58

Lida and Duvivier watched the squad car bearing Riley pull away.

The black man was sitting in the back seat of another squad car, towering above a cop in the front seat. The cop was writing, his head bobbing up and down. The black’s huge hands clapped the air as he spoke.

Still another cop was talking to Lida. “Off the top of my head,” he said, “I’d say he just kind of clicked over. Looked at you and clicked over. Thought you were his girl.” He rustled through his notes. “Christine Rivers?” He looked at Duvivier. “That the name he kept saying?”

“Yes, that’s what he kept saying.”

“Well, I read the name to the old guy on the security force and he said that was it, too. So if you two will come on down to the station, we can wrap it up.”

“What will happen?” Lida asked.

“The guy had a lot of ID. We’ll call up there where he lives and check with this Rivers girl. But you know what my feeling is on this?”

“What’s that?” Duvivier asked.

“Even if she’s got charges to press, she won’t.”

Duvivier agreed. “Domestic stuff,” he said.

“That’s right,” the cop replied, with something like admiration. He turned the look toward Lida. “I gather you were pretty cool in there, miss.”

“I watch a lot of television,” Lida said.

Lida opened the door of the police station and peered into the street. She smiled when she saw him waiting. “Hey,” she said, “how did you get done so fast?”

“I had less to tell,” he said.

“Then you didn’t go into the whole Wendolyn bit.”

“Of course not. Did you?”

“Nope. And I didn’t prefer charges, either. Anyhow, you want to hear the name I used? Florinda Cianfrandelli.”

“No wonder you were in there so long.” He laughed. “But you might have chosen something less flamboyant.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, who were you?”

“Bob Bland,” he told her.

“Jesus.”

“What will happen now?” Lida asked. “You write these things. Tell me.”

“I guess they’ll call the New Hampshire police, find out about Christine Rivers’ murder, and nail Riley for it. What else?”

“And what about Diana and that guy?”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know. Some guy who had all the newspaper clippings and shit. The one who brought Riley here. The one who told me you did it.”

“What was his name?”

“Allen something. Allen Dilworth.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Never heard of him!” Lida bellowed. “Jesus Christ!”

Several passersby turned to stare. They quickened their pace, in the event that she was distributing pamphlets. Duvivier took no notice. “Look,” he said. “If Dilworth is from the college—and he probably is—he’ll find out about Riley when he gets back there. I don’t know.”

“Well, I want to know,” she insisted. “I like a nice, tidy plot. No loose ends. Like Perry Mason.”

“But the story has an intrinsic flaw,” he told her.

“Which is?”

“That the exquisitely crafter Duvivier …”—he ran his thumbs along the lapel of his coat, watching Lida roll her eyes—“should be exonerated of a murder that he hadn’t committed to begin with. That anyone so wonderfully conceived could be asshole enough …”

“Don’t. He’s not an asshole.”

“No? Well, try this, then.” He hyped his presentation of the truth so that, if she laughed at it, he could laugh with her, pretending it had only been a joke all along. “That Duvivier wrote with such strength that even he believed the words that he had placed on the page.” The wrong words.

“Yes, I like that.” She squeezed his hand. “That’s probably just what you did.”

“You do watch a lot of television,” he said, smiling at her.