The Puzzled Heart Read Free Page A

police,” Leslie said, hoping to encourage this rational bent. “Or is that only for inner cities and against black men and boys?”
    “We have to do something,” Kate said.
    “You don’t think they’ll kill Reed, not really?” Leslie asked. It struck her that this conversation horribly resembled one of those prime-time programs she occasionally watched when overcome with exhaustion.
    “They’ve killed doctors who do abortions; they’re fanatics. But it’s not a very sensible demand. What’s to stop me from denying the whole thing once Reed is back?”
    “That’s easy. In the first place, you’ll be tarred with what you said, no matter what explanation you offer. That’s how the media work. You can’t ever correct reporters’ misstatements, they just go on making themanyway. In the second place, fear for Reed will restrain you. And if it doesn’t restrain you, it will be because Reed insists it shouldn’t, and that will lead to further complications of a marital sort. No, they’re clever all right. It’s always easy to be clever if compassion is not part of your aim. Just think about the way Pat Buchanan’s mind works, or Rush Limbaugh’s, and you’ll have a good sense of what you’re dealing with, even though neither of them has anything to do with this particular caper. Kate, are you listening?”
    “Listening and thinking, along the same lines. Thank you for coming home with me, Les. I’ve just had a thought.”
    “Thank God for that. Do you plan to share it?”
    “I think I know where to go for help, or at least for an initial conference. There’s a woman I met last year named Harriet. I’ll phone her.”
    “Don’t phone. Give me a message and I’ll deliver it. In these days of cyberspace, I don’t trust any phone. If I’m being paranoid, better safe than sorry, as my mother used to say.”
    Kate wrote out the note.

Two

    W HEN Harriet Furst arrived in response to Kate’s note, Kate realized that it was far too long—months—since she had seen her. They had met while both were engaged in a more or less temporary capacity at the Schuyler Law School, * Kate in an unfamiliar role in unfamiliar surroundings, Harriet having taken on a new life and a new identity, which seemed to have propelled her wonderfully into the later decades of life. The friendship the two had formed was a lasting one, but they were both busy and neither, Kate realized sadly, had recently called the other. She mentioned this to Harriet.
    “Well, here I am, in answer to a billet-doux. Betterthan a phone call, really. What’s the matter, my dear, and what can I do?”
    “I thought perhaps you and your fellow private eye might help me. Harriet, I really don’t know what to do.”
    “Start at the beginning—which was when?” Harriet said.
    “Last night. And it seems like each hour has been a week long.” Forcing herself into an appearance and voice of greater calm than she felt, Kate told Harriet the whole story thus far, which hardly took six sentences. Harriet listened with close attention.
    “Now tell me about how you came to join a detective agency,” Kate added. She did not analyze if her motive was to stall (action being dangerous) or to decide whether or not to trust Harriet in her new profession.
    “Don’t you think we’d better call Toni, my partner, and get her over here?”
    “Yes. Meanwhile, tell me how all this happened. Of course, you are the perfect private eye.”
    “That’s what Toni said about me. ‘You’re able to move about the world unseen, with the invisibility that age bestows in our society,’ she said. I thought that rather clever of her.”
    “How did you meet her? Answering an ad?”
    “Hardly.” Harriet, after a long look at Kate, decided that talking was the most helpful activity she could undertake while they waited. “Toni (her full name is Antonia, I had hoped after the Willa Cathernovel, but Toni said not),” Harriet began, “had worked in the computer and