‘I doubt the bar is open this late,’ Wesley said to me as brass doors shut and Marino invisibly rose to his floor.
‘I’m quite certain it isn’t.’
We looked around for a moment, as if, if we stood here long enough, someone would magically appear with glasses and a bottle.
‘Let’s go.’ He lightly touched my elbow and we headed upstairs.
On the twelfth floor, he walked me to my room and I was nervous as I tried to insert my plastic card, which at first I held upside down. Then I could not get the magnetized strip in the proper way, and the tiny light on the brass handle stayed red.
‘Here,’ Wesley said.
‘I think I’ve got it.’
‘Could we have a nightcap?’ he asked as I opened my door and turned on a light.
‘At this hour, we’d probably be better off with a sleeping pill.’
‘That’s sort of what a nightcap is.’
My quarters were modest but handsomely appointed, and I dropped my bag on the queen-size bed.
‘Are you a member here because of your father?’ I asked.
Wesley and I had never been to New York together, and it bothered me that there was yet one more detail about him I did not know.
‘He worked in New York. So yes, that’s why. I used to come into the city a lot when I was growing up.’
‘The minibar is under the TV,’ I said.
‘I need the key.’
‘Of course you do.’
Amusement flickered in his eyes as he took the small steel key from my outstretched hand, his fingers touching my palm with a gentleness that reminded me of other times. Wesley had his way, and he was not like anyone else.
‘Should I try to find ice?’ He unscrewed the cap from a two-jigger bottle of Dewar’s.
‘Straight up and neat is fine.’
‘You drink like a man.’ He handed me my glass.
I watched him slip out of his dark wool overcoat and finely tailored jacket. His starched white shirt was wrinkled from the labors of this long day, and he removed his shoulder holster and pistol and placed them on a dresser.
‘It’s strange to be without a gun,’ I said, for I often carried my .38 or, on more nerve-rattling occasions, the Browning High Power. But New York gun laws did not often bend for visiting police or people like me.
Wesley sat on the bed opposite the one I was on, and we sipped our drinks and looked at each other.
‘We haven’t been together much the last few months,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘I think we should try to talk about it,’ I went on.
‘Okay.’ His gaze had not wavered from mine. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I see. So I have to start.’
‘I could start, but you might not like what I would say.’
‘I would like to hear whatever you want to say.’
He said, ‘I’m thinking that it’s Christmas morning and I’m inside your hotel room. Connie is home alone asleep in our bed and unhappy because I’m not there. The kids are unhappy because I’m not there.’
‘I should be in Miami. My mother is very ill,’ I said.
He silently stared off, and I loved the sharp angles and shadows of his face.
‘Lucy is there, and as usual I’m not. Do you have any idea how many holidays with my family I’ve missed?’
‘Yes, I have a very good idea,’ he said.
‘In fact, I’m not sure there has ever been a holiday when my thoughts have not been darkened by some terrible case. So it almost doesn’t matter whether I am with family or alone.’
‘You have to learn to turn it off, Kay.’
‘I’ve learned that as well as it can be learned.’
‘You have to leave it outside the door like stinking crime scene clothes.’
But I could not. A day never went by when a memory wasn’t triggered, when an image didn’t flash. I would see a face bloated by injury and death, a body in bondage. I would see suffering and annihilation in unbearable detail, for nothing was hidden from me. I knew the victims too well. I closed my eyes and saw bare footprints in snow. I saw blood the bright red of Christmas.