“Were you going to take the bus or a cab?” Freddy asked him. “I’m just taking Claire and Michaelaen home. I’ll drop you all off at once. You don’t live far, do you?”
Johnny looked over at Pokey’s Oldsmobile. “I’ll just hop on the …” he was about to say “bus” when he saw a lady parking cop writing out a ticket. If they all left now he could stop the bitch. She could see the detective shield in there. What the hell was the matter with her?
“I wouldn’t think of that,” Claire said.
“No, really. It goes right by my house. I’d rather.” He looked past her at the traffic cop. Claire followed his eyes. All she saw was a taxi full of pretty girls in gauzy dresses disembarking.
“Don’t be silly,” she said without certainty.
“No, I want to. Really.”
Claire tipped her chin to look at him. So that was it. He hadn’t liked the kiss she’d loved. He didn’t care about her after all. What a silly fool she was! Of course, now he could see how ugly she was with her nose all sweaty. “Well, thank you, then, for saving the dog,” she muttered.
“Hey, don’t mention it.” He let go a manic laugh. The policewoman picked up the windshield wiper and smacked it down on the ticket. The jig was up. Then it hit him. Claire’s mother would certainly tell them he’d been there forty minutes ago. There was no reason now not to come clean. “Uh … look, I didn’t want to say nothin’ before. Didn’t wanna worry you or nothin’, but I got a car right here.”
They looked at him, puzzled.
“I been sorta following you,” he said to Claire.
“What, still?” Freddy studied Claire with scornful interest. “You think Claire is in some sort of danger? I doubt that.” He laughed a condescending little laugh. “She’s a little bit past the age for a child molester’s interest.”
“Is that right?” Johnny put his face up against Freddy’s. “I guess you got this whole business all figured out.”
“I didn’t say that.” Freddy’s sardonic tone faded fast.
“You were just acting like that for no reason, like.”
“Yeah, that’s it. No reason.”
“’Cause if you got any ideas about what’s going on around here, we’d be more than happy to listen to anything you have to say down at the stationhouse.”
Freddy went pale. He hoped with all his heart that the customers just going in hadn’t heard that.
The traffic cop sauntered by. “Whatsa matter,” Johnny shouted at her, “you never heard of professional loyalty?”
“Hey, mister, I just do my job.”
“That’s a cop on duty, sister.”
“Yeah, well I got my orders. I ticket anybody, any vehicle sits itself down in my no standing.”
“Johnny,” Claire said, and as she did she realized she’d never said his name like that before, directly to him.
“What.”
“Perhaps you could drive us home. Then Freddy wouldn’t have to leave at all. It’s getting awfully busy in there.” As if to demonstrate her point, a gang of snappily dressed coke types went rollicking up the stairs.
“Hey.” Johnny rolled his shoulders. “Can a corn.”
“I take it that means you will.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell your mother,” Freddy said to Michaelaen, “that I’ll be over tomorrow to see her.”
And Carmela, thought Claire, sick to death of him.
“Off you go,” Freddy tapped him on his bottom.
Neither Claire nor Johnny spoke until they dropped Michaelaen off. They both smiled pleasantly from the car and waved to Mary as she let the boy and the dog into the house.
“You didn’t have to make a fool of him in front of his son,” was the first thing out of her mouth.
“He’s a piece of shit.”
“Maybe so. But that knowledge isn’t going to help Michaelaen grow up a happier person.”
“Happier than what? Happier than who? You? Me?”
Claire let her breath out slowly. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Especially not with him this close to her. “Whatever happened with the license plate numbers?”
“Nothin’. Didn’t turn nothin’ up.”
“Oh.” She waited.
He didn’t want to tell her about the only old golden Plymouth he did know about, the one that sat in front of the station house for as long as he could remember. Furgueson’s. Captain Furgueson’s. 5473 BNJ. So she had her numbers right. Only the thought of Furgueson molesting kids was so ridiculous it almost made you want to laugh. The only body Furgueson was known to molest was over twenty-one and top heavy. Which was where he’d been on his way back from the morning of the murder. He didn’t want to tell Claire about that, though. Nancy Drew here would have the whole neighborhood informed. Truth and all that crap. And where would that leave Furgueson? Divorced, that was where. And from a very nice old broad. A lady. So why hurt either of them? The famed wall of blue loyalty between cops was not always a bad thing. You had to be loyal in this game. He looked over at Claire’s worried, pretty face.
She’d been staring at him. “Were you really following me?” she asked.