He went down the street, looking in the windows of stores. The media people left him alone, some because they’d met him, others because he had his cameras around his neck, which marked him out as somebody not likely to be of interest. A lot of the stores were closed for the winter. Nobody who lived on the island was going to be interested in eight-hundred-dollar handbags or slinky little summer dresses at six hundred dollars a pop, and the women who owned those stores spent the winter in Palm Beach, where they had branches. The bookstore was still open, although Jack had heard the two women who owned that one complaining. It seemed that they’d expected that a raft of people from Los Angeles would mean a raft of customers for books, but maybe nobody in Los Angeles read books. At any rate, they weren’t doing any business.
He got to Cuddy’s Bar and stopped. There was a real bar in Oscartown, down near the ferry, but he didn’t want to walk all the way over there. Cuddy’s was always full of photographers these days. It had been even before the murder. Now there was something like a permanent contingent. Jack remembered coming here as a teenager, and coming in the summer, too, wanting to be around all that, wanting to be part of it. He thought most of the kids who were local here went through a phase like that. He’d been in this place a lot more often this year than he’d been in it anytime since.
He went inside and looked around. The bar was nearly deserted. The tables were nearly deserted too. He put his hand up to the chest of his jacket and felt the little wad of Carl Frank’s money where it bulged. He’d been afraid to put it in his wallet. A thousand dollars. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a thousand dollars in cash, although he had more than that in his account these days. He sat down at the bar and asked for a Molson. Then he waited.
It took almost three-quarters of an hour, but she showed up, just as Jack had expected she would. She was not in good shape when she came through the door, but she was in more clothes that he was used to seeing her in. Maybe murder, or the avalanche of bad publicity that had resulted from the murder, had wised her up. whatever it was, she was wearing jeans and a big bulky parka. She even had snow boots on instead of heels. Jack watched her stride down the center of the room and take one of the small tables against the wall.
Jack got up, took his beer, and walked over. Marcey Man-dret unzipped her parka and shrugged it off. Underneath, she was wearing one of those skimpy little halter tops that didn’t permit a bra and didn’t cover her belly button. Jack put his beer down on the table and sighed.
“Go away,” Marcey said. “I’m not talking to you. None of us is talking to you. This is all your fault.”
“What’s all my fault? That Mark Anderman is dead?”
“You know what I mean. Get out of here.”
“I think you ought to put up with me for a minute. I just had a very interesting meeting with Carl Frank.”
Marcey sat down in the chair on her side of the table, hard. She had already been drinking, but this was not unusual. In Jack’s experience, Marcey drank most of the day, although she usually didn’t start hammering it home until after five. He sat down himself and signaled to a waitress who was clearly trying to ignore them. It was Mitsy Kline, who was somebody he had known vaguely in high school.
In high school, there had been two distinct groups of people: the ones who were on their way out; and the ones who would be here forever, doing jobs like Mitsy’s. Jack had been part of the group that were on their way out.
Mitsy came over. Marcey looked up and said, “I want a champagne cocktail.”
Mitsy made a face and went away.
“You could say please,” Jack said. “It wouldn’t kill you. And people around here expect things like that.”
“I don’t care what people around here expect. I don’t care about anything. God, I hate this place. I don’t know why I ever agreed to come up here.”
“You agreed because you needed the work. It was the only movie you’d been offered for two years.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not being an ass,” Jack said. “I only know what I read in the newspapers. Especially lately. I’m a photographer, for God’s sake. I sold a picture. That’s what I do. And what else was I supposed to do, under the circumstances? Just get up and disappear, like Steve?”
“Steve didn’t disappear,” Marcey said. “He—”
“I know what happened to Steve,” Jack said, “but you can’t do things like that and expect to get away with them. People will notice, eventually. People have noticed.”