He decides he won’t take his books to Belleville on this trip, or his other boxes. It will look presumptuous, even if he and Polly did live together for part of the fall. Going forward, things between them will be stated, out in the open. He will tell her that he was hired as a private investigator to follow her, that he never knew Irving was trying to harm her. If she forgives him, he’ll ask her to marry him.
That said, there’s no law he has to wait until Christmas Eve to propose. She’ll be looking for something then. Why not do it—tonight? No one expects a proposal on December 21. Polly doesn’t even expect him to be there. When he’d first told her he didn’t think he could get away until Saturday afternoon, at the earliest, they both agreed that it might be better for him to drive over Sunday morning as the roads would be wretched that afternoon. But he’s been to the bank, deposited his checks for his last two gigs and there’s not a lot of work this time of year. His last job, in fact, was so awful it made him want to quit PI work forever. Some poor woman with five kids, shopping at the Dollar Tree, was hit by a car, all her cheap little presents scattering in the wind. No one was at fault—it was dark, she stepped off a curb—and the tortured good citizen behind the wheel immediately established a fund in her name. But the sister who stepped up to take donations on the kids’ behalf turned out to be completely shifty. The driver called Adam, and Adam sussed it out in less than two days. The woman, under a slightly different name, had several penny-ante convictions—bad checks, stealing some stuff from a roommate. Real People’s Court shit. There was no way she should be overseeing that fund.
But the part that soured Adam on his job was the happy client giving him a bonus for scaring the shit out of the shady sister. It was as if her misdeeds cleared the slate for the poor mope, made him feel less guilty about the accident. True, she’d probably skimmed some money off the donations that came in, but there was still almost $5,000 for the five kids, which will help. It won’t send them to college, but it will buy groceries, keep the heat on. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.
It’s almost enough to buy a canary yellow engagement ring.
Shit, he’s approaching the bridge and he’s left the ring behind. Should he take that as a sign? Maybe he should wait until the new year. Maybe he should wait until she’s legally divorced. That letter—why didn’t she read it in front of him? He knows Maryland law and he realizes she can’t initiate the divorce, not for a while. If her husband doesn’t file, she has to wait two years for a no-fault.
Two years. June 1997. Where will they be? Who will they be?
He takes the last exit before the bridge and heads back. It will cost him almost ninety minutes, but he can’t stop thinking about it.
*
It is almost nine Thursday night when Adam reaches the High-Ho, but the bar is packed. Business picks up during the holidays. People get giddy from all the socializing, want to keep going, and the High-Ho is one of the few places open after eight. Mr. C has put up decorations that appear to be fifty years old, right out of that Christmas Story movie. Strands of multicolored lights, an illuminated wreath in one window. The air inside the bar feels overheated and smoky after even a few seconds of the cold, crisp air in the parking lot. Adam’s eyes need a moment to adjust.
Mr. C is tending bar.
“Where’s Polly?”
“She wasn’t expecting you tonight, Adam.”
“I wanted to surprise her.”
“Oh, I think we have a gift of the magic here,” says Mr. C, mangling the name of the old O. Henry story. “Polly asked for today off, for a mystery errand. I assume it’s for you. The—the thing she was making for you, it’s not coming out so good. She said there was something she needed to pick up in Baltimore and she took the bus. But you weren’t supposed to be here until early Sunday, I thought.”
“I was trying to surprise her,” Adam mutters, taking a stool. Might as well have a beer or two.
“Like I said, gift of the magic.”
He doesn’t have the heart to correct Mr. C’s repeated malapropism, explain that the story is correctly called “The Gift of the Magi,” and that it’s more than two people trying to surprise each other. It’s the catch-22 of gift-giving. It’s also another one of those Christmas stories that everyone thinks is so nice when it’s depressing as hell. Two desperately poor people try to do something nice for each other as Christmas approaches, sacrificing their most cherished possessions. The woman’s hair may grow back, but it will never be quite the same. Women’s hair never is after they cut it. And what do you do with a watch fob when you don’t have a watch?
What do you do with an engagement ring when you don’t have your girl?
“When did she say she was coming back?” Adam asks.
“She didn’t. Doesn’t matter, because she asked for today and tomorrow off and we’re closed Christmas Eve and Christmas.”
“She didn’t tell me she was off.”
Mr. C clapped a hand to his mouth. “Maybe that’s part of the secret.”
Adam goes to her garage apartment, soon to be theirs. Senseless to expect her as no buses run this late, but he keeps hoping she’ll slide in next to him. But she doesn’t come home that night.
Or the next day.
Or that night.
When Saturday, December 23, dawns, and there’s still no sign of her, Adam can’t stop lying to himself. Something is wrong, terribly wrong, and there’s only one person who can assure him that Polly is okay.
44
“Merry Christmas,” Irving says to Adam over the low partition at city jail.
“Don’t be funny,” Adam says.
“What a sad world this is when even a polite greeting is suspect. I’m glad to see you, if surprised by the timing. I guess it’s a good thing that my lawyer listed you as one of the firm’s employees. Can’t have been easy, getting in here on the Saturday before Christmas.”
“A friendly judge made it happen. Your lawyer’s very well connected.”
“I would hope so,” Irving says. “My legal affairs are not a place to cut corners. I always hire the best. Or try.”
Lowenstein looks terrible, at least ten years older than he did when Adam last saw him face-to-face, which was in June. The orange jumpsuit is unkind to most complexions, but Irving looks particularly haggard. The blood vessels in his face are more prominent, his eyes rheumy like an old dog’s. He has a cold, but no handkerchief, and keeps honking into the crook of his elbow. His cough is syrupy, almost a gurgle.
“You’ve been trying to talk to me since you were arrested. Why?”
“I had information that I thought you should have.”
“About Polly? Is someone still after Polly? Are you still trying to kill her?”
Irving needs a beat. “It’s funny, I still think of her as Pauline. But then, in my head, she still has short blond hair and is a little overweight. Zaftig is the better word. It’s Yiddish, it means—”
“I know what zaftig means.”
“They say almost no one can maintain a significant weight loss. But she has, hasn’t she? Still skinny almost five years out. Maybe prison can be a kind of spa, if you treat it right. I can look forward to that at least. If I’m convicted.”
“You’ll be convicted.”
Adam waits for Irving to contradict him. Does the case against Irving rely on Polly’s testimony? It occurs to Adam that he hasn’t really thought too much about the evidence against Irving, what the cops have. If Polly is the key witness and Polly is missing—
“Where is she?”
“Pauline? I’m sure I don’t know.”
“You tried to kill her before.”
“Really? You may have noticed I’m not charged with that particular crime. They can’t even put me at the scene—I flew to Toledo that morning to visit my daughter. In fact, I’ve never been to Belleville, Delaware.”
Adam had assumed that Delaware charges would follow after Maryland was through with Lowenstein. But of course Lowenstein has never been to Belleville.
“You never do your own dirty work. You hired me to keep tabs on her, then you hired another guy to use the information I had gathered, tried to make the death look like an accident. When they find him, it will be a race to see who flips on who first.”
“They’re never going to find him,” Irving says. “Because he doesn’t exist.”
“You wanted her dead.”