Free Dark Specter by Michael Dibdin Page A

facility,” Warren told him sternly.
    “But you can smoke all you want outside,” added Kristine Kjarstad.
    Wayne Sullivan looked at her, shaking his head slowly. Tears trickled from his eyes and fell, getting tangled up in the mesh of his beard like dew in a spiderweb.
    “Can’t do that,” he mumbled.
    “That buddy of yours paid your fine,” said Kjarstad. “You’re free to go.”
    The movements of Sullivan’s head became ever faster and convulsive.
    “I don’t care about the fine!” he said. “It’s the babies I care about.”
    His tone was so pathetic that Kristine Kjarstad had to look away. Dead bodies didn’t bother her, precisely because they were dead. The grief and suffering of the living was much more difficult to deal with.
    “We’re doing everything we can,” she said in a kindly tone, forgetting for a moment that Sullivan himself was the principal suspect, in fact the only one. “I’m sure we’ll find out pretty soon who did it.”
    Wayne Sullivan looked up at her in astonishment.
    “Find out?” he exclaimed. “What the hell’s to find out? I did it! That’s what I came to tell you. I didn’t want to do it, but there was no other way to save them from that bitch.”

I never expected to see any of them again, and when I did it was pure coincidence. I was passing through O’Hare on the way back from Boston, having visited my parents on the occasion of my father’s sixtieth birthday. He had recently retired, and they had moved to a house on Cape Cod. Because of my mother’s poor health they had been forced to cancel a planned trip to come to see us, and since Rachael hadn’t wanted to travel so far with David, I ended up going there alone. On the way back my connection in Chicago was delayed, and I was killing time in the bar when someone walked up to me and said, “Phil?”
    The face looked vaguely familiar, but it was only when the man noticed my blank expression and said his own name that I realized who it was. Recognition came tainted with a sense of unease. Of the whole group, Vince was the one I had been least close to. His interests—sex, drugs and rock-and-roll—were also ours, but the single-mindedness with which he pursued them set him apart. To Vince, time not spent balling, tripping or bopping, preferably all at once, was time wasted. We admired his purity, but even then it seemed a little extreme. I had never forgotten the time I’d unguardedly mentioned some novel I was currently enthusiastic about, and Vince had remarked crushingly, “You still read books? I’m too busy living.” After that I’d never quite known what to say to him. What on earth would we have to say now?
    It immediately became clear that Vince was no longer Vince. The former acidhead, sack artist and lead guitar manqué was now a highly paid sound technician for a TV station in Chicago with a profitable sideline in freelance assignments. He looked fit, tanned and relaxed, and sipped a Perrier while I slurped my scotch. The duds he had on looked like they cost more than my car, and instead of a commuter plane to St. Paul he was catching a direct flight to Tokyo, club class, to film a documentary on sumo wrestling.
    Worst of all, he was nice about it. He made no attempt to cold-cock me with a blow-by-blow account of his glamorous lifestyle, and even showed some polite interest when I filled him in on the banal data of my own. I told him that I was teaching English at a community college, that I was married, that we had a child. What more could I say? That I liked my work? That I loved my son to distraction? That I was happier than I had ever been in my life? It would have sounded false and forced. I let the lame facts speak for themselves with no attempt to explain or excuse. Vince was very kind and correct.
    “Boy or girl?” he asked.
    “A boy. David.”
    “How old is he?”
    “Going on seven.”
    “Great. I’d love to have kids one day. Right now, though, a family life’s kind of