THIRTY-THREE

Kris Ann was quiet that night, the deep and inward silence of someone brooding on a hard decision. She glanced at me occasionally, distant and thoughtful. I tried reading until she picked up her sketches of the children she taught, done to distract her since Henry’s death. She began drawing with deft, short strokes, lips parted as they were when sleeping, so that she looked always about to speak, or even smile. I watched her, remembering how I’d watched her seven years before, memorizing her movements and expressions so that I could hold them in my mind like photographs. She had known that, and it had quickened her smile and the things she did in my apartment. She had cooked and I cleaned and she spent her spare time painting and reading the books I liked then, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man and essays by Camus, talking about them later. “It’s strange,” she once said of, Camus. “I don’t think he’s sure why he hopes for so much, or even if he should. But he does.” I had smiled then. We were going to Washington.…

The next morning I went to Maddox Coal and Steel.

Mooring’s office was at the end of a carpeted hallway lined by pictures of foundries, open hearths, and blast furnaces. A short-haired woman in her forties sat next to his closed door. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“No. But tell him Adam Shaw is here. I think he’ll see me.”

She frowned, pressed the intercom button, and said, “There’s a Mr. Shaw outside.” Her frown deepened and she hung up looking betrayed. “Go on in,” she said.

Mooring sat at his desk. His drapes were drawn, his office spare, neat, and dark. “What is it?” he asked.

“Our deal is finished.”

His lids dropped. “You wouldn’t be here,” he finally said, “if you didn’t want something.”

“I’ve got two questions. I want the answers.”

“And if I won’t give them?”

“Then I’ll help the newspapers grub through your affair with Lydia Cantwell until you wish it had never happened.”

He looked up at me, curious and almost detached. “What’s in that for you?”

“The pleasure of it.”

His eyes flickered. “That’s unnatural.”

“It’s natural as breathing. Push too many people too far and one of them is going to watch you, and wait. It’s my turn.”

He folded his hands on the desk in front of him, appraising me. “All right,” he said at length. “I’ll listen to your questions.”

I sat, leaning forward over his desk to ask quietly, “Whose son is Jason Cantwell?”

Mooring looked away. Finally, he said, “I’ve never known.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

He turned back. “Why, because you think he’s mine? He couldn’t be. She had someone else then, I don’t know who. If she hadn’t it might all have been different. But then the most I could do was be around her. Being with her was something I grew into.”

For the first time he spoke with feeling, as if seeing the pattern of his life. For a moment I thought of Kris Ann. “Then how does it seem now?” I asked. “The rest of it.”

Mooring watched my face, pondering whether to answer. “It’s a habit,” he said at length. “I’ve gotten used to who I’ve become. But you didn’t come to ask that.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Then tell me your other question.”

I lit a cigarette, still watching him carefully. “Did Lydia ask Cade to get her a divorce?”

His face stiffened. Then he nodded, once.

“When?”

He winced. “Just before she was killed.”

“You mean the afternoon she went to see him.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you visited her about, just before she left?”

“Yes.” He looked at me steadily, miserably. “I was leaving Joanne.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“At first I thought you knew. I was sure you’d come to the house because Cade had told you. When I realized you knew nothing I was amazed and then I began thinking it was better you didn’t. After I called Cade I was convinced he was acting to protect his client and perhaps others from needless hurt, and that you were irresponsible. And”—Mooring’s voice fell off—”there was no point in hurting Joanne, now.”

“Did you believe she had killed Lydia?”

“No.” Mooring shook his head. “That would be too grotesque. I don’t think she could, even with what I’d done. I just didn’t want—after Lydia died, the only thing left was simple decency. I owed her that.”

He grimaced at the sound of it. I took a deep drag of cigarette smoke. “About Cade: are you sure she actually told him?”

“He didn’t say so exactly.” Mooring looked as though a sudden light had hurt his eyes. “But she must have. When I came back that night Lydia was a different woman. Her first smile seemed to come from deep within her, and then all at once she was smiling and crying and leaning against me. When she looked up, her face was streaked with tears. I brushed her cheek, and asked, ‘Is this what I’m getting?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just that I’m free,’ she answered, and then she told me I made her feel delivered to herself, after being lost. I couldn’t imagine how I’d done that. But I felt delivered, too. She was all I’d ever wanted.” Mooring turned from me. His voice was thick. “She wouldn’t lie, Shaw. Not about that.”

“No,” I said quietly. “Lydia wouldn’t lie.”

He didn’t move. “Why do you want to know this?”

“That doesn’t concern you, anymore.”

“Then I’ve answered you now.” His profile was utterly still. “Please go.”

I let myself out.

His secretary peered up, ready to pass the messages spread in front of her. “Hold his calls,” I told her. “Just ten minutes or so.”

She looked at my face, and slowly took her hand off the telephone. I went to my office and waited for Culhane.

It was midafternoon before she called.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Here. Home.”

“Already?”

“I was done by eleven. I got a twelve-thirty plane.”

“You should have phoned from there.”

She hesitated. “I could have. I didn’t want to.”

My head was pounding again. “There’s no problem, is there?”

“I got what you asked for, the partners’ names.”

“And?”

“Adam, there’s one of them you’re not going to like.”

“Who. Cade?”

“No.” I heard her inhale. “It’s your wife, Adam. Kris Ann Shaw.”