Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

Her long, fast strides were restrained only by the knee-hobbling hem of her skirt, so Gideon was able to keep up.

After they disappeared around a corner, Robby said: “I’ll go over to court, get the arrest warrant.” He started to go.

I grabbed the sleeve of his repulsive suit. “Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet?”

“I mean, we’d be making a mistake to push it.”

“No, we wouldn’t!”

“Yes, we would.”

“No!”

“Robby, how many man-hours have you put in looking for that .22? Not enough. We’ve got to give it a better shot.”

His upper lip drew up, so he was almost snarling. His bared teeth were the same color as his beige suit and shoes.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he 230 / SUSAN ISAACS

demanded. “You going soft? You going to risk letting her run?”

“Where is she going to run to?”

“Anyplace. Listen, I was in her closet. She has hiking boots!

A backpack!”

“For crissakes, she’s a Jewish broad. What the hell is she going to do? Go to ground in the wetlands?” I didn’t tell him that was precisely it: the waking nightmare that had stolen five hours off my sleep the night before. Bonnie could get away. I’d almost choked myself with my sweaty, twisted rope of a sheet as I tossed around. She could disappear, live off the land, gradually make her way north, steal a boat, get off Long Island. “Or you think the fag lawyer’s going to hide her in his wine cellar?”

“She could go back to Utah!”

“And do what? We’ve got the addresses of all her brothers, and her old man in Arizona. There’s no place for her to hide.”

“If we bring her in now, before the weekend, we’re heroes.

Damn it, don’t you care about your career?”

“Blow it out your ass, Robby.”

Robby banged the wall with his fist. It made a dull, undramatic thud. But his voice made up for it, blaring, amplified by the narrow corridor so the whole floor could hear him.

“You’re gonna fuck up this case!”

“No! I’m going to do my job, follow up all the leads. I’m not going to be some ass-kisser who cuts corners because he can’t wait to pucker up.” I made a wet, kissy sound in the air. “‘Yoo-hoo, Captain Shea. Here is the solution to the heinous murder that has so captured the attention of the national media. Please, you take all the credit. I only want the satisfaction of a job well done—’” Robby brought up his fists and bounced on the balls of his feet. His keys MAGIC HOUR / 231

jingled in his pants pocket. “Holy shit! Don’t hit me, Robby!”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Brady.”

“Don’t hurt me! I’m forty years old.”

“Listen, you loser, son-of-a-bitch drunk, I’m going to court to get a warrant. Now.”

“Good. Get the hell out of here. And while you’re on your way, I’m going in to Shea and telling him what a lazy bastard you’ve been, and how you’re jumping the gun and handing him a case that could fall apart five seconds after it gets to the grand jury.”

It was more like a movie than life, almost a freeze-frame.

I didn’t move. Robby kept his fists up, but finally, slowly, opened them. His fingers spread out; it looked as though he’d decided to throttle me. Finally, I said: “Calm down.”

“Fuck you, you dipso.”

“Listen to me. Don’t rush this. You’re gonna push Shea, and then the D.A. will find fifty loose ends—like Mikey LoTriglio. Like Lindsay.”

“Lindsay,” he sneered.

“Don’t you get it? Some rag newspaper in the supermarket is going to print a picture of her from Transvaal holding a rifle. ‘Is Lindsay Keefe Trained to Kill?’ Don’t you get that the Daily News is going to do a big piece on Sy’s mob connections? And don’t you get that unless we can respond to every single question that could come up with one single answer—Bonnie Spencer—the department could be made to look like it’s trying to pin it on some poverty-stricken sweetie pie of an ex-wife, and you and I are the ones who’ll get creamed for it?”

Robby didn’t answer. And he didn’t choke me. He just lowered his hands, turned and, in his clunk-heeled beige loafers, stomped back to Homicide.

232 / SUSAN ISAACS

“Don’t ask me about the case, Germy,” I said into the phone.

“I am not asking you about the case,” he honked in his hundred-thousand-dollars’-worth-of-New-England-schools voice. “I am a film critic, not a gossip columnist. And I didn’t ask what was wrong with your case. I asked what was wrong with you. You sound—it’s hard to describe—flat. Tired.”

“I’m too old for this shit.” Having bounced the Sour Kraut from our mutual desk, I had my files fanned out in front of me, all unopened. “Tell me about Lindsay Keefe.”

“I love it. Classic film noir. The uncouth cop falls for the ice-blond sophisticate.”

He did it; he made me smile for a second. “I just want to know about Transvaal.”

“Why?”

I hesitated, but then I said: “I know you long enough to know you’ll keep your mouth shut, Jeremy.”

“That’s right, Steve.”

I saw I’d been doodling on the cover of Bonnie’s file.

Shaded 3-D boxes. Her initials: I realized they were mine, backwards. “Okay, I heard Lindsay was shown shooting a rifle in the movie.” Germy made that upper-class exhaling sound that comes out between Ah! and Oh! “What I’m asking is if—without raising bicoastal eyebrows—you can get me the name of someone who knows what went on while they were making that movie.”

“Someone who knows whether Lindsay could actually shoot or if she just pulled the trigger and the sound editor went ‘Bang!’”

“Yeah.”

“Call me back in a hour.” He paused. “And listen, MAGIC HOUR / 233

from an old friend…You sound something less than yourself.

Take it easy. All right?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

I called Lynne, hoping I’d get her machine. But she picked up. “Hello!” Cheery, welcoming. I had nothing to say to her.

I hung up the phone and dialed my brother.

“Easton, come on. Listen. Remember you told me