Glass Houses(24)

“Perhaps decent legal representation would have been able to prove your innocence.”

“I doubt it,” Tyrell said. “I caved in the side of a guy’s head with a rusty plumbing pipe in full view of two dozen witnesses and a couple of police officers. Granted it was in the middle of a fight, but I started the fight.”

Philippa Lydgate blinked. “I can’t believe that. You don’t look at all violent to me.”

“I’m not, anymore. It was a long time ago. I was nineteen, and I was flying on enough—” He was about to say “shit.” The word on the street for drugs was “shit,” and that was even the right word. Drugs were “shit.” “On enough,” he finished off, “beer, wine, marijuana, cocaine. You name it; I’d imbibed it. That was the kind of person I was. And now I’m not.”

“That’s admirable,” Philippa Lydgate said.

“Most of the guys they picked up on suspicion of being the Plate Glass Killer were white,” Tyrell said. “You can find that out on the Internet. There were a little bunch of us, and what we all had in common was that we were near a victim and knew her. It’s just routine. Now that they’ve got the guy, we can all go back to living our normal lives.”

“Yes,” Philippa Lydgate said. She looked around the store again, going slowly from section to section: the potato chips and corn chips and popcorn in plastic bags; the big display of Pop Tarts and boxed cereals; the frozen food cases with their little piles of Hot Pockets and Pizza Rolls. Then she turned back to the counter and looked right past Tyrell to the wall behind him where the cigarettes were.

“You don’t have lottery tickets,” she said. “I thought stores like this always had lottery tickets.”

“I don’t have lottery tickets or girlie magazines,” Tyrell said. “I don’t have liquor either.”

“Very commendable,” Philippa Lydgate said.

Then she turned on the point of one of her very high heels and walked out of the store, Tyrell watched her go down the street. People turned to look at her. She was everything this neighborhood was not.

Charles came out from the back and watched her go, too.

“That one’s trouble,” he said.

There was nothing wrong with his grammar this time at all.





FOUR


1


Later, Gregor wouldn’t be sure what had been worse—that Bennis’s car was sitting at the curb in front of their building as if it had never left Philadelphia, or that Bennis herself wasn’t waiting for him on the second-floor landing. He had no idea exactly what it was he’d expected. At the very least he was prepared for a bang-up row. On the other hand, Bennis being Bennis, all that might be in the offing was one of those long periods where all they did was Talk. Gregor could never figure out what the Talk was about, or where it was supposed to get to, or where it was supposed to end. Right now, he couldn’t figure out what it was he was supposed to say. This morning he would have said that he was not sure he wanted Bennis back in his life no matter how much he missed her. As soon as he saw her car, he knew just how much that wasn’t true. It was as if somebody had suddenly attached springs to his feet. He was happier than he had been in months.

He went up the stairs and looked around, first in her apartment, then in his. There was one very good sign. Her luggage was on his living room floor, not her own, and she’d obviously unpacked some of it and showered and changed while he was out. He checked his watch and was surprised to find that it was almost one. He’d had no idea he’d spent so much time on the problem of Henry Tyder. He looked around his apartment for a note, but found none. He checked his answering machine in case she’d called in and left something there. She did that sometimes. There was nothing. He knew she hadn’t tried to call him on the cell phone because he’d been carrying it, with the ringer on, all day.

He went to the big window in his living room and looked out on Cavanaugh Street as if he would find her sitting on somebody’s front steps. The street was mostly empty, and he hadn’t really expected to see her anyway. Across from him, Lida’s big second-floor living room was empty. Even her grandchildren weren’t visiting this afternoon. He licked his lips. They were as dry as sand. Maybe she was over at Donna and Russ’s. Donna was her closest friend on Cavanaugh Street. The problem was, Bennis didn’t have “close friends” the way most women did. She didn’t have soul mates she told everything to. If she was over at Donna’s, it wouldn’t mean anything. At least, it wouldn’t mean the thing Gregor feared most.