I STRIPPED OFF MY shirt, then slipped the handcuffs and holster from my belt. I placed both the gun and the cuffs in my dresser drawer, together with the belt clip of ten extra cartridges and my shield case. I slipped off my trousers, then stepped to the full-length bedroom mirror and gazed for a long, critical moment at the small roll of loose flesh above the beltline of my shorts. In the past half year, had the roll increased? Were the pectoral muscles sagging, the thigh muscles softening? Half turning, I allowed my abdominal muscles to go loose. In profile, there was an undeniable belly bulge. My muscle tone was gone. But it was late, nine thirty. And in fact my weight was within ten pounds of my best proball years. I was only forty-three. I still had most of my hair. I could still …
The phone rang.
Was it news from a stakeout? Canelli, at the King house? Markham, at Arnold Clark’s? I strode quickly into the living room.
“It’s Ann, Frank.”
“Hi. I tried to call you.”
“We just got home. We’ve been shopping. Both the boys lost their wool ski socks. Do you know how much ski socks cost?”
“Yes. I used to buy them, too, remember?”
“Do your children ski?”
“Of course. It was part of their mother’s Junior League image. Indispensable. Skiing, and tennis lessons.”
“We both have ex-spouses with social pretensions. I never thought about it. Do you think it’s significant?”
“I hope not.”
I could hear her giggle. “You have a certain talent for one-liners, Lieutenant. Deadpan one-liners. Do you know that?”
“I’m glad you think so. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
She hesitated. Then: “Can’t you get away for the weekend?”
I sighed. “I’m not sure. This case—the film maker—isn’t going very well. I can’t ask my men to put in extra hours while I’m out of town for the weekend.”
“Doesn’t Pete owe you some time?”
“Not really. Anyhow, we don’t keep books. Besides, this case is mine. Pete has his own caseload.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe. We’ve got a few things developing. It’s a matter of how they work out. Why don’t we plan on dinner and the evening? The whole evening. Let’s play it by ear. If I get a break with the case, we can just throw some things in a suitcase, and take off.”
“The next time a policeman takes out after one of my children,” she said, “I’m not going to become emotionally involved. Do you think I’d’ve liked you better as a professional football player?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well, in the first place, I wasn’t really a very successful football player.”
“You probably lacked the killer instinct.”
“You may be right. Anyhow, I’m glad I didn’t know you then. It was a very tense period in my life. Plus I was married.”
“Did you ever have any affairs when you were married?”
“Yes, toward the end. But they didn’t mean anything. By that time, I was a so-called P.R. man at my father-in-law’s factory. Which meant that, in addition to drinking with important clients and driving them to the airport, I was also expected to provide them with girls. Which meant that I—fouled up, once in a while. But by that time everything was ending—my marriage and everything else.”
There was a silence. Then, in a small, chastened voice, she said, “You never told me any of that, darling. Not really.”
“I know.” I paused, then said, “Sometimes things—come easier, over the phone.”
“It must have been humiliating. I mean”—she hesitated—“having to provide girls. You must have felt …” She let it go unfinished.
“Yes. That’s how I felt.”
I heard her draw a deep, pensive breath. Then she said, “That’s a terrible time—the end of a marriage. It took me a long time to realize it. A long time after the marriage was over, I mean.”
I didn’t reply, and a small silence began to lengthen. Suddenly there was no more to say—not over the phone. Ann felt it too, and we quickly said good night.
I’d no sooner broken the connection than the phone rang again.
“This is Canelli, Lieutenant.”
“What’s doing?” I sat down in an easy chair, crossing my bare legs.
“Well, I turned up something pretty interesting,” he said. “So I thought I should call you, like you told me.”
I sighed softly. Canelli rambled, especially on the phone. Looking down at my legs, I saw goose flesh beginning.
“I wasn’t disturbing anything, was I, Lieutenant? I mean, you said that I should—”
“No. It’s fine, Canelli. What’ve you got?”
“Well, about quarter to eight,” he said portentously, “Mrs. King got her car, and she went out. So I followed her. So what does she do, for God’s sake, but she drives out Sacramento Street—to the thirty-six-hundred block. And she parks the car and goes up to this old Victorian house that’s all dark, except for a couple of lights in the back of the house. So she starts beating on a door knocker, hard. She knocks for a minute, maybe, but nobody answers. So she tries the door, and when that doesn’t work, she acts like she’s real pissed off. So finally she opens up her purse and gets out a paper and writes on it. She slips the paper in the mail slot of the door, and she turns around and leaves—gets back in her car, and drives off, back home. So, naturally”—he paused for breath—“so naturally, I took down the address of the house, and I checked it out. And guess what, Lieutenant?”
I sighed again, recrossing my legs. “I give up, Canelli. What?”
“Well, the house belongs to Emile Zeda. You know—that guy with the Satan cult, or whatever they call it.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah. I mean, here she is, the night before her husband’s funeral and everything, knocking on Emile Zeda’s door.”
“Did you follow her home?”
“Sure.”
“Did she go right home?”
“She sure did. I mean, she didn’t have anything else on her mind, except going to Zeda’s place. I could tell by the way she was acting.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m phoning from a bar. I mean, I didn’t know whether you wanted me to stake out Zeda’s place or anything. So I thought I’d better call you at home, like you told me.”
I took a moment to consider, then said, “You may as well get some sleep, Canelli. We’ve got four men out on stakeout on this case already. I don’t want to authorize any more overtime. Not now, anyhow.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean, Lieutenant. I don’t blame you.”
“Why don’t you pick me up tomorrow morning about nine? We’ll stop by and see Emile Zeda on our way to the office.”
“Roger. Good night, Lieutenant.”