“I could help. If you’d like me to.”
Pete thought it was just a way of filling another day. But it went further than that. The following week they went shopping together. Then Paul Beckman took her out for dinner to thank her, and afterward, he invited her up. Pete parked behind the cop car and watched Beckman’s apartment for an hour, trying not to imagine what was going on up there. Unable to tear himself away until the lights went out and it was clear she wasn’t leaving that night.
Sure, he’d heard all the rumors at the station house, all the jokes—and he had the memory of her parted lips, her wide eyes, as she looked at him on the day her son was put in the ground—but this was something else. This was a bereaved mother and a married man. Devlin was right about her. There was something rotten underneath the sweetness.
He didn’t know what the cops did after that, but he drove home and opened one beer and then another, and wrote until his head ached.
MALONE CASE: MOTHER MAINTAINS SILENCE
By Staff Reporter Peter Wonicke
QUEENS, Sept. 20–The strawberry blonde at the center of a Queens double murder case today refused to comment on rumors that she is conducting a relationship with a married man.
Mrs. Malone, who is separated from her husband, reported her two children missing on July 14. Some hours later the body of little Cindy, age 4, was found lying in a weed-strewn lot not far from the apartment where Mrs. Malone has chosen to remain.
Two weeks later the body of Cindy’s brother, Frank Jr., age 5, was found in a clump of bushes on an embankment above the Van Wyck Expressway, near to the World’s Fair.
Mrs. Malone, neat in a white jacket over a pale knit dress, her hair teased into a bouffant to give her five-foot-four-inch frame the impression of extra height, was seen entering the apartment of Paul Beckman, a senior executive at advertising firm Schiller and Klein, just before midnight.
A source stated that Mrs. Malone has several close male friends. The police have learned that she is a “swinger” who frequents a number of popular nightspots in Flushing and Corona.
The Malone children were taken from a bedroom that was later found to be locked while their mother remained in her own bedroom next door. There were no sightings of strangers near the apartment building and Mrs. Malone’s neighbors reported no unusual disturbances that night.
No arrest has yet been made in the case.
The next morning, he turned in the article and headed out to Long Island City. The waitress started to lead him to his usual table, but he stopped her, chose a different seat. He wanted to see them together now.
It was only when they arrived that Pete realized they might notice him, recognize him.
But in the event, they only had eyes for each other. Beckman seemed softer, somehow. A little shy. He saw Ruth basking in Beckman’s gratitude, like a cat stretching in a pool of sunlight. Her skin and hair were sleek as satin.
“You’re so lovely. Beautiful. You could have your pick of men. A guy would be a fool not to want you.”
After they’d gone back to the office, Pete sat in his car a while, looking out at the East River, watching the light on the water. He pictured Beckman resting his head on her breasts and Ruth holding him until he fell asleep. Pete saw her lying there, listening to his gentle snores and feeling the weight of his body on hers, the solidness of him in her arms, his need for her like a balm.
Writing the article had released something in him. The anger was gone and for the first time, he was seeing Ruth not as a suspect, not as Frank’s estranged wife or as Frankie and Cindy’s mother, but as someone’s lover.
Pete had seen her frustrated, furious, bored, flirtatious: this was Ruth satisfied. This was Ruth desired and desiring.
He laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes and thought about her. About what made her different. He’d met other girls in New York: the sisters and cousins of guys he knew, or their friends and roommates. Compared to his hometown, it sometimes seemed like there were pretty girls everywhere: in every store and on every sidewalk, in every diner and movie theater.
The girls at home were mostly married now, frowsy and chapped by motherhood. A few were sliding with desperate resignation into spinsterous routines. City girls were different. They’d come to New York to get away from the narrowness of those options. They’d made a decision to be different. To take a chance on life.