“Want me to meet you somewhere?”
“No, pick me up at my house.”
I got there at 7:02. Before I reached the door, she opened it, stepped out onto the front path, and met me halfway, setting off the motion-sensing light. She had on a sleeveless, black cotton dress, no stockings, low-heeled black sandals. No diamonds, just a thin, gold choker that accentuated the length and whiteness of her neck. Her hair was clipped back in a ponytail. It made her look younger, tentative.
“I need to explain about last night,” she said, talking fast, sounding breathless. “The truth is, the early patient was scheduled at nine-thirty. I had plenty of time, didn’t need to kibosh everything. I was- let’s call a spade a spade: I was nervous. Being with you made me very, very nervous, Alex.”
“I-”
“It wasn’t you.” Her shoulders rose and fell. Her laugh was quick, just short of brittle, as she took my arm and ushered me into her house. Standing with her back to the door, she said, “If my patients could see me now. I’m a big-deal expert at helping others make transitions, but I am having the hardest time.”
She shook her head. “Transitions. Now I’m being presumptuous-”
“Hey,” I said. “The first time we went out I changed shirts three times.”
She stared up at me. I touched her chin and raised it. She removed my hand.
“Saying the right thing,” she said. “With people like us, you never know if it’s the training.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
She threw her arms around me and kissed me deeply. Her tongue was gingery and nimble. I held her tight, stroked her face, her neck, her back, chanced roaming lower and when she didn’t stop me, dropped both my hands and cupped her rear. She moved my right hand around to her front, sandwiched it between cotton-sheathed thighs. I explored her heat and she did something with her hips that was pure intent. Lifting the black dress, I peeled down her panties, felt the angle of her legs widen. I kissed her, I strummed her. One of her hands was tangled in my hair, holding fast. The other fumbled at my zipper. Finally, she freed me and we were on the hardwood floor of her living room and I was in her and she was clutching me and we were moving together as if we’d been doing it all our lives.
She kissed my face and said, “I’m going to go out on a limb. With you it’s not just the training. You’re a sweet man.”
The feelings came later. After we’d slept and eaten leftovers and renewed our dehydrated bodies with gulps of water and were finally heading north on Pacific Coast Highway. Taking Allison’s Jaguar because it was a convertible. I was at the wheel and Allison stretched out on the reclined passenger seat, bundled up in a big, white Irish sweater, hair loose, flapping like an ebony banner, face to the wind.
One hand rested on my knee. Beautiful fingers, long and tapered. Smooth and white.
No scars. Robin, though a master of tools, hurt herself from time to time.
I gave the Jag more gas, sped past black ocean and gray hillside, the headlights of other adventurers. Stealing peeks at Allison’s face when the road straightened. My scalp still ached where she’d yanked my hair, and the stretch of brow from which she’d licked my sweat pinged with electricity.
I put on even more speed and she stroked my knee and I got hard, again.
Beautiful woman, sensuous woman.
Fast car, gorgeous California night. Perfect.
But this idiot’s joy was muffled by the wagging finger of doubt- some notion that I’d cheated.
Beyond stupid. Robin’s with Tim.
And now I’m with Allison.
Things changed. Change was good.
Right?
5
A hundred hours since Baby Boy had bled out in the alley and Petra had turned up nothing. The clammy, sour smell of whodunit permeated her sinuses. She found herself wishing for a slam-dunk bar stabbing but picked up no other cases. The crime drop that had become the department’s big-time cap feather meant adequate staffing. It would be a while before the homicide dial rotated back to her.
She went over the file till her head hurt. Asked a couple of the guys if they had any ideas. A young D-I named Arbogast said, “You should listen to his music.”
Petra had bought a few CDs, spent the early-morning hours with Baby Boy’s bruised voice and wailing guitar licks. “For a clue?”
“No,” said Arbogast. “Cause he rocked.”
“Guy was a fucking genius,” another detective agreed. An older one- Krauss. Petra would’ve never taken him for a blues fan. Then she realized he was around Baby Boy’s age, had probably grown up with Baby Boy’s music.
A genius dies but the mainstream press couldn’t care less. Not even a phone call from the Times, despite uniformly good reviews of Baby Boy’s music Petra found while surfing the Web. She left a message for the newspaper’s music critic, on the off chance something in Baby Boy’s past could point her in a new direction. Jerk never phoned back.
She did get pestered by a handful of self-styled “rock journalists,” young-sounding guys claiming to represent outlets with names like Guitar Buzz, Guitar Universe, and Twenty-first-Century Guitar, each one wanting details for obituaries. No one had anything to say about Lee other than to praise his playing. The word “phrasing” kept coming up- Alex had used the term- and Petra figured out that meant how you put notes and rhythm together.
Her phrasing on this one stank.
The rock writers lost interest when she asked questions instead of answering theirs. Except for one guy who kept bugging her for details, a character named Yuri Drummond, publisher of a local magazine called GrooveRat, which had run a profile on Baby Boy last year.
Drummond alienated Petra immediately by calling her by her first name and proceeded to compound the annoyance by rooting around rudely for forensic details. “How many stab wounds? How much blood did he actually lose?”
Guy had the ghoulish curiosity and nasal voice of a hormonally stormed teenager, and Petra wondered about a prank caller. But when he asked her if anything had been scrawled on the alley wall, she stiffened.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Well, you know,” said Drummond. “Like the Manson murders- Helter Skelter.”
“Why would the Manson murders be related to Mr. Lee’s murder?”
“I don’t know. I just thought…”
“Have you heard anything about Mr. Lee’s murder, Mr. Drummond?”
“No.” Drummond’s voice rose in pitch. “What would I know?”
“When did you interview Mr. Lee?”
“No, no, I never met him.”
“You said you ran a profile on him.”
“We ran an in-depth profile and listed his discography.”
“You profiled him in depth without meeting him.”
“Exactly,” said Drummond, sounding cocky. “That’s the whole point.”
“What is?”
“GrooveRat’s into the psychobiosocial essence of art and music, not the cult of personality.”
“Psycho-bio-social,” said Petra.
“In plain words,” said Drummond, condescending, “we don’t care who someone screws, only the groove they put out.”
“Hence the title of your magazine.”
Silence.
Petra said, “Do you have information about who Baby Boy Lee was screwing?”
“You’re saying there was a sexual angle to-”
“Mr. Drummond, what exactly was the focus of this profile?”
“The music,” pronounced the little snip, letting the unspoken “duh” hang in the air.
“Baby Boy’s phrasing,” said Petra.
“Baby Boy’s whole groove- the mind-set he put himself into to get the sound he did.”