Her face was very close to his, and he could see the brightness in her eyes, and the fullness of her mouth when she drew back.
"Oh God, woman," he said.
She rose and took his hand and as she was leading him from the room he turned her around and said, "The dishes. We have to…" and she tossed up her back skirts in reply, the way can-can dancers do. In the living room, she handed him a sheet of paper, neatly folded in half.
"I didn't know you wanted to answer the mail," Carella said. "I somehow suspected I was being seduced."
Impatiently, Teddy gestured to the paper in his hand. Carella unfolded it. The white sheet was covered with four typewritten stanzas. The stanzas were titled: ODE FOR STEVE.
"For me?" he asked.
"Is this what you do all day, instead of slaving around the house?"
She wiggled her forefinger, urging him to read the poem.
ODE FOR STEVE
"The last stanza doesn't rhyme," Carella said.
Teddy pulled a mock mask of stunned disgust.
"Also, methinks I read sexual connotations into this thing," Carella added.
Teddy waved one hand airily, shrugged innocently, and then-like a burlesque queen imitating a high-priced fashion model-walked gracefully and suggestively into the bedroom, her buttocks wiggling exaggeratedly.
Carella grinned and folded the sheet of paper. He put it into his wallet, walked to the bedroom door, and leaned against the jamb.
"You know," he said, "you don't have to write poems."
Teddy stared at him across the length of the room. He watched her, and he wondered briefly why Byrnes wanted a copy of the fingerprints, and then he said huskily, "All you have to do is ask."
All Byrnes wanted to do was ask.
The lie, as he saw it, was a two-part lie, and once he asked about it, it would be cleared up. Which was why he sat in a parked automobile, waiting. In order to ask, you have to find the askee. You find that person, you corner that person, and you say, "Now listen to me, is it true you…?"
Or was that the way?
What was the way, damnit, what was the way, and how had a man who'd lived honestly all his life suddenly become enmeshed in something like this? No! No, damnit, it was a lie. A stupid lie because there was a body someone was trying to… but suppose it were not a lie?
Suppose the first part of the lie was true, just the first part alone, what then? Then, then, then something would have to be done. What? What do I say if the first part of the lie is true? How do I handle it? This first part of the lie, this first thing was enough. It was enough to cause a man to doubt his sanity, if it was true, if this first thing was true, no, no, it cannot be true!
But maybe it is. Face that possibility. Face the possibility that at least the first thing may be true, and plan on handling it from there.
And if this other thing was true, and if it broke, what untold harm would be done then? Not only, to Byrnes himself, but to Harriet, God, why should Harriet have to suffer, Harriet so innocent, and the police department, how would it look for the police department, oh Jesus let it not be true, let it be a lousy punk lie.
He sat in the parked car and he waited, certain he would recognize him when he came out of the building. The building was in Calm's Point, where Byrnes lived, and it was surrounded by lawn, and there were trees placed all around it, trees bare now with winter, their roots clutching frozen earth, the bases of their trunks caked with snow. There were lights burning in the building, and the lights were a warm amber against the cold winter sky, and Byrnes watched the lights and wondered.
He was a compact man, Byrnes, with a head like a rivet. His eyes were blue and tiny, but they didn't miss very much, and they were set in a browned and weathered face that was seamed with wrinkles. His nose was craggy like the rest of his face, and his mouth was firm with a weak upper lip and a splendid lower lip. He had a chin like a cleft boulder, and his head sat low on his shoulders, as if it were hunched in defense. He sat in the car, and he watched his own breath plume whitely from his lips, and he reached over to wipe the fogged windshield with a gloved hand, and then he saw the people coming from the building.
