Night Train полностью

Motive, motive. “Motive”: That which moves, that which impels. But with homicide, now, we don’t care about motive. We never give it a second’s thought. We don’t care about the why. We say: Fuck the why. Motive might have been worth considering, might have been pretty reliable, might have been in okay shape half a century ago. But now it’s all up in the fucking air. With the TV.

I’ll tell you who wants a why. Jurors want a why. They want reruns of Perry Mason and The Defenders. They want Car Fifty-Four, Where Are You?

They want commercials every ten minutes or it never happened.

That’s homicide. This is suicide. And we all want a why for suicide.

And how’s it looking?

Tomorrow night I’m seeing Trader Faulkner, and something new, something more, may emerge from that. ‘But otherwise it’s pretty much made. It’s down. Isn’t it? I have followed up all the names in Jennifer’s address book. I have been through the phone records and the credit-card accounts. And there’s only one gap: No hit on the lithium. Tony Silvera has been onto Adrian Drago in Narcotics, and they gave their snitches a roust. But this isn’t a street drug we’re talk­ing about. And I don’t build on nailing the connect.

But—hey. Jennifer Rockwell was a cleavage in a lab coat. But she wasn’t Mary Poppins. A spinning top looks still and stable until the force starts to weaken. A tremor, then it slows and slews. It wobbles and reels and clatters. Then it stops.

Answers are coming together, are they not? We got sex and drugs and rock and roll. This is more than you usually get. This is plenty. This is practically TV.

So why don’t I buy it?

I keep thinking about her body. I keep thinking about Jennifer’s body and the confidence she had in it. See her in a swimsuit and you just thought... One summer day five or six years ago the Rockwells took the whole roof pool at the Trum, for their anniversary, and when Jennifer came out of the cabana and walked toward us in her white one-piece we all fell silent for a beat, and Silvera said, “Hm. Not bad.” Then Grandma Rebka clapped her hands together and wailed, “Zugts afen mir!” It should be said about me. We should all be so lucky. The sight of her instantly had you going along with the idea that the basis of attraction is genetic. Get Jennifer, and your genes would surge forth, in a limo. Her body was kind of an embarrassment, a thrilling embarrassment, to everyone (even Trader dipped his head). But it wasn’t an embarrassment to her. The confidence with which she carried it was self-evident, self-sufficient—I guess the word I want is “consummate.” She never needed to give it a moment’s thought. And when you consider how much the rest of us think about our bodies, and what kind of thoughts these are. Yes, absolutely right. We should all be so lucky.

Something else was said that day, around the roof pool at the Trum. The two grandmas, Rebka and Rhi-annon, who died within a month of each other the fol­lowing year—they were a great double act. As a ten-year-old Rebka had cleaned the streets of Vienna with her father’s skullcap. And she was an angel of light. Silver-spoon Rhiannon, on the other hand, was dour, sarcastic, and mean. And Welsh. If you thought Schadenfreude was a German word, then five minutes with Rhiannon would make you think again. And the mouth on her, still with that accent. She could even shock me. In a long life of uninterrupted ease, Grandma Rhiannon had one real cause for complaint. All her chil­dren grew and flourished. But she’d had fifteen of them.

Out by the pool, that day, she said,

“I’m like a horse in the bullring. I’ve got bags of sawdust in me.”

And I said, “Is that a Welsh thing? I thought it was an Irish thing, having a ton of kids.”

“No, not reely. It was him. Billy. It was him wanted them. I only wanted two. Even after little Alan he was on at me to have more.”

“More?”

“Day and night. Just one more. I’d say, ‘Come on, Billy. Give it a rest. I’m awl awl as it is.’ “

“You’re what?”

She pronounced the two words the same. Awl awl. All hole.

That’s what I sometimes think this case is.

All hole.

Tonight’s my date with Trader.

One thing I do, before I go over there, is dig out the transcript of the interrogation I conducted down­town. My effort, there in the small interrogation room, was misdirected. But I’m impressed by its tenacity. Now I see this:

I have a witness that puts you outside the house at seven thirty-five. Looking distressed.

“Mad.” Riled-up. Sound familiar, Trader?

Yes. The time. And the mood.

I missed that earlier, and I now remind myself to pick up on it tonight. Why distressed?