Last night, Jan-Mark had seen Reggie for an hour starting at seven-thirty, a quick roll and knock around while Reggie’s wife was off being in that idiotic play. Much later, he had seen Reggie again, unexpectedly, well after midnight, when Reggie came to tell him about Gemma Bury being dead. Reggie should have called, but he hadn’t wanted to, maybe because it was a kind of victory. Jan-Mark had three lovers and now two of them were dead, leaving Reggie to rule the roost alone. Or something. Jan-Mark hated psychoanalyzing people. He was bad at it and it only made a mess anyway. There were a thousand clinical explanations for why Reggie George was coming up his driveway again at eight-forty-five on this Tuesday morning, coming for the third time in under twenty hours, but Jan-Mark wanted to ignore them all. He preferred to think Reggie was just being a pain in the ass.
Reggie had come in his pickup truck, which he almost never did. That pickup truck was a signature, identifiable as Reggie’s from here to Montpelier. He had to be on his way to work. Jan-Mark watched as he stomped through the new snow to the basement door and punched at the bell. He waited a few moments before flipping on the intercom switch next to the kitchen table where he was sitting and calling down to his guest.
“I’m awake and watching you march through the nice clean precipitation,” he said to Reggie. “Come on up if you have to.”
“I have to.”
“I’m out of liquor.”
“It’s important.”
Jan-Mark was not out of liquor. He had three untouched bottles of Glenlivet sitting in his trunk upstairs, but he had no intention of bringing them out at this hour of the morning, and no intention of bringing them out for Reggie George at any time. Reggie was impressed when Jan-Mark got him a six-pack of Heineken beer. There was the sound of heavy boots coming up the open, polished cedar staircase. The staircase was spiral and Reggie always slipped on it once or twice when he came up. When he did he swore in the most direct and least imaginative way. He got to the kitchen level and worked his way out of the curving trap, shaking his right foot side to side in the air as if he’d minorly damaged his ankle.
“Shit,” he said. “I hate those stairs.”
“I know you hate those stairs,” Jan-Mark said patiently. “What do you like? Can I pour you some coffee?”
“I’ve got some coffee in the truck. And I’m in a hurry. I’m supposed to be on my way to work.”
“Maybe you talked to your wife about what we talked about last night. About making things a little more interesting.”
“No, I haven’t talked to my wife. I haven’t hardly seen my wife. She was asleep when I got back from here last night. It’s what I heard. That’s what I wanted to tell you. What I heard at breakfast this morning.”
“What did you hear?”
“That they found the gun, that’s what I heard,” Reggie said. “That foreign guy did it. Or he told Franklin’s people where to look, I guess. Right there in the park where it happened. It’s all over the CB.”
“You mean on the police band?”
“I mean people talking about it.” Reggie was impatient. “The news is all over town, JM. The only reason you don’t know about it is that you’re stuck all the way out here. And you don’t talk to anybody.”
“I talk to lots of people.”
“You don’t talk to anybody in town.”
All this time, Reggie had been bouncing around on the balls of his feet, rocking back and forth, taking his hands out of the pockets of his jacket and putting them back in again. He had said he was in a hurry and he was damn well going to look like he was in a hurry. That was how Jan-Mark saw it. Now Reggie seemed to decide that this was stupid, or to change his mind, or something. He pulled out one of the bentwood kitchen chairs and sat down.
“They found the gun,” he repeated.
“You said that.” Jan-Mark nodded.
“It was up in a tree. There aren’t a lot of trees in the park. Just a couple. It was in one of those, near that place where the animals go in and out. Maybe it was in a bush.”
“Maybe?”
“Well, I’m trying to remember what the park looks like, JM. I don’t go traipsing around in parks on a regular basis. Only time I’ve been through in years except to take a shortcut from Main Street to Carrow is going to see Candy in this play. And I guess it’s a bush, not really a tree. Big round pine bush, like the kind they use for hedges.”
“Clipped?”
“I don’t know,” Reggie said. “How should I know? Why the hell would anybody want to know?”