"My Foolish Heart" by the Bill Evans Trio, live at the Village Vanguard, the twenty-fifth of June, 1961. I am your host, Henry Shake — the Sheik, the Shake, the Shook of Araby.
Smiling, Jack pours the beaten eggs into the frying pan, twice swirls them with a fork, and marginally reduces the gas flame. It occurs to him that he has neglected to make coffee. Nuts to coffee. Coffee is the last thing he needs; he can drink orange juice. A glance at the toaster suggests that he has also neglected to prepare the morning's toast. Does he require toast, is toast essential? Consider the butter, consider slabs of cholesterol waiting to corrupt his arteries. The omelette is risky enough; in fact, he has the feeling he cracked way too many eggs. Now Jack cannot remember why he wanted to make an omelette in the first place. He rarely eats omelettes. In fact, he tends to buy eggs out of a sense of duty aroused by the two rows of egg-sized depressions near the top of his refrigerator door. If people were not supposed to buy eggs, why would refrigerators come with egg holders?
He nudges a spatula under the edges of the hardening but still runny eggs, tilts the pan to slide them around, scrapes in the mushrooms and scallions, and folds the result in half. All right. Okay. Looks good. A luxurious forty minutes of freedom stretches out before him. In spite of everything, he seems to be functioning pretty well. Control is not an issue here.
Unfolded on the kitchen table, the La Riviere Herald catches Jack's eye. He has forgotten about the newspaper. The newspaper has not forgotten him, however, and demands its proper share of attention. FISHERMAN STILL AT LARGE IN, and so on. ARCTIC CIRCLE would be nice, but no, he moves nearer to the table and sees that the Fisherman remains a stubbornly local problem. From beneath the headline, Wendell Green's name leaps up and lodges in his eye like a pebble. Wendell Green is an all-around, comprehensive pest, an ongoing irritant. After reading the first two paragraphs of Green's article, Jack groans and clamps a hand over his eyes.
I'm a blind man, make me an umpire!
Wendell Green has the confidence of a small-town athletic hero who never left home. Tall, expansive, with a crinkly mat of red-blond hair and a senatorial waistline, Green swaggers through the bars, the courthouses, the public arenas of La Riviere and its surrounding communities, distributing wised-up charm. Wendell Green is a reporter who knows how to act like one, an old-fashioned print journalist, the Herald's great ornament.
At their first encounter, the great ornament struck Jack as a third-rate phony, and he has seen no reason to change his mind since then. He distrusts Wendell Green. In Jack's opinion, the reporter's gregarious facade conceals a limitless capacity for treachery. Green is a blowhard posturing in front of a mirror, but a canny blowhard, and such creatures will do anything to gain their own ends.
After Thornberg Kinderling's arrest, Green requested an interview. Jack turned him down, as he declined the three invitations that followed his removal to Norway Valley Road. His refusals had not deterred the reporter from staging occasional "accidental" meetings.
The day after the discovery of Amy St. Pierre's body, Jack emerged from a Chase Street dry cleaner's shop with a box of freshly laundered shirts under his arm, began walking toward his car, and felt a hand close on his elbow. He looked back and beheld, contorted into a leer of spurious delight, the florid public mask of Wendell Green.
— Hey, hey, Holly — . A bad-boy smirk. I mean, Lieutenant Sawyer. Hey, I'm glad I ran into you. This is where you have your shirts done? They do a good job?
— If you leave out the part about the buttons.
— Good one. You're a funny guy, Lieutenant. Let me give you a tip. Reliable, on Third Street in La Riviere? They live up to their name. No smashee, no breakee. Want your shirts done right, go to a Chink every time. Sam Lee, try him out, Lieutenant.
— I'm not a lieutenant anymore, Wendell. Call me Jack or Mr. Sawyer. Call me Hollywood, I don't care. And now —
He walked toward his car, and Wendell Green walked beside him.
— Any chance of a few words, Lieutenant? Sorry, Jack? Chief Gilbertson is a close friend of yours, I know, and this tragic case, little girl, apparently mutilated, terrible things, can you can offer us your expertise, step in, give us the benefit of your thoughts?
— You want to know my thoughts?
— Anything you can tell me, buddy.
Pure, irresponsible malice inspired Jack to extend an arm over Green's shoulders and say:
— Wendell, old buddy, check out a guy named Albert Fish. It was back in the twenties.
— Fisch?
— F-i-s-h. From an old-line WASP New York family. An amazing