CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Bud woke up at the Victory. Dusk out the window–he’d slept through half a night and a day. He rubbed his eyes; Spade Cooley locked right back on him. He smelled cigarette smoke, saw Dudley sitting by the door.
“Bad dreams, lad? You were thrashing a bit.”
Nightmare: Inez trashed by the press, his fault–what he did to nail Exley.
“Lad, in repose you reminded me of my daughters. And you know I care for you no less.”
He’d sweated the sheets through. “What’s with the job? What’s next?”
“Next you listen. I’ve long been involved in containing hard crime so that myself and a few colleagues might someday enjoy a profit dispensation, and that day will soon be arriving. As a colleague, you will share handsomely. Grand means will be in our hands, lad. Imagine the means to keep the nigger filth sedated and extrapolate from there. One obstreperous Italian you’ve dealt with in the past is involved, and I think you can be particularly useful in keeping him in line.”
Bud stretched, cracked his knuckles. “I meant the reopening. Talk straight, okay?”
“Edmund Jennings Exley is as straight as I can be. He’s trying to prove bad things against Lynn, lad. Salt on all the old wounds he’s given you.”
Live wires buzzing. “You knew about us. I should’ve known.”
“There is precious little I don’t know, and nothing I would not do for you. Coward Exley has touched the only two women you’ve loved, lad. Think of grand ways to hurt him.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
They made love straight off– Ed knew they’d have to talk if they didn’t, Lynn seemed to sense the same thing. The cabin was musty, the bed unmade–stale from last time with Inez. Ed kept the lights on: the more he saw, the less he’d think. It helped him through the act; counting Lynn’s freckles kept him from peaking. Slow on the act, both of them, making up for their tumble off the couch. Lynn had bruises; Ed knew they came from Bud White. For a tightrope act they were gentle; their long embrace after felt like payback for their lies. When they started talking they’d never stop. Ed wondered who’d say “Bud White” first.
Lynn said it. Bud was the fulcrum that convinced her to lie to Patchett: the police investigation was a joke, they were grasping at straws. White knew of Patchett’s milder doings, she was afraid he’d get in trouble if Pierce fought back. Pierce might try to buy his friendship, he thought everyone had a price tag, he didn’t know her Wendell couldn’t be bought. Bud got her thinking; the more she thought the more she hurt; a certain police captain kissing a certain ex-whore at the only moment she would have let him just added to the party’s over, Pierce made me but he’s bad deep down, if I let him go then maybe I’ll get back some of the good things he’s killed in me. Ed winced through the words, knew he couldn’t return her candor–now Jack Vincennes was going in barefoot, he’d counted on Lynn to push Patchett to panic, past Fisk taking a fire axe to the drop, past his people grilled and arrested. Lynn met his silence with words–excerpts from her diary, a show-and-tell for fugitive lovers her pronouncement. Funny, sad–old tricks derided, a monologue on carhop hookers that almost had him laughing. Lynn on Inez and Bud White–he loved her here and there and mostly at a distance because her rage was worse than his, drained him, a night here and there was all he could take. No jealousy–so his own jealousy jumped up, almost forced him to shout questions: heroin and extortion, astounding audacious perversion, just how much do you know? The gift she gave him wouldn’t let him; soft hands on his chest made him throw out a parity in candor before he started interrogating or lying just to have something to say.
He went straight to his family, spiraled past to present. Mama’s boy Eddie, golden boy Thomas, the jig he danced when his brother stopped six bullets. Being a policeman/patrician from a long line of Scotland Yard detectives. Inez, four men killed out of weakness; Dudley Smith going crazy to find a suitable scapegoat that Ellis Loew and Chief Parker just might accept as a panacea. A headlong rush to the great Preston Exley in all his intractable glory and how ink-embossed pornography lined to a dead scandalmonger, vivisected children and his father and Raymond Dieterling twenty-four years ago. A rush until there was nothing left to say and Lynn kissed his lips shut and he fell asleep touching her bruises.