John Goldbach - The Devil and the Detective

‘I had a relationship,’ she said. ‘But not anymore. We stopped seeing each other a while ago. He was the one Gerald cut off, so to speak, the one who traded on his name.’

‘When did you stop seeing each other? Why?’

‘After Gerald cut him off,’ she said. ‘He became desperate and Gerald knew about us, though he didn’t say anything, that was his style, but instead worked at ruining Adam’s life, little by little, he picked away at it. He never trusted Adam in the first place but my affair with him just confirmed his suspicions. It was a mistake.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Getting involved with one of his associates?’

‘Yes, that, but Adam specifically; if I hadn’t’ve gotten involved with him, Gerald wouldn’t’ve destroyed him financially, and Adam wouldn’t’ve killed himself.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘When I realized that Gerald was making things difficult for him, I stopped seeing him, hoping that’d calm Gerald down. It didn’t, though. Gerald just sped up his plan to destroy Adam. He made sure no one would do business with him and he found ways of reclaiming what belonged to Adam. Adam kept trying to contact me but I wouldn’t answer his calls or his emails or letters. It was too much for me. I didn’t realize how desperate he actually was. I was sad and thought he was just suffering like me and that we couldn’t help each other while we suffered and so on. I just thought that it’d be healthier for him not to hear from me, but that wasn’t the case. About a month after we last spoke, he walked down to the harbour late at night and drank a bottle of whisky, then walked out onto the frozen river and jumped in where there was a large crack in the ice. He left me a letter, though I didn’t get to read it. Gerald intercepted it and burned it in our fireplace. He burned it in front of me and told me it was an irrelevant letter from an irrelevant ex-colleague of his. I knew it was from Adam, of course, but didn’t argue with him. I didn’t question him. From that day forth, however, things between us were never the same.’

‘But weren’t they bad already? Wasn’t that the reason you had an affair in the first place?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Then why did you cheat on him?’

‘Because there was something about Adam that was different from Gerald, it was different and exciting, and I loved him for that, for being different and exciting, for treating me differently, for not always keeping me at arm’s length.’

‘Did you want revenge for Adam’s death?’

‘Yes,’ said Elaine, ‘but I didn’t want Gerald to die. I don’t think he knew how desperate Adam really was. I don’t think he thought Adam would kill himself. It wasn’t his fault.’ She paused, drained her wineglass, then said, ‘If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.’

I didn’t argue with her or say anything, hoping that she’d say more, though instead she stopped talking and poured another glass of wine. I helped her clear the table and put the leftovers in the fridge.

‘Do you want vodka?’ she said.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Would you like a martini or straight from shot glasses?’

‘Shots are fine.’

She poured two and said, ‘ Santé, ’ and I said, ‘ Na zdorovye, ’ and we clinked the small glasses and drank back the freezing-cold vodka. She looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

‘One more,’ she said, and I agreed.

It was getting late and we were drinking vodka so that maybe we’d sleep. We talked a bit, though about nothing of note. We smiled at each other and then drank another shot. After three, I put the bottle back in the freezer and poured us both large glasses of ice water. My hands were cold from the cold vodka bottle and the ice cubes. I went to give Elaine her water but instead I put it down on the counter and took her face in my cold hands and kissed her. She kissed back, so I kept kissing.

After a minute, she stopped and said, ‘Let’s go up to bed.’ I nodded and followed her up the staircase; for the first time I was upstairs, but I was distracted. The room was large, the sheets dark, and that was all I noted.

‘Your chest is hairy,’ she said, nuzzled up against me, her hand on my chest and her head on my shoulder. My eyes were closed as we lay in bed, still dazed — I was not yet ready to consider the implications of sleeping with my client, a client whose husband had been murdered approximately twenty-four hours prior to my sleeping with his widow. Elaine, too, seemed to possess a sort of post-coital obliviousness, for she seemed softer, warmer in general, and very trusting, I thought, more trusting than before.

‘You don’t like hairy chests?’

‘No, I like them. It’s comforting,’ she said. ‘When I was younger I never thought I’d like hair on men but now I do.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. In my early teens I liked effeminate men, or at least hairless ones, but eventually that changed.’

‘So you liked the kinds of guys who’d be in boy bands?’

‘Exactly,’ she said.

‘Newts.’

‘Right.’

‘And now you like the Magnum PI types.’

‘Not exactly,’ she said, laughing, and I said, ‘Good. I don’t like those types, either. I don’t even drive.’

Elaine then asked me about girlfriends, that is to say, if I had a girlfriend. Not anymore, I told her, the same response I’d given the night before. She asked me when we broke up. I told her we broke up about eight months ago or so, though I wasn’t sure. She asked me what happened and I told her that when we first met there was a series of misunderstandings, resulting from her blindness, that led her to believe I was a millionaire, and that at first things were blissful, like they’d never been before with anyone else, for either of us, ever in our lives, but then eventually, after our initial courtship, a surgeon claimed that he could cure blindness, or at least the type that she suffered, and he was performing free operations, so she contacted the surgeon and got the surgery, and then when she discovered that I’m not the man she’d imagined me to be, that I’m not the millionaire she’d imagined me to be, we both realized that things would never work out for us and that a life together would be impossible. ‘It was sad,’ I said, ‘for both of us.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘So what really happened?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and must’ve sounded sincere, for she let me leave it at that. ‘There were girls before her, though.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How many?’

‘Girls have I slept with or had serious relationships with?’

‘Had serious relationships with.’

‘Not that many, though they seem to get more serious each time,’ I said, ‘but I suppose that’s how it goes.’

‘For a while,’ she said.

And we left the conversation at that. We were silent for a long time, though not sleeping, just lying in bed, in each other’s arms, without talking, thinking, perhaps, though it was hard to be sure. For a while, I wasn’t thinking, but then I began thinking about Gerald Andrews again and wondering if his killer was in my arms, though I didn’t really believe Elaine was the killer, or at least I didn’t want to believe that she could possibly do such a gruesome thing to someone she loved, or at least once loved, according to what she’d said. Could I ever kill someone that I once loved? I wondered. Of course, at times, I’ve thought that it’d be easier if someone I once loved were dead, rather than separated from me, but those kinds of thoughts are fleeting, at least in my experience, like all thoughts, though some turn into action. It’s sick what some people do to leave their mark on an indifferent universe. No, I thought, I can’t dismiss the possibility that Elaine killed Gerald — or had him killed — to avenge Adam’s death. We become cold and hard when we’re let down or angered, I thought, and we often lash out at those who we feel duped us. Elaine hadn’t spoken in a while, though her eyes were open and unmoving, save the odd blink. We stared into each other’s eyes as if into space. Then she opened her bedside drawer, produced a bottle of 222s, swallowed at least three, without any water, and again closed her eyes.