Valentine

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Authors: Tom Savage
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females: their insistence on doing “man” things. Jill shook her head, counting off all the so-called usual behavior patterns of adult males, and marveling again that Nate didn’t seem to fit any of them. Today had been a perfect example: the strong, masculine presence she’d felt at her side throughout her unpleasant ordeal at the police station—
    The police station. The memory sent Nate from her mind, replacing him with harsh reality. She sat in the little office at the back of the apartment staring out the window above her desk as the shadows lengthened and twilight fell. She thought for a long time about the greeting cards and about her trip to the Sixth Precinct. Then, with a glance at her watch, she picked up the phone again and dialed.
    “Hello.”
    “Hi, Tara, it’s Jill.”
    “Hey, babe. What’s shakin’?”
    “Well, I’ve been thinking. A lot. You know your friend on the show, the one you told me about in the restaurant yesterday?”
    “Yeah, Betty.”
    “Betty. Right. I want you to do something for me. . . .”
    He listened to their conversation. Then, when they’d hung up and the machine stopped, he put down theheadset, went to get another beer, lit a Marlboro, and reached for her second novel. This one was called The Widower , and the cover art was an extreme close-up of the face of a pretty blond woman, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a scream. The copy on the back began:
    The worst day of Heather Morgan’s life was the day she said, “I do.”
    Until now . . .
    He thought briefly about the phone calls he’d just heard. Then he opened the second book and began. He read long into the night.
    Soon, he thought as he read. Soon . . .

4
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3
    “I don’t understand,” Barney Fleck said. “I don’t understand what it is you want me to do.”
    Jillian stared at the unusually tall, gray-haired, fiftyish man behind the enormous desk in front of her. He’d been so friendly, so downright jovial ten minutes ago, when she’d first come into the surprisingly modem office in the big gray building on Twenty-fifth Street. He’d poked his large head out the door to the waiting room where she’d sat for some five minutes, watching the efficient-looking, middle-aged secretary working at her computer. When she’d first seen him, Jillian had wondered whether, perhaps, she had made a mistake in coming here. Barney Heck (“Rhymes with ‘tec’,” he’d laughingly told her) had ushered her into his office, waving her into a leather armchair facing the big, cluttered desk, and gotten right down to business.
    “What can I do for you, Ms. Talbot?”
    She’d told him what he could do for her, but apparently he had not understood her.
    “I want you to find him,” she repeated, enunciating her words as if clarity of diction would make up for her apparent lack of clarity of meaning. “I want you to find Brian Marshall. He and my mother were divorced sixteen years ago, and he moved to Cleveland. At least, I seem to remember that it was Cleveland. It might have been Cincinnati—I always get those two cities mixed up. I guess it comes from being an arrogant New Yorker.”
    He laughed again, his hearty basso profundo unsettling the papers on the desk. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I have that New Yorker map of the United States permanently fixed in my brain. You know, New York on the east coast and L.A. on the west coast, and everything between them comes under the general heading of ‘Kansas.’ Well, if it really is one of those two places, I guess I can find him. I just don’t understand exactly what you think your stepfather has to do with all this.”
    She thought a moment before replying, finally deciding that complete honesty would be the best course of action. “I guess you could say that I was the reason for their divorce. My father died when I was seven. Lung cancer. Five years later my mother met Brian Marshall. He was a big, handsome Irishman, very friendly—at first. A

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