Drawing Dead (42 page)

She sat passively through all of this. Hands in her lap. Occasionally smoothing her skirt. Readjusting her purse. At one point she opened the snap, peered in. As if looking for something apropos of the subject.

I paused, to let her find it.

Go on, she said.

As I continued, she extracted from the purse a tube of lipstick and a smooth black saucer-shaped container of face-enhancing chemical mulch. I recognized the brand. Very elegant. Very expensive. Flipped open a tiny mirror. Fixed her makeup.

By the time I’d finished the story, she’d completed her facial ministrations. She looked straight at me. Calm. Passive. Expressionless.

You don’t seem terribly upset, I said.

My emotions are my own business, Mr. Redman.

I didn’t mean to intrude. We all deal with things in our own way.

Yes.

We spent the next while in our own ways. I knocked off a couple,
three, double scotches. Louise, Ms. Chandler, sluiced down an equivalent number of cosmos.

In effect, I guess, we spent the time in the same way.

To break the polar ice, I told her about the tests on the FedEx package contents.

I told you to give that thing to me, she said.

Well, yes. But it wasn’t entirely in my control. And anyway, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. Clay?

You will now retrieve the package and deliver it to me, Mr. Redman.

Do you know what it means? I asked. Clay? What could that mean? Was your sister a sculptor? Did she spend any time in Alabama?

That would have been red clay. Not brown.

You’re right. I stand corrected. And impressed. Red clay country. Anyway, any ideas?

You’re the one I pay to have ideas, Mr. Redman.

I’d had just about enough. I looked her in the eye.

Is there something you’re not telling me? I asked. Again?

She looked at me impassively. Then, ever so slowly, a smile crept its way up the sides of her eyes, metastasized to the edges of her mouth. She leaned forward.

Rick, she said softly. I absolutely forbid you from ever questioning my integrity again.

It suddenly occurred to me that my iron maiden was a little tipsy. Maybe more than a little. It was kind of … disconcerting. And sexy. At the same time.

Yes, I said. I have been a bad boy. A very bad boy. Perhaps I should be punished.

I put my hand on her knee.

The silk of it.

She didn’t pull away.

Victory.

Round one.

I didn’t wait for the bell to sound. To begin round two.

I didn’t wait for it. I came out swinging.

Ms. Chandler, I said, drawn close by the sweet subtle scent of her. I think it’s time we dropped the pretense.

What pretense might that be, Mr. Redman?

The pretense that I don’t find you sickeningly attractive.

My, what a felicitous turn of phrase, she said, leaning back away from me.

Ignore the phrase, I said. Let’s get to the point.

Oh God, I thought as the words spilled hazardously from my mouth. I’m ruining everything.

I think I’ll visit the ladies’ room, she said.

Of course, I said, already slotting this episode into its appropriate place in the Top Ten Most Humiliating Things I’ve Done When Drunk. I was thinking maybe number eight, and fixing to order another double while she was away. Obliterate the memory. Subsume the responsibility. Was that me? Oh, no, that wasn’t me, it was the demon drink what done it.

She strode back to the table, far sooner than expected. My new double hadn’t even arrived.

She took my hand. She pulled me to a standing position.

Come on, she said.

I followed obediently. God knew where she was taking me. An intervention, probably. She’d been talking to Madeleine. Wait a minute, I remembered, she didn’t know Madeleine. Could she somehow know Madeleine?

She hadn’t let go of my hand.

She opened the ladies’ room door.

It was one of those private-style restrooms. One toilet. Marble walls. Tasteful appointments. And a lockable entrance door.

She locked the door.

Okay, she said.

She sat back on the blue marble sink.

The iron lady opened up.

M
Y CELL PHONE RANG
.

Redman, I said.

Rick.

Yeah, Butch?

We got a problem.

You’re telling me?

No, Rick. We got a real problem.

What? The fact that Brendan is dead, I still owe Evgeny ten grand, which I don’t have, I’m now a confirmed embezzler, isn’t problem enough? I’m sure I’ve left out a few …

I said
we
, Rick.

All right, all right. What’s the fucking problem?

Just grab a cab. Come to 1495 Industrial. Right next to the International Pet Grooming Institute.

Is international different from domestic?

What?

Is international pet grooming different from domestic?

Shut the fuck up and get over here. Downstairs on the left. Basement.

Gotcha. Ten minutes.

Make it five.

I grabbed a cab. It smelled of cheese. Feta cheese, I thought. And uncertainty.

S
HE WAS LYING FACE UP
. I’d never seen her lying any other way. Standing up, there was variety. But when we’re talking reclining, this was the way she was. On her back.

She didn’t look that different from the last time I’d seen her, actually. Which immediately brought to mind the author of that misfortune. The Hooded Man. Right away there was no doubt in my mind, not the soupçon of a doubt, that he was the perpetrator of this latest outrage.

I didn’t see any ropes, but it was clear as high-class gin that she’d been tied up. There were burns on her wrists and ankles, ugly red-brown circles crying pain and abasement. And the echo of them around her neck. Ligature wounds, in the technical literature. She’d been strangled, in other words. Just as before, she was half naked. Whatever she’d been wearing—it was red, palpably silk, and violently shredded—was gathered about her in knots and pieces. Her face was turned away. I couldn’t see the expression on it. And I didn’t want to.

Butch, I said. They tell you anything?

Nah. They’re too busy doing their thing. I’ll talk to the Main Man later. He won’t hold back.

What makes you so sure?

Don’t ask.

Okay. I’m glad someone in the room has faith.

I do what I can, he said. But faith’s got nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, let’s go get a drink.

Can’t argue with that.

There was a cheesy Irish pub across the street. The Stuck Pig, or some such. We sat at the bar. I ordered a double Dewar’s on the rocks. Butch had the same. Safe but effective, I thought, inhaling the first one and calling for a second.

Shit, I said.

Yeah, said Butch. Shit.

What the fuck am I going to say to Louise?

It’s all about you, Rick, isn’t it.

Fuck yeah. Eloise is dead. What does she care?

Jesus, man. You really mean that?

Of course not. I’m bitter. And scared. You got a problem with that?

Butch didn’t say anything. Slugged down his scotch. Waved at Manny, the bartender, for another. I felt a dark, dull stabbing in my chest. My throat tightened. Oh fuck, I thought.

Typhoid fucking Ricky, I said.

Yeah, said Butch. Funny.

But seriously. She’s paying us big money to keep tabs on her sister, follow up the Vladimir thing, whatever. And the sister’s cold toast. It doesn’t look good.

It feels worse than it looks.

My point exactly. I were her, I’d be pissed as hell.

Yeah .

I gazed blankly at the photos of dead celebrities on the wall. Frankie Avalon. Joey DaSilva. Who the hell was Joey DaSilva?

So what are we going to say? I asked.

What’s to say, man? We did what we could. He got to her. We’re sorry.

We’re really fucking sorry.

Ain’t that a fact.

It has the virtue of being true.

I’m hitting the head, said Butch.

Give it my best.

I’ll give it my best.

Okay, I said. That’ll have to do.

I rubbed my face. I uncracked my clenched jaw. I tossed back my second double scotch and nodded at Manny for another. I thought about the scene across the street. Melissa on the couch. People kept dying on me. What the fuck was wrong with me? I could have saved Melissa. Brendan. I could have saved Eloise. I could have saved them all. Hell, one of them, at least. I was sure of it. If only I weren’t so fucked-up. Just think what I might have figured out, been able to do, if my veins weren’t pumping two percent eighteen hours of the day and overloading my liver with the refuse for the other six while I dreamed of blackness and airplane crashes.

Aw, fuck it, I said out loud. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Hey you, said a voice that could only have come from a six-foot-four-inch bear of an over-tanned cop named Rod.

Hunh? I replied.

What were you doing over there? he said.

I thought of saying Where? but that would only piss him off. And he already looked pissed off enough. Not to mention twice my size and packing a big fucking gun in a bulging holster under his left armpit.

I remembered his name, but not why I knew it. He reminded me, in a way I couldn’t quite place, of a guy who’d been involved in one of my pro bono criminal cases, back when I was a real lawyer, representing the indigent accused, aka the guilty as hell, ensuring they’d get off with less than they deserved. It wasn’t the way to make friends with guys like Rod, if he really was that guy. Which seemed improbable. Seeing as how we were about three thousand miles from Queens.

I knew her, I said.

You knew her, the Bear said with his best cop sneer, the one that says, You’re going to lie to me, I know you’re going to lie to me, and you know that I know that you’re going to lie to me, and you’re just like every other lying sonofabitch creep I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across every stinking night and day in the course of my vastly underpaid line of work, so don’t think you’re anything special, asshole.

There was a whole lot in that sneer.

Just how well did you know her? he continued, with an air of already knowing the answer.

He’s with me, Rod, said Butch, returning from the men’s room just in time.

Ah, said the Bear, still looking straight at me, clearly still less than convinced of my bona fides. Let me rephrase, then. In what capacity did you know the deceased, sir?

I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say, I said, with less confidence than I had intended to muster.

Hey, Garcia, he called out to a tall pockmarked colleague lurking by the door, the presence of whom I had failed to note. Jerk-off here says he’s not at liberty to say.

Garcia was in the midst of lighting a cigarette, in violation of a large No Smoking sign on the wall right next to his head. He coughed out a guffaw, apparently finding Detective Bear’s attempt at humor unbearably effective.

Take it easy, Ferguson, said Butch. His name is Rick. And he’s okay. I’ll vouch for him. C’mon, let’s go talk in private.

Hardiman, said the Bear, whose surname appeared to be Ferguson, you still with the force?

Yeah, I’m still with the force, Butch said, with the air of someone who’d answered the question a few too many times. Got promoted, actually, and now that I think of it, I’d be your superior officer now.

Not in this jurisdiction you ain’t, the Bear replied.

It came back to me. Butch and the Bear used to work together in the twenty-eighth precinct, Manhattan. The Bear had apparently relocated to the desert. Work on his tan.

I don’t see any crime scene, said Butch, looking around the bar. Rick, do you see any crime scene?

I studied the lively patterns of light refracting through the ice cubes in my glass.

Hey, Butch went on, putting his hand on Ferguson’s shoulder. I’m not pulling rank. I know, I know. I don’t have any rank to pull. Let’s just go in back and talk, okay?

Ferguson the Bear regarded him for a moment, his face betraying a near ineluctable desire to bull his way through the situation—his default mode, I’d already surmised, aided by some vague recollection of a case involving an underage pimp with an abiding affection for glue and the paper bags from which it was nasally dispensed.

But Butch’s big brown eyes prevailed.

All right, said Ferguson reluctantly. I’ll give you a few minutes.

There were a couple of old pinochle players in the Pig Snout’s back room. I’d thought all the pinochle players had died out by then, but I guess a few were hanging on. Though these guys didn’t look like they had all that many hands left in them. One desiccated hombre in a drooping ten-gallon cowboy hat was wearing a sagebrush mustache encrusted with at least five years of unexhumed nasal dust.

I slipped Manny twenty bucks to hustle them out of there, and we took up residence.

The room wasn’t really a room at all. More like a cubicle, slightly elevated and concealed from the rest of the degenerates in the place by a set of long-faded cigarette-burned vintage 1930s speakeasy-style maroon velvet drapes.

The VIP cubicle.

I was happy to see that Rod didn’t stand on department protocol, and ordered a Guinness with a tequila back. I refrained from commenting on the curious libatious juxtaposition. More power to him, I thought.

Mr. Pockmark stayed at the door. I guess they figured me and Butch for an escape risk. Or maybe an excape risk, as I imagined Mr. Pockmark putting it.

After the obligatory pleasantries between Butch and Rod, Rod leaned his chair back against the wall, gave us the download. Slowly. Taking his time. Like a guy having a beer after a hard day pounding the pavement.

She’d been found face up. There were open wounds on her back and buttocks. Looked like lash marks. Cause of death as yet undetermined. But ligature marks on her neck pointed to strangulation. Whatever it was, it hadn’t happened across the street. The body had been brought there from somewhere else.

Sexually assaulted? asked Butch.

I’m not the medical examiner, said the Bear, making a show of scratching his crotch, but just between you and me, yeah. Anal.