Текст книги "Beach Strip"

Автор книги: John Lawrence Reynolds

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

19.

The lane along the beach extends five miles beyond the canal. I have walked its length. I walked it after Dougal Dalgetty’s widow left with her arms folded and her head down. I had walked it with Gabe on autumn days very much like this one when we talked about books and music and people we passed on the way. And I had walked it when Gabe was away for a few days testifying in Montreal and something happened.

Gabe and I had argued before he left. I love Montreal and wanted to go with him. He would be gone almost a week. I could go shopping or just stroll through Côte-des-Neiges while he waited to testify. Gabe said no. He was being paid to be there and it was work. He would take me at our expense some other time. I accused him of wanting to chase women while he was there. Wasn’t that what men did, alone in Montreal? Wasn’t it that kind of city?

The accusation made him angry, as angry as I have ever seen him, and he left in that mood, calming down a little when he called from the airport, but I was still furious and screamed at him before hanging up.

The next night, he called from Montreal and we had another argument. I drank some Teacher’s, sitting alone, and Mel arrived, and that’s when I said fuck it, or fuck him, who cares? I used the Scotch as an excuse, as a crutch, as whatever name you care to hang on it.

This is how it started. Mel and I sat staring at each other and talking about nothing until every phrase sounded like a double entendre. When Mel got up to leave, I asked if he would like a kiss goodbye, flirting really, having fun, and he smiled and I walked to him and took his face in my hands and kissed him, open-mouthed. I thought he would say what I did was stupid and stop it, but he didn’t. We were on the sofa, and then we were on the floor and his head was between my breasts with his mouth searching for my nipple and when he found it, when his tongue began circling it, I know I said, “Lick it! Lick it!” aloud, and Jesus …

I loved it because it was bad and it was wrong, and I hated myself because it was bad and it was wrong, but not as much as I loved it.

I had not had an orgasm with Gabe for months, but it happened with Mel and then it happened again and again, like a string of damp firecrackers. When it was over, Mel kissed the back of my neck and I told him to get the hell out of my house, and he did.

And I dreamed about it the following day, walking the length of the boardwalk and sleeping alone in my bed. Dreamed about Mel and me, and I made up with Gabe over the telephone that night, and when he returned I resumed my life of working two days a week at the retirement home and visiting a mother who could offer me wisdom but no spoken words and painting the kitchen and telling myself I was happy with a great guy. But a month later I was at Mel’s apartment in the middle of the day, and we didn’t even get undressed this time because I wore this wide denim skirt …

The third time was all my idea. Gabe was attending a police course in New York. The subject was interrogation techniques. I called Mel and said, “One more time,” and he said, “Where?” and I said, “Not here and not at your place. Pick a motel somewhere.”

Fantasies. That’s what I wanted. A savings account of fantasies I could draw from after my next birthday, when I turned forty-one. Turning forty hadn’t upset me. It was a cosmic joke. Everybody made jokes about turning forty. Turning forty-one was scary, serious.

In the shower, with the water running. That’s the fulfilled fantasy. Mel and me, standing in the shower, warm water flowing over our bodies, and moving, moving until he moaned. Then we dried each other off, I dressed and left. It happened and it was over. Three strikes. I was out. Two months later Gabe was dead.

Did Gabe know about Mel and me? I was afraid he did.

Yes, he could, I began to think. Yes, he could have been angry enough to shoot me and then perhaps to shoot himself. Yes, he could have grown so despondent when I didn’t arrive that he could commit suicide just to stop the pain he was feeling. Yes, I might have killed him in that manner that lovers kill each other by turning away a head, withdrawing a hand, ignoring a word.

If I could believe that, and I felt the idea begin to embed itself within me while I walked the beach strip on that late summer’s afternoon, perhaps I could relax somewhat. The universe, as a great man once said, was unfolding as it should. Gabe was dead, Honeysett was dead, Dad was dead. Mother, Tina, and I were alive.

That was all I knew. I sat on a bench alongside the boardwalk and stared out at the lake while tears coursed down my cheeks and people glanced at me as they passed, a sad woman staring at the water, waiting for the cormorants to return.

He killed my husband. That’s what Dougal Dalgetty’s widow said. She believed Gabe had killed her husband. Impossible.

I wiped the tears from my eyes, rose off the bench, and found the nearest pathway from the shore to Beach Boulevard. Across the boulevard and two blocks away, I saw the upholstery shop in the small two-storey frame building and walked toward it. How dare this woman, in her mourning and sadness, claim Gabe was a murderer. Had she been telling other people the same thing, walking up and down the beach strip, telling lies about my husband?

I know nothing about upholstering. I’m a slipcover kind of person, I guess. If it’s stained, wash it. If it’s torn, mend it. If it’s ugly, cover it. So I have no idea if the upholstery business is profitable or not. Based on what I could see of Beach Upholstery, it was not. The display windows were crammed with dead and dying plants, although given the amount of grime on the window, the state of each plant’s health, not to mention its species, was difficult to determine. Lights shone from inside the shop, but I saw nothing moving, nor did I hear the tapping of a hammer or the whir of a sewing machine. I had never seen anyone enter or leave the upholstery shop either. But a cardboard sign on the front door, its upper left-hand corner dirty and worn from, I assumed, decades of being turned over at the beginning and end of each day, declared it open.

I had no need for upholstery. It was the door beside the shop I wanted, the one with a mailbox on one side, a doorbell on the other, and 212A above it. I pushed the doorbell button, heard a satisfying ring inside and shoes descending the stairs. A latch clattered, a bolt slid aside, and the door opened on Dougal Dalgetty’s widow’s worn face, remaining that way just long enough for me to place a hand against it and prevent her from closing it.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

She moved behind the door and began pushing it, but I was already through the opening and inside the small foyer at the foot of the stairs.

“Please talk to me,” I said.

She closed her eyes, then turned and began walking slowly up the stairs, and I followed her into the three rooms that appeared to be her world.

I had expected antimacassars, splintery furniture, and worn carpets. Instead, I stepped on thick broadloom beneath several pieces of good-quality oak furniture. There were interesting prints on the walls, and lovely ceramic lamps cast a warm light in the room. An oak-mantled fireplace filled one corner. In another corner a Persian cat stood up, stretched and yawned, blinked in my direction, and walked off toward the kitchen in a manner that was clearly a rebuke.

“You want some tea?” Mrs. Dalgetty asked, avoiding my eyes. She was wearing the same pink cardigan and tartan slacks.

I told her no and thanked her. She appeared relieved. I asked if I could sit down. She said, “Sure,” and I chose a tweed loveseat. “Didn’t Wayne Honeysett live around here?” I asked.

I had meant it as a conversation starter. Mrs. Dalgetty took it as a threat. She stepped back, looked out the window toward the steel mills on the bay, and shook her head. “I don’t know nothin’ about what happened to him,” she said.

“But he did live near here, didn’t he? On one of the side streets?”

“What do you want?” She was biting her bottom lip, looking at the floor, at her worn nails, everywhere but at me.

“I wanted to ask about something you said when we met this afternoon. About my husband, and your husband.”

Her head remained in constant motion, even after she settled herself in a leather armchair. When she said nothing, I went on.

“You said my husband killed your husband. Why did you say that?”

“Because he did.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know, that’s all.”

“But who told you that?”

She shook her head from side to side.

“You know my husband is dead,” I said.

A change of direction. She nodded her head once.

“They think he committed suicide. The police do. I don’t think he did, but I don’t know. I don’t think my husband was capable of killing anyone, including himself.”

She looked directly at me for the first time and, as I had seen when we met on the boardwalk, the remnants of her beauty were visible. She had pretty eyes.

“Mrs. Dalgetty,” I said, “we have both lost our husbands recently, and I’m sure your husband’s death was as devastating to you as mine was to me—”

“Glynnis,” she said. “My name is Glynnis.”

“That’s a lovely name,” I said. “Thank you. And I’m Josie. Josephine, actually, but—”

“Wayne Honeysett was murdered,” she interrupted. “Somebody crushed his head under the bridge. Didn’t they? That’s what everybody around here says.”

I told her yes, that’s what I thought. It was horrifying to imagine it, but I believed that’s what happened.

“And if your husband didn’t commit suicide and somebody killed him,” she said, “were they all murdered by the same person? Your husband and my Dougal and Wayne?”

“Then you knew him. You knew Wayne Honeysett.”

She nodded and stared out the window. “We grew up together. We were kids here on the beach strip. Wayne had his problems. He wasn’t perfect.” She smiled, looked down, and straightened the front of her cardigan. “He was kinda nice-looking, and he liked me. He knew me when I was young, and he liked me because he thought I was pretty. And I was. Not beautiful, maybe. Just pretty.” She opened her cardigan, revealing a small silver brooch in the shape of a peacock, with a green stone for its eye, pinned to her blouse. “He gave me this because he liked me. It’s white gold. The stone is an emerald. A real emerald.”

“It’s lovely. When did he give you that?”

“Two, three months ago.” She was fingering the brooch. “I never told Dougal that he gave it to me. I said I bought it for a couple of dollars at a garage sale and that it was just a cheap piece of junk. Dougal never knew nothin’ about jewellery. He bought my wedding ring when we got married and that’s all, so he didn’t know this is real gold and has a real emerald.” She looked up. “It is. I went into the city and had a jeweller look at it, and he said it’s a real emerald and real white gold. Said it’s worth a lot of money.”

“Mr. Honeysett must have liked you very much.”

“He liked women. He always did. He liked women to like him. It wasn’t even about sex, I think. I mean, I don’t know for sure. But he would give you gifts if you were a girl, a pretty girl. I knew him when we were kids, and he was always like that. I think Wayne became a jeweller so he could make things for women. Men, too. But he loved making things for women, brooches and earrings and stuff.”

She looked out the window, remembering. “We both grew up here on the strip. He was kind of sweet on me when we were fourteen, fifteen years old. I married Dougal and he married Florie, whose family had the money to get him started in business. The jewellery business.” She looked away from the window and, with her head down, said, “I should have gone to his funeral, Wayne’s, I guess. I thought about it, but I don’t like going too far from home nowadays. People talk.”

“Mr. Honeysett had his problems, I understand.”

She looked up and nodded. “Only after Florie died. Poor Wayne. People said terrible things about him, or said he was doing terrible things. Bad things. I don’t know if any were true. We’ve all done bad things in our lives, I guess. Most of us, anyway. I just know he was nice to me and some other people, I hear.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Two, three weeks ago. He stopped me when I was walking on the beach strip. He wanted to know how much I liked the peacock pin. He was always asking me that. Whenever we met after he gave me the brooch, he wanted to know if I still liked it, and if I still liked him, I guess. I told him it was just about the most beautiful thing I’d ever owned, which was the truth. That seemed to make him happy.” She shook her head and smiled. “Some men are strange that way. They like to make women happy because that’s what makes them happy. The men, I mean.”

“Some women are like that,” I said. “About men.”

She nodded and stared out the window again, across the strip and toward the lake.

We sat in silence as the cat returned, passing within reach of me without looking in my direction. Out of respect, I waited until it was settled in the same corner of the room it had occupied when I arrived. Then I said, “I need to know why you think my husband was involved in your husband’s death.”

“Mike Pilato told me.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“At Dougal’s funeral.” She closed her cardigan, hiding the peacock from view. “He paid for it, Mike did. The funeral.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Dougal did some work for Mike. Mike’s a nice guy, no matter what a lot of people say. I mean, he’s, you know, he does a lot of stuff, but listen, Mike didn’t do nothin’ bad to us, Dougal and me. He did some good things for us. We helped each other out, Mike and Dougal and me.” She looked at a picture on the wall. “We helped each other out.”

“What kind of work did your husband do for him? For Mike Pilato?”

“None of your business. None of anybody’s business.” Her eyes were still on the picture.

“Do you think Mike Pilato would talk to me?”

She looked across and smiled. “Sure,” she said. “You’re pretty. Mike always talks to pretty women.”

“Thanks.” I stood up. “What do you know about this man called Grizz? Have you really never heard of him?”

“No.” Her smile was gone. “You in cahoots with him or something?”

“With Grizz?”

“With that son of a bitch who keeps coming here asking for him. He’s crazy.” She pulled back into herself, hugging her chest with her arms and pulling her legs onto the chair, avoiding my eyes again, withdrawing into her madness. “He comes here again, I’ll kill him. You tell him that. He comes here again, I’ll get a knife and I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

She was shaking with fear or anger, or perhaps both.

“Is this man about thirty, bearded, dresses like a bum?”

“You tell him,” she said, pressing her face into the back of the chair. “You tell him I don’t know nothin’. I just want people to leave me alone.”

“Mrs. Dalgetty,” I began. “Glynnis. He’s been to my place as well. I have no idea who he is, honest.”

She remained enveloped within the chair, seeming to will it to embrace and hide her.

I thanked her and walked down the stairs and out into the sunshine, where I stood thinking about all she had said and listening to a tap-tap from within the upholstery shop. It was open, after all. Someone was inside, driving tacks into wood.

20.

Power is different depending on who has it and uses it. You talk power to a man and he thinks about a football team or a truck engine, the kind of power that’s dynamic, in motion, like a railway locomotive. Or maybe political power to get other people to do what you want or not do what you don’t want. Or the power of money, which is nearly the same thing.

Talk power with a woman, especially a woman who knows her way among men or even around just one man, and her idea is different. It’s not dynamic. It’s subtle. All right, it’s sexual.

I remember my first husband, the good years with him, the early years when we were both working and struggling. We had an old car that wouldn’t start in the rain or if it was too cold, and we lived in a small apartment where we were trying to save money for a down payment on a suburban split-level.

Anyway, we had a fight about something. It must have been substantial, and I know it was at the dining-room table, because my clearest memory of the fight is tossing my dinner plate at him, and it missed and splattered against the wall. The point of the fight is long forgotten, but I recall the broken china and mashed potatoes and canned peas all over the floor and my husband fleeing the house because he was either frightened that my aim might improve or concerned that he might kill me.

I knew he would be back. So I cleaned up the broken china, did the dishes, and told myself I needed to do something in my power to get past this, and I did. I fixed my face, slipped into a pair of lace stockings, and put on a black negligee I hadn’t worn since our honeymoon. Then I sat in a chair in the corner, with all the lights out and waited for him to return.

He said nothing when he came home, turned on the lights, and saw me there. Just looked away, trying to keep from smiling, I’ll bet. Kept that grim face on while I rose from the chair and tippy-toed across the room, put my arms around his neck, and said that I was sorry and that the things he wanted me to do and I didn’t, well, I would do them all night if he wanted, just to prove how sorry I was.

You can’t pull freight trains across the country or win a Super Bowl with that kind of power. But it works for other things. Especially when you’re female and young. At this point in my life, I could forget young. Younger would have to do. Younger than Mike Pilato, anyway. I chose the black pencil skirt, this time with a black sweater that was just a little too small and the pumps from Saks.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I located Mike Pilato’s offices. He was in the hardware business, officially anyway, in an old residential area of the city that ended at Pilato Park on the shore of the bay, west of the mills and factories. The two-storey brick building across the street from the park was neat but otherwise unimpressive, surrounded by a high wire fence. A worn sign on the roof announced it was the site of White Star Hardware Distributors. Business did not appear to be very good at White Star. In fact, it was non-existent. Two large doors at one side of the building, one marked shipping and the other receiving, were closed. Dusty blinds covered the windows on both levels. No vehicles sat in the parking lot, and the only truck I saw was a plumber’s van parked across the street in front of a crumbling brick cottage where, I assumed, someone’s toilet was backing up.

A man wearing coveralls and a battered fedora was sweeping the wide sidewalk leading from the door marked office, moving a broom back and forth with little enthusiasm.

I drove past the building, parked the Honda, and walked back to White Star, reputedly the headquarters of the most powerful crime boss in the city. The man stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom, watching as I approached. I asked him if Mr. Pilato was inside.

“He’s a-busy,” the man said. He was sixty, perhaps seventy years old.

“I’d like to talk to him,” I said, wondering if he could be carrying a weapon under those coveralls.

“What about, eh?” He was studying me. “You wanta buy hardware? I don’t think you wanta buy da hardware.”

“I need to talk to him about my husband.”

“Mr. Pilato, he knows you husband?”

I was becoming tired of this routine. What was I doing, talking to a guy sweeping the sidewalk who could barely speak English? I turned to walk toward the door again, but his broom swung up to block my way.

“What’s you name?” the old man asked.

“Josie Marshall. My husband’s name was Gabe Marshall. He was a policeman, and he died about two weeks ago. He was shot to death.”

“You tink Mr. Pilato have something to do with it, eh?”

“I don’t know.” I should go back to my car, I began telling myself. Get in it, sit down, and drive away. “I don’t believe what everybody is telling me about my husband and why he died. How he died. That’s all. Somebody said Mr. Pilato may know what happened. That’s why I’m here. In case he knows.”

The man’s face softened. As did mine. Every time I talked about Gabe something within me began to melt. There is a limit to power of any kind.

“Wait a-here,” the man said, and he walked through the office door, which was metal with a small, barred window, closing it behind him. After about thirty seconds, the door opened again and he emerged and stood to one side, beckoning me in, and I entered a small, empty foyer leading to a heavy oak door that swung open as I approached and closed after I passed through it.

From the outside, White Star Hardware Distributors may have appeared to be struggling, but Mike Pilato’s office looked like a Wall Street success. The room was large and substantial, with oak-panelled walls, silk carpets on a polished slate floor, draperies that had never come within shipping distance of a Walmart, and nicely framed oil paintings on the wall.

At one end of the room, an oak desk resembling one I had seen in pictures of the Oval Office sat on a riser. Behind it was a large leather chair that held … nobody. I sat facing the empty desk, the empty chair, and the bookshelves covering the wall behind them, the shelves overflowing with hardcover books whose perfect spines indicated they had probably never been read.

The door behind me opened and closed, and footsteps approached. A man stepped onto the riser with some agility, considering that his stomach was prominent and his white hair flowed down to his shirt collar. He wore heavy black-framed glasses, a black and gold silk shirt stretched over his paunch, and black pleated trousers. I noticed the details of his clothing because I preferred them to his face, which was round and scowling. His eyes never left me while he found his chair and settled into it. For a moment I flattered myself that he liked what he saw, but then I realized he was watching to see if I might pull a gun or a hatchet out of my purse.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. His eyes shifted away from me for short instants, glancing around the room as though confirming that everything was in place, then returning to me. His voice was deep, the words delivered with neither warmth nor threat.

What the heck am I doing here? I thought. Then, He’s a man, older than you. Maybe he’s killed a guy or two, but he’s still a man, and you know about men. “First of all, thanks for seeing me—” I began.

He waved my words away. “What do you want?” he said in the same flat delivery.

“I’m a little nervous,” I started to explain.

“You think I might hurt you?”

“Well—”

“Relax. The plumbers know you’re here.”

“Plumbers?”

“In the truck. Outside. Three, four guys from downtown. They took your picture. They take everybody’s picture. So you’re safe.” He actually permitted himself to smile briefly. “Pretty safe.”

“My name is Josie Marshall,” I said in my best headmistress voice, “and I came here, Mr. Pilato, on a serious matter. My husband is dead. I believe someone killed him. I was told perhaps you would know something about it.”

He acted as though I had insulted him. Perhaps I had. His head jerked back and his chin rose so he was looking down the length of his nose at me. “Do you think,” he said, and I felt an edge to his words like the feeling you get when you press a thumb against the sharp side of a carving knife, “that every time somebody gets killed in this city, it’s because of me? Is that what people like you think?”

“No, of course not,” I said. It was the beginning of a lie. Maybe not everybody.

“What do you need to know that’s so important you think I know it and other people don’t?” He spoke precisely, each consonant bitten off. “You tell me that, okay? Tell me now.”

A picture appeared in my mind. It was a picture of a terribly foolish woman wearing a skirt that was a little too tight and a little too short, under a cotton sweater as form-fitting as she would ever want to wear in public, and she was sitting alone in an office with a man who had a reputation for reassembling other peoples’ brains with a baseball bat.

I’m usually good at being cool under pressure. Okay, I wasn’t cool when Gabe’s body was found. This was different. I folded my hands in my lap and looked directly at Mike Pilato. “I am not making accusations,” I said, trying to match Pilato’s precise enunciation. “I would never do such a thing. I’m not a police officer, I’m not a lawyer, I’m nobody except a woman who loved her husband and wants the truth of his death to come out, whatever it might be.”

Pilato leaned back in his chair. “Nice speech,” he said.

What the hell. “It was no damn speech,” I said, tossing aside any concern about consonants or my safety. “It’s what I need to do. Somebody said you knew my husband. If you say you didn’t know Gabe, fine, I’m gone. If you knew him, please help me. That’s all I ask.”

He nodded. “Better speech.” Before I could tell him to go to hell, which I figured would either make him kiss me or shoot me, he said, “Ask anything you want. I’ll answer it, if it doesn’t incriminate me.”

I asked if he had ever met Gabe.

He placed his hands on the desk in front of him. “Yes,” he said. “I have met most detectives in this city. Sometimes we’re in the same business. Different sides, same business.”

“When did you speak to him last?”

“Maybe two weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“In a bar down the street. Place called Mahady’s.” A glance at me, so he could watch my reaction. “I own it.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Not what. Who. We were talking about someone. Your husband wanted to know what I knew about this person.”

“What was the name of this person, the one my husband asked about?”

Some successful people are actors when it comes to getting others to do things, or to hear things in a certain way. It’s timing, it’s the delivery, it’s the expression, it’s the voice. It’s acting. Pilato was an actor. He paused and watched me, building suspense. Then he said, “Eugene Griswold.”

“Who is he?”

“Was,” Pilato said, his eyebrows back in place. “Who was he.”

My god. Another murder victim. “What happened to him?”

A shrug. “He died.”

“From what?”

“Probably old age.” He leaned forward, his eyes on mine. “Some manichino named Eugene Griswold, the only guy with that name I found, or had people find for me, opened a place in Connecticut, I don’t know, somewhere around 1776. An inn, a hotel, whatever you want to call it. Opened it with his brothers. They ran it, the three of them. Partners. It’s still there, the inn. You can look it up. The Griswold Inn, someplace in Connecticut. Might go there someday and look at it.” One more smile, quick and cold. “Maybe you come with me, eh? Have a dirty weekend together?” Instead of fading this time, the smile widened into a grin. His teeth were too porcelain-perfect to be real.

When I didn’t respond, he leaned back in his chair. “That’s the only Eugene Griswold I know about. It’s the only Eugene Griswold anybody knows about. I had never heard that name before your husband met me at Mahady’s and asked if I knew him. ‘Who’s Eugene Griswold?’ your husband says, and I say, ‘I don’t know, should I?’ and your husband tells me Griswold is some big shot, some new capo in town, and maybe I should look him up. So I do. I have somebody look him up, this Griswold. Nobody knows him. Somebody, you don’t have to know who, it’s none of your business, gets on a computer and finds out about this guy in Connecticut, started a bar two hundred years ago. That’s all I know about a Eugene Griswold. That’s all anybody knows about him. Probably more than your husband knew. Your husband thought he was local, some new local guy. Your husband was wrong.”

“I was told,” I began. I swallowed, closed my eyes, and began again. “I was told that this man, this person worked for you—”

“Do I look that old?” He grinned.

“—and his street name was Grizz.”

“I was told that too.”

“And you never heard of anyone by that name?”

“Never.”

“How about Dougal Dalgetty?”

He stared at me as though considering whether to answer or not. Finally, “What do you want to know about him?”

“Did he work for you?”

“He worked for my company.” Pilato was finding something interesting on his thumbnail. It gave him a reason to avoid my eyes.

“Doing what?”

“That’s no business of yours. It’s no business of anybody’s.”

“Do you know who shot him?”

His eyes jumped from his thumb to me. “No,” he said in a voice that reminded me this was not a man to cross or insult. Or even, for that matter, to question. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You told his widow, Glynnis, that my husband killed him.”

“I said possibly. Your husband possibly killed him.”

“Why? Why would you say my husband might have shot Dougal Dalgetty?”

“Dougal and I talked. He told me things. About dealing with police officers.”

“Were you sorry to hear Dougal was killed?”

“I’m sorry to hear anybody is killed. Always I’m sorry. But what can I do?”

“If you knew who did it, who shot Dougal Dalgetty, would you do something about it?”

“What, you mean get revenge?” I wasn’t sure if he was amused or angry. “You think I get revenge? You think I’m playing in a schoolyard, you take my bicycle, I take yours?”

“I’m just—”

“You hit my friend, I hit your friend? You think that’s how my world works?”

“It’s what most people would think.”

“Most people are stupid, right? I believe in punishment, not revenge. Punishment is not revenge. Punishment is better than revenge. Punishment is to reduce crime and reform the criminal. Those are a woman’s words. Her name was Elizabeth Fry. Reduce crime and reform the criminal. That’s what she said. I punish people who need it. I don’t take revenge.”

I twisted in the chair to look behind me. We were still alone. The room was quiet. Everything was quiet. No noise entered from outside. Not the rumble of trucks on the road or trains on the nearby railroad track. Nothing. The room also appeared to be darker than when I had entered.