"How many times we split and come back together?"

I looked into his eyes. Maybe I was about to be dumped. But that's not what the eyes were saying.

"Too many to count," I said. "Five-maybe six."

"Gets kind of old, don't it? I mean, we must belong together or something, or we wouldn't keep doing it. Right?"

I didn't know how to answer that.

"Why'd I have to put a dress on, Walter?" I asked softly.

"Because I didn't want to ask you to marry me while you were wearing overalls."

Lord!

"Can I have another drink, Walter?"

"So what do you think about it?" he said as he signalled the bartender.

"s.h.i.t, man. I don't know. What do you want to get married for?"

Not the world's most gracious response to a proposal, is it? I was sorry the minute the words came out of my mouth. But he went on, undaunted.

"I'm tired of f.u.c.king around, Nan. I want us to have a house. I want us to have kids. It's just ... time."

Kids? Kids? I'd never told Walter my thoughts, fears, about having children. I guess, like a lot of other women, or at least I a.s.sumed there were many others like me, having children had never been a desire of mine, though I'd always a.s.sumed that if I were to hook up with a man who really wanted them, I'd be able to do my part.

Truth was, I was sure I wouldn't make much of a mom. And I'd always counted myself lucky for having a mother who was so unlike me. I'm self involved, mercurial, emotionally unstable, don't get any gold stars for patience, something of a loner, apt to take off for ports unknown at a moment's notice, if that, and really don't appreciate people I can't reason with. In short, a child's nightmare. Poor thing would be logging hours on the school counselor's couch before it turned seven, all because of me. But if this theoretical man insisted on babies, at least I could tell him what the deal was going in. h.e.l.l, I was better about it than Aubrey. She hated children-with a pure, unalloyed hatred-and would say so to just about anybody.

But I said none of that to Walter. Instead, I took his hand and held it for a long moment.

"Here's what we do," he said eagerly. "I'm renting a car in the morning. Driving to Philly for the meeting. You catch the train at Penn Station and wait for me at Thirtieth Street Station. I'll pick you up at twelve. We drive up to Bucks County. I know this inn you're gonna love. Matter fact, we might spend a few days there once we get married. Anyway, we drive up there, just you and me, have lunch, take it easy, stay the night, just talk about things. Doesn't it sound good?"

Yes, it did. Looked at as nothing more than a little respite from the city, or as a romantic getaway during which we'd plan our wedding (ha ha), it did sound good.

Wild Bill was dead. Henry Valokus had vanished, probably for good. And the trail of Rhode Island Red was dead cold. I'd been played for a fool, pushed around, threatened, a.s.saulted, f.u.c.ked and abandoned. And so what was the big issue in my life? Getting married. To quote Fats Waller, "One never knows, do one?"

Walter's proposal had genuinely knocked me on my a.s.s. I had never really known whether I loved him. And I suppose I had never believed he loved me.

So why did we keep coming back together? He'd asked a good question.

I tried to visualize myself dusting the living room of some two-bedroomer upstate. Waiting by the garden gate for the little one to come home from school.

Not.

I tried to be a little more realistic: Walt's at work, I'm still in my nightgown at three in the afternoon, listening to Monk records while the pork roast defrosts, maybe noodling a little on the sax or with some spiral bound notebook full of over-ripe verse.

Would Walter want to go to the Loire and sample wines on our vacation? No. We'd wind up in some pricey time share in Jamaica.

"So you gonna marry me or what, girl?" He kissed me again.

I was glad Mom couldn't see me now. She'd have a heart attack from the suspense. I kind of smiled at the image-not the image of her clawing at her chest but the one of her rising off her barstool with the girl, are you crazy? look on her face.

"Walter, Walter, Walter," I said, feeling at one and the same time aroused and sad. "I'll tell you what. I'm not going to marry you-tomorrow-but I am going on that honeymoon. And we can talk about it, as you said."

Yeah, "talk" was right. There was an awful lot I hadn't told my little fiance.

I took the nine-thirty to Philadelphia the next morning. I'd brought four paperbacks along to read on the 90-minute run: a novel by an expatriate American writer with whom I'd spent about ten minutes in bed the last time I saw Paris; a couple of poetry anthologies; and the same unread Gertrude Stein volume I'd been toting on and off trains for most of my life. I didn't crack one of those books. I was much too distracted.

I saw a sign just outside Trenton that seemed to tap on some long buried memory. TRENTON MAKES/THE WORLD TAKES, it read. It made me wonder if perhaps my parents had taken me to Philly when I was a kid. Where could we have been going? Probably someplace exciting, like an interstate spelling bee.

The train stalled just past Trenton and pulled into Thirtieth Street Station at eleven-thirty, a half hour late. Even so, I was still early. Walter had told me to wait for him on one of the benches near the geographical center of the station because he didn't know at what entrance he would find parking for his rented car. I sat down and went a couple of rounds with Gertrude.

At eleven fifty-five Walter had not yet arrived. We were supposed to meet at noon, but Walt is notoriously early. Meaning that five minutes before the appointed time is late for him. He wasn't there at noon either. And he wasn't there at twelve-thirty.

I tried to remember where he was going in Philly. He was trying to corral a client, he'd said. Clients for Walter were magazine publishers. That's what he did-sell s.p.a.ce in magazines to advertisers. But he didn't mention any specific magazine. He just said he and his new partner were going together. What was his partner's name? Mitch.e.l.l? Mariachi? I didn't remember, and what did it matter? I wouldn't know where to reach them anyway. I couldn't call Walt's New York office-they probably didn't even know he was in Philadelphia. After all, Walter and his partner were on a sort of secret mission to help them start their new firm.

I got up and made a circuit around the station. I sat down again. I bought the Enquirer and read it. I bought a New York paper and read that. I bought a coffee, keeping watch on the two ends of the station as I sipped it.

It was one-thirty. No Walter. Under my breath I began to curse him in the kinds of terms you don't expect one affianced to use when referring to the other.

I searched out the phones and tried calling Walter's New York apartment. No answer there. And no answer at my own place just my own voice on the machine.

At one fifty-five I heard the announcement that a train was boarding for New York ... Last call! It was all I could do to keep my seat. But I managed.

When they made the same announcement forty-five minutes or so later, I succ.u.mbed.

I hadn't bought a return ticket. I paid the conductor in cash.

As the train rolled along, my anger dissipated. And in its place came guilt and chagrin and an almighty embarra.s.sment. Why the h.e.l.l had I gotten so angry at him? Why hadn't I waited? I'd a.s.sumed his failure to show up had been volitional, malicious in fact. But any one of a hundred things could have prevented him from being on time. G.o.d, he might even have been in an auto accident-or something worse.

Why hadn't I waited longer? Why hadn't I done something else instead of just fleeing? Because I was still Lady Fly Off the Handle; that was part of the answer. I knew another part of the answer, too: I knew I wasn't going to marry Walter Moore.

By the time we got to Newark I had myself a little more in hand. The disaster scenarios were receding from my mind. Surely something had gone awry with Walter's potential client and he was in the station now making frantic calls to me in New York. He'd come back to the city and tell me what happened and I'd make him a nice dinner, or something. And as for the honeymoon, well, one has just got to be philosophical about that kind of thing.

Darn that dream-right, Mom?

CHAPTER 13.

Friday the 13th I was in no mood for the subway. I took a cab home.

The afternoon sun fell dustily into the lobby as I stood fumbling through my overnight bag and all my pockets for my keys. Finally, burrowing at the bottom of my bag, I felt them through a wad of Kleenex. Relieved, I slipped the key into the lobby door and stepped inside.

A meaty black hand covered my mouth so powerfully and so completely that my whole face went numb, my vision blurring.

"Just stay calm, college girl," I heard. "Stay calm and quiet. Somebody's in your apartment and I'm going up to get him. Understand?"

I nodded. The hand dropped away. I turned in the cramped s.p.a.ce and found myself staring into the demonic eyes of Detective Leman Sweet.

"Who's in my apartment?" I asked, voice cracking.

"You'll find out soon enough," he said, soundlessly closing the lobby door and drawing his gun. He gestured me backward with the piece. "Stay put."

He was taking the stairs slowly, slowly, the boards creaking faintly as he moved. But before he had even reached the second floor landing, I heard the door to my place swing open. I popped out and looked up after Sweet but I could see nothing but his ma.s.sive back.

"Police! Hold it!" Sweet bellowed to the intruder.

The words must have escaped the man's throat involuntarily, instinctively: "What the f.u.c.k ..."

"Get your hands up!" Sweet screamed at the man. At Walter.

It had taken me a second or two, but I recognized that voice. That was Walter up there.

What the f.u.c.k? My sentiments exactly.

Through Leman Sweet's legs I could see Walt's loafers. I heard a thud and then saw a saxophone case on the worn out carpet.

"Don't fight him, Walter!" I shouted. "He thinks you're breaking in."

I began running up the stairs, bellowing as I went, "Sweet, leave him alone, Sweet!"

"Shut up!" he yelled down to me. "Stay!" he shouted at Walt. "Don't you move, motherf.u.c.ker."

The two of them stood in a sweaty frieze, neck muscles taut, eyes locked, until Leman Sweet took a menacing step toward Walt.

"Do what he says, Walter," I warned. But Walter wasn't listening. I don't even think he knew I was there. "For G.o.dsakes!" I shrieked at the detective. "Leave him alone, G.o.d.a.m.nit. He's not breaking in. I know him. He's my-"

"I know who he is, girl."

"I ought to kill you where you stand," Leman Sweet growled at Walter. Stand was the operative word. He wouldn't allow Walter to sit. As for me, he had said that if I dared move from the kitchen chair, he'd shoot us both.

G.o.d help us, I thought at first. It's going to be the Diego scene all over again. Abusive cop beating the h.e.l.l out of an unarmed citizen. Except my instinct to try to protect poor Walter had suddenly frozen. In one dread-drenched second I had realized that Walt was no innocent bystander here. He was guilty. Guilty of what, I didn't yet know. But it was something a lot more serious than standing up his fiancee in Philly.

"Get that gun the f.u.c.k out of my face," Walter came back, bl.u.s.tering, weak.

Sweet only laughed at him. "You got a hot minute to tell me everything," he said. "Don't bother to deny nothing. Don't give me excuses, alibis, nothing. Just tell me what I want to know. Starting with you and Charlie Conlin."

Walter swallowed hard, trying not to come apart, trying to mask the trapped rat quality in his eyes.

Thwack!

Even I felt that backhanded slap across Walt's face. But he took the blow standing up. Then, for the first time since this crazy encounter began, Walter looked at me.

My stomach flipped.

Get a grip, baby girl, said Ernestine. Here it comes.

"He had the seat next to me at the Garden," Walter began slowly. "We both had season tickets for the Knicks. We got to talking. I couldn't believe it when Charlie told me he was a cop. He seemed like real people. We liked each other a lot. Started having a drink, shooting the s.h.i.t after the games. Sometimes I would meet him after work. We used to shoot pool once in a while-pick up-I mean, when I wasn't living with Nanette, he and me met some women at some of the places he liked to go hear music. We were ... I don't know ... friends."

"Right," Leman said. "Y'all went out chasing p.u.s.s.y together. Did a little c.o.ke together. s.h.i.t like that. Real cool. Charlie always thought he was Mister New York Cool. Mister Dangerous. He was going to buy those season tickets even if he couldn't pay the rent. Okay. Go on."

"We had been buddies for a year before he told me about this thing that was going to set us up for life. Charlie had heard these rumors. Unbelievable stories. But he sure as h.e.l.l believed them. There was this saxophone-they called it Rhode Island Red-and it was worth a million dollars. Maybe even more."

I burst into laughter. Walter must have gone crazy! There was no saxophone on earth worth a million dollars.

"Real funny, ain't it?" Sweet said, not laughing. "You just shut up and keep listening to your friend here. You didn't think it was so funny, did you, Walter?"

"No."

"Keep talking, Walter. Tell us how Charlie filled up your head with dreams of gold."

Gold? What gold?

"He said he had it worked out," Walter went on. "He said people had been looking for this sax for decades, but now he had a line on it. This old man-some jackleg trumpet player-actually knew where he could lay his hands on this treasure. The guy's name was Tuttle but they called him Wild Bill. Wild Bill was tight with Charlie's old lady, a blind girl that he stayed with sometimes. She didn't even know that he was a cop. She only knew him as a musician, Sig, his undercover name.

"Anyway, the two of them, the girl and Wild Bill, would get high together, play on the street together, sometimes she would give him a place to crash, stuff like that. And one day Wild Bill told her about the sax. She never really believed it existed. Tuttle was nothing but an old alkie, used to be a junkie. She figured it was some kind of pipe dream-something he made up.

"She mentioned it to Charlie eventually. She wasn't copping out on Tuttle or anything, she just told him, more like a joke than anything else. Charlie put it all together. He knew then that the rumors weren't crazy, that the million dollar sax was for real.

"Yeah, he was planning on taking this Wild Bill off-beating him out of this so-called gold mine. But, like Charlie said, what was a guy like Turtle going to do with something that valuable anyway? He'd never be able to fence it. He was bound to f.u.c.k up. Chances are somebody would have either conned him out of it or killed him for it. So Charlie cut himself in.

"He told Wild Bill how it was going to be: he'd give him sixty grand and Wild Bill would turn the sax over to him and be out of the deal forever.

"Wild Bill accepted."

"Yeah," Leman echoed. "I bet he did. But where was Charlie gonna lay his hands on sixty thousand dollars? Simple. He lifted the buy money from the operation we were doing."

"That's right," said Walter.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n straight, it is," said Leman. "Then the dominos started falling. Tell us, Walt."

"First, Charlie learned that some washed up mob punk, an ex con out of Rhode Island, was after the sax. He was a white dude who had been in the joint with Turtle. Charlie figured, if this guy knew about it, how many others knew?

"Next thing that happened, Charlie got wind that Internal Affairs was about to eat his a.s.s up. They suspected he stole that buy money."

"And that's where I come in," Sweet said, his voice raw. "I didn't know nothing about nothing before IA got in on it. Didn't have to be a genius to realize they were going to fall on me too. I was Charlie's partner, so they figured I was in on it too. If he was dirty then I was dirty. Sure, the n.i.g.g.e.r in the duo would have to be in on the corruption.

"Finally they were convinced that I was innocent. Next thing I know, the Department's telling me I have to join forces with those idiots in order to find out what the f.u.c.k happened to my partner. That's when I started hearing about this stupid saxophone and the bodies it was racking up.

"It must have been touch and go for old Charlie. He was racing the clock near the end. He was hot as h.e.l.l. A mob guy sniffing around; IA on his tail; dealing with a loose cannon like this old alkie, Tuttle. Isn't that right, Walt?"

"Yes. Wild Bill had told him he'd have the sax in forty-eight hours. Charlie needed a place to stay. He couldn't risk going back to the blind girl's place. And he couldn't stay at my apartment uptown because we didn't want anybody to connect the two of us. He told me to sit tight till he got in touch."