The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [109]
“Yeah, I got it.”
Poor Tommy Guns. He truly looked disappointed.
I took one last look at the bloodied men on the floor. And they looked up at me. The feeling of holding their lives in my hands sent an electric jolt through me. Cisco tapped me on the back and I followed him from the room, closing the door behind me. We started down the hall but I put my hand on my investigator’s arm and stopped him.
“You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have brought me here.”
“Are you kidding? I had to bring you here.”
“What are you talking about? Why?”
“Because they did something to you. Inside. You lost something, Mick, and if you don’t get it back you aren’t going to be much good to yourself or anybody else.”
I stared at him for a long moment and then nodded.
“I got it back.”
“Good. Now we never have to talk about this again. Can you take me back to the office so I can pick up my bike?”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
Thirty-one
Driving by myself after dropping Cisco in the garage, I thought about the law of the land and the law of the streets and the differences between them. I stood in courtrooms and insisted that the law of the land be applied fairly and appropriately. There was nothing that had been fair and appropriate about what I had just been party to in the black room.
Still, it didn’t bother me. Cisco had been right. I needed to gain the upper hand inside my own soul before I could gain it in court or anywhere else. I felt renewed as I drove. I opened all the Lincoln’s windows and let the evening air course through the car as I came down Laurel Canyon toward home.
This time Maggie had used her key. She was already inside when I got there, an unexpected but pleasant surprise. The refrigerator door was open and she was leaning down and looking in.
“I really came because you always used to stock up before a trial. Your refrigerator was like going down the cold aisle at Gelson’s. But what happened? There’s nothing here.”
I dropped my keys on the table. She had been to her own home from work first and had changed. She wore faded denim jeans, a peasant shirt and sandals with thick cork heels. She knew I liked that outfit.
“I guess I didn’t get around to it this time.”
“Well, I wish I’d known. Might’ve considered going somewhere else on my one night this week with a sitter.”
She smiled slyly. I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t still living together.
“How about we go down to Dan’s?”
“Dan Tana’s? I thought you went there only when you won a case. You already counting your chickens, Haller?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“No, no way. But if I went there only when I won then I’d hardly ever get to eat there.”
She pointed a finger at me and smiled. It was a dance and we were both well used to it. She closed the fridge and walked through the kitchen door and then right past me without so much as a kiss.
“Dan Tana’s is open late,” she said.
I watched her walk down the hallway toward the master bedroom. She pulled the peasant blouse up over her head just as she disappeared into the room.
We didn’t really make love. Something about what I had seen and felt in the black room at the Saints was still with me. Call it residual aggression or the release of the impotent anger I had felt. Whatever it was, it informed all my moves with her. I pulled and pushed too hard. I bit her lip and held her wrists together above her head. I controlled her and I knew what it was all about while I did it. Maggie went with it at first. The newness of it was probably interesting. But curiosity eventually turned to concern and she turned her face from mine and struggled to free her hands. I held her wrists tighter. Finally, I saw tears well in her eyes.
“What?” I whispered into her ear, my nose pressing hard into her hair.
“Just finish,” she said.
All aggression and drive and desire went down the psychic drain after that. Her tears and telling me to finish made me unable to. I pulled out and off, rolling to the side of the bed.