Free Dead Man's Thoughts by Carolyn Wheat Page A

helped Nathan clear a space by the window and fill it with marble chips. Then we’d spent a Saturday in the plant district on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan picking out trees and such. False aralia, schefflera, rubber plants, giant dieffenbachia, palms, a couple of figs—it was a little jungle. The last time I’d seen it, the plants had been ripped from their pots and the dirt thrown over everything in the living room.
    The office was like a morgue. Lily, Ramona, and the other secretaries sat at their desks, dabbing at their eyes with Kleenexes. Ramona motioned me into the lunchroom, where the lawyers were.
    Flaherty sat at one end of the table, a cup of milky coffee and two Danishes in front of him. His blue eyes were red-rimmed. They teared up as I came over to him. I put my arms around his bulk and kissed him. He squeezed my hand.
    â€œGod, Cass, what an awful thing,” he said. His voice nearly broke. I set my coffee down and sat next to him.
    The others in the room were in better control than Flaherty, but just barely. Bill Pomerantz had the paper open, shaking his head as though he thought they might have made the whole thing up.
    Jackie Bohan blew her nose and said, “I can’t believe it. Nathan of all people.”
    â€œI just hope I don’t pick up any fucking burglary cases today,” Mario said bitterly. His mouth was ugly with hate. “If I have to represent some fucking burglar the day after a friend of mine gets killed by one.…”
    Flaherty cut him off. “That’s your job,” he said, his voice hard. “Don’t confuse your grief for Nathan with anything else, okay?”
    Mario stalked out of the room, muttering, “Just don’t ask me to get ’em out of jail. Not today.”
    Bill looked up from the paper, a disgusted look on his face. “Christ, what shit this is,” he said. “You were right, Pat. They don’t actually say it, but they hint like hell.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked, alarmed. I’d bought the paper because I was afraid of what they might say, but as far as I could see nothing had been said about Button’s Midnight Cowboy theory.
    Flaherty’s voice was bitter. “It’s subtle. But it’s clear to anyone with a certain type of mind. ‘Bachelor apartment.’ ‘No sign of forced entry.’ ‘Bound hand and foot on the bed.’ It all adds up to ‘fag killing,’ doesn’t it?”
    â€œFlaherty,” I said softly, trying to keep it between the two of us. “I was Nathan’s lover. Don’t you think I would have known if he was—like that?”
    He looked at me, an expression of pure misery on his normally humorous face. “I don’t know, Cass. I want to believe you, but what about this?” He gestured at the paper. “It does look like he knew whoever killed him. He let the killer in, and he let—” his voice choked, “he let himself be tied up. How can you explain that?”
    I couldn’t. He went on. “Oh, God, Cass.” His voice was achingly tight, and his face was pinched with pain. “I can’t help but wonder—did Nathan have a whole side to his personality that none of us knew about? A dark side?”
    â€œThat business of having clients come to his house—” Sylvia began.
    â€œIt was dangerous,” Bill agreed. “Stupid.”
    â€œMaybe he was, like, courting death,” Sylvia offered. “A death wish. Unconsciously setting himself up. You know what I mean?”
    â€œWhoever did it must have really hated him,” Jackie said. “The way his apartment was destroyed. A real psycho.”
    Flaherty looked at me, an appeal in his vivid blue eyes. Eyes that usually laughed and now could hardly keep from crying. “I feel betrayed,” he whispered.
    So did I. But not by Nathan. By the people I’d thought were his friends and who now stood ready to