Puzzles always made Fiona appear distant. Her unconscious became heavily involved. She had developed this characteristic early, and it had a profound effect on her relationships with other people, especially men.
"Fiona's daydreaming again."
It was her mother's favorite rebuke. Her father, as always, was kinder.
"She's a deep one, that one," he would say. There was a broguish lilt to the way he said it, despite the fact that he was born in Brooklyn and would eventually become, according to his many sycophants, the Senator from the "Great State of New York."
Grampa Fitzgerald had brought the brogue all the way from Limerick and died crying it on his lips, gunned down in Bedford Stuyvesant, three weeks from NYPD retirement. Perhaps, she had wondered, the cop life was in the blood, although her upbringing and education in the heady precincts of privileged Washington represented to all those in her circle consider this occupational choice an aberration.
She was five years old at the wake, but the memory still prompted total recall more than a quarter of a century later. Big red veiny faces. Swollen bloodshot eyes. Moving shadows in the dimly lit living room where old Fitz was laid out, rouged and smiling, as if he had confronted his killer, daring him to ship him off to Gaelic heaven.
To her father her choice of profession was not, of course, a woman's place, and he had ranted and raved over such effrontery to the male imperative-until the day he saw her in uniform, and then, perhaps remembering old Fitz and others among relatives and friends that had served in that capacity he collapsed in tears of pride.
By then he had passed, bitter in his last days, having been defeated in a last hurrah campaign burnished by a tinge of corruption and leaving her mother helpless, which hastened her demise, An orphaned only child, Fiona did have the comfort of old friends who were among the Washington elite and her non-concentric social circles encompassed both the Washington elite as well as the blue collar world of her colleagues.
As she carried her two suitcases up the walk to Bruce's Georgetown townhouse, she felt an odd tug of guilt and insecurity. In her mid-thirties, permanent relationships with men had alluded her. Bruce's smiling presence, buttressed her resolve.
"I left the light burning in the window," he said, opening the door before she could insert the key.
"You shouldn't have." She let him embrace her, annoyed by her own gaminess after a long sweaty day's work. "I smell awful."
"Au naturel," he said. He smelled beautiful, like a bar of lime soap. He was wearing a velour robe, which he drew slightly open to show his eagerness.
"I've got a headache," she giggled, making no move. She felt his surety, his comfort. He kissed her hair. He could wait.
He released her to bring her suitcases in and carry them up the stairs of the three-story house. His ex-wife had decorated the house with charcoal gray carpets and red throwaways. She had arranged it around their collection of Chinese "Bloods," antique sixteenth-century vases. Although his wife had taken most of the antiques, she had left him three or four, which had tripled in value since their divorce settlement three years earlier.
He hadn't done much with the house since, and the divorce had put a dent in his bank account. It was, he told Fiona, a ransom just to have the kids half-time. Also, it foreclosed on a nasty divorce proceeding that could have affected his political career. From the moment she met him she understood that as a "given."
Soaking in the hot tub, Fiona felt her body soften. It was her ritual to have a long soak after the day's grimy work. It was as if she were washing away the film of human filth that daily clung to her.
In her work she floated in a sewer of human degradation, a scum of horrors, aberrations, cruelties. She was always fighting a battle with herself to maintain professional indifference, the same standard of a surgeon operating on a cancer, leaving the emotions to others. But sometimes the tide of human horror flowed through all too vulnerable chinks of her being. A sexual mutilation, a child ripped apart solely for gratification-you never were too hard-boiled for that. Sometimes the utter madness of crime crashed through the ramparts of her defenses. When she faltered, she would pray it was not because she was a woman. Compassion was the enemy of homicide cops.
Yet there was something bizarre, something oddly clean about murder by gunshot, like killings in a cowboy flick. Pain without tears. As she lay in the tub, she felt the distance growing between her and that day's murder. Her eyes were closed and she did not notice Bruce until he stood above her, holding a drink.
"Pour that in your snout," he said, clinking the ice in the glass. She took the glass and held it against her face, feeling the cold. She sipped, watching him, the aesthetic aquiline nose, the full lips and strong cleft chin. Above his high forehead the bed of steel-gray curls began in endless ripples, tight but soft.
In his flecked hazel eyes she saw the intensity of his own drama, predatory when it came to political ambition, a trifle too shrewd at times, frightening when he was on the attack. She preferred looking into them on the threshold of pleasure.
He was so well made and he made her feel so good. Yet, in many ways, they were opposites. She was light, thin-skinned, with veiny networks under her patina of freckles. Her hair burned auburn in the right light and her pubic bush was carroty and, she thought, unfetching. She loved the lush black jungle mysteries of him.
In any light her eyes were Kelly green. They carried their own inner lamps, he once told her. She had a good straight Gaelic nose, unfleshy, with nostrils that quivered when she restrained anger. Her anger was a beast on a leash, she knew, and she could let it out when her turf was invaded. She could also slip into deep brooding dark moods.
"The boys downtown should see you now," he said, soaping her breasts. She reached out for him.
"And you your constituents." She kissed him there. "Good old Johnson."
"What?"
"Police nomenclature." She laughed. "You'd get every lady's vote."
"I'm going to need them in November." She caught a tremor of anxiety.
He helped her out of the tub and toweled her off like a baby, adding light oil and sliding his palms over her skin.
"God, it's good to feel like a woman again," she whispered. He hitched her to him and carried her to bed. She was surprised at the fury of her pleasure after such an exhausting day. When it had subsided and his soft breathing found its sleeping rhythm, she lay beside him, energized, unable to sleep. In that state the puzzles always surfaced, like a submarine emerging from the deep.
She had carried away from the crime scene a half-made image, a negative aborted in mid-development. Later, she had watched Dr. Barton do the autopsy, and had seen the killer bullet extracted. They had a corpus delicti with a history. He was a painter, frustrated by failure, a common ailment, who taught art history to teenagers and haunted museums, presumably searching for the missing link to his own talent.
"Who would kill Joseph?" the victim's wife had gasped. Surely not her. She was bogged down by three young children, overworked, and her husband's perpetually lit fuse of unfulfilled artistic ambition.
Fiona would have to go up to Hagerstown and ferret out more details. Poor Teddy. He'd have to go as well, courting Gladys's wrath and jealousy. Fiona always went out of her way to make Gladys feel secure, but nothing helped. It was simply an occupational hazard.
"She thinks that women get into police work so they can get laid a lot," Teddy had confessed. "Even though she likes you."
Can't be helped, she had decided. It hadn't been her motivation. Policemen hardly made a dent in her libido. For that reason she tried to neuter herself, not an easy task in a sea of men who played with guns and their precious Johnsons. The uniforms, the camaraderie, the occasional brutality were all a man's game. That, she knew, made homicide all the more challenging.
Whatever the motive, it was an unlikely setting for a killing. The National Gallery of Art! And why in that specific spot under Childe Hassam's painting? She made a mental note to check out Hassam. And the crime lab reports would tell them a great deal. When she grew drowsy, she fitted herself against Bruce's body, two embryos, and let her mind idle. Soon she was asleep.
His hands wakened her, their movements sensual and probing, lifting her out of the mud of unconsciousness. At first her sense of place was confused, but soon a warm wave of pleasure overtook her, and she yielded to its power.
"I love this woman," he whispered as his lips smoothly glided over her body. No one should be allowed such joy, she told herself, with a nod at the old Catholic guilt. It had long lost the power to inhibit her. She threw herself into the sexual dance with fierce joy, hearing the echo of her cries of pleasure in the cool room.
"A regular screamer," he laughed, biting her earlobe. She felt her heart pounding against the hand on her breast. "And very much alive."
"Maybe it's compensation for all that death around me," she said, and instantly regretted saying it. "Sorry. I'm getting too analytical."
A buzzing began, and Bruce reached over and pressed the clock button, which threw a time reading on the ceiling. It was after nine.
"I forgot to shut it off," he murmured. He embraced her again. "A whole weekend," he sighed.
"Not all of it, I'm afraid." She realized that she had blurted it out too soon. It struck right at the heart of their major point of contention… their time together.
"You're getting to be an Indian giver," he said, releasing her.
"You can't schedule a killing," she said.
"After the weekend, I'm going to be hounded until November. I've got a race on my hands. A Hispanic lady with a Harvard law degree, who talks street talk. Her name is Rodriguez. Her brother is married to a Rosenbaum. And she has a voice like Lauren Bacall."
"And her looks?"
"Disgustingly attractive."
"You're just running scared."
"Scared?" He got up and opened the blinds, squinting into the sun. "I'm petrified. I need this win. Otherwise, I don't have a shot at the Senate seat."
"Doesn't a dozen years count?" she asked.
"They count for change. The district's gone to seed."
She could see the fine glaze of his long slender body, the hairs swathed in the glow of bright light. His manhood was still engorged. She patted it.
"You'll make it. Eight the hard way."
"In craps, it's not an easy roll to make, Fi. I just got the poll yesterday. Only twenty percent even know who I am. I've been their congressman for seven terms and only twenty percent know who I am. Can you believe it? That's not merely a disaster. It's a catastrophe."
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going," she mumbled foolishly.
"You're trivializing it."
He went into the bathroom and she heard the steady gush of the shower. She started to brood, then picked up the phone and called a man at headquarters.
"Odd as hell," Jim Hadley said in his Baltimore twang. He was one of the examiners in the Firearms Examination section. "A forty-four. From the lands and grooves it could be either an English Bulldog or a Wembley. It's the ammo that bugs me. Ancient. Like maybe a hundred years."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing probably. Anyway, that's your job to find out."
She hung up, then dialed Flannagan, whose cheery "Yo" defied his gruesome task.
"Prints?"
"An army."
As she listened to other details, Bruce came out and without looking at her left the bedroom. When she finished with Flannagan, she called Teddy at home. Gladys answered, her voice distant and angry.
"I'm sorry," Fiona said.
"Speak to my kids," Gladys snapped. Teddy was on the extension and shouted for his wife to get off the line.
"It's on page one," he growled. "And there's a picture of the Eggplant. The mayor is very defensive. And the Board of Trade is raising hell. We're all on the griddle. Got to find the bastard."
"They want things safe in their Disneyland," she murmured. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't cancel the weekend. "He'll want something every day now."
"He just got off the phone with me. I got a pep talk and he's authorized overtime."
"The Eggplant? What makes him so generous?"
Bruce came in wearing a short striped robe, his curly hair glistening. He put a cup of coffee on the bedside table and threw the Post on the bed. She picked up the paper and read the headline: "MURDER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY."
"It'll sell papers," she told Teddy. "Pick me up in an hour. I'm at Bruce's." She hung up and jumped out of bed.
"Sorry I blew up," Bruce said. "I got greedy."
"I like you greedy," she said, cuddling him.
"Previous experience gets me edgy. My ex-wife's career became her everything."
"No comparisons, please." She felt the brief panic. It was bad enough being secretly, sometimes vociferously, jealous. It's a dead ember, he had protested.
"It's my morning for apologies. I wanted us to start out on a perfect note."
"It did," she said, caressing him.
"At least arrange it so you can be with me to see the fireworks at Remington's. From his place you get a clear view."
"Been there done that. I like the fireworks from here," she said, insinuating her hand under his robe.
"It's an annual thing. Everybody is coming."
"Everybody?" She knew he loved surprises like this. "I'll settle for just us coming." It was the kind of double entendre they both loved.
But suppose he does lose his seat in Congress, a voice inside her speculated. It didn't wait for an answer.
