EBOLOWA 4

4

 

Tuesday April 2 1974: Chicago

     Candace knew that men like Bill H. Holden Jnr had only one thing in mind when they said they needed to talk, especially when the talking was scheduled for the Departures lounge at O’Hare with a bottle of cheap Italian fizz for company.  All she cared about was getting in first.  She found the bar, picked him out and crossed the room before he spotted her.  She stopped him getting up with a hand raised like a traffic cop, no physical contact thank you, and sat down.  She could see that he was all set to break it to her gently, his hand ready to reach out and his eyes all dewy as if the situation was hard for him too.  Laughable.

     “It’s perfectly all right Bill,” she said in the crisp tone reserved for malingerers at the clinic, “I want out of this mess much more than you do.”

     She’d initially thought of standing him up but in the end decided to come conspicuously over dressed with heels and flashy make-up to make sure he knew what he was missing.  The jarring difference between how she looked and how she sounded took the wind out of his sails and he gaped, his plan in ruins.

     “Really - - ”

     “Yes really,” she said swiftly, “so no rationalizations necessary.  I’ve got too many of my own.”

     She couldn’t even summon some cliché about it being fun while it lasted because it hadn’t been, but most of all she dreaded him saying it’d been complicated.  It wasn’t, it was dead simple, but the word had taken on a whole new charge since she’d found Annie’s card.  Like Harry Kaplan said so bluntly, it meant somebody else’s husband - - infidelity, lies, and betrayal.  She couldn’t imagine Annie being any more comfortable playing “the other woman” than she had been, although it was also true that neither of them was immune to the frisson of forbidden fruit.  She didn’t think anybody was, unless they were locked away in a convent.  She’d even felt it with the sorry instance of masculinity across the table, although she could easily see him scuttling home to his wife.

     “Well, Candy - - “

     “Don’t call me that,” she hissed stifling an urge to knock the glass out of his hand.  “I told you before.” 

     “Sure, sure, sorry - - “

     “Just don’t do it.”  It made her want to pin him to a specimen board like a moth.

     “I won’t.”

     He wasn’t going to get another chance. 

     She studied him anew, taking in the middle-aged spread she’d once seen as robust and the come-hither macho look that was no better than a barroom leer, and marvelled at her poor judgement.  It had all been so damned corny, meeting in a bar and already the worse for wear.  Mom had died a few weeks before and she’d been suffering from a toxic mix of grief and guilt.  She’d had to deal with Dad and Marie Claire too - - whoever said funerals rounded things off?  And that particular night she’d put off sorting through the house.  The attic and Annie’s trunk had been preying on her mind and one drink in the company of a stranger seemed harmless enough.  She’d told herself she was entitled to a break and hadn’t planned on going to bed with him.  She couldn’t remember it when she had and the rest followed like a bad script.  It didn’t deserve to be called an affair.   

     My God.   Enough already. 

     “Right, I’m out of here,” she said pushing the fizz across the table.  “Celebrate on your own.” 

     He struggled to his feet and she eyed his waistline.

     “And by the way Bill, a word of professional advice: get your wife to put you on a diet or she’s going to lose you.”

     He gaped some more and she put a hand on her chest and said “from a coronary, not to another woman”.  With that she turned on her heel and headed for the El.  Swarms of people were going the same way and it felt as if she was floating on a tide of humanity - - and in the same direction for a change.  She was light-headed, relieved, liberated, but also pricked by a bad conscience: he’d been such easy meat and she’d enjoyed making him squirm.  Had he deserved it?  Probably, but it still felt a tad gratuitous. 

     But the more she thought about it the more she figured Annie would’ve trashed him and not given it a second thought.  Annie had been the ruthless one, Mom had always said so - - which was the other reason for Candace feeling better than she had for years - - she’d finally made up her mind to confront the past.  She’d talked to Hélène long distance and they’d decided she should hire a private detective.  There had been a SOMEONE in Annie’s life and it was time to find out who it was.

     It was amazing what a decision could do to your morale and weird how coincidences happened.  Standing on the platform ahead of her was none other than that same private detective, Harry Kaplan, wearing a very handsome flying jacket with the fur collar turned up.  She nearly called out his name and virtually skipped over to him.

     “Dr Fayol,” he said, turning and clearly taken aback, “what are you doing here?”

     Her mind went blank for a second. “Seeing off my aunt.  She lives in Montreal.”  She groaned inside: the man was a private detective and used to seeing through lies.  “Sort of an aunt anyway, she shuttles between Montreal and Paris.  Rags to riches, literally, she’s in the lingerie business.  Anyhow please call me Candace.  Dr Fayol sounds like you’re my patient when actually it’s the other way round.  That’s a great jacket by the way.”  

         “Memento from Long Island.”

     “Sal told me you’d been.  I called the office this morning.”

     “Anything she couldn’t handle?”

     “No.  I was just touching base.”

         “She’s booked me on a flight to Cameroon tomorrow via Manchester.  I’ve got to get the tickets from her tonight.”  He glanced at his watch.

         “You don’t hang about.”

         “It’s your money - - ”

         “You don’t have to rush for that.”

         “I’m not.  It’s just the way the case is going.”  

         Why did she feel let down?  She’d only just hired him and somehow she’d imagined them breaking the ground together.  She still had some of Annie’s stuff to go through.  “Who’s in Manchester?”

    “Ronald Uttley: the guy fooling around under the net of bananas.”

    She nodded.  “So the Ice Maiden was useful, was she, Eleanor What’s-her-name?”

    “Eileen O’Connell.  Yeah, she gave me some contacts and a couple of possible candidates: the suave black guy at the café, and the thickset man on the riverbank.”  He took two photos out of his pocket.  “These guys.”

    “I remember them - - ” She nodded: they had caught her eye, guys oozing macho self-confidence.  “What’s O’Connell like?”

    “No ice on show, charm itself.”

    “Really?”  She frowned: women normally gave Dad their best smile.  “I’m surprised.”

    “She strikes me as a woman of many parts.”

    “A fake you mean?”

    A train was coming up the tracks and he suddenly took her by the elbow. “There’s a bar down here,” he said looking at her closely.  “We can’t talk on the El.”

    “Is there something wrong?”

    “I don’t know yet.” 

    He eased her through the crowd into a bar, an ersatz western saloon with double doors, polished wood, stuffed bison heads and wagon wheels.  The girls behind the bar were wearing suede leather skirts and vests with fringes.  Sounded like Patsy Kline on the jukebox, all broken hearts and deserted women, and the sort of place she’d normally avoid like the plague.

    “Sorry to drag you in here,” he said as if he’d picked up her vibe, “but we need to talk.”

    “Fine.”  It was an unfortunate phrase but how was he to know?  She headed for an empty booth and smoothed her skirt as she sat down.

    “Drink?” 

    “I get the feeling it’s time for something strong.”  She smiled.  “On expenses of course.  Bourbon, on the rocks.” 

    She watched him cross the room.  Damn: Bourbon, the family poison - - what was she thinking?  She was jumpy: was it him or what he’d found out?  Either way she was glad she’d dressed up; Bill had his uses after all.  She stole a quick look in her make-up mirror and then studied the Frederick Remington print pasted onto the booth wall.  The Fifth cavalry was arriving in the nick of time to save a plucky family of homesteaders from a circling pack of heathen Sioux and she half expected there to be some blond damsel tied to a stake.  

    It was exasperating: what chance had the future got when the past was doled out like this?  Guys like Remington, Hollywood and TV, were all wielding the grievous power of image to the wrong effect, no better than propaganda.  She knew that line about all art being propaganda, but there had to be differences.

    She looked up as Harry came back from the bar. 

    “Here we go,” he said putting down a tray with two glasses and a bowl of peanuts in front of her. 

    “Thanks.”  The glass was cold and heavy, the bourbon matching the colour of the pine table.

    “Good health,” he said and clinked her glass.

    “Well?”

    “I’m sorry, but I didn’t expect to run into you like this.”

    “Nor did I.”

    “Maybe it’s all for the good.  I was going to call but it’s better to talk face to face.“

    “What is?”  She tried to quell a nervous flutter and watched him gather his thoughts in what Mom used to call a pregnant pause.  She knew it wasn’t fair but somehow it’d always sounded like a jibe about her not giving her mother grandchildren.   

    “Well for a start,’ he was saying, “like I said, there’s a lot more to Eileen O’Connell than meets the eye.”  He paused and swilled his drink round.  “She didn’t hide the fact that she and Annie didn’t hit it off.”

    “Annie didn’t hit it off with a lot of women.  She was too busy making it in a man’s world and they didn’t like it.  They either felt guilty for not being the same or resentful and things haven’t changed that much I can tell you.”

    He paused and nodded as if he understood.  “I think Eileen O’Connell would agree with you.  Somewhere else they might’ve got on but Douala was too small a pool for them both.”

    “Annie didn’t give way to anybody.  She was tough and liked to get her own way.”

    “O’Connell thought she was reckless.”

    “She was doing a risky job - - “

    “Right, but you said she used her looks to get stories and that she was with the guy the night she died - - ”

    “I told you she wouldn’t have gone skinny dipping on her own.”

    “Right, that’s my point.  Going with a guy she’d only just met seems reckless.”

    She felt cornered and the flutter in her stomach got close to panic.  “What are you saying?”

    “Nothing yet.”  He drained his glass.  “It usually happens in a new case.  The assumptions get thrown in the air.”

    “What assumptions?” 

    “About who was there and what happened.  Eileen O’Connell was adamant Annie was on her own, even though there was a lot of gossip about her and those two guys.  She figured they had a rendezvous but he never made it.”

    “Well, I think he did.”

    He nodded.  “That’s why I’m keeping an open mind about how she died.”

    Now panic gripped her.  “You mean it wasn’t an accident.” 

    A dam burst and the words leapt out at her as if they’d been waiting for the chance.  Somebody killed her.  She’d always suspected as much but had only managed to utter the words out loud over her mother’s open coffin in the chapel of rest, muted like the whisper of dry leaves, but now they were deafening as if she was trapped in a bell tower. 

    “It’s possible,” he said.

    She took a swig and the bourbon burned her throat and hit her stomach and radiated in every direction.  A thought raced through her mind: she’d been waiting for this for years without the slightest idea where it would come from.   Now she knew.  “How?” she asked.  “I mean, if she’d been skinny dipping.”

    He didn’t have to say anything. The slightest movement of his head was enough to fill her mind with a kaleidoscope of horror.

    “I’m sorry I have to raise the possibility.”

    “It’s not your fault - - ”

    Fault: the word caught in her throat.  It was somebody’s - - blood pounded in her ears, waves crashing on a shore, and somebody tearing at a skirt and a scream ripped through the night.  Annie: a hand reached up before disappearing below the surface. 

    “It’s only one scenario,” he said, finishing his drink, “I need to get out there and stir up the past.” 

    “It’s better knowing,” she said in shock.  “A whole lot better.” 

    But she didn’t know what she was saying: it wasn’t a whole lot better.  The pictures in her head wouldn’t leave her alone.  She looked up, her head swimming: he was shaking her hand and saying something about getting in touch as soon as he knew anything definite.

    “You’ve got to find him,” she said gripping his arm.  “It’s the only way.”