Yesterday's News

said it was better I didn’t know, like she was some kind of spy or something. I couldn’t believe that she thought the guy was going to help her or anybody else. I kind of knew who he was... that is, I’d seen him down at... down on The Strip once in a while. I went down there... to get stimulated, you know? To see if the... shows and all could help me that way.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, one night at this place, a bar called Bun’s, he comes up to me between... between shows and sits down and starts telling me, telling me to my face about how him and Jane... made love. About what she said while he was...”
    I gave him a moment. “How did Coyne know who you were?”
    “He said from the picture.”
    “Picture?”
    “Yeah. At Jane’s house. She had a photo of her and me together. On her dresser.”
    “That night at Bun’s, you guys fight it out?”
    “No. No, I was... too ashamed, I guess. I just ran out of there, never went back. Then Coyne gets killed maybe a week later, and Jane suspects, well, like I said.”
    “So why did you go to Jane’s on Monday night?”
    “I was home, drinking. I don’t... don’t drink well. I got a little high, and I started calling her. I’m not sure what I was thinking, I guess that I could convince her to take me... to give us another try as a couple. Well, I called her, I don’t know, four or five times, and let it ring out, no answer. So finally I pulled on some sneakers and sweat clothes, and went out to my car, figure to see her face to face but be dressed casually, you know? Like it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of idea.”
    “When she wasn’t home?”
    “Huh?”
    “You expected to see her at her house when she I hadn’t been answering her phone?”
    “Oh, no. I... I thought maybe she had somebody else now. Somebody else like Coyne. Every time the phone rang and she didn’t answer that’s what I... pictured in my head. Anyway, I finally got mad enough to drive there. I still... I still had a key to her I front door. She gave it to me because the buzzer bothered her landlady.”
    “What time was this?”
    “I don’t know. Late, maybe eleven-thirty, midnight.
    I shouldn’t even have been driving, what I’d had to drink. Anyway, I open the door to her place, and the stereo is going, and so I sneak around to the bedroom, to sort of peek in I guess, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and then I see her....” Fetch put his good hand up to his eyes. “She was just lying on the couch, like she’d fallen asleep. I touched... I touched her, and she was cold, and there was this smell, like a clogged toilet, and I realized she... she was dead. I... I’d never seen anybody dead like that. I panicked, I suppose. I remember running toward the front door. And I remember jumping in the car. And that’s all. Except for being scared, every day after that.”
    “Scared about what?”
    “About what? About finding Jane’s body and not reporting it or anything.”
    “But you figured she’d committed suicide, right?”
    “I didn’t know what to think, understand? I mean, all I knew was she was dead. I didn’t look around for anything or anybody. I just knew she was dead. It was only when I got back home and stopped shaking that I realized she probably died of something like that. Suicide, I mean. The way she looked, no blood or anything, I never even thought about murder.”
    “Tell you what.”
    “Huh?”
    “Think about it now.”

    Connie eyed me suspiciously as I approached her window.
    I said, “Can you get Duckie for me?”
    She put her People magazine down carefully, saving her place. “You’re getting to be a real pain in the ass.”
    “Pretty please with sugar on it?”
    Connie reached under her counter, then made a ceremony of bringing the magazine back up so I couldn’t see her face anymore. My loss.

    Aside from four insurance salesmen whooping it up at the bar, Duckie Teevens and I were alone in Bun’s. He’d suggested we take a table off in a comer. Sherry, who seemed to double as daytime waitress, at least for Duckie, took our order. Neither of us said anything until she’d delivered the drinks, whiskey for Duckie and a Michelob for me.
    Teevens clinked his glass against the neck of my bottle and said, “So you wanted to talk with me, talk.”
    “I haven’t noticed you over my shoulder for a while.”
    “Like I told you, Bunny decided he didn’t want me trailing you no more.”
    “Can you tell me why?”
    “I figure