Ed Gorman: Cold Blue Midnight

'I need you to come to my office.'

'For what?'

'Strictly business. We're doing a new corporate brochure about ourselves and it probably won't surprise you that I want to be the center of attention.'

As she listened to him, she played with a pair of long scissors with orange rubber-tipped handles. She couldn't remember buying these but maybe they were an old pair she'd forgotten about. Such were the mysterious ways of households.

'Eric, I'm on the other phone. Let me call you back.'

'Ten thousand dollarsthat's the figure to keep in your head. Ten thousand, just for a few hours' work of shooting me in various setups at the office.'

The convent. The aged nuns. Of course! It was as if Eric had read her mind, the bastard.

She certainly couldn't just turn him down.

She'd at least have to think about it…

'How about my office in two hours?' Eric said.

She felt rushed, confused, resentful.

Damn call waiting, anyway.

Then she smiled at herself: that was certainly a mature response to her little dilemma. Blaming call waiting.

'I can't make it at five. Will you be there at seven?'

'Hey, babe, remember me? I'm the original workaholic. Of course I'll be here at seven.'

'All right, I'll see you then.'

She punched back to Kate. 'God, I'm sorry.'

'That's all right. I wanted to read that novel anyway. It was only six hundred pages and I had plenty of time while I was waiting for you.'

'Eric.'

'Eric Brooks?'

'One and the same.'

'That jerk. What'd he want?'

'Ostensibly he wants me to take his photo.'

'He's still trying to get you into bed, isn't he?'

'Maybe he's changed,' Jill said.

'Why can't guys like him be impotent?'

'But he's making it very difficult for me. He's offering me ten thousand dollars to shoot him for his corporate brochure.'

'I'd shoot him for a lot less than that.'

'You know that convent idea I told you about?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Well, for ten thousand dollars I could close the shop down an entire week and really do the convent photos right.'

'Then I guess it'd be worth it.'

'I mean, I've held him off for a long time now. I guess I could hold him off for a few more hours.'

'Just remember to wear that nuclear-powered chastity belt I got you for your last birthday.'

Jill smiled. 'God, Kate, thanks for being my friend. I'd go insane without you, I really would.'

'So you going to call Marcy?'

'Soon as we hang up.'

'That's Browne with an'

'Browne with an "e".'

'Smart-ass.'

'I'd better get back to the darkroom.'

'Let me know how it goes with Marcy.'

'I will. I'll call you tonight.'

They hung up.

Jill went to the darkroom. She needed to do some printing and enlarging of the photos she wanted to show Marcy Browne.

Rick Corday rented a small storage shed near the north side. The area had become so violent that he kept swearing to get a garage someplace else but as yet he hadn't gotten around to it.

Now, as he pulled up to his small shed, one of a hundred such sheds inside the cyclone fencing, he saw the two teenage boys he'd had some trouble with the last time.

One white, one black.

They'd called him a name he hadn't liked at all and he'd given them the finger.

As he'd pulled away, they'd thrown rocks at his car.

Now, getting out of the car, he observed them. They were a hundred yards away, near the entrance, watching him.

This wasn't a good time to harass him.

He was still very angry with Adam. Adam always played so many mind games. He knew Rick was a hypochondriac, for instance, so he was always telling Rick how pale and sick he looked. And when they watched TV talk shows, Adam always said, 'That sounds like you, Rick,' whenever somebody had some real head problemslike the guy that killed his mother and then skinned her and wore her around the house all day. And Rick, who was very insecure, always bought in. He was just too suggestiblebelieving virtually everything Adam told him.

Adam.

The bastard would never be faithful: never. Wouldn't even make the attempt.

Rick took his keys from his pocket, unlocked the shed, walked in and looked around. He heard the distant barking of angry dogs.

Rick was an orderly guy. Boxes were stacked neatly on either side of the small shed. He needed the one containing his winter boots and parka and windshield scraperall the accoutrements to get through a Midwestern winter.

He took down the box. Hidden behind it was a small suitcase; a quarter of a million dollars was in it. He picked up the box. Then he went outside and locked the shed and turned around and looked at the two teenagers standing there.

One white, one black.

'You gave us the finger the other day,' the black one said.

'Oh, yeah?'

Rick just went on about his business, saying nothing more.

He opened the car door and slid the box in on the backseat.

And that's when the white one made his move.

Put his hand on Rick's shoulder. Tried to spin him around.

Rick brought his knee up and hit the boy square in the groin.

He pushed the boy over backwards.

All the kid could do was hold his crotch and roll around on the ground.

'Hey, man, you can't do that,' the black one protested.

Rick pushed his angry face up against the kid's face. 'Oh, yeah? Who's gonna stop me?'

The black kid kind of shrunk in on himself.

Rick got in the car and drove away.

The white one was still rolling around on the ground, clutching himself.

Before the death of her first son, Evelyn Daye Tappley had generally been liked by her servants. She'd never been an especially warm woman but she was fair and tolerant, and always remembered birthdays and always tried to be accommodating when a maid or cook had family matters to attend to, and she was certainly liberal in the salaries she paid.

But this was many years ago, and in a mansion on the other side of Chicago.

Her husband Clark had died tragically in a car accident sixteen months following the death of young David. The police and family friends alike found the accident suspicious. Clark had been a virtual teetotaler, but on this night his alcohol content measured far in excess of the legal limit. 3He'd been alone, driving a familiar stretch of road, when his car left the highway and slammed into a tree at an approximate 75 mph. The coroner ruled the death accidental.

Three days after his death, in the Madison Street building from which he oversaw the family railroad dynasty (thank God his grandfather had decided to haul freight instead of humans), Evelyn found a letter in the middle drawer of the large oak desk she had given him the day he assumed the presidency of the corporation. Nothing in the note surprised her. In the past year, Clark had been subject to insomnia, depression, frequent impotence, frightening rages and curious lapses of memory. And crying jags. She had never seen a man cry so long or so hard. She comforted him when she could but he was beyond comfort. Their minister said it simply: 'He doesn't seem to be able to get over David's death.' And it was that simple. And that profound.

Margaret Connally was let go, of course. While Clark didn't blame her for David's death, he still couldn't bear to look at her because all he saw was David in his playpen and the timber rattler striking. The two other children had been Evelyn's idea. She was pregnant with Doris when Clark took his life. As for the note itself, it read:

Dear Evelyn,

I couldn't have asked for a dearer wife or better mother of my children. Please understand that I can no longer bear up under my pain.

I'm hoping that all those Sunday school stories of my youth are true, that I will soon be reunited with my little boy David once again. Please destroy this note and don't share its contents with anyone. I don't want the lives of Peter and our new baby ruined before they get started. With all my love, darling,