O'Farrell's Law Read Free Page B

was. He’d never ever considered another woman, knew he never would.
    â€œJill must be a very special lady.”
    â€œShe is,” said O’Farrell, bridling.
    The psychologist discerned the reaction at once. “It worry you to talk about her?”
    â€œIt worries me to talk about her in the context of screwing somebody else.” Where was he being led? “Jill hasn’t got any part of this,” he said.
    â€œAny part of what?”
    â€œWhat I do.” Fucked you, you self-satisfied bastard, he thought, knowing that Symmons couldn’t ask the obvious follow-up question.
    â€œThat worry you, what you do?”
    O’Farrell swallowed at the ease of the other man’s escape. “No,” he said, pleased with the evenness of his own voice. “What I do doesn’t worry me.”
    â€œWhat does worry you?”
    â€œI told you already: nothing.”
    â€œBeen to the graves lately?”
    It had been a long time coming. “Not for quite a while.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œNo particular reason.”
    â€œThat used to worry you,” the psychologist said.
    O’Farrell felt the slight dampness of discomfort again. “Wrong emotion,” he insisted. “It was sadness that something that happened to her so young made her later do what she did.”
    â€œLose her mind, you mean?” Symmons was goading him.
    â€œThat. And the rest.”
    â€œNever feel any guilt? That you could have done more but didn’t?”
    â€œNo,” O’Farrell insisted again. “No one knew. Guessed.”
    â€œLooks like that’s it, then,” Symmons said abruptly.
    O’Farrell had not expected the sudden conclusion. He said, “See you in three months then?” The squirrels were still swarming over the trees. O’Farrell had an irrational urge to ask the man if they damaged his garden but decided against it: he couldn’t give a damn whether they chewed up everything.
    â€œMaybe,” Symmons said, noncommittal.
    He would be expected to respond to the doubt, O’Farrell realized. So he didn’t. He let Symmons lead him back across the coldly patterned hallway and at the entrance gave the perfunctory farewell handshake. Because he guessed the man might be watching from some vantage point, he did not hesitate when he got into the car, as if he needed to recover, but started the engine at once. He carefully controlled his exit, not overaccelerating to make the wheels spin but going out as fast as he could, an unconcerned man wanting to get back to work as quickly as possible after an intrusive disruption. Which he actually didn’t want to do. He was only about thirty minutes—forty-five at the outside—from Lafayette Square, and Petty would expect him to come in, but O’Farrell decided on unaccustomed impulse not to bother. A call would do. Start the weekend early, instead: that was what half the people in Washington did anyway.
    O’Farrell drove without any positive goal, the road dropping constantly toward the capital. He had done all right, he decided, repeating the dressing-room assurance. But he’d been stupid to try to find significance in Symmons’s questions: he’d have to avoid that next time. There’d been one or two moments when he’d come near to making mistakes by wrongly concentrating upon what the psychologist meant rather than upon what he was saying, but nothing disastrous.
    Jill wouldn’t be home yet. And she might think it odd if he were in the house ahead of her, because it hardly ever happened. Maybe he should go to Lafayette Square after all. No, he rejected once more. What then? O’Farrell started to concentrate on his surroundings and realized he was near Georgetown and made another impulsive decision. If he were going to goof off, why not really goof off?
    O’Farrell got a parking place on Jefferson and walked back up to M Street, choosing the