Ed Gorman - Night Kills

Brolan went to the far end of the pool and stood next to the silver-coloured ladder leading into the water.

After a minute or so, coming up for air, Cummings saw him. He said, spitting water, "What the hell do you want?"

"I want to know why you broke into Emma's duplex last night."

Cummings's answer surprised him. "How the hell'd you know about that?"

"The girl you knocked out told me about it."

"I didn't mean to hit her so hard. She shouldn't have been looking through my car."

Cummings finished his lap and swam to the ladder. Climbing out of the water, he shook his head and then sleeked back his hair. He grabbed a nubby white towel from a deck chair and started towelling himself off.

"So, what the hell're you doing here, Brolan?"

"I want to know why you were in Emma's duplex."

Wet, eyes red from the chlorine, white hair turned a dirty grey from the water, Cummings said, "Why the hell do you think?" He tugged his blue trunks up.

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking you."

Cummings began to work his jaw muscles. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Brolan. "What's going on here? You know damn well what I was looking for in her duplex. The nice little package I pay 'rent' on every month."

Brolan started to ask him what he was talking about, but just then the doorman came into the pool area. His voice echoed off the tall ceding and the lapping green water. "There's a call for you, Mr. Cummings."

"Thank you," Cummings said, poking a little finger into an ear and cleaning out some water. To Brolan, he said, "I've got to say one thing, Brolan. I'm surprised you'd have anything to do with this."

"With what?"

Some of the anger died in Cummings's eyes. His gaze was one of curiosity, then surprise. "You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No, I don't."

Cummings's laugh bounced off the pool walls. "My God, Brolan, did you think it was because you two assholes are such great businessmen that you suddenly started picking off accounts?"

"Cummings, I want you to tell me what you're talking about." Cummings patted his arrogant, handsome face with the nubby towel. "Go ask your partner, Brolan. Maybe it's time you started asking him about a lot of things."

Before Brolan could say anything else, Cummings's wide white feet began slapping the wet tile floor. He was heading for a wall phone about ten yards away. He was obviously finished talking with Brolan, even if Brolan wasn't finished talking with him.

But just before he reached the phone, Cummings turned around and said, "Tell the girl I'm sorry I hit her so hard."

He walked over to the phone, jerked up the receiver, and began talking.

Brolan stood there a long moment. What the hell had Cummings been talking about? What was he paying 'rent' on? And what did Stu Foster have to do with any of this?

In the lobby, furious without quite knowing why, he went over to a bank of pay phones. They weren't enclosed, so he knew that he'd have to watch what he said. He called the office and asked for Foster. Still at lunch, was the answer. He hung up.

As he walked to the parking lot, the cold finally dispelling the sharp, lingering scent of chlorine in his nostrils, his mind raced with possibilities of Stu's role in all this. But what would that be?

And what had Cummings been looking for the night before, when he'd knocked out Denise?

He got in his car and left the country club. As he made his way out, the man on the snowblower waved again.

Brolan waved back and then gave his car as much power as it could handle on the icy road.

Halfway through his search, he found the photograph. It looked as if it had been taken sometime during the sixties, because the little girl standing next to a 1967 Ford was not only dressed up in a Sunday blue dress but was also proudly hugging a Partridge Family album to her chest. The girl was very young and, in the sunny day, squinted up at the camera, which only made her look even more vulnerable than she would have naturally. The girl was Emma.

"Did you find something?" Denise called from the other room.

He had to clear his throat. Looking at the photograph had touched him in a way he hadn't wanted to be touched. Not by Emma. Not anymore.

"No," he said. "I'm still looking."

Over lunch Denise and Greg had speculated about what the man who'd broken in the previous night might have been looking for. Ultimately-because they had decided that the man probably had not found what he'd come for-they'd come over to Emma's and started looking for something that probably wasn't very mysterious at all… but something that was no doubt vital to the killer.

In a bureau drawer Greg had found the photograph, and he couldn't stop staring at it. In a way the photo put a curse on him. He had decided that he no longer loved Emma; that in her heart she'd seen him not as an individual or a man but as that abstraction known as a cripple. He had decided two days before to keep that in mind whenever he felt sentimental or sad about her. But staring at this photo… he wondered what she'd been like as a little girl. He wished he had a time machine and could go back to her on that sunny Sunday morning and talk to her. Help her, really.

If Greg had raised Emma, she certainly would have turned out to be a very different woman. Not hating herself; not lacking even the barest self-confidence. (She genuinely believed she was ugly and stupid; Emma-ugly and stupid!) He would have seen that she took her studies seriously, that she dated only the right kind of boys, that she went on to college… And then, of course, (in this time machine fantasy) she would have fallen in love with him. He would have offered her a wonderfully normal girlhood, and she would have returned the favour by seeing that no one loved her as well as Greg Wagner himself. And it would not have been pity, and it would not have been gratitude; it would have been pure love, an admixture of both the romantic and the more mature sorts of love, and they would have been bound up in this forever.

He had no idea that he was crying as he sat in the sachet-scented bedroom, slumped in one corner of his wheelchair.

But behind him, gently, Denise said, "You all right, Greg?" And when he looked up at her, he felt very foolish, of course, and unmanly, tears silver on his cheeks. "I'm fine."

She grinned. God, she did have a cute, impish grin. "Yeah, that's just how you sound, too. Fine."

He had to laugh. He was sad, but she got him laughing, and he silently thanked her for it.

She came over and stood next to him and looked at the photograph. "Is that Emma?"

"Yes."

"Boy, she was really pretty."

"She sure was."

"You'll always love her, won't you, Greg?"

He smiled up at her. "Actually I'm trying to not to."

"Really? How come?"

"Because she didn't love me."

"From what you said, I'll bet she did."

"Well, not in the way I wanted to be loved anyway."

"So, why should that stop you from loving her in the way you want to love her?"

"Because it makes me feel weak and foolish."

She leaned over and kissed him on the side of the head. "You know what it is?"

"Huh?"

"It's your pride. That's all." Then she tousled his hair. "You men. You're all alike." She snatched the photo from his hand and said, "Now, give this to me, and I'll go get it framed for you tomorrow. This is a great picture, and you should keep it someplace special in your duplex."

She thumped him on the shoulder. "And forget about your pride, Greg. You've got enough problems without that hanging over your head."

By then, of course, he was laughing and laughing hard. She was treating him just like a child… and somehow making him understand (without hurting his feelings) that he was behaving just like a child.