William Diehl: Eureka

“How’s the arm?” she asked.

“Just another scar to add to the ones I have already.”

“That rich dame likes scars, does she?” Delilah said, taking out the makings and rolling two cigarettes.

“What do you know about that rich dame?”

She peered up at me and smirked.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said. “Where do you think Brodie found out about that sissy dog of yours?”

“Mata Hari, huh?” I said.

“She was a piker.”

She lit the two butts, and gave Culhane and me each one. I looked around at what was left of Culhane’s run for governor.

“Where are all those swells with the money who were making you look like a winner last night?”

“After I made my bow-out speech, they all went up to the golf course.”

“How about Brett Merrill and Ben?”

“They feel bad for me. But I don’t have to tell you that.”

“That was cute, the way you got off the subject about the lady banker,” Delilah said.

“You probably know more about her than I do,” I said.

“You ought to marry her,” Delilah said. “Better than working for a living.”

“I’m not sure she’s cut out to be a cop’s wife,” I said.

“I’m not sure you’re cut out to be a rich boy,” Culhane said.

We got another laugh out of that.

“Better go home and change clothes before you go by her place,” said Delilah. “Unless you want to scare her to death.”

“I got one question to ask before I head out,” I said.

“Christ, you never change,” Culhane said.

“It’s for Delilah.”

“Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Did the shooting at Grand View happen just the way they say?”

She looked at me for a long minute and said, “It happened exactly the way Brodie said it did.”

I nodded and got up to leave. Then I said to her, “But if it had happened some other way, you’d still say it happened the way Brodie said it did, wouldn’t you?”

“You bet your sweet ass I would,” she said with a smile, and without hesitation. Then she added, “You just don’t get it.”

“No. Maybe someday I’ll understand why Wilma Thompson and Lila Parrish went on the lam. And who paid them to do it.” I shrugged. “Who cares anyway, right?”

Wrong. I did care. I felt sorry for Wilma. After looking for happiness all those years, she still ended up dead.

“I’m sorry about Eddie Woods’s wife,” I said.

His face got very sad. He looked out the window as if there were answers out there to questions we all have about life and death.

Delilah started to say something but Culhane cut her off.

“Innocents always get caught in the cross fire,” he said.

“What’s the dif,” I said. “By tomorrow, it’ll be old news.”

I got up to leave and we shook hands.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think you’re an honorable guy. We just play by different rules.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“Thanks for the sandwich,” I said, kicking my way through the balloons on the way to the door.

“Hey, Cowboy,” Culhane called after me.

I stopped and looked back at him.

“You’re a helluva snoop,” he said. “But you had your nose up the wrong dog’s ass on this one.”

“I think you’re half right,” I said.

“Don’t you ever admit you’re wrong?”

“Why bother?”

“Well, just remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

He gave me a farewell smile.

“I told you so,” Thomas Brodie Culhane said.

I drove back to the house, made a big fuss over Rosie, and gave him two cans of dog food and an extra bone. I kept my arm out of the shower so the bandage wouldn’t get wet, then dressed in my best navy slacks and blue shirt. I stopped by the drugstore and picked up the most expensive bottle of champagne they had, and went next door to the toy store to get a tin bucket, the kind kids take to the beach. There was a little girl, no more than eight or nine, selling roses on the corner. Ten cents apiece. She had sixteen left. I bought them all and gave her five bucks. I thought she was going to cry.

It was getting dusk when I turned into Millie’s drive.

She opened the door before I got to it.

“Hi,” I said, “I happened to be in the neighbor…”

She didn’t let me finish. She pulled me in the house and put the roses and the pail with the champagne on a table near the door and she kissed my cheeks and my lips, and then took the pail and led me up the stairs and into her bathroom. She turned on the faucets to the tub and poured in a bottle of bubble bath. She unbuttoned my shirt slowly, kissing my chest as she did. She unzipped my pants and pulled them down, and sat me down on the edge of the tub and took off my shoes and socks. Then she slowly unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall on the floor, and slipped off her tennis shorts and panties. She stuck a toe in the water, eased herself down into the bubbles, then took my hands and led me into the tub facing her.

Then she noticed the bandage.

“My God, what happened?” she said with alarm.

“Later,” I said. “How about the champagne?”

“Later,” she murmured.

I settled into the tub and she slipped her legs around my hips and took my arm and gently kissed the wound.

“How bad is it?” she asked softly.

“Well,” I whispered, “I think it may have ruined my dreams of becoming a concert pianist.”

She locked her legs around me and slid me to her.

“Thank God,” she whispered in my ear. “I hate Chopin.”

Bannon got a card from Brodie Culhane once while he was overseas. Christmas, 1944. He was in some little town in Normandy. He didn’t remember its name. There wasn’t enough left to remember.

“I know how it is at Christmas,” Brodie had written. “I’ll think of you and hoist a glass of Irish Mist. One cube, please. Take care of yourself, Cowboy.” It was signed “Santa C.”

It had reached Bannon on January third, but it was the thought that counted.

Not a word since, except the card he had received two days ago. And now he was driving down the hill into San Pietro as he had five years before. Nothing had changed except the trees were a little taller and there was a different movie playing at the theater and Max and Lenny weren’t riding herd on him.

He had said very little on the drive up, and the night before he had sat out by the pool, soaking his leg and rereading the file he had kept through the years. It was in a footlocker he had left with her when he went off to the army. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old locker until he got the card, when they got back from their honeymoon.

He read it, showed it to her, then went down in the storm cellar, opened the trunk, and dug it out.

A closed case to everyone but you, Zee, Millicent had thought.

She didn’t ask him about it and they had talked little about the old file on the trip up, but she knew that there were questions in its yellowing pages that had gnawed at him since he had come back from San Pietro that last time. She had sat quietly with her hand on his leg, watching the foothills grow into mountains.

He was going to find the answers.

He took a left at the bottom of the hill, drove up to The Breakers, and parked in front of the entrance.

The valet was a sharp little noodle in a tailored uniform, hair slicked back and a solicitous smile on his face. The closer he got to the car, the more the smile changed from con man to awe. He stopped beside the car and ran the flat of his hand very lightly across the hood.

“Fine,” he said. “Italian paint job.”

He backed up about six feet, checked her out, and came back.