Carrie returned from showering, wrapped in a towel. She pulled her shower cap off and gave her dark mane a toss. She began to dry herself off, talking to me over her shoulder.
“I thought about coming to the funeral, but I just couldn’t handle it. Did you go?”
“Yeah, I went. I hadn’t known Bobby long, but it was tough. You were dating him when he had the accident, weren’t you?”
“Actually, we’d just broken up. We dated two years and then things went sour. I got pregnant, among other things, and that was the end of it. He paid for the abortion, but we weren’t seeing much of each other by then. I did feel terrible when he got hurt, but I stayed away. I know people thought I was a real cold fish, but what could I do? It was over. I couldn’t see hovering around him loyally just so I’d look good.”
“Did you hear any talk about the accident?” “Just that someone ran him off the road.” “You have any idea who it might have been or why?” She sat down on a bench and hauled a foot up, drying carefully between her toes. “Well, yes and no. Not who really, but I know something was going on with him. He didn’t confide much by then, but he did go with me when I had the abortion and he stayed real close for a couple of days.” She switched feet, bending to inspect her toes. “I worry about athletes foot,” she murmured. “Sorry.”
She tossed the towel aside and got up, crossing to a locker, taking out clothes. She glanced at me. “I’m just trying to say this right because I don’t really have any facts. Just an impression. I remember him saying some friend of his was in trouble and I had the feeling it was blackmail.”
“Blackmail?”
“Well, yes, but not in any ordinary sense. I mean, I don’t think there was money changing hands or anything like that. It wasn’t sinister cloak-and-dagger stuff. Somebody had something on somebody else and it was pretty serious. I gathered he’d been trying to help and he’d just figured out how to do it… .” She pulled on her underpants and then an undershirt. I guess she figured her breasts weren’t big enough to worry with a bra.
“When was this?” I asked. “Do you remember the date?”
“Well, I know I had the abortion on November sixteenth and he stayed with me that night. The accident was the day after that, I think, the night of the seventeenth, so it was all in that same week.”
“I’ve been going through the newspaper starting in September, thinking maybe he was caught up in something public. Did you get any impression of the arena where all this was taking place? I mean, I don’t even know what to look for.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. Really. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t even make a guess.”
“You think Rick Bergen was the friend in trouble?”
“I doubt it. I knew Rick. I think Bobby would have told me if it had been Rick.”
“Somebody at work?”
“Look, I just can’t help you with that,” she said impatiently. “He was being very tight-lipped and I wasn’t in a mood to pry. I was just glad the abortion was over with. I was taking pain-killers anyway so I slept a lot and the rest was a blur. He was just talking for the sake of it, to take my mind off things and maybe a little bit from nerves.”
“Does the name Blackman mean anything to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
She pulled on a pair of sweatpants and slipped her feet into some thongs. She bent at the waist, flipped her hair across one shoulder, and gave it a couple of whacks with a hairbrush, then grabbed up her shoulder bag, moving toward the door. I had to do a quick two-step to catch up with her. I didn’t think she’d finished dressing but I could see now that this was all she intended to wear. Sweatpants and an undershirt? She was going to freeze once she got outside. I scurried after her, catching the door as she passed into the corridor.
“Who else was he hanging out with back then?” I asked, trotting up the stairs to the main entrance with her. “Just give me a couple of names. I gotta have something to go on.”
She paused, glancing back-at me. “Try a kid named Gus. I don’t know his last name, but he works at that skate-rental place down at the beach. He’s an old high-school buddy and I think Bobby trusted him. Maybe he’ll know what its about.”
“What were the other things? You said you got pregnant ‘among other things.’”
Her smile was tense. “God, you are so persistent. He was in love with someone else. I have no idea who, so don’t bother to ask. If I’d known about the other woman I’d have broken off our relationship long before. As it was, I didn’t hear about her until I told him I was pregnant. I thought at first he might marry me, but when he told me he was seriously involved with someone else, I knew what I had to do. To his credit, he did feel terrible about the bind I was in and he did as much as he could. There was nothing cheap about Bobby and he really was a sweet guy at heart.”
She started to move away and I caught her by the arm, thinking rapidly. “Carrie, is there a chance that the friend in trouble and the woman he was involved with were one and the same person?”
“How do I know?”
“I don’t suppose he gave you a little red address book, did he?”
“All he gave me was heartache,” she said and walked off without looking back.
Chapter 15
The skate-rental shack is a dark green box just off a parking lot near the wharf. For three bucks, you can rent roller skates for an hour, with kneepads, elbow pads, and wrist braces thrown in without charge so you won’t sue them later for the harm you might do yourself.
Bobby’s taste in friends was hard to predict. Gus looked like the sort of fellow if you saw on a street corner, you’d reach over casually and make sure your car doors were locked. He must have been Bobby’s age, but he was sunken-chested and frail, and his color was bad. His hair was dark brown and he was struggling to grow a mustache that only made him look like a fugitive. I’d seen mug shots of felons I’d trust before him.
I had introduced myself and ascertained that this was indeed Bobby’s friend, when a blonde with flyaway hair and long tanned legs came up to turn in a pair of skates. I watched their interchange. Despite my first impression, Gus had a nice way about him. His manner was mildly flirtatious and he had a tendency to glance in my direction, showing off, I suspect. I waited, looking on while he calculated how much she owed him. He returned her street shoes and I.D. and she hopped over to a bench to put on her tennies. Gus waited until she was gone before he spoke.
“I saw you at the funeral,” he said shyly when he turned back to me. “You were sitting near Mrs. Callahan.”
“I don’t remember seeing you,” I said. “Did you come to the house afterwards?”
He shook his head, coloring. “I wasn’t feeling too good.”
“I don’t think there’s any way to feel good about that.”
“Not when your buddy dies,” he said. His voice carried a barely perceptible quaver. He turned away, making a big display of shoving the shoe skates back into the proper slot on the shelf.
“Have you been sick?” I asked.
He seemed to debate for just an instant and then said, “I got Crohn’s disease. You know what that is?”
“No.”
“Inflammatory bowel disease. Everything goes right through me. I can’t keep weight on. Run a fever half the time. Stomach hurts. ‘Etiology unknown,’ which means they don’t know what causes it or where it comes from. I’ve had it almost two years and it’s got me down. I can’t keep a real job, so I do this.”
“Is that something you recover from?”
“I guess so. In time. That’s what they say, at any rate.”
“Well, I’m sorry you’re suffering. It sounds grim.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, Bobby cheered me up. He was in such bad shape himself, we’d get laughin’ sometimes. I miss him. When I heard he died, I almost gave up, but then this little voice said, ‘Aw Gus, get up off your dead ass and get on with it… this isn’t the end of the world, so don’t be a jerk.’” He shook his head. “It was Bobby, I swear. Sounded just like him. So I got up off my dead ass. Are you looking into his death?”