“I think she's having an affair. I want to know if I'm right. I want to know who it is.”
Cowley carefully set his pencil down. He observed Douglas for a moment. Outside, a gull gave a raucous cry from one of the rooftops. “What makes you think she's seeing someone?”
“Am I supposed to give you proof before you'll take the case? I thought that's why I was hiring you. To give me proof.”
“You wouldn't be here if you didn't have suspicions. What are they?”
Douglas raked through his memory. He wasn't about to tell Cowley about trying to smell up Donna's underwear, so he took a moment to examine her behavior over the last few weeks. And when he did so, the additional evidence was there. How the hell had he missed it? She'd changed her hair; she'd bought new underwear—the black lacy Victoria's Secret stuff; she'd been on the phone twice when he'd come home and as soon as he walked into the room, she'd hung up hastily; there were at least two long absences with insufficient excuse for them; there were six or seven engagements that she said were with friends.
Cowley nodded thoughtfully when Douglas listed his suspicions. Then he said, “Have you given her a reason to cheat on you?”
“A reason? What is this? I'm the guilty party?”
“Women don't usually stray without there being a man behind them, giving them a reason.” Cowley examined him from beneath unclipped eyebrows. One of his eyes, Douglas saw, was beginning to form a cataract. Jeez, the guy was ancient, a real antique.
“No reason,” Douglas said. “I don't cheat on her. I don't even want to.”
“She's young, though. And a man your age…” Cowley shrugged. “Shit happens to us old guys. Young things don't always have the patience to understand.”
Douglas wanted to point out that Cowley was at least ten years his senior, if not more. He also wanted to exclude himself from membership in the club of us old guys. But the PI was watching him compassionately, so instead of arguing, Douglas told the truth.
Cowley reached for his Orange Julius and drained the cup. He tossed it into the trash. “Women have needs,” he said, and he moved his hand from his crotch to his chest, adding, “A wise man doesn't confuse what goes on here”—the crotch—“with what goes on here”—the chest.
“So maybe I'm not wise. Are you going to help me out or not?”
“You sure you want help?”
“I want to know the truth. I can live with that. What I can't live with is not knowing. I just need to know what I'm dealing with here.”
Cowley looked as if he were taking a reading of Douglas's level of veracity. He finally appeared to make a decision, but one he didn't like because he shook his head, picked up his pencil, and said, “Give me some background, then. If she's got someone on the side, who are our possibilities?”
Douglas had thought about this. There was Mike, the poolman who visited once a week. There was Steve, who worked with Donna at her kennels in Midway City. There was Jeff, her personal trainer. There were also the postman, the FedEx man, the UPS driver, and Donna's youthful gynecologist.
“I take it you're accepting the case?” Douglas said to Cowley He pulled out his wallet from which he extracted a wad of bills. “You'll want a retainer.”
“I don't need cash, Mr. Armstrong.”
“All the same…” All the same, Douglas had no intention of leaving a paper trail via a check. “How much time do you need?” he asked.
“Give it a few days. If she's seeing someone, he'll surface eventually. They always do.” Cowley sounded despondent.
“Your wife cheat on you?” Douglas asked shrewdly.
“If she did, I probably deserved it.”
That was Cowley's attitude, but it was one that Douglas didn't share. He didn't deserve to be cheated on. Nobody did. And when he found out who was doing the job on his wife… Well, they would see a kind of justice that even Attila the Hun was incapable of extracting.
His resolve was strengthened in the bedroom that evening when his hello kiss to his wife was interrupted by the telephone. Donna pulled away from him quickly and went to answer it. She gave Douglas a smile—as if recognizing what her haste revealed to him—and shook back her hair as sexily as possible, running slim fingers through it as she picked up the receiver.
Douglas listened to her side of the conversation while he changed his clothes. He heard her voice brighten as she said, “Yes, yes. Hello… No… Doug just got home and we were talking about the day…”
So now her caller knew he was in the room. Douglas could imagine what the bastard was saying, whoever he was: “So can you talk?”
To which Donna, on cue, answered, “Nope. Not at all.”
“Shall I call you later?”
“Gosh, that would be great.”
“Today was what was great. I love to fuck you.”
“Really? Outrageous. I'll have to check it out.”
“I want to check you out, baby. Are you wet for me?”
“I sure am. Listen, we'll connect later on, okay? I need to get dinner started.”
“Just so long as you remember today. It was the best. You're the best.”
“Right. Bye.” She hung up and came to him. She put her arms round his waist. She said, “Got rid of her. Nancy Talbert. God. Nothing's more important in her life than a shoe sale at Neiman Marcus. Spare me. Please.” She snuggled up to him. He couldn't see her face, just the back of her head where it was reflected in the mirror.
“Nancy Talbert,” he said. “I don't think I know her.”
“Sure you do, honey.” She pressed her hips against him. He felt the hopeful but useless heat in his groin. “She's in Soropti-mists with me. You met her last month after the ballet. Hmm. You feel nice. Gosh, I like it when you hold me. Should I start dinner or d'you want to mess around?”
Another clever move on her part: He wouldn't think she was cheating if she still wanted it from him. No matter that he couldn't give it to her. She was hanging in there with him and this moment proved it. Or so she thought.
“Love to,” he said and smacked her on the butt. “But let's eat first. And after, right there on the dining room table…” He managed what he hoped was a lewd enough wink. “Just you wait, kiddo.”
She laughed and released him and went off to the kitchen. He walked to the bed where he sat, disconsolately. The charade was torture. He had to know the truth.
He didn't hear from Cowley and Son, Inquiries, for two agonizing weeks during which he suffered through three more coy telephone conversations between Donna and her lover, four more phony excuses to cover unscheduled absences from home, and two more midday showers sloughed off to Steve's absence from the kennels again. By the time he finally made contact with Cowley, Douglas's nerves were shot.
Cowley had news to report. He said he'd hand it over as soon as they could meet. “How's lunch?” Cowley asked. “We could do Tail of the Whale over here.”
No lunch, Douglas told him. He wouldn't be able to eat anyway. He would meet Cowley at his office at twelve forty-five.
“Make it the pier, then,” Cowley said. “I'll catch a burger at Ruby's and we can talk after. You know Ruby's at the end of the pier?”
He knew Ruby's. A fifties coffee shop, it sat at the end of Balboa Pier, and he found Cowley there as promised at twelve forty-five, polishing off a cheeseburger and fries with a manila envelope sitting next to his strawberry milkshake.
Cowley wore the same khakis he'd had on the day they'd met. He'd added a panama hat to his ensemble. He touched his index finger to the hat's brim as Douglas approached him. His cheeks were bulging with the burger and fries.
Douglas slid into the booth opposite Cowley and reached for the envelope. Cowley's hand slapped down onto it. “Not yet,” he said.
“I've got to know.”
Cowley slid the envelope off the table onto the vinyl seat next to himself. He twirled the straw in his milkshake and observed Douglas through opaque eyes that seemed to reflect the sunlight outside. “Pictures,??
? he said. “That's all I've got for you. Pictures aren't the truth. You got that?”
“Okay. Pictures.”
“I don't know what I'm shooting. I just tail the woman and I shoot what I see. What I see may not mean shit. You understand?”
“Look. Just show me the pictures.”
“Outside.”
Cowley tossed a five and three ones onto the table, called, “Catch you later, Susie,” to the waitress and led the way. He walked to the railing where he looked out over the water. A whale-watching boat was bobbing about a quarter mile offshore. It was too early in the year to catch sight of a pod migrating to Alaska, but the tourists on board probably wouldn't know that. Their binoculars winked in the light.
Douglas joined the PI. Cowley said, “You got to know that she doesn't act like a woman guilty of anything. She just seems to be doing her thing. She met a few men—I won't mislead you— but I couldn't catch her doing anything cheesy.”
“Give me the pictures.”
Cowley gave him a sharp look instead. Douglas knew his voice was betraying him. “I say we tail her for another two weeks,” Cowley said. “What I've got here isn't much to go on.” He opened the envelope. He stood so that Douglas only saw the back of the pictures. He chose to hand them over in sets.
The first set was taken in Midway City not far from the kennels, at the feed and grain store where Donna bought food for the dogs. In these, she was loading fifty-pound sacks into the back of her Toyota pickup. She was being assisted by a Calvin Klein type in tight jeans and a T-shirt. They were laughing together, and in one of the pictures Donna had perched her sunglasses on the top of her head to look directly at her companion.
She appeared to be flirting, but she was a young, pretty woman and flirting was normal. This set seemed okay. She could have looked less happy to be chatting with the stud, but she was a businesswoman and she was conducting business. Douglas could deal with that.
The second set was of Donna in the Newport gym where she worked with a personal trainer twice a week. Her trainer was one of those sculpted bodies with a head of hair on which every strand looked as if it had been seen to professionally on a daily basis. In the pictures, Donna was dressed to work out—nothing Douglas had not seen before—but for the first time he noted how carefully she assembled her workout clothes. From the leggings to the leotard to the headband she wore, everything enhanced her. The trainer appeared to recognize this because he squatted before her as she did her vertical butterflies. Her legs were spread and there was no doubt what he was concentrating on. This looked more serious.
He was about to ask Cowley to start tailing the trainer when the PI said, “No body contact between them other than what you'd expect,” and handed him the third set of pictures, saying, “These are the only ones that look a little shaky to me, but they may mean nothing. You know this guy?”
Douglas stared with know this guy, know this guy ringing in his skull. Unlike the other pictures in which Donna and her companion-of-the-moment were in one location, these showed Donna at a view table in an oceanfront restaurant, Donna on the Balboa ferry, Donna walking along a dock in Newport. In each of these pictures she was with a man, the same man. In each of the pictures there was body contact. It was nothing extreme because they were out in public. But it was the kind of body contact that betrayed: an arm around her shoulders, a kiss on her cheek, a full body hug that said, Feel me up, baby, 'cause I ain't limp like him.
Douglas felt that his world was spinning, but he managed a wry grin. He said, “Oh hell. Now I feel like a class-A jerk. This guy?” Douglas indicated the athletic-looking man in the picture with Donna. “This is her brother.”
“You're kidding.”
“Nope. He's a walk-on coach at Newport Harbor High. His name is Michael. He's a free-spirit type.” Douglas gripped the railing with one hand and shook his head with what he hoped looked like chagrin. “Is this all you've got?”
“That's it. I can tail her for a while longer and see—”
“Nah. Forget it. Jesus, I sure feel dumb.” Douglas ripped the photographs into confetti. He tossed them into the water where they formed a mantle that was quickly shredded by the waves that arced against the pier's pilings. “What do I owe you, Mr.
Cowley?” he asked. “What's this dumb ass got to pay for not trusting the finest woman on earth?”
He took Cowley to Dillman's on the corner of Main and Balboa Boulevard, and they sat at the snakelike bar with the locals, where they knocked back a couple of brews apiece. Douglas worked on his affability act, playing the abashed husband who suddenly realizes what a dickhead he's been. He took all Donna's actions over the past weeks and reinterpreted them for Cowley. The unexplained absences became the foundation of a treat she was planning for him: the purchase of a new car, perhaps; a trip to Europe; the refurbishing of his boat. The secretive telephone calls became messages from his children who were in the know. The new underwear metamorphosed into a display of her wish to make herself desirable for him, to work him out of his temporary impotence by giving him a renewed interest in her body. He felt like a total idiot, he told Cowley. Could they burn the damn negatives together?
They made a ceremony of it, torching the negatives of the pictures in the alley behind JJ's Natural Haircutting. Afterward, Douglas drove in a haze to Newport Harbor High School. He sat numbly across the street from it. He waited two hours. Finally, he saw his youngest brother arrive for the afternoon's coaching session, a basketball tucked under his arm and an athletic bag in his hand.
Michael, he thought. Returned from Greece this time, but always the prodigal son. Before Greece, it was a year with Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior. Before that, it was an expedition up the Amazon. And before that, it was marching against apartheid in South Africa. He had a resumé that would be the envy of any prepubescent kid out for a good time. He was Mr. Adventure, Mr. Irresponsibility, and Mr. Charm. He was Mr. Good Intentions without any follow-through. When a promise was due to be kept, he was out of sight, out of mind, and out of the country. But everyone loved the son of a bitch. He was forty years old; the baby of the Armstrong brothers, and he always got precisely what he wanted.
He wanted Donna now, the miserable bastard. No matter that she was his brother's wife. That made having her just so much more fun.
Douglas felt ill. His guts rolled around like marbles in a bucket. Sweat broke out in patches on his body. He couldn't go back to work like this. He reached for the phone and called his office.
He was sick, he told his secretary. Must have been something he ate for lunch. He was heading home. She could catch him there if anything came up.
In the house, he wandered from room to room. Donna wasn't at home—wouldn't be home for hours—so he had plenty of time to consider what to do. His mind reproduced for him the pictures that Cowley had taken of Michael and Donna. His intellect deduced where they had been and what they'd been doing prior to those pictures being taken.
He went to his study. There in a glass curio cabinet, his collection of ivory erotica mocked him. Miniature Asians posed in a variety of sexual postures, having themselves a roaring good time. He could see Michael and Donna's features superimposed on the creamy faces of the figurines. They took their pleasure at his expense. They justified their pleasure by using his failure. No limp dick here, Michael's voice taunted. What's the matter, big brother? Can't hold on to your wife?
Douglas felt shattered. He told himself that he could have handled her doing anything else, he could have handled her seeing someone else. But not Michael, who had trailed him through life, making his mark in every area where Douglas had previously failed. In high school it had been in athletics and student government. In college it had been in the world of fraternities. As an adult it had been in embracing adventure rather than in tackling the grind of business. And now, it was in proving to Donna what real manhood was all about.
Douglas could see them together as easily as he could see his pieces of erotica intertwined. T
heir bodies joined, their heads thrown back, their hands clasped, their hips grinding against each other. God, he thought. The pictures in his mind would drive him mad. He felt like killing.
The telephone company gave him the proof he required. He asked for a printout of the calls that had been made from his home. And when he received it, there was Michael's number. Not once or twice, but repeatedly. All of the calls had been made when he—Douglas—wasn't home.
It was clever of Donna to use the nights when she knew Douglas would be doing his volunteer stint at the Newport suicide hotline. She knew he never missed his Wednesday evening shift, so important was it to him to have the hotline among his community commitments. She knew he was building a political profile to get himself elected to the city council, and the hotline was part of the picture of himself he wished to portray: Douglas Armstrong, husband, father, oilman, and compassionate listener to the emotionally distressed. He needed something to put into the balance against his environmental lapses. The hotline allowed him to say that while he may have spilled oil on a few lousy pelicans—not to mention some miserable otters—he would never let a human life hang there in jeopardy.
Donna had known he'd never skip even part of his evening shift, so she'd waited till then to make her calls to Michael. There they were on the printout, every one of them made between six and nine on a Wednesday night.
Okay, she liked Wednesday night so well. Wednesday night would be the night that he killed her.
He could hardly bear to be around her once he had the proof of her betrayal. She knew something was wrong between them because he didn't want to touch her any longer. Their thrice-weekly attempted couplings—as disastrous as they'd been—fast became a thing of the past. Still, she carried on as if nothing and no one had come between them, sashaying through the bedroom in her Victoria's Secret selection-of-the-night, trying to entice him into making a fool of himself so she could share the laughter with his brother Michael.