"That's okay. I already ate. Besides, I'm not feeling that adventurous tonight."
"Ha ha."
"So what've you got?"
Marty leaned forward and pulled a file from one of the stacks on his desk and opened it.
"Her name's Sandy Dunlop," he said as he flipped through the papers. "A lap dancer at Pussy's. The D.A.'s prosecutor says she shot and killed her boyfriend with malice aforethought, so we're looking at murder one unless I can knock some holes in his argument. Thing is, the boyfriend beat the crap out of her for years, pimped her out of the club. A real sweetheart."
"So one day she's had enough and ups and shoots him," Hank said.
"I'd love to have a moment of passion to work with, but it's not that simple. The prosecutor agrees Ellis—this is the victim, Ronnie Ellis—is a scumbag, but he's got papers proving she bought the gun three weeks ago. She was working the night he was shot, so she'd have had to make a special trip home on her break, shoot him, then come back and finish working before she gets off for the night and can come home and 'discover' the body. He's got opportunity, motive, and—since she can't account for her time during her break—a lack of alibi. And her prints are all over the murder weapon."
"Who's the prosecutor?"
Marty sighed. "Bloom."
"Beautiful."
Eric Bloom was the son of a Fundamentalist preacher who'd gone into law, specifically the D.A.'s office, to clean up the city. His father saw to the safety of its citizens' souls, while he saw to their physical safety, with a special interest in shutting down anybody even remotely connected to the sex trade. If he didn't think they were guilty, he'd still want to put them away, just on principle.
"So what does she say?" Hank asked.
"Ellis made her buy the gun. She was doing a trick in some guy's car during her break. She doesn't know who killed Ellis, but she's happy he's dead—or she was, until the D.A.'s office hung a murder rap on her."
The downstairs buzzer went off and Marty pressed the appropriate button on his intercom, asking who it was.
"It's Mac—who'd you think it would be, this time of night?"
Marty buzzed him in.
"She have a sheet?" Hank asked.
Marty nodded. "But nothing violent. A couple of solicitation charges. A couple more fraud—she bounced a few checks and did some time in county for the last one."
They heard the elevator door open down the hall and put their discussion on hold when Mac came bustling in. Balding, still wearing a grease-stained apron over his expansive paunch, he gave Hank a wave and set a brown paper bag on Marty's desk. Marty unwrapped the sandwich before Mac could leave.
"See?" Mac said. "You got your rye—just like you asked." He gave Hank a what-do-you-do-with-a-guy-like-this look. "You happy now?"
"This is tuna salad. I ordered ham and cheese."
"You know the kind of cholesterol there is in cheese?"
"But there's none in the mayo?"
Mac shrugged. "I was out of ham. So sue me." He winked at Hank. "Big shot lawyer, they're all the same—am I right? Nothing's good enough for them."
Hank had to laugh.
"See?" Mac said, turning back to Marty. "That's what you need. A sense of humor—am I right?"
"You should've been a lawyer," Marty said as he paid. "I don't know how you stay in business."
"You want something?" Mac asked Hank.
Hank shook his head. "So what did you want me to do?" he asked when Mac had left.
"Finding the trick she was with during her break would be nice."
"Do we have a name?"
Marty laughed. "No. But we've got a description."
He shuffled through the papers in the file and passed one over. Hank glanced over it, then got the joke.
"That tattoo on his dick should make him real easy to find," he said.
Marty popped the lid on his coffee, grimacing after he took a sip. "No sugar—as usual."
"But even if I find him," Hank said, "you can't make him testify. He'd be incriminating himself."
Marty waved that off. "We just need confirmation on where Sandy was during her break. We don't have to get into what they were doing at the time."
"But if Bloom gets him on the stand …"
"It doesn't have to go that far. All I'm looking for now is a hole in his case so that he'll actively pursue some other options. As things stand, they've got their case, so nobody's digging any deeper."
"Okay."
"There's also her girlfriend," Marty said. "Chrissy Flanders."
"You've got an address for her?"
Marty nodded. "Except she's gone missing, too. She worked at Pussy's with Sandy, same shift. Maybe she can help us narrow the time frame. Sandy doesn't have a car, and even with public transport or a cab, it'd be a tight run to the apartment she shared with Ellis. Any way we can narrow the time frame will help."
"I'll do what I can. How much of a rush is there on this?"
"We're entering a plea Friday. Be nice if we could defuse Bloom's case before that—make him rethink his options."
"Bloom's going to change his mind?"
"Hey, miracles happen. One more thing," Marty added. "There's this guy." He pulled a photograph from the file. "Sandy only knew him as 'the Frenchman,' but she managed to I.D. him from the mug books." He passed the photo over. "His name's Philippe Couteau. Works out of New Orleans. Been booked a few times, but no convictions. Apparently it's a family thing—they've been involved with organized crime for a few generations now. Couteau's the oldest of three brothers. Very heavy dude.
"According to Sandy, he and Ellis had just had a fairly serious disagreement about a drug deal Ellis screwed up. Cops are looking for him, too, but I know they're only going through the motions. Far as they're concerned, the case is solved and it's now in the hands of the D.A.'s office. Which is why finding the trick she was with that night is so important."
Hank was only half-listening. The cold eyes looking back at him from the mug shot were very familiar.
"Hello?" Marty said.
Hank looked up. "I know where you can find Couteau," he said. "He was in the Zone the other night. I watched a girl stick a knife in his back."
Marty gave him a sharp look. "You're saying he's dead?"
Hank nodded.
"Jesus." Marty pushed his hair back. "Do I even want to know how you were involved?"
"It wasn't like that. Thing is, he's dead. So why didn't the cops I.D. him when they brought his body in?"
"I'll find out."
Hank slowly put the photo back on the desk.
5.
Annie's apartment was as Spartan as Rory's was cluttered. Where you could barely see Rory's floor, the wide expanse of pine floorboards in Annie's living room was like a small town square, glowing in the buttery light cast from a lamp that stood on a small table near the window seat. There was a Morris chair beside the lamp, a battered sofa along one wall, a structure made of wooden crates along another that served as a bookcase and held her CDs and stereo, a small Persian carpet by the sofa, and that was about it. Only one picture hung on the walls, a small black-and-white photograph of Ahmad Jamal sitting at his piano, looking out at the viewer from a narrow black wooden frame.
Compared to the rest of the apartment, the living room was decidedly opulent. Her bedroom had only the bed and a chest of drawers, with no pictures on the walls at all. In the spare bedroom, which served as a home studio since she'd had it soundproofed, was a four-track on a wooden crate, a stool, a guitar amplifier, two mikes in their stands, and her guitars: a vintage Janossy six-string and her stage guitar, a Takamine, both on stands. Small speakers stood on plastic milk crates in two corners of the room.
"Don't have much use for most stuff," she told Rory once when he asked why her furnishings were so sparse. Then she smiled. "You know. Some people travel light; I live light."
Rory always felt cramped in his own apartment after a visit to Annie's. He'd step into the chaos that was his
home and invariably make a serious vow to finally get started on the big tidying up he'd been promising himself he'd do for years. But just as invariably, something more pressing would come up and the task would be put aside until another day and eventually forgotten until his next visit. Like now. As soon as he and Annie crossed the hall and went into her apartment, he immediately thought of the mess and clutter of his own.
"Kerry's a sweet girl," Annie said.
Rory agreed. Kerry was sweet, one of those genuinely nice people that he hardly ever seemed to run into anymore. He liked how she'd confessed to feeling hopelessly lost ever since she'd gotten off the plane, where most people would have put up some kind of front and tried to bluff their way through what they didn't know. Feeling out of kilter the way she did was nothing to be ashamed of—he'd felt the same way when he'd first moved into the city, and had told her as much. It was hard to sort everything out in a place this big, especially when you didn't know anyone. She'd seemed grateful for that—and for all of their help.
Between the three of them, they'd dragged an old and remarkably unmusty futon up from the basement and set it up in her bedroom. Then Rory and Annie had scavenged about in their own places for the various things Kerry would need to get her through the night. Towels, soap, bedding. Some pots and pans, a plate, a mug, a pair of old Coke glasses, eating utensils. Bread, marmalade, butter, cheese, tea, milk and sugar. Rory gave up a spare club chair that had been hidden under a stack of cardboard box flats in his back room. Annie donated a half roll of Droste chocolates, a real concession since they were her favorites and it was her last roll. Two hours later, realizing that Kerry must be tired after her long trip, they'd said their good-byes and left her to finish settling in on her own.
"That takes some nerve," Annie said, closing the door behind them. "Just packing up and moving halfway across the country like she did."
Rory nodded in agreement. He made himself comfortable on the sofa while Annie disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a couple of bottles of beer, condensation beading on the brown glass. She put a Walkabouts CD on the player, the volume low, then joined Rory on the sofa, her long legs splayed out on the orange crate that served as a coffee table.
"Best unknown band in North America," she said as Carla Torgerson, one of the group's two vocalists, launched into a version of a Nick Cave song. "More's the pity. I wonder if Kerry ever got a chance to catch them in concert."
"Southern California's a long way from Seattle."
"But still."
"But still," Rory agreed. "They could have been playing down her way." He took a swallow of beer. "Though somehow I doubt she went out much." He looked across the room at the informal portrait of Jamal. "Talking to her was like meeting someone who's just arrived from a foreign country or left a convent or something."
Annie smiled. "Mmm. Innocent and sweet."
Rory gave her a sidelong glance.
"Just your type," she added.
"Jesus, Annie."
"I'm joking already. You have got to lighten up."
"Ha ha."
"But she is attractive," Annie went on.
Rory gave a slow nod.
"And when was the last time you went out on a date?"
"What are you, keeping tabs on me now?"
"Not me," Annie said. "Though the crow girls probably do."
Rory smiled. "I think they keep tabs on everybody." He took a swig of his beer. "The thing that gets me is that, after all these years, I still haven't figured out where they live. It's got to be somewhere in the area, but I'll be damned if I know where."
"Why not simply accept that they live in a tree?"
"You don't believe that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's …"
He'd been about to say "impossible," but the word got swallowed by the sudden eerie sensation that flooded him. After all these years, he repeated to himself. He'd been living here almost a decade and it had only occurred to him now that he'd always thought of the crow girls as a couple of neighborhood tomboys. Kids. Barely teenagers—fourteen years old at the most. But they'd looked like that when he first met them, and in nine years they hadn't changed. They still looked like the rambunctious twins they'd been the morning he'd moved in, appearing out of nowhere at his door, wanting to know who he was, and where had he come from, and how long did he plan to live here, and did he like to climb trees …
"This is so weird," he said slowly. "Do you know what I just realized?"
Annie was looking at him with obvious amusement. "No. But it must have been some really deep thought because your face has gotten all scrunched up and way serious."
"It's the twins—the crow girls. They …"
His voice trailed off again, but this time it was because of the sound of music coming from Kerry's apartment across the hall. Piano music. Some classical piece. He vaguely recognized it, but it was nothing he could put a name to. He and Annie looked at each other.
"Rachmaninoff," Annie said.
Rory forgot about the crow girls and their unchanging looks.
"Annie," he began.
But she had a faraway look in her eyes. She was listening, only not to him.
"No one's played that piano since Paul died," she said. "He used to play that piece all the time—remember?"
Rory didn't—classical music all sounded the same to him—but he nodded anyway, to let her know he was listening.
Annie sighed and a sorrow settled over her like a cloak, the way it always did when she thought of Paul. Rory wasn't quite sure what their relationship had been—more than friends, not quite lovers. An affection that went deeper than blood ties, certainly. She'd been devastated when he died—the whole house had gone into mourning—but she'd taken it the worst.
Rory had liked Paul, too, though he hadn't been nearly as close to him as Annie. Paul had always been a little too intense for him—a man on a mission, though Rory had never quite figured out what that mission was. He'd died in his sleep, which had seemed odd to Rory, considering Paul seemed to be in better physical shape than ninety percent of the people he knew, always exercising, eating right, the whole nine yards. But the coroner's report had stated that he'd died of natural causes. Go figure.
"You still miss him, don't you?" Rory said.
"I'll always miss him."
Rory nodded. He waited a moment, then came back to what had bothered him when they first heard the sound of the piano.
"Kerry can't be playing that," he said.
Annie blinked, coming back from wherever it was that her memories had taken her.
"I hear the piano," she said. "Don't you?"
"Sure. It's just that … I was joking with her earlier, when we were waiting in the hall for you to answer your door, about how the apartment wasn't completely unfurnished. There was at least the piano.
" 'Doesn't do me any good,' she says. 'I can't play.' "
"Well," Annie said, "I guess she was putting you on because she plays beautifully."
"I suppose …"
But it didn't seem right. What possible motivation could she have for lying about something so inconsequential?
The music stopped abruptly in midbar. After a moment Rory realized that both he and Annie were holding their breath, waiting for the music to take up where it had left off. He leaned forward, listening with his whole body, then finally let out a sigh when only silence responded. Annie took a sip from her beer.
"You're still strangers," she said, as though reading his mind. "Maybe it's just something she didn't want to talk about. Maybe something about a piano brings back painful memories—I mean, look at how suddenly she stopped."
"Sure."
Annie shook her head. "Don't read more into it than there is. I'm sure there are all kinds of things you wouldn't want to talk about with a stranger, stuff you wouldn't even talk about with me."
Rory gave her a puzzled look. "Like what?"
"How would I know? What I do know is that
we've all got our hidden currents, no matter how wide and friendly the river seems. Start casting deep enough and who knows what you'll dredge up."
Rory had to smile. "Now isn't that a lovely image."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah, I guess I do. I was just … surprised."
Their conversation lagged then. Rory understood what Annie had been getting at, but the logic of her argument hadn't done much to quell the disappointment he was feeling. It wasn't as though he'd had any great plans to hit on Kerry or anything, but he had liked her and the lie seemed so out of character—
Then he really had to laugh at himself. Right there was the hole in his own logic. What did he really know about her character? He'd put together a little picture in his mind of who Kerry was—pretty, sweet, innocent and honest—and the lie had poked a hole in it. That was the real problem. Not anything Kerry had done.
Annie was probably right. Undoubtedly, seeing the piano had woken a bad memory for her and rather than get into it, she'd simply denied she could play, denied any past that included a piano. It wasn't so much that she'd lied about it. She was simply trying to avoid having to deal with it. End of story.
He looked over at Annie to see her finishing her beer. She set the empty bottle down on the floor beside the sofa and raised her eyebrows.
"You want another?" she asked.
Rory held up his bottle to show he still had a third left. "I'm okay with this."
"So you were talking about the crow girls," Annie went on.
"The crow girls. Right."
It took him a moment to pick up the threads of their earlier conversation. The strangeness of his observation, once he'd considered it again, hit him as strongly as it had the first time. How could he not have noticed it before?
"They don't change," he said. "They look exactly the same now as when I first met them."
Annie laughed. "And you've changed?"
"What do you mean?"
"You don't look any different from when I first met you, either."
Rory knew what she meant. Some people aged well—or settled into their looks at an early age—and he was one of them. He looked about the same now as he had when he left high school.
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