Edward Gorman - The Autumn Dead

"No. That's the strange thing. He asked for the suitcase, but when I looked for it, it was gone."

"What did Gary say?"

"Oh, he's always polite. He's a holdover from the sixties and he can't let himself consciously admit that it bothers him that she'd live with a black man. He doesn't mean to be a bigot. I feel sorry for him."

"He got all her other things?"

"Yes."

"And he just left without the suitcase?"

"Yes." He thought a moment. "I could be wrong, but I believe the day before Gary came, somebody jimmied one of my windows."

"And got in?"

"Possibly."

Now Karen's coming to me made sense. She had sent Gary over to get her things. When Glendon Evans said the suitcase was gone, she refused to believe him. So she looked me up, sent me in to get it.

"I don't know if I'll ever feel safe here again."

More to myself, I said, "What the hell could be in the suitcase that so many people are interested in it?"

He laughed. "It couldn't be money. Not the way she depended on my Visa and American Express cards." His laugh was as harsh as my own. Then, "The terrible thing is I'd take her back. How about you?"

"Oh, no. She's been out of my system for a long time."

"So why did you agree to help her?"

"We're from the Highlands."

"Oh, yes," he said. "The Highlands."

"So she talked about it?"

"Frequently. She even had nightmares about something that happened back there. Always the same thing. She'd be waking up screaming and bathed in sweat and-" He stared down at his coffee. "My father was a surgeon. I rode around in a Lincoln and went to private school. I almost feel guilty."

I was curious. "She never told you what the nightmares were about?"

"No. But she did always use the same word. Pierce."

"Was that somebody's name?"

"I don't know. I thought you might, being from the Highlands.

"No."

He put a hand to the back of his head. "I'm afraid I'm going to need stitches."

"I was wondering about that."

"Would you give me a ride? There's a trauma center not too far from here."

"Sure."

He stood up. He was still wobbly. He put his palms flat against the table as a precaution.

"You all right?"

He looked up. He looked pale beneath his light-brown skin. I pretended I didn't see the tears in his eyes. "She's never going to come back to me, is she?"

Soft as I could, I said, "I don't think that's her style. Coming back to people, I mean."

From a drive-up phone I tried my service to check or calls, discovered I had a radio spot for tomorrow in a downtown studio-a local spot but one that promised decent residuals-and that the same woman had called three times but had not left her name.

Finished with my service, I called Donna Harris' apartment. It was publication time for Ad World, and I didn't really expect her to answer-she tended to a bunker mentality the day everything got put to bed, eating innumerable and exotic pieces of junk food (I'd once seen her mix Count Chocula and Trix into a kind of bridge mix)-but she surprised me by being home.

"Hi," she said. "I was hoping you wouldn't call because I'm so damn busy, but then I was hoping you would call because if you didn't, I'd feel neglected. You know?"

"I know."

"I wish we could go to a movie tonight."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

"You finished working?"

"At Security I am. Actually, I'm working on something else."

I explained what that something else was.

Her voice got tight. "You've mentioned her before, haven't you?"

"Karen Lane?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yes, I suppose I have." I sighed. "Please don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Get jealous. There's nothing at all to get jealous about."

"I trust you, Dwyer."

"Really?"

"The rational part of me does, anyway."

"How about the irrational part?"

"How does she look after twenty-five years? God, that sounds like a long time."

"It is a long time, and she doesn't look all that sensational."

"In other words, she looks gorgeous."

"She looks all right."

"Now I know gorgeous for sure."

"It's a job. You seem to forget that little incidental fact. She's actually paying me money."

"Otherwise you probably wouldn't want to get involved with her at all, would you?"

"You probably won't believe this, but no, I wouldn't. She's a classic example of retarded adolescence. Nothing to her matters quite so much as her tan or her new sweater or how that cute guy at the health club looked her over. It's a seventh-grade mentality and we're headed toward fifty. The big five-oh. It's a pain in the ass."

"You figured out what's in the suitcase?"

"Obviously something valuable."

"You think she might have stolen something from somebody?"

It was then I saw it for the first time. The sleek black Honda motorcycle. Driven by a sleek black-leathered figure. Black leather head to toe, with a black helmet and black mask. Across the street. Just sitting there. I looked back from my rearview and said, "I'm assuming that's what it's all about. Some kind of theft. Otherwise Glendon Evans wouldn't have gotten beaten up."

She sounded a bit scared. "I'm sorry I was so pissy."

"It's all right. You know how I got the other night when that old actor friend of mine stopped by our booth and spent twenty minutes staring at you."

"God, why are we so jealous?"

"Insecure."

"But why are we so insecure? I mean, we're bright, we're attractive. We should have at least a little self-confidence."

"Probably our genes." I looked into the rearview again.

The black-clad rider still sat astride his black Honda.

"Your mind is drifting. I can tell over the phone."

"Sorry."

"Something wrong?"

"I don't think so. Just my usual paranoia." Then I said, "You could do me a favor."

"What?"

"On your way back to your office, you could stop by my place and pick up some clean clothes for me."

"In other words, you want to stay all night?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

"No, that'd be nice. Only I want the window up."

Donna is never so happy as when she's covered with goose bumps and sleeping soundly. "Can't we flip for it?"

"We flipped for it last time and you cheated."

"Oh, yeah."

"So if you stay, the window's going to be up. Clean fresh air."

"Okay. And I appreciate you stopping by my place. I have the feeling I'm going to be busy."

"Where you going?"

"Up near the Highlands. Little housing development there. Where Karen Lane claims to be staying."

"Claims?"

"Right now, I'm not sure I believe anything she tells me."

"Good." Donna laughed. "Stay that way."

They'd built the houses in the mid-fifties, and though they weren't much bigger than garages, the contractors had been smart enough to paint them in pastels-yellow and lime and pink and puce, the colors of impossible flowers, the colors of high hard national hope-and they were where you strived to live in 1956 if you worked in a factory and wanted the good life as promised by the Democrats and practiced by the Republicans. There were maybe four hundred houses in all, interlocked in Chinese puzzle boxes of streets, thirty to a block, glowing in the sunlight, hickory-smoked with backyard barbecues and driveways filled with installment-plan Ford convertibles and DeSoto sedans. The housing development seemed the quintessence of everything our fathers had fought World War II for. My own father never made it there; we always stayed in the Highlands farther down in the valley. But on Sundays we'd drive in our fifteen-year-old Plymouth with its running boards and mud-flaps through the streets of the development while my parents discussed just which type of house they would buy-there being four basic models-when the money came in.