AS I SWITCHED OFF the engine and set the parking brake, I was thinking of the first time I’d come to the Haywood flat, just three months ago. It had been a business call. Dan Haywood, Ann’s teen-age son, had briefly been a suspect in a homicide. I’d been questioning Dan on the front porch when I’d heard someone behind me. Turning, I’d seen a small, stylish blonde standing in the rain, holding two large, sodden grocery bags. With my cop’s compulsion for quick categorization, I’d labeled Ann a young society matron—cool, self-confident, aloof. I’d been right about the past, but not about the present. She’d been married to a successful, affluent psychoanalyst. But the marriage had ended two years ago. Now she lived with her two sons and taught grammar school to supplement her child-support allotment. I’d only met her husband once. It had been a brief, blustering encounter. If I continued to threaten his son, my career would be in jeopardy, he’d said. The threats had been routine. The delivery, though, had been convincing. Victor Haywood was a vicious, pompous, polysyllabic sadist. During most of their marriage, his secret victim had been his wife. She was only now, two years later, rediscovering a sense of her own worth.
As I walked to Ann’s front door, I saw a Porsche parked two doors down. Dr. Haywood drove nothing but sports cars.
Billy, age eleven, answered the door. “Hey,” he said in his high, excited voice. “Hey. Jeeze. You were on TV. Jeeze, they talked more about you than the governor, practically.”
“Not true, Billy. Besides, by tomorrow, I’ll be yesterday’s news.”
“How many times did you shoot the crook? How many?”
I sighed. “If you’d listened, Billy, you’d know that I didn’t shoot him at all.”
“He was shooting at you, though. I know he was shooting at you. I heard about that.”
Ann came up behind the boy, grasped his shoulders firmly, and turned him back toward the living room. “Hi,” she said softly, squeezing my hand. “Come in.” As we walked side by side down the short hallway of the converted Victorian flat, she moved close beside me. As our thighs brushed, I felt a sudden, secret quickening of desire. Again she squeezed my hand. She felt it, too.
Dan was seated beside his father on the sofa. Seeing me, Dan smiled. “Hi, Frank. You’re a big hero today. Great.”
“Today is right. I was just telling Billy that, in the news business, it’s all today.”
“Hello, Lieutenant.” Pointedly, Victor Haywood didn’t bother to look at me directly.
“Hello, Doctor. How’ve you been?”
“Fine, Lieutenant. Just fine. How’ve you been?” His eyes were mocking, his voice elaborately supercilious. He was a lean, taut man with a cruel mouth and a permanent country-club tan. In that moment I suddenly realized that he would always hate me—first for threatening his son with the law, then for becoming his ex-wife’s lover.
“How do you manage to get such a good press for yourself, Lieutenant?” he was asking. “Do you trade favors? Is that how it’s done?”
Staring directly into his saturnine eyes, I deliberately allowed a long moment of silence to elapse before I quietly said, “No, Doctor, that’s not how it’s done.”
“Oh, come on now, Lieutenant. I’ve always heard that policemen can get the law at a wholesale price, so to speak—just like car salesmen can get cars at cost. Surely you can work a swap with a friendly reporter. Cut-rate cars or cut-rate laws. What’s the difference? Everyone’s looking for a deal.”
“Not everyone. Not me.”
“In that case, Lieutenant, I submit that you’re naïve—or worse.”
“And I submit that you’re wrong—or worse.”
As we held each other’s eyes, I saw his fixed, malevolent smile falter. I realized that I was playing a dangerous game, ridiculing an egotist before his sons. If I could, I decided to go for a draw.
His voice was low and tight. “One of us, obviously, is wrong. Very, very wrong. The question is, which one?”
In the silence, I heard Ann clear her throat. Dan was staring down at the floor. Billy’s eyes were wide as he looked first at me, then at his father.
It seemed to require an enormous effort, but I shrugged. “Lots of people have misconceptions about policemen—just like lots of people have misconceptions about psychiatrists.”
He nodded, mocked thoughtfully. “Very neatly put. Lieutenant. I keep forgetting that you once went to college.”
I didn’t reply. Instead, without being invited, I sat down in a large leather armchair. It was a chair that had once been the doctor’s favorite. Victor Haywood watched me for a moment, then rose to his feet. He turned to Ann, who had also risen to face her ex-husband. I saw her hands clenched knuckle-white. She couldn’t hold her own with Haywood. She just couldn’t hit hard enough.
“I want you to be sure and remember, now,” Haywood said, “that the boys are to be ready, without fail, at four P.M. Friday. I’ll be here precisely at four to pick them up, and I intend to be underway by four thirty at the latest. Otherwise, the whole weekend will be jeopardized. Skiing takes an enormous amount of energy, you know, even without the strain of adjusting to the altitude. So it’s essential that the boys get a good night’s sleep Friday night. Especially Billy. He doesn’t tolerate altitude changes well.”
“I know,” Ann answered. Her voice was low. Her eyes fell.
“Yes. Well, knowing is one thing. Taking measures is something else.”
“They’ll be ready, Victor. We’ll pack Thursday night.”
“Yes. However, don’t pack too much. Don’t overdo it. Remember, it’ll be three of us in a sports car.”
She didn’t reply.
Abruptly, Haywood turned to his two sons, sitting on the opposite arms of the couch. Their farewells were perfunctory. Haywood left the flat without glancing at me.
“Well,” Dan said, “it’s almost eight. I’d better hit the books. See you, Frank.”
I rose. “See you, Dan.”
Reluctantly, Billy followed his older brother down the hallway to the rear of the house. Ann stood in the doorway, watching them go. When the hallway door closed I went to her, turned her around, and took her in my arms. I felt her tremble.
“He’s a genuine twenty-four-carat bastard,” I said, tucking her head down in the hollow of my shoulder. “I think he’s the biggest stuffed shirt I’ve ever known.”
Her voice was muffled. “Thank you for giving it back to him, darling. Most people don’t, you know—or can’t. He intimidates most people.”
“I suppose he does. In a way, that’s his trade.” I drew her closer. I could feel her body slowly relaxing against mine. “But it just so happens that it’s my trade, too,” I said softly.
She drew back to look at me. Her eyes were misted with a hint of tears, but her smile was bright. Disengaging one hand, she pressed at the tip of my nose with a small, slim forefinger.
“You don’t intimidate me, Lieutenant,” she whispered. “You’re nothing but a sentimental slob. And don’t you forget it”