by Greg Rucka
“I have idea, I have plenty idea,” I said.
“Barry,” Chapel told his phone, and the speaker came on and the tones of the number began to fill the car. While it was dialing, Chapel said, “No, I don’t think you do. I think you left on tour a year ago and you were a musician, and sometime during the past year, you became a celebrity, and nobody sent you the memo. You keep on pretending your life is normal, all you’re going to do is keep getting into trouble, Miriam.
“You are no longer normal, and it would serve you well to remember that.”
There was a click from the speakers, and a man’s voice came on. “Yes?”
“Barry, it’s Fred. We’ve got a situation, you’ll hear about it as soon as you turn on the news. I need you to get a couple things together for me and take them over to the Heathman for a guest, name of Lee.
“I need your sizes,” Chapel said to me.
I gave him my sizes.
“Anything in particular?” Barry asked.
“She likes jeans and T-shirts. She’ll need underwear, toiletries, all those good things. Shoes, too. What size are your feet?”
“Seven.”
“You hear that, Barry?”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“I’ll have it by eleven,” Barry said, and hung up.
We crossed the river back to the east side, then turned north and up to Burnside, then west again and back across the river. Chapel drove calmly, eyeing his mirrors. I didn’t say anything for a while, lost in my thoughts.
It occurred to me that I didn’t know how to be a grown-up.
With my mother, there hadn’t even been a memorial, and the body had eventually been disposed of by the State of Oregon in some way or another that to this day remains a mystery. Once they had put her in the ambulance, I never saw her again. I didn’t even know where she’d ended up, if she’d been buried someplace, or cremated, or what.
“I can’t go to a hotel,” I said suddenly. “I can’t go to a hotel, I have to plan the funeral. That’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? He has to be buried, and I have to plan that, and I have to call his friends and tell them he’s dead and I have to call the paper and do the obituary and all of it. That’s what happens now, doesn’t it? I have to do all that.”
“Don’t worry about it right now,” Chapel said.
“But I have to do it, Tommy won’t do it, God, they don’t even know where Tommy is—”
“Your father’s being held right now, it looks like they’re going to charge him.”
“They’ve got him?” I asked, stunned. “They had him the whole time, that’s what you’re saying?”
“He’s under arrest, they picked him up early last night at your brother’s place.”
I digested that, and it seemed good, but then it didn’t, because in a way it only made things worse.
“Then I have to go to the condo,” I said. “Mikel’s condo, I have to go there and get his things and . . . and what do I do with his things? I mean, he doesn’t have a will, I’m sure he doesn’t even have a will, why would he, twenty-nine years old and shot dead, how could he see that one coming, huh?”
“Mim, just relax.”
“I have to handle his estate. No, settle his estate, that’s what it’s called, right? You’re an attorney, you know. It’s called settling the estate, right?”
We’d stopped in front of the Heathman, and I wasn’t certain how long we’d been parked. The engine was silent, and the uniformed doorman was coming to help me out of the car.
Chapel put a hand on my arm.
“Mim, you’ve got to calm down. Just wait here. Don’t get out of the car.”
He waited until I nodded, then his hand slid from my arm, and I heard him take his keys from the ignition and get out of the car. The doorman was portly, black coat, black hat, red stripes, with a bushy beard and mustache, and after Chapel entered the hotel he turned back to me, curious. I looked away hastily, up the street, to the Portland Center for the Performing Arts and the Schnitz and the movie theater on the corner, its marquee listing all the films currently being shown.
The Black Tarot topped the bill.
Then my door opened, and I gasped, relaxed when I saw it was Chapel. He helped me out of the car, into the hotel, to the elevator, and then down the hall and into the suite.
It was a Van-quality room, nicer than I was used to. There was a sitting area with a couple of armchairs and a desk and a couch, and nice abstract paintings on the walls. A sliding partition at one side was open, leading to a raised king bed. The furnishings were wood and looked expensive, and there was an electric kettle on a table, and a miniature French press coffeemaker, and two tins of ground coffee. There was a minibar with a basket of treats and three bottles of Oregon wines, and two televisions, and three telephones, and two bathrooms, and flowers in a vase on a nightstand.
Chapel went to the closet and pulled it open, taking down one of the complimentary robes for me and draping it over the back of a chair. I looked at it and at him.
“You should shower and get some sleep,” he said. “You’re going to need your health and your rest.”
I nodded, dropped into a chair, thinking to hell with my health, what I wanted was a drink and a smoke.
It was like he was reading my mind. “How drunk were you when the cops picked you up?”
“Drunk,” I admitted.
“Blackout drunk?”
“Not that drunk.”
“I couldn’t ask you this at the station, so I’m asking you now. Did you kill Mikel?”
I came out of my chair and tried to punch him. He blocked it easily, pushing my arm away, and I tried to swing at him again, calling him a list of names, beginning with the basic profanities and working up to the multitiered ones. He was shouting back at me to calm down, and he blocked again and then gave me a shove, sending me back into the chair. I had to flail for the armrest to keep from falling.
“You motherfucker—”
“Did you?”
“No! Jesus fucking Christ, what are you? How can you even ask that?”
He drew his lips back, pinching them together, breathing through his nose.
“How can you even ask that?” I repeated.
He crossed to the window in the sitting room, looked out, then closed the blinds. The blinds, like the other furnishings, were wooden, too. Once he was satisfied that we couldn’t be spied upon, he moved to the nearest easy chair.
“I had to ask.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did, because the police are asking it, too. You’re the one who said it could have been Mikel who was responsible for those cameras in your house. It’s possible you went over there and confronted him and things turned violent.”
I just shook my head, wouldn’t look at him.
“You have to look at it from the cops’ point of view.”
It sunk in. “They don’t really think it was Mikel selling those pictures of me?”
“They have to consider it.”
“But he’s the one who told me about them! That makes no sense!”
“It’s the way they work, they have to consider it. They have to consider Tommy, too.”
“It wasn’t Tommy.”
“Oh?” Chapel raised an eyebrow. “I’d think he’d have been at the top of your suspect list.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t kill Mikel. I’m saying he’s not responsible for the pictures. Look, he came to my house Thursday, and just . . . there’s no way he could do that. He’s too pathetic. Crime of passion, sure. But install cameras in my house? That’s just not him, no way.”
Chapel thought, barely nodded.
I asked, “How long do I stay here?”
“Next forty-eight hours, at least. This will get bad, Mim, and I want you as far out of it as possible. The media’s going to go nuts, if they haven’t already. Your brother dealt drugs, your father’s a convict, you’re a celebrity . . . reporte
rs wait their whole lives for this kind of thing. Throw in that you’re the subject of someone’s commercial voyeurism, and we have what we refer to in the legal profession as a fucked-up mess. I don’t want you leaving these rooms. I don’t even want you calling for room service. Don’t use the phone at all, unless it’s to call me. If someone comes to the door, you hide in the bathroom. I don’t want anyone knowing where to find you.”
“The police—”
“They want you, they’ll come to me,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“Time for me to earn what Graham and the label and you have been paying me for. I’ll handle the press, the police. I’ll arrange for your brother’s funeral. You leave all that to me.”
“I should be doing something.”
“You stay sober. Can you stay sober, Miriam?”
I nodded.
“Really? Or should I get the wine out of the room?”
“You going to remove the minibar, too?”
“I’ll be keeping the key.”
I twisted on the chair, uncomfortable, and wanting him to shut up. “I’m out of cigarettes.”
“I’ll have Barry get you a carton.”
“I don’t want to be alone.” It sounded more plaintive than I wanted it to.
He nodded. “Who do you want to stay with you?”
“Joan.”
He took a different mobile from his pocket, matte black and no bigger than a credit card, and asked me for her number. I gave it to him, and he dialed. It seemed to ring several times before anyone answered, and then Chapel started speaking, introducing himself. He didn’t hand over the phone, just saying that he represented me, that my brother had been murdered, and that for the sake of my privacy he had moved me from my home to a hotel. I couldn’t hear Joan’s half of the conversation, not even when Chapel told her about Mikel. He asked her if she would mind joining me, staying with me for a day or so, and there was no appreciable pause for her to answer, and then he was saying I was at the Heathman, under the name Jennifer Lee, and that the sooner she got here, the better.
Then he hung up and said, “She’s on her way over.”
“I wanted to talk to her. You should have let me talk to her. She knew Mikel.”
He slid his phone back into his jacket, exhaling, and his face changed, smoothing. I realized that he’d been as worked up as I was, that he was as worried as I was, though maybe not for all the same reasons.
“I should have,” Chapel said. “I apologize.”
I thought about saying that I accepted it. Thought about offering him an apology of my own, too, for whatever good it would do. Maybe to bank against future transgressions.
Instead, I got up and grabbed the robe off the back of the chair, then went into the bedroom to change, slamming the partition behind me.
CHAPTER 18
Barry had dropped off clothes and smokes before Joan arrived, and Chapel left almost immediately after she got there. I had showered and eaten a room-service sandwich—ordered by Chapel—and was feeling so sleepy I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
Joan gave me energy, though, along with unconditional comfort. I took it greedily, trying not to remember that I hadn’t been around to give her the same when Steven died.
Chapel returned Saturday night, about an hour after I woke up, with a long list of accomplishments. He’d arranged the funeral for Monday afternoon, at a parlor called Colby’s in Southeast. He’d picked Colby’s, he told me, because they could be discreet, and that was going to be even more important, because Van and Click and Graham all intended to be at the service. He’d spoken to Graham, and passed along concern and condolences from all involved. Apparently even Oliver Clay had expressed sympathy for my loss. Big of him.
It was the mundane questions that threw me. What kind of casket did I want for Mikel? What kind of flowers? Should there be music at the service? Choral, or organ, or something else? Was there a song he liked? Did I, perhaps, want to play? Did Mikel want to be cremated, or buried, and if buried, where? Who of his friends did I want invited to the funeral?
“I don’t know his friends,” I admitted.
“If it’s all right with you, I can go through his things, see if I can find an address book. Did he keep an address book?”
“He had a PDA, one of those pocket things,” I said. “Should be at his house.”
“Then I’ll bring that back here, and you can put together a list of guests.
“You remember a car on your street, a gray Chevy?” Chapel asked me. “It was parked down the block from your house.”
“The beater?”
“Burchett’s people figured that’s where the signal from your house was going, that the receiver was in the car.”
“So Burchett found the tapes?”
“He couldn’t get into the vehicle. But he told the police about it, and they’ve moved it to their lot. Their people are going over it.”
“But that means that the police will have the tapes,” I said. “If there are tapes, then they’ll have them.”
“Yes, but as evidence. Their existence might be leaked, but not their contents, not until they’ve got the people responsible.”
That didn’t actually reassure me very much at all.
Chapel went on, telling us that Tommy was still in custody, but that he hadn’t been charged.
I asked him why.
“A guess? The police don’t have the evidence and they’re trying to get it.”
“What about Miriam?” Joan asked. “Is she a suspect?”
“For about six hours, she was the prime suspect,” Chapel told her.
Joan was almost incredulous. “For heaven’s sake, why?”
“The search they executed at her home turned up a lot of blood, they thought it might have been her brother’s.”
“It wasn’t,” I said. “It was mine.”
“They know that now.” Chapel shook his head. “No, she’s in the clear for the time being. Even if she wasn’t, the D.A. would want to be damn certain before he took the publicity of charging her.”
Joan was looking at me. “Why did they find blood in your house?”
“My hand,” I said.
“You said you cut it on tour.”
“I lied.”
“Why would you . . .” And Joan trailed off, because she figured out the answer to that one, and it led to another question. “That’s why you’re home? Because you couldn’t stay sober on tour?”
Chapel wasn’t speaking, and from his expression, he looked like he wasn’t listening, either. I knew he was, but he did a good job of pretending not to.
I tried to make a joke, I said, “It’s just the way Steven told it, Joan. It’s just part of the job.”
“He never said that.”
“He sure did.” I was indignant. “Before I left for the Scandal tour, we went to dinner, and you and he talked about the wild life on the road. About the way you two used to party when you were touring.”
Joan’s expression shifted, moved away from her anger to an almost curiosity, as if she was seeing me for the first time. “When was this?”
“When we went to Ringside for dinner, just before I left.”
She glanced over at Chapel, then back to me, and now the curiosity had become concern. “That never happened, Miriam.”
“It did!”
“We didn’t eat at Ringside. We had dinner at our place before you left, sweetie, and you left early, because you had to get home and pack.”
I tried to remember, and the thing was, now that she’d said it, I knew she was right. But I really thought we had gone to dinner at Ringside, I was certain I could remember the sound of Steven’s voice, the way he kept laughing as he told his anecdotes about life on the road.
But it hadn’t happened, and I withdrew to silence, feeling foolish and confused, and a little scared. If I was making that up, then what else was I creating in my mind? What else was I lying about?
CHAPT
ER 19
Sunday was broken only by Chapel’s arrival with Mikel’s PDA. I composed a list of fifteen names I thought I recognized, people that Mikel had actually liked, or at least, that I thought he’d liked, and I looked around for an entry for Jessica and didn’t find one, but there was one for a girl named Avery Sanger, so I put her on the list, too.
Chapel told me he’d make calls, letting them know the when and where of the service, and then he left us alone again, and that was the most exciting thing that happened on Sunday.
We left the hotel in the darkness before dawn the next morning, Chapel guiding me out much the way he’d guided me in, straight to his waiting Audi. We were followed by the guy Burchett had sent over, and it was the first time I’d seen him, though Chapel assured me there’d been someone on duty outside my room the whole time.
As we were getting into the car, Burchett called Chapel and confirmed that it was safe for me to return home, that the press had finally gotten bored with waiting for my return. I was grateful for the news. I wanted to get home and get changed, to have some time by myself before the funeral.
Joan stayed behind on the curb, waiting for the valet to bring her Volvo, promising she’d pick me up for the service that afternoon.
In the car, Chapel gave me the latest.
“Now they’re onto the pictures,” he said. “The story has been on the networks, MTV and the like. NME and Dotmusic are covering it. Rolling Stone’s guy arrived in town yesterday. There’s a good chance reporters will show up at the service since they know you’ll be there, and if that happens I want you to keep your mouth shut. Don’t answer any questions. Nothing, Miriam. Just keep your head down.”
“I will.”
“Van, Click, and Graham got in last night. They released a statement through the label about how they needed to be with you, to support you, and they’ve canceled the next week of dates to be here.”
“Van must have bled over that,” I said.
Chapel ignored the comment, turning us onto the Broadway Bridge. “Not as relevant, but it may interest you to know that as of Saturday night Nothing for Free had jumped twelve spots on Billboard’s Top Fifty, to eleven. We’re expecting to hear it’s in the Top Ten sometime today. Scandal reentered at sixty-seven. ‘Queen of Swords’ is in heavy rotation in just about every major outlet, and it’s been the most requested video on MTV for the last two nights. You can interpret that however you like.”