Ghost Detective

by Scott William Carter

  She was leaning into me, her other hand pressing against my leather jacket for balance, and I knew if I didn’t stop it now, I never would. The need was too strong. I pulled away. She followed at first, not understanding, and I clutched her by both shoulders and pushed her back. She was breathing a little fast and her face was alive with desire.

  “What?” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I just … can’t.”

  The hurt in her eyes was almost unbearable. I was wounding her. I was cutting her deeply, and it was worse than anything else I could have done to her. When she spoke again, in a whisper, she seemed so delicate, not at all like the brave and stubborn Alesha she presented to the world. It was as if she was made of sand and the slightest breeze would blow her away. Her hands fell limply to her sides.

  “Is there something wrong with me?” she asked.

  “God, no.”

  “Don’t you want me?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Then … what?”

  Her eyes searched my own. My hands still clutched her shoulders, her leaning into me, trusting me with her weight, and for just a second, I thought about pulling her into me. Embracing her would have been easy, and so right in this moment filled with long-suppressed desire but so wrong for what was in my heart, and so hard to live with if I really cared about what was best for Alesha. To her, I was not just another disposable boyfriend. If I let her in now, I would only disappoint her later—and her disappointment would be all the more crushing.

  But was that really why I wasn’t giving in? No. If I was being honest, there was really only one reason, and Alesha, who’d always been there for me when it mattered most, deserved to hear it.

  “I’m still in love with my wife,” I said.

  If the fire in her eyes hadn’t died before, it was totally extinguished now. She leaned back, nodding more to herself than to me, pulling only a few inches away, but the gulf between us felt much greater. Still perched on the edge of the desk, she turned and faced the door. She touched her hair and her face self-consciously, smoothed her shirt, took a breath, and straightened her back. After a moment’s pause, she propelled herself toward the door without even giving me a glance. This cold dismissal was far worse than if she’d screamed profanities at me.

  I’d been so afraid of wounding her that I hadn’t realized that she could also wound me.

  “Alesha,” I said.

  She stopped, her back to me, her hand on the doorknob. I heard a woman laugh in the living room, a sharp, piercing laughter, and it was a tether yanking us back into the world. For a moment there, it had just been us, a universe made for two. Alesha waited. I knew she was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. There was no making it better. Anything I said would only make it worse. After a time, it was Alesha who spoke.

  “She’s dead, Myron,” she said. “She’s dead and she’s never coming back. Until you accept this, you’ll never be able to move on with your life.”

  Then she went out the door and left me alone in the room—in a universe made for one.

  Chapter 19

  “That Ford Explorer of yours is registered to some badass dudes,” Alesha said.

  That was her greeting, entering through my open office door, a big grin on her face, two cups of steaming Starbucks coffee in her hands. I knew she was bringing coffee—when she came by in the morning she always brought coffee—which was why I’d left the door open for her, forcing myself to put up with the dying goat yodeling from the Higher Plane Church of Spiritual Transcendence down the hall. It was Saturday, which usually meant I was free from the auditory torture, but apparently no such luck today. Or maybe it was Sunday when the place went dark. I could never remember. Their Sabbath probably rotated depending on the alignment of the stars.

  The low sun shining through the rain-streaked window filled the room with shifting, wavery light. It was no longer raining, but it had rained Friday night, and the droplets of water remained on the glass as reminders of the party that was. It had rained long and hard, and I’d lain awake for hours in bed listening to it crackling on the roof, hoping at any moment my wife would return, always disappointed when she didn’t. Two days gone now.

  I rose and took one of the coffees from Alesha, then shut the door. The cup had a sleeve, but it still felt scorching hot. Alesha was dressed in her gray trench coat, jeans, and open-toed sandals. Off duty. I couldn’t help but notice that she’d painted her toenails black with tiny gold zodiac symbols.

  “What do I owe you?” I asked.

  “You always ask,” she said, “and I always tell you to go to hell.”

  “And yet if I didn’t ask, I’d feel like a mooch.”

  “And yet if you didn’t ask, you’d have to accept my generosity without making a big fuss that you were willing to pay for it anyway. So I’ll say it again: Go to hell.”

  Still grinning, she settled into one of the office chairs. I took a seat behind the desk, waiting for her to spill the beans on what she knew. As usual, when she had something good for me, she took her time. I sipped the coffee, and, as usual, it was so scalding that it brought tears to my eyes. Since I never seemed to learn this particular lesson, I took my pain like a man and forced my wince to come out as a smile.

  Alesha let her gaze wander around the room, settling, as it often did, on the wall above my computer. I didn’t need to follow her eyes to know she was contemplating the special framed painting I’d hung there when I’d first rented the place.

  “Okay,” Alesha said, “I know I’ve asked this before, but why do you have a blank white picture up there again?”

  “I told you, it has sentimental value.”

  “But it’s blank.”

  “Let’s get back to the badass dudes,” I said, since there was no way I could explain to her that the painting wasn’t blank for me. “How badass are we talking about?”

  “Very badass,” Alesha said.

  “Are we going to play twenty questions again?”

  She snickered. “I just like making you work for it a bit. You know, not all private detectives have somebody like me on the inside who can feed them information. I want you to be appropriately grateful. I might need some favors myself some day.”

  It was one of those offhand comments that would have meant nothing to somebody else but had the kind of double meaning we both recognized. She realized it as soon as she said it, holding my gaze for few extra beats before her smile wavered just a little and she looked away.

  “Believe me,” I said, “you know how much I appreciate your help.”

  “Duly noted,” she said. Then, brightening: “Anyway, the Ford Explorer is registered to an enterprising businessman named Manuel Loretto—or rather, a corporation that he’s tied to but not really tied to, if you get my drift. Came to the United States illegally when he was seven. His parents were deported, but he stayed with his aunt, eventually became a citizen. When he was sixteen, he dropped out of high school to work in a cannery in Salem. When he was eighteen, he started his first business—one of those street-side burrito vans. By the time he was twenty, he opened his first Mexican restaurant in Woodburn. Now, at forty-five, he’s got his fingers in all kinds of pies, mostly catering to Hispanics—laundromats, auto-repair shops, even real estate offices.”

  “A true American success story,” I said. “Very inspiring. I’m not seeing why it’s relevant.”

  Alesha took a sip of her coffee. If her coffee was as hot as mine, she didn’t show it. “It’s relevant because one of the pies he’s got his fingers in is the drug trade.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “I’m telling you, the folder on this guy is a mile thick. The DEA has been trying to nail him for years. He’s got so many layers between him and the street gangs that actually peddle the meth, crack, and other stuff at the street level that his fingers never actually get dirty. But amazingly, his businesses all seem to do much be
tter than you’d think. Even in a weak economy, he was making money hand over fist.”

  “Imagine that. What about the picture I emailed you of those guys in the car?”

  “No luck there yet,” Alesha said. “I’m sure they’re some of his operatives. The well-dressed one was probably a low-level lugarteniente.”

  “A what?”

  “Forgot your high school Spanish, huh?”

  “It’s a little rusty.”

  “It means lieutenant. The way Loretto’s operation works, like most of these things, he’s got a bunch of lieutenants in charge of different things. They’re all vying to move up the ranks.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Another question. Is there any reason you can think of that a guy like that would be snooping around Karen Thorne’s condo Thursday night? It’s in the Pearl District, very posh.”

  “Huh,” Alesha said. “Not really the crowd Loretto’s gang runs in. Kind of hard to see how they might be mixed up in Karen’s murder. How do you know he was in Karen’s condo?”

  “Because I was there,” I said.

  “And you saw him?”

  “Let’s just say I know he was there before me.”

  “Uh-huh. And you’re not going to tell me how you know this, are you?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Right,” she said, “when in Myron-ese means not just ever.”

  “Alesha—”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” she said, though I could clearly see it wasn’t. “You’ve got your sources to protect and that sort of thing.”

  “Exactly,” I said, though the real reason I couldn’t tell her was a little more complicated.

  I knew it was the same guy who’d gone to Karen’s apartment building because I’d swung by there Friday night on my way back from Janice’s house. When I showed Perry, the friendly neighborhood ghost clerk, the cell-phone picture of the Hispanics I’d snapped in Vancouver, he’d identified the younger, more sharply dressed man as the same one who’d left the building when I was still unconscious on the floor upstairs. I wasn’t about to tell Alesha that my source was a ghost.

  “Got an address for Mr. Loretto?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Lives in a huge house in Lake Oswego. I doubt he’ll talk to you without a warrant, though. Place has got more security than the White House.”

  “You never know. Some people find me irrepressibly charming.”

  “I’m serious, Myron. Don’t play games with this guy.”

  “Duly noted,” I said. “Can I have the address?”

  She wrote it on a yellow sticky note. I knew the address. It wasn’t that far from where my parents used to live, though I was sure his house was an order of magnitude more impressive.

  “If you’re going to talk to him,” she said, “you should at least have me tag along.”

  “Hmm. In this case, I think it might be better if I didn’t have a cop with me.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Just promise me you’re not going to get yourself killed, okay?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

  “Not funny. Seriously, this guy isn’t like the low-level whack jobs we usually deal with. He’s smart, he’s ruthless, and he’s very, very powerful.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  She took another drink of coffee, studying me carefully. The yodeling from down the hall had thankfully fallen silent. No cars passed on the street outside. The quiet created a sense of intimacy in the room that wasn’t there before, changing the tenor of the moment. Alesha looked away.

  “All right,” she said, “I better get going. You may like to work on Saturdays, but I like to have a break now and then.”

  “Late for your astrologist?” I said.

  “Hairstylist, if you must know.”

  “So the state of your hair is more important than the state of the stars?”

  “No, I just like to have nice hair first. I’m seeing her later today.”

  She winked at me. Taking her coffee, she rose and walked to the door. As if on cue, the yodeling from down the hall started up again. Alesha grinned at me.

  “Do you have to pay extra for the music?” she asked. “Or is it a fringe benefit?”

  “What’s the city ordinance on noise pollution again? And if I shoot them, can I claim self-defense?”

  “Depends on how good your lawyer is,” Alesha said.

  I thought that was her exit line, but she paused as if she was thinking of saying something else. Billie strolled casually through the open door at just that moment, plunking herself down in the chair as if she’d just stepped out for coffee rather than been gone for days. She wore a purple beret, tilted so far to the side that it looked like it might slide off her head at any second, a baggy Jimmy Hendrix T-shirt, and Army fatigue pants cut off at the knees. She looked at the floor, not at me.

  Alesha, of course, didn’t see her, but she did see my surprised reaction.

  “What?” she said.

  “Hmm? Oh, nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Billie said. “How nice. I’m nothing. Happy to see you, too.”

  “Didn’t look like nothing,” Alesha said. “Looked like you, I don’t know …”

  “Saw a ghost?” Billie interjected, with a snicker.

  “… sat on a tack or something,” Alesha finished.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just thinking about the case, I guess.”

  “Ah. Well …” She swallowed. “We’re still shooting pool tomorrow night, right?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes.”

  “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did. That’s okay. We can reschedule for another time, no biggie.”

  “Alesha, I’ll be there. Sharkey’s at 8 p.m., right?”

  “Sure, if you can make it.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  She nodded and left. When I looked back at Billie, she was smirking. Someone smirking at you is annoying all by itself, but for some reason it’s particularly annoying when that person is wearing a beret. Adding in that she’d been gone for two days, plus the mood music down the hall, and I wasn’t in a gracious state of mind.

  “What?” I said.

  “You know she wants you,” Billie said.

  “Jesus.”

  “And you want her.”

  “Oh come on, Billie. That’s not true.”

  “Uh-huh. I think he doth protest too much. It’s not like it’s a new thing. You guys have always had chemistry, even when I was alive. Honestly, I don’t know why you don’t jump in the sack with her now. It’s not like I have much to offer you.”

  “You’re my wife, for God’s sake.”

  “Your dead wife.”

  “Billie—”

  “Your dead invisible ghost wife. Aren’t you tired of playing the part of the celibate priest? You used to be really good in bed. I really hate to see that go to waste. Some woman should get some good out of it.”

  I shook my head. “Will you quit? I can’t believe you disappear for two days and this is what you want to talk about.”

  “I’m just saying, since you can’t sleep with me, it might as well be with Alesha. Hell, she might even love you.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “You know it’s not. She’s practically telling you she loves you with every word out of her mouth.”

  “Oh, and you don’t?”

  “Don’t what?”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d blurted the question without thinking it through, without really wanting an honest answer.

  “Love you? You know I do,” she said, though she didn’t sound all that convincing. “That’s not the point. The point is that you’re a man with sexual needs, and she’s an attractive woman who’s obviously ready to take care of them.”

  “All right, I’m done with this conversation. I’ve got work to do.”

  I rose from the desk, grabbed my phone, keys, and wallet, and donned my leather jacket. Billie watche
d me, still wearing an annoying smirk, but when I took out the Glock and made sure it was loaded, her expression changed to one of concern.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Detecting,” I said, placing the Glock back in my side holster. It was always a comforting presence.

  “Uh-huh. And where, exactly, will you be detecting?”

  “Why? You afraid I won’t come back? Don’t worry, I won’t be gone two days.”

  “Myron, don’t be like that. You know I need my space. I was always that way. I was that way before you even married me, so you knew what you were getting into. So just tell me where you’re going, okay?”

  I told her. I didn’t necessarily have a great attitude doing it, but I told her. In fact, I told her everything that had happened since she left, from my bump on the head in Karen’s condo all the way up to what I’d learned about Manuel Loretto. She was shaking her head before I’d even finished.

  “You’re not going into that guy’s place,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Like hell. Even if you do get to talk to him, why do you think he’d tell you anything?”

  “I’m feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.”

  “What?”

  “I just had this conversation with Alesha.”

  She glared at me. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you talked about with Alesha. I’m your wife, and I don’t want you going.”

  “Oh, now you’re my wife?”

  “Damn it, Myron! Why is this case so damn important?”

  “You know why it’s important. Why do you even have to ask?”

  She stewed in silence, shaking her head. I turned to leave, and she sprang to her feet.

  “Fine,” she said. “If somebody has to go in, then it’s going to be me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll snoop around while you wait in the car.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said. “What if somebody sees you?”

  She gave me a what-are-you-thinking look.