about her,” I said. “Are you sure she’s dead? Was there anyone else who … who felt about her the way your husband did? Anyone who might have fought with him for her? Do you know if she … if she …?”
“If she loved Tim back?” said Mrs. Colt. The laugh was still in her voice.
I nodded. “Yes.”
Mrs. Colt smiled wryly at me. She stood up. “Mr. Wells, as it just so happens, I can give you everything you want.” In one corner, there was a small writing desk. It was covered with papers. They lay loose all over the surface, disorganized. But the one she wanted was right on top.
She handed it to me. A crumpled piece of blue stationery. Cheap paper but elegant somehow, womanly. The handwriting was a woman’s, too. Neat and swift and small. A schoolgirl hand. The ink was faded. At the edges of the letter, there were white patches blotting out some of the words. Constant fingering had worn away the surface of the paper.
I glanced up. Mrs. Colt was walking away from me slowly. Her hips swung haughtily as she walked. She turned smartly and settled on the sofa again. She propped her elbows on her knees, folded her hands under her chin. She watched me, smiling. That wry, bitter smile.
For a long time, I could not look at the page in my hand. I knew what it was. I suppose it was what I’d come to find. But I could not look at it. I felt the paper under my fingers. I imagined her touching it, holding it like I was. I lowered my eyes and read.
My dearest love,
Tonight, I think the end is very near. In a week, certainly no more than two, the rebels will be upon us, and so will the holocaust. The city will be put to the torch, the people put to the sword. My small enterprise—which has thrived amidst the day-to-day corruption of the government—will no doubt be among the first “reforms” of the new regime. I, who have seen and survived such reforms before, feel somehow certain that I shall not survive to see another.
I have been wondering—on this warm summer’s night to which you have so unchivalrously left me—I have been wondering why I should feel my fate so heavily. The scrape is similar to others I’ve been in, the odds of escape the same. Why should I feel doomed this time of all others? Why no hope from your ever-hopeful Eleanora?
But of course, that is the answer. It is that I am yourEleanora now. Yours and always yours and yours alone, my darling, my darling …
I looked up. “You found this,” I said. I had to say something. I was embarrassed by the letter, by the passion of it.
Mrs. Colt’s smile had faded. All that was left was a trace of irony at the corner of her lips. Irony and pain. “The police gave it to me,” she said. “They gave me the papers Tim was carrying when he died. The ones they didn’t think they’d be using in their investigation.”
I nodded. I kept nodding as, irresistibly, my eyes were drawn back to the page. The letter went on:
There are now, for me, so many ways to die. That’s the rub of it. Before, there was only the danger of losing my own life. But now—now, you might lose your life and make mine useless, worse than death. Or we might be separated forever somehow so that death would be a comfort. I never feared imprisonment before, but that also would be dying now because it would keep me away from you. I never feared torture before or all the cruelties they devise for people like me. But what if I were disfigured or disabled, rendered, I mean, incapable of giving myself to you? Which is all I want to do always. What good would life be to me then?
Last night, you said that you could not go on living if I died. That, too, murdered me a little. If I knew you would be safe and well, maybe I would not fear this onrushing catastrophe. I wish I could tell you that I do not love you—or even that I hate you—so that you would forget me. But would you believe me? How could you? Say you would not. Say you never could.
Do you know what I think? I think that only people who love each other as much as we do really know the face of death, because only we really know the face of life. And if this fear, this certainty of the end … if this intimacy with death is what we have to pay for our intimacy with living and each other, then I wanted to tell you tonight, my darling, that your smallest kindness to me was worth it, that your whispered word was worth it, that the briefest sight of you was worth it as nothing else could be, and that no matter what happens, I am
Yours, yours, yours,
Eleanora
My love, I thought. Eleanora, my love, my love.
Mrs. Colt’s green eyes were glistening when I looked up now. I saw the pain there, the pain she lived with day by day.
“You see, Mr. Wells,” Mrs. Colt said. Her hands were still tucked under her chin. “You see, you didn’t come here to find out about Tim’s death, did you? You came here to find out about her. All your questions—Is she really dead? Did she really love Tim? I half knew—right from the day I came to your office—I was almost sure that you would come to me like this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I looked at you and I thought: He’s one of hers, just like Timmy. Just like Timmy: he belongs to her.”
I stared down at the letter. I shook my head, uncomprehending.
Mrs. Colt lifted her chin off her hands. Her back straightened. She gazed at me with towering hurt and pride.
“What is it you want anyway?” she asked me. “What is it men like you want from us?” She smiled quizzically. She really wanted to know. “I was a good wife to Tim, Mr. Wells. I was a wonderful wife.”
I murmured, “I’m sure. I …”
“I was everything he could have asked for.” She gestured at the wrinkled blue page in my hand. “Everything except an illusion.”
My fingers rubbed the paper in my hand, as if to reassure myself that it was real.
But she went on: “She wasn’t like that: all courage and beauty. No one is like that. Not all the time, not day after day. Tim had a romance with her for a few weeks in a dangerous place and it was special. I understand that. But she’s dead now. She’s dead and it’s over and … and I was here. I couldn’t afford to be an illusion, Mr. Wells. I was here day after day.”
I stood up. I walked to the desk with the papers on it. I held Eleanora’s letter for another moment. Then I placed it on top of the pile.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mrs. Colt said behind me. “You’re thinking that I chose what I have, that I’m kidding myself.”
I faced her a moment. I felt tired. Very tired. Too tired to think. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
She didn’t care what I said. “Maybe I am,” she continued. “But you’re kidding yourself, too. You fooled yourself into thinking Tim’s murder had to do with Eleanora, but it’s just you … it’s just the way you feel … it’s …”
The words were choked off. She
shivered. She hugged her shoulders and turned her head so I couldn’t see her face.
I stood where I was, near the desk. I stared at her. I was shaken by what she’d said. I had known it was true, deep down. I had known it was true all along. But when she said it aloud, it suddenly struck me with full force: Colt’s murder was not about Eleanora. It never had been.
Everything seemed to change the moment I acknowledged that. It was as if I’d been sitting in a room while twilight came. As if I hadn’t really noticed it was getting dark. It was as if Mrs. Colt had come in then and said simply, “Why are you sitting in the dark like this?” and hit the light switch. All at once, everything seemed clear.
All at once, I knew who had killed Tim Colt.
There was only a shadow staff in the city room. The white maze of cubicles stood silent, mysterious. Tom Cochran was at the desk. A young guy. Handsome prep-school kid. Short brown hair, three-piece suits. He had his feet up, his hands behind his head. He was chatting up Sally Giles. She was a pretty young redhead Cambridge was grooming for the night desk. Cochran lifted a hand to me as I came in. Sally smiled.
I sat down next to them at the long table.
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve got something.” I told them what I had.
Tom Cochran’s feet came down to the floor with a thud. His circular face went pale. He ran his palm up over the well-combed hair on his brilliant head.
“Well, has there … I mean … has there been an arrest?”
“No. Not yet. But there will be after I call Gottlieb.”
“Yeah, but I mean … should I call Cambridge? Maybe I should call Cambridge?”
“You do, and I’ll quit and peddle this to Reader’s Digest,” I said.
“Yeah, but …”
“Let him read about it in the newspaper.”
I pushed away from the desk.
“Oh hey,” Sally said. She had a soft voice, a whisper. She smiled again when I glanced back at her. She had a dazzling white smile. It lifted her freckled cheeks. “Someone’s been calling for you. A guy. Wouldn’t leave his name.”
“Yeah? Okay, pump it back to me if he calls again.”
She smiled some more. She had blue eyes. There was something vague about them.
I started down the corridor to my desk. As I went, I noticed Alex, the copyboy, hovering over the printers. I began to wonder if Alex had a home.
My desk was buried under papers. I grabbed handfuls of them and dumped them in the trash. I pushed some others aside until I uncovered a coffee mug. It was black with the words SCREW OFF in white letters on it. McKay had given it to me last Christmas. I picked it up, peered in at the bottom. A crust of coffee about an inch thick had hardened there.
I peeked my head up out of my cubicle. I shouted, “Yo, Alex!”
The kid looked up. His arms were full of the hard copy he’d been tearing. I hurled the mug at him across the room.
“Yaagh,” he remarked. The copy went flying up in the air. His hands clapped together like a seal’s flippers. He managed to catch the mug. The copy fluttered down around him. A sheet of it folded gently over his head.
“You ever see a copyboy fly?” I called to him.
He shook his head no. The copy slid off him and drifted to the ground.
“Right,” I said. “So keep that mug filled or I’ll toss you out the goddamned window.”
“Sure thing, Pops,” said Alex.
I felt no remorse.
I went to work. I stuck a sheet of paper in the Olympia. I stuck another cigarette in my mouth. I stuck the phone’s handset under my chin. I dialed a number. The phone started to ring. I started to type.
I battered out my lead. A woman spoke in my ear.
“Manhattan South. Sergeant Harrison,” she said.
“How ya doin’, Harry? This is Wells at the Star.”
“Hi, Wells at the Star, nothing’s happening.”
“Yeah, it is, you just don’t know it yet.”
“Ooh, that’s not what we like to hear from you, Wells.”
“Is Gottlieb there?”
“No. It’s Saturday, darling.”
“Oh yeah. Damn. Well, listen, it doesn’t matter. I need him. Call him at home, tell him I need him.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.”
“No, no. He’ll thank you for it. Really. He’ll want all of this one.”
“Okay, Wells,” she said dubiously. “Only for you.”
I hung up. I went back to the typewriter. I battered away. The clacking rose up out of my cubicle. It floated away over the broad, silent, white-lighted room.
Alex brought me my coffee.
“You clean the crud out of it?” I said, typing.
“Yeah, sure, Pops,” the kid said.
“Good. I’ll recommend your promotion to underling.”
“It’ll be an improvement over slave.” He sighed. And he was gone.
The pages rolled up in front of me. The story rolled out with them. It seemed a simple story now. Just a slight shift of emphasis had made it seem simple. I had most of the pieces. They fit together. The fit was tight.
The phone rang next to me. I snatched it up. Jammed it onto my shoulder. I kept typing.
“Fred.”
It was not Fred.
“John? John, is that you?”
“Chandler,” I said. I stopped typing. I grabbed the handset, shifted it to my other ear. “Chandler, what’s …”
I heard her gulp once. I heard her breath come fast. Her words came faster. “John, there’s a man … he says he’s going to …” She gave a little gasp. She was gone.
I straighted in my chair. “Chandler?”
Another voice came on the line. A man’s voice. It was light and quick as a knife blade. It had the slightest touch of an accent.
“I have her, Mr. Wells,” it said softly. “I have her here. I have her and I will kill her if you don’t come to me.”
“One hair, shit-for-brains. Hurt one hair on her head and they’ll bury you in a fucking water glass.”
“I know a way to kill her that she will not like,” he answered. “No, no, sir, she will not like it at all.”
I controlled my breath so I wouldn’t sound scared. “What do you want?”
“I want you here. I want you here within half an hour. Then we will negotiate.”
“Listen, how do I know …”
“You know if you are not here I will kill her. I will kill her in my not-very-pretty way.”
“Where are you?”
He gave me an address way downtown on Crosby Street. It was a lane of old lofts and abandoned factories.
“Too far,” I said. “Gimme an hour.”
There was a pause. “Until twelve,” he said. “And then I will kill her. If there are police, I will kill her. If you are not alone, I will kill her, too.”
I looked at my watch. It was 11:05.
“By noon,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
A dial tone answered me.
I nearly tipped my chair over as I jumped to my feet. I clutched at the pages I’d been writing, bunched them together in my fist. I grabbed a pen, dropped it, grabbed it again. I scrawled the address I was headed for on a message note. I ran out down the aisle to the copydesk.
“Cochran!” I screamed.
Tom had been walking toward the coffee machine. He swiveled and came running back to me. I jabbed my story into his hands.
“Call Sergeant Harrison at Manhattan South. Read her the first two graphs of this story, then tell her to get some manpower to this address.”
I shoved the message sheet at him. Cochran didn’t even look up at it. He was staring at the top graphs of my story. He was wide-eyed.
“Holy shit, Wells!” he said. “I mean, holy shit!”
“Just tell her!” I screamed.
I stuffed the address into his hand and went racing for the door.
I had fifty-two minutes left.
The Artful Dodge was waiting at the curb. I jumped
in. I peeled away into the traffic with an explosion of black exhaust. I turned the corner, leaving rubber on the road behind me. I ran the lights until I hit Madison Avenue, going uptown.
The avenue stretched away before me in the clear blue day. The buses crowded the right lane, coughing their way from stop to stop. Cars and taxis wove up the left lane. Not many. Just the first of the morning’s Christmas shoppers.
I set my palm at the center of the car’s wheel, ready to lean on the horn. I hit the gas. The Artful Dodge roared and groaned its way up to forty. Cars—cabs mostly—bunched around me, then fell away. More bunched around me. We raced and swerved together in a little clot for about a block or so. I swung the wheel this way and that, going for the daylight between the yellow cabs. I spat ahead of the pack again. Cars dropped back on either side of me. The office towers and shops with their wreaths and lights and trees all melded in a colorful blur.
Intersections came and went. I leaned on the horn. I made it wail as I rocketed under red lights and in front of oncoming cars. I left a trail of screeching brakes and shrieked curses behind me.
All that time, I waited for the sound of a siren. I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, hoping for the sight of a flasher. Hoping for some enterprising patrolman to come after me for reckless driving. I saw the green street signs rushing past me. I saw the numbers on them rise into the sixties, into the seventies. Not a patrol car in sight. Not even a traffic agent to pull me over. This is a very dangerous city.
The posh shops of the eighties streamed by. The traffic seemed to dissipate. Eighty-fifth Street. The Artful Dodge shot forward like a bullet, her old engine straining. Eighty-seventh, Eighty-eighth. I had my eyes glued to the black and battered Manhattan pavement. Ninetieth.
I wrenched the wheel.
It was a one-way street in the wrong direction. I didn’t even look. I hauled the wheel over like I was turning a great schooner in the middle of an empty sea. The world spun at the windows. The old car turned so fast under me it seemed to lift into the air. For a moment I was certain the spinning world would roll and I’d be spilled out into a roaring, tumbling, shattering explosion.