“Corona and lime, Dewar’s with a splash,” the bartender said, and put the drinks down in front of them. “Shall I keep this tab running?” “Please,” Michael said.
He lifted his glass. She lifted hers.
“To a nice evening together,” he said. “Till plane time.”
She seemed to be looking through him, or at least past him, toward the other end of the bar, almost dreamily. She nodded at last, as if in response to a secret decision she had made, and smiled, and said, “That sounds safe enough,” and clinked her glass against his and began sipping at her beer.
“But you didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“What was your question?” she said.
“Are you married?”
“Would it matter?”
“Yes.”
She waggled the fingers on her left hand. “See any wedding band?”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I’m not married,” she said.
“Divorced?” he said.
“Nope. Just single.”
“Beautiful woman like you?”
“Ha.”
“I mean it.”
“Thank you.”
“So what I’d like to do,” he said, “you must know a lot of good restaurants …”
“Slow down,” she said smiling. “You didn’t ask me if I’m engaged, or involved with anyone, or …”
“Are you?”
“No, but …”
“Good. Do you like Italian food?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, and put down her glass, and slid her handbag over in front of her, and reached into it for a package of cigarettes.
“Well, if you know a good Italian restaurant, I’d like to …”
“All right,” she said suddenly and coldly and somewhat harshly, “you want to give it back to me?”
He looked at her.
Her eyes had turned hard, there was no longer a smile on her face.
“The ring,” she said. She was whispering now.
“Just give it back to me, okay?” She held out her right hand. Nothing on any of the fingers.
“The ring,” she said. “Please, I don’t want any trouble.”
“What ring?” he said.
“The ring that was right here on this finger before we started holding hands. A star sapphire ring that was a gift from my father. I want it back, mister. Right now.”
“But I don’t have it,” he said. He realized there was a foolish grin on his face. As if she were in the middle of a joke and he was smiling in anticipation of the punch line.
She looked at him. Eyes as blue and as hard as the star sapphire she claimed was missing from her hand. Eyes somewhat incredulous, too. She’d told him she was a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, no less; was he some kind of idiot to have stolen her ring? This was in her eyes.
“Listen,” she said, her voice rising, “just give me the goddamn ring, and we’ll forget …”
“I don’t have your …”
“What’s going on here?”
Michael turned on the stool. Big, burly guy standing there at his right shoulder, between the two stools. Tweed overcoat. Shoulders looked damp. Crew-cut hair looked damp, too. As if he’d just come in from outside. Beard stubble on his face. Hard blue eyes. Tonight was a night for hard blue eyes. If you had brown eyes tonight, you were out of luck.
“Detective Daniel Cahill,” he said, and opened a small leather case and flashed a blue-enameled gold shield. He snapped the case shut. “This man bothering you?” he asked Helen.
“It’s all right, officer,” she said.
“I’d like to know what’s happening here,” Cahill said.
“I don’t want to make any trouble for him,” she said.
“Why? What’d he do?”
It occurred to Michael that they were both talking about him as if he were no longer there. Somehow this sounded ominous.
“If he’ll just give it back to me,” Helen said.
“Give what back, miss?”
“Look, officer,” Michael said.
“Shut up, please,” Cahill said. “Give what back?”
“The ring.”
“What ring?”
“Officer …”
“I asked you please to shut up,” Cahill said, and suddenly looked around, as if aware for the first time that there were other people in the bar. “Let’s step outside a minute, please,” he said. “You, too, miss.”
“Really, I don’t want to make any trouble for him,” Helen said.
“Please,” Cahill said, and gestured slightly with his chin and his raised eyebrows, which seemed to indicate he had some concern for the owner of the place and did not want to make trouble for him, either. Which Michael considered a good sign. Helen got off her stool and put on her overcoat and picked up her briefcase, and Michael followed her and Cahill to where he’d hung his coat on the rack to the left of the entrance door. He was digging for the coat under the pile of other coats on top of it, when Cahill said, “You won’t need it, this won’t take a minute.”
Together the three of them went outside, Helen first, then Michael, and then Cahill. It was still snowing. Bigger flakes now. Floating gently and lazily out of the sky. The temperature was in the low thirties, Michael guessed, perhaps the high twenties. He hoped this little conference out here in front of the bar really would be a short one.
“Okay, now what is it?” Cahill said. Sounding very reasonable.
“He has my ring,” Helen said. Also sounding very reasonable.
“Officer,” Michael said, “I never even saw this woman’s …”
“Over here,” Cahill said, and indicated the brick wall to the right of the bar’s plate-glass front window. “Hands flat against the wall, lean on ‘em,” Cahill said.
“Hey, listen,” Michael said.