Paul Levine - Night vision

It made me smile, the irony of it. I was investigating him, and he had me under surveillance. "Look, Nick, what am I supposed to think? Especially now. You've just admitted the motive. I don't know how much Marsha knew, but it was enough to make you nervous."

"Everything. She knew everything. Priscilla told her."

"What? You told me you never talked about it."

"She was my wife. When I got back, I was a mess. They were pinning medals on me, and I was dying inside. She took care of me. I told her. She said it would go away, she would make it better, and she did."

"Until you left her."

He picked up the mug of coffee, then put it down again. "She set me up. She pretended she didn't care, that she'd get along without me, but she wanted me back. If she couldn't have me, she'd get even. She made friends with Marsha, up-and-coming TV personality, told her everything she knew. It wasn't enough for a story, no confirming sources, but Prissy figured a journalist could do some research, put it together. Prissy could ruin me, Marsha would get a promotion. They'd both be happy."

"So you planted Rodriguez in their little garden. Like I said, you're the guy with the motive."

He looked at me straight on. "Listen, you thick-skulled, lead-footed linebacker. Would I tell you this if I had anything to do with the killings?"

"Sure, 'cause you're so much smarter than me-"

"Cut the crap. I told you the truth to get you on track. We've got to work together. You, me, Rodriguez. These cases are making too many headlines."

"Right, may cost you some votes next time around."

He ignored the crack and drained the coffee, which had turned cold. He didn't seem to notice. "Yesterday, I ordered Rodriguez to start over. Go through the files. What did we miss? Re-interview everybody. Talk to that loony Blinderman babe, Doc Riggs, your English friend, anybody who knows anything. I want you to put some heat on Max Blinderman. He's got a record."

"Anything else?"

"Be creative. Do what you do best."

"You want me to hit somebody?" I asked.

I could never be a prosecutor.

A really good prosecutor must have no doubts. The prosecutor is the vengeful instrument of the state, a man or woman who sees the effect of depravity and must not care about the cause. The defendant is filth. No matter that as a child he may have been abused, impoverished, and ignored. He is a blight on society, and the prosecutor is the street cleaner of our times.

I always have doubts. I see the glimmer of humanity underneath masks of evil. I see reasons and causes and justifications. And mitigating circumstances. I feel pity. Nick Fox would say I misdirect my sorrow. He would say I am soft. But now my anguish was for him.

I had listened to his tale of horror and fear, to his admission of cowardice and betrayal. And I mourned for him, undeserving recipient of my grief. Evan Ferguson was dead. A few seconds of pain, nothing more. Nick Fox was dead, a lifetime of nightmarish torment.

He was right. He never should have appointed me. I didn't belong here anymore. Keep Lassiter away from the cops and the crooks. Let him try his fancy-pants divorces. Let him argue which conglomerate breached which contract to sell a million widgets to which multinational corporation. Let him defend the rights of reporters to fib and to fumble. But he doesn't have the stomach for the place with steel doors and the men with hard eyes. He doesn't see in black and white. All he sees are shades of gray.

"How do you feel?" Pam Maxson asked.

"Compared to what?" I answered.

I was sprawled on my sofa, left leg hoisted onto my sailboard cocktail table. Three donuts were spread on the fin.

"I went out," she said, sitting down on a wooden rocker Granny Lassiter had given me.

"I know."

"I couldn't sleep."

"That makes two of us."

"You were dead to the world when I left. You look better now."

I didn't ask better than what.

She walked over and sat down but didn't take a donut. "Did you have any breakfast?"

"Coffee and cyanide with Nick Fox. He stopped by after you…left."

We were dancing around it. I consider myself a modern man. Maybe I never took a vote on it, but I like to think I am enlightened where relationships are concerned. I try to be sensitive to a woman's needs, her independence, her space. Still, I don't think it impertinent to ask where my bedmate has gone at three a.m. while I lie there, battered and drugged.

So why didn't I ask?

Because she would think me a Neanderthal, a clinging, possessive, antiquated jerk. Instead, I told her of my talk with Nick, and she listened quietly, asking only if I believed he was innocent in spite of the obvious motive.

I didn't know.

Then I mentioned the northeasterly breeze and how today might be a bit cooler, and she nodded in silent appreciation of my meteorological insights. Finally I grabbed a donut from the daggerlike fin, took a healthy bite, and blurted out, "So where the hell were you-?"

She looked away and said, "Is it going to be that way?"

"Sorry, but I'm not used to falling asleep with company and waking up solo."

"And I'm sorry if I deflated your engorged male ego."

"Look, it's not as if I don't trust you, it's-"

She bolted from the rocker, which pitched forward and back even without her. "Trust me! What right do you have to even think about me in those terms? I don't seek your trust. I don't want your trust. If you have some romantic notions about us, let me disabuse you right now, Jake. You and I have gone bump in the night. You have great vigor in your performance, so you may paste a gold star on your report card. You try hard to please, and if you are a bit rough around the edges-you rub my breasts as if you're waxing your car-you are by no means unique in that regard. You are not an unpleasant fellow most of the time, although your penchant for unprovoked violence prompts me to suggest intensive therapy. As for our relationship, you are involved in a most interesting investigation that furthers my research. When it is completed, I seriously doubt that either of us will desire the other's company. So please, Jake, for your sake, face reality."

I sank into the sofa and brooded. Reality. The medication had worn off and my head throbbed. But not as much as my ego. So far I had been wrong about everyone and everything. I ran through the roster. Alex Rodriguez wooed computer ladies because Nick Fox wanted him to. Nick killed his best friend but not the wife who set him up or the girlfriend who would have destroyed him. Tom Carruthers was a charming guy who dated my secretary and hadn't strangled her yet. Mary Rosedahl didn't fit in anywhere. Gerald Prince was merely a drunk who wanted a comeback on the stage. And Pamela Maxson? She was using me to further her research, and the first night I wasn't up to bedtime games under the paddle fan, she hotfooted it elsewhere.

Or did she? She hadn't said. It shouldn't make any difference, but it did. Okay, so I'm not that enlightened.

"Are you saying you weren't with someone else or that I have no right to ask whether you have been?"

"Jake, must you?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I have found a lover."

And what am I, chopped liver?

"I see," I said softly. A look of martyrdom.

"Really, Jake, you're acting very immature. It is not as if we pledged ourselves to each other."

"So I shouldn't have a sense of loss."

"You can't lose what you don't have."

It made sense to my brain, but the rest of me wasn't listening. My eyes were watery.

"Who is he?" I asked. "Do I know him?"

"Oh, Jake. Don't go looking to be hurt."

She was right. No need to look. The pain would find me soon enough.

Professor Gerald Prince thrust his chin forward, and in his best upper-crust Rex Harrison voice intoned: "The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls, in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another." I hobbled to my customary spot in the back row and wondered if I'd get in trouble for not doing the homework. On the stage a young woman read Eliza Doolittle's lines as they worked their way through the final act.