He stood watching me not work. But he wasn’t smug at all when he asked, “So—what do you say, Michelle?”
“It’s ‘Michael.’ ”
He shrugged. “Whatever. You’re a rose by any name that deserves better than sitting behind a computer at some goddamn desk in a dreary uniform that does lousy things to your....What do you say?”
“What do I say?”
“Is there an echo in here?” His grin was big and friendly but something in his eyes was serious, almost pleading. “Yeah, Michael, what do you say?”
My lower lip quivered. My eyes were tightening and untightening. My breath was coming fast.
“...Yes?”
And six months later, I was a partner in the Tree Agency, smartly attired in a black suit with white blouse, both courtesy of Norma Kamali...
...behind a desk, typing at a computer keyboard.
Well, somebody had to run the office, Mike said. And I was the only one among the handful of Tree Agency employees who had the computer skills. Once we had expanded, as our new Michigan Avenue suite of offices would easily allow, I could replace my own position and finally get out in the field.
Mike said.
I admit I was frustrated. Dan Green, Roger Freemont and Mike made up a smaller boys’ club than the Chicago PD, but a boys’ club all the same. Each had his private office—there were three offices and a conference room at the rear—and I would see them conferring just outside those offices, in various combinations. Our agency may have been in the Loop, but I wasn’t. I kept my own company in one of the eight cubicles that were to be filled one day.
Freemont I particularly found grating.
Fortyish, bald, burly, in black-rimmed glasses and off-the-rack suits, he looked like an accountant having a bad day. Every day. He was civil but spoke to me only when necessary, and I had the feeling he resented that I—like he and Dan—was a full partner.
Once, about three months after we opened the office, Freemont had stopped by my desk and awkwardly tried to make nice. Sort of.
He said, “Look, I know you’re qualified, and the time will come. Trust me.”
“Why?”
Behind the lenses of the glasses, his dark blue eyes blinked owlishly. “Why what?”
“Should I trust you.”
He frowned. “Because you trust Mike, and he trusts me. I know you feel...left out.”
I smiled at him the way a teacher does a problem student. “That’s right. Things are going on around here, cases looked into, that I’m not part of. There’s more whispering than a teenage slumber party.”
Suddenly he seemed ill at ease; or I should say, even more ill at ease.
“You’ll have to take it up with Mike,” he said, and was off to the privacy of his office.
Dan Green, on the other hand, was genuinely friendly, and we hit off. We followed a couple of the same TV shows and that gave us some common ground for office chitchat, and we both had a jones for Gino’s deep dish pizza, which led to an occasional business lunch or dinner.
Just the same, he never got fresh with me; we were strictly business buddies.
But when we hired Bea Vang away from the Chicago PD—where among other things she’d worked undercover vice and, along the way, picked up a taste for fun if mildly slutty clothes—Dan took more than a professional interest. Or was that less?
Ms. Vang was a good-looking young woman whose attributes may have been emphasized by the Betsy Johnson fashions she preferred, but even in Ann Taylor she’d have been the kind of attractive nuisance that could lead a Dan Green to spend way too much time stopping by her desk.
Bea hadn’t complained to me, but I could see she was getting uncomfortable, so I brought the subject up with Dan—boiled down, it came to “Cool it!”—and then reported to Mike.
“I had to talk to Dan today,” I told him.
“About hitting on Bea?”
“Right. Last thing a new small business needs is a sexual harassment lawsuit.”
My point, admittedly, was undercut by our being naked in bed together at the time I brought this up....
Mike’s bed, in his apartment.
He threw the paperback he’d been reading onto the nightstand, moved closer and slipped an arm around me. “Sexual harassment, huh? Isn’t this where I came in?”
“Never mind where you came in,” I said, thumping him on the nose with a forefinger, gently. “Bea’s got a solid law enforcement background, and—as we expand—we need to get her out from behind that desk and into some real case work.”
“Is this a veiled criticism?”
I beamed at him—one hundred watts of sarcasm. “About my being stuck behind a desk? Why, no! Not at all! I would never accuse you of bait and switch. Not in a million fucking years....”
He slipped his arm out from around my shoulders and sat up in bed, sheets gathered at his waist, his muscular chest and broad shoulders meaning absolutely nothing to me, much, and gave me his most earnest look. “Hey. By next year, you will be out from behind that desk. One way or the other.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He had this puckish expression going; just plain silly, on a big hairy ape like him. “It means...you might be expanding, yourself.”
I frowned. “I’m working out every other day, I’ll have you know.”
“I didn’t mean that. You’re perfect. It’s just...I have big plans for you, Michael.”
“Plans. Plans. How about something right now?”
“Okay.”
He reached for the nightstand, opened the drawer, and came back with a little black box.
Of course I knew.
So do you.
But surprise washed over me just the same, when I took the tiny box and flipped it open and saw, nestled there in pink satin, a diamond ring. Simple. Elegant. A karat, maybe.
And Mike Tree knew, for all my talk, dangling a karat in front of me would get this woman’s attention....
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said softly. “You’re out on the streets all you want, a P.I. just like the big boys...and girls...as long as you take a year off every time we have one.”
I frowned in confusion. “One? One what?”
“A boy. Or girl.” He was moving in for the kill now, nuzzling my neck. “Some detective,” he said.
Then he was crawling on top of me, kissing my neck, nibbling at my ear, and this and much else that’s none of your business went on for quite a while.
But this I will admit: before he slipped it in, he made me slip it on—the ring, I mean.
He said, “Gotta...start...making an...an honest... honest woman...out of you....”
“Take,” I said, “your time....”
FOUR
The doctor’s pen scratched at his notebook paper, filling a lull.
Then he said, “Let’s get back to new business, Ms. Tree. What was it about the Richard Addwatter killing that touched a nerve?”
“The other victim,” I said.
“The woman with Addwatter at the motel?”
“No. The other other victim—Mrs. Addwatter.”
“All right. What about her case touched a nerve, then?”
I glanced over at him. Reflections obscured the eyes behind the lenses and his solemn visage with the spade-shaped beard made him a figure in the kind of dream he might be asked to interpret.
“I’ll ask you one, Doc. How often does a homicide lieutenant encourage a P.I. to get involved in a murder case?”
Cook County Memorial Hospital, on West Harrison, takes up roughly fifteen city blocks and works at keeping the citizens of Chicago alive and well. When that doesn’t pan out, the Cook County Morgue, located at the hospital for 130 years or so, takes over.