Free Day of Wrath by Jonathan Valin

I said. "All I want to do at
the moment is make sure she's safe."
    A crowd of people began filing through the doors behind
us—elderly men and women dressed in their Sunday best. Some of them smiled
at Frances and me; and one bright-eyed old woman in a straw hat and belted
orange suit wagged her finger at us. Frances grinned.
    "I don't know where they get their enthusiasm from," she
said. "Have you taken a close look at that street out there?"
    "Close enough," I said.
    "Most of them are living on social security in one-room
apartments. They have to contend with inflation, disease, neglect, Reaganomics,
and that street. And they still show up once a week to play bingo and listen
to a lecturer tell them about all the opportunities they're missing." Frances
stared at me solemnly. "I don't think I want to get that old, Harry. I
don't think I'm that brave."
    I patted her cheek and said, "Yes, you are."
    She smiled. "It's just the job, you know," she said and
gave my hand an affectionate squeeze. "I'll call you tonight after I've
run the check on your Miss Segal." She handed the photograph back to me,
started to walk away, then turned around. "I guess I better tell you something
else," she said. "The woman in that photograph—the one with the gray
hair?"
    "Yes."
    Frances bit her lip. "I think I know her from some place."
    "Well, come on, Frances," I said. "Where the hell is that?"
    "A club I used to go to," she said. "I think I've seen
her there. A club in Mt. Adams."
    "What club?"
    "Just a club," she said. "A club I used to go to a couple
of years ago."
    "Why the mystery?" I said to her. "Finding that woman
could be important. Tell me the name of the club and I'll check it out."
    "Harry," she said flatly. "It's not that easy. This is
a private club. A club for women."
    "I see," I said.
    "Well, don't look so shocked," she said, although I wasn't
looking particularly shocked. "I have a right to my own life."
    " Who said differently?"
    "I can't really talk about it now," she said, glancing
over her shoulder at her Hook. "Tonight . . . when I call you about this
other thing, I'll explain it to you."
    " You don't need to explain," I said.
    But she'd already turned away
and walked back to the table.
    ***
    About thirty minutes later I was driving down Eastlawn
Drive—past the school yard, filled at that hour with children, past the
huge stone church, looking gray and grave in the afternoon sun. The shadow
of the stone crucifix above the rectory stretched across the pavement,
touching the edge of Mildred Segal's front lawn. No one stared aimlessly
out of the windows on this street. Children at play looked their ages or
a bit younger—cowed, perhaps, by the priests in their black soutanes,
who stood like dark pillars among them. Nothing was open or transparent
here—not the houses with their long brick Faces or the people who lived
inside them. It was all shade and privacy—each yard with its own maple
tree, like a maze to prying eyes. And, yet a boy from this street had been
brutally murdered. A girl from these modest houses had bolted to a different
life. And in spite of the facade there wasn't any real shade to be found,
except for the heavy, mordant shadow creeping across Mildred's lawn.
    I simply couldn't get him out of my mind—Bobby Caldwell.
The way his legs had been bent back against themselves. The look on his
face when the cops had unwrapped the tape. It had shaken me through. Made
me weary of all the mean streets and all the hapless people who lived on
them. Like Frances Shelley, whose cheek I had patted, I was beginning to
think that I wasn't tough enough for the job. Or for what I might find
at the end of it. I'd been contracting myself out too long—fighting other
people's battles and braving other people's losses. I stared up at Mildred's
front door and thought, what if the girl was dead, too. What then? But
there was no one around to pat me on the cheek. No one but me.
    Mildred answered the door on my third knock.