Sunburn: A Novel(72)
“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.”
“I do now.”
The simple words chill him. “What have you done, Irving? Where is she?”
He shakes his head, his face serious but without malice. The graveness of his expression worries Adam even more. He would feel better if he sneered or laughed mirthlessly, like some cartoon villain.
“I hold no brief for her. But I never tried to kill her. What, you think I’m some criminal mastermind, orchestrating things from city jail? I’m a grandfather, near retirement. The case against me is based on Pauline’s say-so and a collection of, let’s say, inconveniently coincidental policies I helped to broker, years ago. Yes, if she doesn’t testify, I have a better chance at acquittal. But I’ve never arranged a hit on anyone.” He seems to lose himself in a memory before he repeats, more firmly: “I never tried to kill anyone.”
“And yet people ended up dead because of you. How many? And what would one more mean?”
“I know you’re here as a contractual hire of my lawyer,” Lowenstein says. “But I’m not going to presume confidentiality. I put my trust in you once. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You put your trust in me? You lied to me, again and again. Claiming she had money, that she had ripped you off, that she had stolen from one kid and she would do it again. You were biding your time, waiting for the perfect moment to try to kill her.”
“I knew where she was before I hired you, sonny. The point was to figure out if she had money, if she was spending it. Now it’s six months later, you’re just a poor schmendrick who fell in love with her. Is it possible you know even less about her than you did when you started? Oh, you know the names, the sad history, her crime. You know she had a daughter with Ditmars. Do you know what happened to her?”
“I assume some relative took her in.”
“No one wanted that kid. Joy Ditmars has a severe form of cerebral palsy—can’t walk, can’t speak—and is institutionalized at Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital. It’s on Rogers Avenue. Sound familiar?”
Two taxis on a hot summer day. One turns on Rogers Avenue. Adam made the decision not to follow, reasoning that she would spot him on that suburban road. But he told Irving what he saw, where they went. Turns out Irving knew all along what was on Rogers Avenue.
“And here’s how canny she is. The life insurance from her first husband, the policy that almost ruined me, got me investigated—that was in her daughter’s name, in a trust administered by Pauline. Insurance company wouldn’t have to pay if it were for Pauline, but they couldn’t keep the money from the daughter. It pays for her care there. Pauline then surrendered her parental rights—voluntarily, she couldn’t get rid of that kid fast enough. But Pauline wasn’t done, oh no. She likes to play the innocent, but she picked up some tricks from that husband of hers. Last year, she settled out of court with the hospital where the kid was born, blaming them for her condition. Deprivation of oxygen at birth, probably. I’m not sure why the hospital didn’t do due diligence about custody—they were probably so excited to settle that they didn’t get very far into the investigation—but if the state has the kid, she’s not entitled to the damages. I figured she could cut me in for a share, or I’d tell the hospital they’d been taken. But I needed to figure out why she was keeping it a secret. Now I realize it’s an asset she’s hiding from her next ex-husband. She’s a shark, that one, always moving forward.”
She’s the opposite, Adam wants to say. She’s been swimming lazy circles in Belleville all these months.
“I’m telling you, she doesn’t have any money. She can barely make rent some months.”
“And you help her with that, don’t you?” Irving does smile now, but it is an infuriatingly kind one, almost pitying. “She has her charms. I know, believe me. There’s something about her—a stillness, a capacity for quiet. Maybe she always had that quality, but sometimes, I think it was from living with Ditmars. She learned to freeze, like a deer, or a child playing that game. Freeze tag? And she gave a man a sense that he was a hero, that he could save her. If she made me feel that way, I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”
“You had associates, other people who were involved in the things you did—” Adam is grasping and he knows it. But there has to be an explanation for Polly’s disappearance. Would he really rather her be dead than duplicitous, playing him for a sucker all these months?