William Bayer - Mirror Maze

"Frank… " Her smile was warm, her voice throaty and full of feeling.

"It's been so long. I hope you don't mind meeting here." "Not at all,"

Janek said. "It's good to see you, Sarah." Suddenly he felt gallant toward her. The bitterness he had harbored for so long faded rapidly in her presence, leaving him with a mellow, protective concern he had not felt toward her in years.

When Josef came over to greet them, he kissed Sarah's hand. After he took their order and moved away, she giggled slightly. "I'm still a sucker for old-world manners," she said.

She asked a lot of questions about people in the Department, detectives with whom they'd once socialized. Most of them were people Janek didn't see anymore and a few of them were dead. But Sarah chattered on about them as if the years had never passed.

When she asked about his current cases, he responded cautiously. When she asked if he still attended pro-hockey games, he sensed she had something on her mind and was trying to warm him up before exposing it.

He knew how to deal with that: keep shifting the topic to throw her timing off. So he sparred with her until halfway through the main course, when he suddenly realized he was treating her like an interrogee. Then he was annoyed with himself. He hadn't wanted the dinner to turn out this way. Lighten up, he told himself. Try and make it pleasant. But then it was too late; Sarah looked uncomfortable.

"All right," she said, breaking in on him in the middle of a story,

"there's something I want to discuss."

He lowered his silverware. "Sure, there is. That's why you asked to meet." "I thought it would be nice to see you, Frank."

"But it hasn't been all that nice, has it?"

"I didn't say that. You make me a little nervous, that's all."

"Sorry. I wanted this to go well.

Anyway"-he looked at her-"what's on your mind?"

She lowered her eyes. "I need more money."

He stared at her blandly. "So do I."

"I mean it, Frank. I can't keep up, not on what you send me.", "I don't follow that." He spoke carefully. "You have a full-time job. Plus I send you a monthly check. The amount was agreed to long ago. You can't come around now, years later, and expect to renegotiate."

"Times change. Things are more expensive these days."

"For everyone. Not just YOU."

"Look, Frank-" "No, you look," he said. "You still going out with what's-his-name?"

"That has nothing to do with-"

"It has everything to do with it. You're going out with a professional man who earns a hell of a lot more than me. And he sleeps with you in a house I spent twenty years paying off so you'd always have a roof over your head."

She bristled. "Guess what, Frank? The damn roof on that damn house leaks."

"So, get it fixed."

"They say it has to be replaced." "I'm sorry," he said. "It's your house now. Fix it up or sell it and move someplace else."

She gazed at him. She made no attempt to conceal her disgust. "I had a feeling you'd say something like that. I was hoping you wouldn't."

He laughed, fighting off the old bitterness. "Shameless as ever. You haven't changed."

She stared at him, outraged. "What've I got to be ashamed about?"

The transparency of your manipulations, he thought, but he didn't say it. Instead he shook his head. Then, in a tone as kind as he could manage: "Why don't you ask your rich boyfriend to help you out?"

"I can't, that's all." Tears filled her eyes. "Oh, Frank don't you understand?"

"Sure, I understand. You're in a relationship with another guy. I don't know why you two haven't gotten married-that's none of my business. But my responsibility to you ended long ago. The fact that I'm still paying alimony galls me no end."

She lowered her voice, then mumbled as if to herself, ' suppose I could go to court, ask for a bigger allotment.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. Believe me, that would be a mistake."

"I'm not threatening. It was just an idea."

"When you talk about court I take it as a threat."

"I'm only asking, Frank. If you can't do it, you can't." She smiled.

"I don't want to be one of those wives we used to talk about. Remember?

The ones who took their exes ' the cleaners'?"

"You'll only be counted among them when you act like one of them." He signaled to the waiter. "How about some dessert?"

"Please do one thing?" He stared at her, waiting to hear. "Think about it, that's all. Just think about it. Will you do that, Frank?"

He swallowed. He could feel his resistance melting, but he couldn't help himself-he'd always been a sucker for a well-turned ankle. "Tell you what. I'll consider helping with the roof Get an estimate and let me know."

She brightened. "That would be wonderful!"

"I'm not promising anything."

"I understand."

"First let's see what kind of money we're talking about."

"I'll call the contractor tomorrow."

The waiter came over. They ordered pastries. Then their conversation mellowed. Again, he felt the similarity to an interrogation-how, after manipulating a source into giving him what he wanted, he always felt the need to smooth things over, descend from a summit of intensity and conflict to a plateau of amiable banter. But this time he hadn't gotten anything. Sarah had. So, what about himself, what role had he played in their little joust? Sucker? Dupe? He knew he'd been the one to lose control.

After dinner they strolled through the Village, down quiet residential streets. It was a warm summer night, people were out, sitting on portable lawn chairs or lingering before their doors. On the stoop of one building a girl was playing a guitar; her friends, assembled on the steps, sat around her, listening.

"How's Kit?" Sarah asked in a tone intended to sound nonchalant. Sarah had never been able to bring up Kit's name without pretending she was doing so casually.

"Kit's fine," he said.

"I hear she's sending you on a little trip." Janek stopped walking. "Who told you that?"

"A little bird," Sarah said gaily.

He was angered that word on his Cuba venture had gotten out. "Whoever told you broke security."

"It was a cop's wife, someone you don't know. You don't know her husband, either."

So, despite Kit's precautions, the Department was still a sieve. Janek wondered if Baldwin had leaked the story. He would certainly have passed the news to Dakin, then Dakin's crowd would have spread it fast.

"It's that damn Mendoza thing, isn't it?" she asked. "I hate that case.

I always did."

He started walking. "I'm not all that crazy about it myself." "It ruined our marriage. I never told you that before, but that's really what I think."

He looked at her. Was she serious? Didn't she understand that her selfishness had ruined it-her refusal to have children, her insistence on having abortions the two times she'd gotten pregnant, as if the presence of a child in the house would somehow demenish her, cause him to pamper her less, make her feel less like a princess? The greatest regret of his life, he knew, was that he had spent a dozen years with a woman who had insisted on a barren marriage, while all the time he had yearned for a son or daughter whom he could lavish with his love.

"Mendoza is an unpleasant fact of life," he said. "My only interest in it is to put it to rest."

"And Kit-is that her only interest?"

He stopped again. "What are you getting at?"

She turned to him. "Just raising a point. Everyone in the cops has his own agenda. I learned that from you long ago. I was just wondering if maybe Kit had one. Like why, now that everyone's forgotten about Mendoza, does she want you to go back and beat on it again?"

"Our honor's at stake." Sarah laughed. "Is that what she says?"

God, you're impossible! "Why do you care, Sarah? What's it to you?"