Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

Without thinking, I put my hand on the wheel and whirled it in the other direction. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was presumptuous. It was just a reflex.”

She smiled tightly. “It’s okay. I’m not a very confident driver. Daniel taught me to drive last fall. I grew up in Manhattan.”

Her driving steadied a little bit and I took my hand off the oh-shit strap. Maybe everything would work out, maybe we’d get to and from the dinner party intact, maybe I’d find the murderer and get more work and a place to live, maybe Allison would calm the fuck down and we’d go to Tanger Outlets and redo her wardrobe. Maybe.

Allison took a deep breath. “Freeman’s a Shakespearean. He got tenure as a wunderkind a thousand years ago and hasn’t published much since. He’s always talking about his new project. He’s going to do a valorium edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor . He says that he’s just an old-fashioned scholar, which means he thinks everything after 1780 is trendy garbage. And he calls women wenches . And he drinks too much. But, you know, he’s seventy.”

“Is there a Mrs. Freeman?”

“Oh, yeah. Lois.” So much for feminism. “I guess she’s younger. I think she was his student. She helps out in the alumni office. She’s, uh, very nice. Well, I mean, classic faculty wife.”

Huh.

“He’s not so bad, really. It’s surprising that he’s interested in Gertrude Stein.”

Old age had defused Freeman and he’d been clever enough to stroke Marx a little. For all her criticism, if there were a departmental conflict, she’d be in his camp.

“I’m leaving in two weeks to go to Paris, to work on a new project. I got a grant from the Omni Foundation — it’s on Gertrude Stein, her theater projects. The radical inconsistencies are fabulous.”

“Sure. Omni Foundation, that’s a big deal. Your letters must have been stellar.”

She clenched the steering wheel. “We’re here.” She slammed on the brakes.

“And so we are. Maybe we can have coffee tomorrow,” I said.

She shrugged and then softened. “I hate seeing Daniel. It makes me tense. He makes me tense.”

I patted her shoulder. We walked, arm in arm, right through the neighboring sprinklers, all working well and making things verdant in front of the stately homes.

The house was classic East Rock, circa 1927: a big two-story home with two wings off the center, both needing repair. Ghosts of live-in help fluttered by. The slightly warped black shutters framed big leaded windows and a chipped slate walkway led to a slate front porch, with two unnecessary columns and exactly enough room for two guests and the big Japanese urn with hopeful pink geraniums in it. Dusty panes of stained glass marked the second- and third-floor landings. There was the general air of past grandeur (and current deep, cossetted comfort and protection, which I wanted even more than I wanted grand). And lovely, blameless mountains of late roses and banks of hydrangeas, in full blooming white, pink, and lavender. I rang the doorbell and smiled reassuringly at poor Allison, who was holding onto her neckline.

“You look fine,” I lied. “Fuck him.”

A leprechaun opened the door.

Professor Freeman was as bald and red as an apple, just about 5'6", wearing the standard-issue hairy Harris Tweed jacket in a novel shade of avocado. His baggy brown corduroys drooped under his round belly and his tie was emerald green with brown and beige diamonds. I expected his socks to be green argyle and the toes of his wee boots to curl upward — and I was right about the socks. There was something irresistible about his delight in being such a snappy dresser at his age. He twinkled.

He ducked his head in a professorial half-bow and attempted to make eye contact with my breasts. “Artemis...” he murmured.

A lot of people find this kind of thing annoying, but I don’t mind it so much, nearing forty. “Professor Freeman,” I responded, grinning. “We brought wine!”

A faded pink wraith appeared next to my host. Mr. Freeman had used up their collective allotment of vitality and color. A little taller than he and ash-blond, she looked like a gladiolus at the end of the season. She tottered toward me on scuffed pink silk sandals and clutched her husband’s shoulder. My God, I thought, she must have muscular dystrophy or something. Then I examined her face and saw those wet, bluish-red eyes and knew she must have been downing vodka since lunch, if she’d had lunch. Mrs. Freeman stared at me, damply, for a long minute; we all stood very still while she tried to get into gear.

“Come in, come in,” she finally barked. “Don’t just gawk, Albert. Make them drinks.” She wasn’t able to do the hostess routine very well anymore, but she knew the basics and did what she absolutely had to do. “Dumb as a bucket of worms,” she mumbled, kicking their fat gray cat out of her path. I didn’t ask to whom she was referring.

The living room was cheerful, in its way. There was a shabby beige velvet couch (covered with gray cat hairs) and four matching armchairs, their nap rubbed off at all the corners. And everywhere there were bits of Ireland. Shillelaghs on the walls, four-leaf clovers in amber cubes, ceramic mugs with John Kennedy’s face, sepia prints of lasses and laddies kissing in the back streets of fair Dublin. The floor-to-ceiling curtains were green linen. It was a shrine to Irish kitsch and you knew that Albert Freeman had lovingly collected and arranged every bit of it. ( Freeman, I thought. Irish? )

I sat down and jumped again. Underneath me was a horsehair cushion depicting the saint with embroidered snakes, 3-D style. I settled back in with the white wine Freeman handed me. I would have gone for a real drink or three, but then I would have gotten friendly, and then I would have gotten nasty. If I’ve learned nothing else in my thirties, it’s that I have to drink the way Allison has to drive — slow and worried. Allison, the party animal in question, drank apple juice. Mrs. Freeman continued to sip from a tall clear glass, with not so much as an ice cube or lemon slice for camouflage. Freeman (who was starting to seem more like “poor old Albert”) drank Connemara whiskey and discoursed about its pedigree as he gulped. There was no food on the table, except one small bowl of fuzzy cashews. I sniffed for a reassuring scent of cooking, but I couldn’t pick up anything. My stomach growled.

The doorbell rang and a man burst through the door. Apollo in white jeans, white cotton shirt, and blue blazer. No socks. No little tiny wings on his ankles. He hugged Mrs. Freeman, who smiled and said, “Daniel!” Daniel Markham focused a dazzling smile on me and gave the tail end of it to Allison, who started to perk up, then wilted back into her chair.

“Great to be here. Great whiskey, Al. How about on the rocks, with just a splash. Great.”

Just as Daniel, gleaming from tip to toe, settled into one of the armchairs, the doorbell rang again as our last guest arrived. Mrs. Freeman yelled, “It’s open!” and a dull mouse of a man came in.

“Hey, Jimbo,” Daniel said.

Poor man with thinning brown hair worn long and floppy, a pronounced overbite, little pink mouth, small, sharp nose, and an unfortunate tendency to wear gray. But his eyes were not unfortunate. They were shiny brown and bottomless, seeing everything and thinking, clicking on all cylinders, about all he saw. At the moment, he was fastened on Allison, whose gaze was locked onto Daniel’s perfect profile. Things happen in New Haven, don’t think they don’t.

Mrs. Freeman made the introductions in her abrupt way: “Jim, this is... Jesus, who? Wait, Allison told me. Dell Chandler. She didn’t make it in psych at Wesleyan, now she’s like a junior lawman or something. This is Jim Fiske, he was visiting this year. Rising star but not here. Don’t get attached. He’ll be gone in another week or two. The rest of the department? I guess all those fuckers are out of the country.”