Free The Big Bad City by Ed McBain Page B

drinks out to the garden, and they sit here at this very same stone table he now shares with the detectives.
    The summer insects are noisy tonight.
    They listen to the night all around them.
    “Is something troubling you?” he asks at last.
    “No, Frank.”
    “You seem … I don’t know. Withdrawn.”
    “No, no.”
    “If it’s something, please tell me. Perhaps I can help.”
    “Do you ever feel? …” she asks, and hesitates.
    He waits. He knows better than to press her. If she wishes to share whatever this is, she will of her ownaccord. He has heard her confession every week since she came to this city. She knows she can trust him. He waits.
    “That the past and the present …,” she starts again, and again stops.
    The noise of the insects seems suddenly deafening. He wishes there were a volume control, wishes he could tune out the sounds of the universe and peer directly into Mary’s mind, find there whatever it is that has cast this pall over her, help her to reveal it to him, reveal it to God for His understanding and mercy, His forgiveness if in fact there is anything to forgive.
    Yet he waits.
    Takes another sip of his drink.
    Waits.
    The insects are rowdy.
    “What I mean, …” she says. “Frank, do you ever feel that the past is
determined
by the present?”
    “You’ve got that reversed, haven’t you?” he says.
    “Not at all.”
    “You’re saying the
present
determines …?”
    “Yes, the past. What we do
today
determines what already happened
yesterday
.”
    “Are we about to get into a discussion of free will?”
    “I hope not.”
    “Determinism? Predestination?”
    “That’s not what …”
    “
Double
predestination? Calvinism? Am I back at the seminary?”
    “I’m not joking, Frank.”
    “How can you seriously suggest that the
future
determines? …”
    “Not the future. The
present
.”
    “In the past, Mary, the present
is
the future.”
    “Yes, but I’m talking about
now
. The
immediate
present.”
    “Can you give me a concrete example?” he says, thinking that if he can move her from the abstract to the specific, then perhaps he can get her to talk about what’s
really
troubling her. For surely, a metaphysical discussion isn’t what she …
    “Let’s say, for example …”
    She sips slowly at the drink.
    “Let’s say we’re sitting here enjoying our scotch …”
    “Which, in fact, we are doing.”
    “Here in the present. This moment is the present.”
    “It most certainly is.”
    “I’m sorry you think this is funny, Frank.”
    “Forgive me.”
    “What I’m trying to
say
is … do you think that our drinking this scotch, here and now in the present, somehow induced you to
buy
the scotch whenever you bought it?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I
didn’t
buy it. It was a gift from Charles. He brought it back from Glasgow.”
    “Then was
his
buying it, whenever that was …”
    “Three months ago.”
    “Was
his
act influenced by our drinking the scotch right this minute? Did he somehow
know
back then, three months ago in Glasgow, that you and I would be sitting here in your garden tonight … what’s today’s date?”
    “The eighteenth.”
    “July, June, May,” she says, counting backward. “On
May
eighteenth, did Father Charles
know
, or discern, or even prognosticate that tonight we’d be drinking the scotch he was at that moment buying in Glasgow? Did the present …
tonight
, August eighteenth, at … what time is it?”
    “Nine-thirty.”
    “Did
this
hour and
this
minute in
this
garden on
this
night determine his buying
this
scotch three
months
ago?”
    “I didn’t think it was
that
strong,” he says, and looks into his glass as if searching the drink for hidden potency.
    “I’m serious, Frank. Suppose, for example … well, just
suppose
a decision I made two Sundays ago … here at mass, in fact …”
    “What decision was that?” he asks at once.
    “It doesn’t matter. A decision. Let’s say a spiritual