Yesterday's News

her hand around the loft, “has already started to wear off. I’d really appreciate some company tonight. Even just for dinner. What do you say?”
    I thought about how much lousier funerals were when you anticipated them. “Okay.”
    “Great. Anything you can’t eat?”
    “Shrimp.”
    “No problem. You have a good sense of the city yet?”
    “Getting there.”
    “You take Main Street to Armory, then a right onto Armory to The Quay. Follow The Quay all the way to the end. My place is the last one on the right. Seven-thirty, bring white wine.” She headed for a makeshift locker room off in a corner.
    “Hey, you have a house number?”
    “Last place on the right. You can’t miss it.”
    I watched Rendall bounce lightly on the balls of her feet as she moved away. After the folks I planned to see next, a home-cooked meal sounded better and better.

    I bought a crabmeat plate and lemonade at a luncheonette, then crisscrossed the east side of town till I found Grantland Avenue . Knocking on doors, I finally got someone to point out Gail Fearey’s place. The homes on Grantland made the shacks on Crestview look like the mansions at Newport . What cars there were reminded me of the primered Buick, stilted on cinder blocks or slumped in carports like old dogs.
    Fearey’s house was a tiny ranch on a narrow lot. The driveway was packed dirt with a few patches of gravel too deeply embedded to erode away. A broken, rusted tricycle was at the edge of the driveway, as though somebody had run over it in the winter and just left it there to degrade over time.
    The siding was dull yellow here and flat white there. A picture window had nine frames where there should have been glass. Cardboard, irregularly cut and of different colors, was stapled over four of them. I walked to the front metal door that had neither screen nor storm window. The stock wooden door behind it affected a mail slot. I reached through the metal door and knocked on the wooden one.
    On my third try a female voice, husky from too much smoking, spoke from the other side of the door. “Who is it?”
    “Gail Fearey?”
    “Who is it?”
    “Ms. Fearey, my name is John Cuddy. I’m investigating the death of Jane Rust, and I’d like to talk with you.”
    “I don’t wanna talk about her.”
    “Just a second.” I took a twenty from my wallet, tearing it in half. “I’m going to slip half of a twenty dollar bill through the mail slot, Ms. Fearey. You get the other half if you let me come in. You piece the two halves together, the stores will accept it.”
    No reply.
    I flipped the slot and shot the first half in to her. After a moment, she said, “You got any ID?”
    “Yes. Here it comes.”
    After another moment, the locks clicked and the door itself came open. I pulled the metal door out and stepped inside.
    “Here’s your ID.” She was about five-two and looked anorectic, the big blue eyes popping from a waif’s teardrop face like a Margaret Keane painting. Acne scars riddled each cheek, and she used no makeup that I could see. Her lips were bloodless, her clothes a tee shirt that hung off her and jeans that billowed where they should have filled. “Where’s my other half?”
    “Of the twenty?”
    “Right.”
    “You get that after we talk.”
    A world-weary expression came over her features. “Sure.”
    Fearey turned away, walking to a gut-sprung chair. The chair and the daybed sofa across from it had metallic gray electrician’s tape in a lot of places. A bulky color TV nearly caved in the milk crates beneath it. The video was on, but no sound came out. A thick elastic band stretched tautly from the ears of the channel changer to a brick on the floor. Sitting, she saw me staring at the set.
    “Tuner’s gone. Rubber band’s the only thing can hold it on a channel.”
    I chose the daybed sofa. “Is the sound gone, too?’ “No. The brat’s asleep in the other room. He’s been acting up lately, so keep your voice down, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “Got a cigarette?”
    “Sorry.”
    “Think I got some somewhere. Just a second.” Fearey shuffled to the kitchen counter, pushing a Burger King bag onto the floor before finding a crushed pack of something. She pawed through three drawers for matches.
    Coming back and lighting up, she said, “I’m trying to quit. For the kid. Bad for his lungs too, they say now.”
    I nodded. “I understand you lived here with Charlie Coyne.”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “No. He lived here with