Read Online Beware the Solitary Drinker by Cornelius Lehane - Free Book Online Page B

four or five, she wore love beads and peasant dresses. By the time she was ten, with lipstick, she was so pretty—a real baby doll—and she was stunning. Although you wouldn’t mistake that she was a child.
    â€œFor months, Angelina talked about her friend in the park. No one paid much attention. And then, she began calling him her boyfriend…I was the one who knew he’d done it …All of a sudden, she was in a tiff, mad at her boyfriend, but too grown up about it…It was too much like a jealous woman’s anger. I got Angelina to tell me because I already knew…That’s how close I was to her. I could feel what she felt.”
    â€œHow did she feel about being raped?”
    Janet started and lost her footing. She seemed troubled by the word. “I guess she didn’t think she was raped…She thought she had a boyfriend.”
    â€œDidn’t anyone explain the difference to her? Did she get counseling?”
    â€œNo. My mother said she didn’t need it…It was the boy who was sick. I guess he was sick. He was from a really respectable family, my mother said…His father worked things out with my mother…He went into some kind of hospital, I guess, after it happened. We never talked about him again. I imagine the whole thing ruined his life.”
    â€œAngelina’s, too.”
    Janet kept her thoughts to herself for a minute, watching the buildings and the traffic on the far side of the park, as I did.
    â€œSo you think this closeness will work a second time? You’ll intuit who the murderer is? You’ll get a premonition?”
    â€œI’m not saying that…My sister and I were very close, Brian…I’m not going to let anyone forget what happened to her…I’d know things that other people wouldn’t know…I might see something no one else would see.”
    â€œWhy don’t you know what she did in New York then?”
    Again, she looked startled. For a moment, she hemmed and hawed. “I do… At least I know some things about what she did here. She wrote to me…” She looked me straight in the eye. “Actually, I knew of you before I ever saw you…”
    The spell broke. I’d been conned. Now, I didn’t like this Janet Carter at all, this superior-acting upper-crust lady from Massachusetts, this pillar of respectability.
    â€œI suppose I should have told you,” she said in what must be her most professional tone.
    â€œI don’t give a fuck what you tell me. This is New York… No one tells anyone the truth…You get used to it.” I’d let my guard down and Janet Carter got a couple of steps ahead of me. Lots of fancy footwork. Pop would tell me I was out of my element, like with the kid con men on Flatbush Avenue when I was growing up. “Life made them sly and cunning and tough,” Pop said the times I told him I’d been swindled. “You wouldn’t want their lives.” Why this maxim applied to a proper young lady from Springfield, I wasn’t sure. But I knew now she chose carefully what she told me; she didn’t innocently gush out her life story.
    â€œWhy did Angelina come to New York?” I asked.
    This time, I’d caught her off guard, and her eyes that had been looking into mine shied away for a second. “I’m not sure…She wanted to become something, an actress, a singer…”
    I’d had enough. “Why don’t you sit down with Sheehan and tell him everything you know?” I said. “That might get him moving in the right direction.” I had no reason to spar any longer with Janet Carter, I decided. She had her own agenda.
    She smiled a superior smile. “Why don’t you?” And walked away.
    ***
    That night, Janet was in Oscar’s again. Not particularly interested in me, except for ordering a beer now and again, most of the time paid for by one of the winos, she spent the