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

The Blue Sky had once been a regular greasy spoon, but the Greek guy who’d bought it had done it over, so now the spoon was hardly greasy at all. The walls were paneled in fake oak, the ceilings dripped with fat-globed chandeliers and hanging plastic plants. The menu, a listing of every food product capable of being microwaved, was almost as thick as the Bible. The owner hovered over us, pad open, ready to transcribe whatever we happened to say.

I looked at Gideon. “The cook usually washes his hands after he takes a dump, so you can have the chicken salad or tuna fish and not die. The hamburgers taste like snow tires.

They nuke everything else.”

MAGIC HOUR / 237

“Don’t listen to him,” said the owner. “He’s a stupid cop.

All my food’s good. Today the special is nice flounder on a bed of spinach wit’ feta cheese.”

Gideon said no thank you, he’d already eaten. Just an iced coffee. I ordered, and the owner strolled off, toward the kitchen.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Make your pitch.”

Gideon adjusted his knife, fork and spoon and took a minute to make sure the edge of his napkin was absolutely parallel with the edge of the table. Once that was accomplished, he immediately opened the napkin and put it on his lap. I noticed that for all his clean-cut, square-jawed handsomeness, the bridge of his nose appeared to have gotten squished in the birth canal or in a fight and never popped back into place. “I was hoping this conversation wouldn’t be necessary,” he said quietly.

“It’s not. You could have saved yourself the trip—and acid indigestion from the iced coffee. All we’re doing now is neatening up a few loose ends. Probably by tomorrow we’ll be arresting your client.”

“Her name is Bonnie.”

“I know that.” My cheeks began to ache; I could feel the pressure of tears someplace way behind my eyes. I wasn’t going to lose it, but if I was, it wouldn’t be in front of this guy. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Why are you out to get her?”

“Mr. Friedman, with all due respect, you’re her friend. And this is not your field. You’re personalizing a criminal investigation. And you’re wasting my time and not doing your client any good. Do everybody a favor: wait till tomorrow.

Let Paterno handle it. He’s used to dealing with us and the D.A.”

The owner came back with the iced coffee and a little bowl of teaspoon-size containers of half-and-half. Gideon waited until he was gone. “You’re the one who’s been personalizing it,” he said.

238 / SUSAN ISAACS

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m getting at that it is morally and ethically wrong to investigate someone you’ve—”

Put up the umbrella, I thought, because here it comes: a shower of shit. “I’ve what? ”

“Slept with.”

Heat rises. Blood rushed up to my forehead, my ears. I was so fucking furious. Disappointed too: I couldn’t believe she’d resort to something that cheesy—which shows the state I was in. I’d had no trouble believing that, with evil intent, she could plan and execute a homicide. But tell a tacky lie?

Not my Bonnie! “That’s total and complete crap,” I said.

“No, it’s not crap.” He was calm, at peace. Whatever shit he was dropping on me, it was shit the bitch Bonnie had made him believe.

“Your friend has a little problem in the truth department, Counselor. I never laid a hand on her. I never made a suggestive remark. Nothing.”

“Now, that’s crap.”

“Look, you don’t really want that iced coffee. Go back to East Hampton, practice some real estate law, forget this conversation.” He stayed put. “Okay, the head of Homicide’s a guy named Shea. Go ahead. Talk to him. Or file a formal complaint with the department.”

“What happened between the two of you that makes you want to get her so badly?”

I looked up and saw the guy coming back with my sandwich and the malted. The food looked pale, puffed-up, dead—like something pulled out of the water, something that, before you can stop yourself, makes you gag. “Look,”

I said to Gideon, “obviously she has you believing something went on. I’m not going to try and talk you out of it.” A piece of bacon hung out of the roll, dark, curled, wormy. “But I’m not going to ruin my lunch and sit here listening to MAGIC HOUR / 239

you tell me I copped a feel when I was questioning her, or showed her my shield and said, ‘Fuck me or go to jail.’

Okay? So take a walk, Mr. Friedman.”

I could hardly hear him. “I’m not talking about the investigation. I’m talking about what went on five years ago.”

“What?”

“Five years ago. You…I wouldn’t call it an affair. But it wasn’t just a typical one-night stand.”

“Wrong guy,” I snapped.

“She called me about it the next day. I remember. She sounded elated. She said, ‘Gideon, I met this wonderful man!’”

“She’s lying. Or maybe she’s just…Maybe this whole experience has made her a little crazy, if she wasn’t that way to begin with.”

“Bonnie’s as uncrazy as they come.”

“So maybe it’s an honest mistake, and she just thought she saw me under her covers. Look, I’m sure you know it isn’t any secret that a lot of guys have rolled around in that bed.”

Gideon had put a lightweight olive-green blazer over his ninja outfit. Silk probably. He rolled down a sleeve, then recuffed it. “Bonnie told me, ‘He grew up here in Bridgehampton. On a farm. About two minutes from here.’” I didn’t say anything. I shook my head. “I remember this conversation, Mr. Brady. I’d never heard her so high. She said, ‘He’s a cop, of all things. A detective. Very bright. And a wonderful sense of humor. I had fun.’”

“Not with me she didn’t.” He started working on his other sleeve. “I’m sorry. I know you believe what you’re saying, but it wasn’t me.”

Gideon peeled the top off a little container and dumped cream into his glass. “She said—”

“Please. There’s really no point