“No problem, Marlene,” said Harry, which is what he always said, and what he would have said had she asked him to load the building on his back and dump it off Pier Twenty-eight.
“I’m forgetting something important,” she said out loud to no one as she gathered up her bag and coat and beckoned to Wolfe. “It was something about you-have you got a gun?”
Wolfe shook his head. Marlene sighed. “Well, you’ll need one. Can you shoot? Yes, of course you can shoot. I’ll get Dane to give you one of his-he has about fifty of them. Sym! Concealed-carry application for Wolfe, okay? Don’t forget! Okay, let’s go!”
They breezed by Sym, muttering over government forms, and were out the door before Marlene braked sharply and called back inside. “Sym! I just remembered. Wolfe isn’t bonded. Get the paperwork from Allied and fill it out and make sure he signs it and notarize it and get it back to them.”
Sym rolled her eyes and grunted in acquiescence.
Marlene pushed the yellow VW (which for a wonder started right up and purred) through the uptown traffic as only a one-eyed, heavily armed woman was likely to push, endangering herself and others but escaping injury, and arrived at Edie Wooten’s building only ten minutes past the appointed time. The doorman gave them what seemed like an extra fish eye as he rang upstairs and handed Marlene the handset. Edie Wooten sounded nervous and distraught.
“Oh, God, I forgot you were coming, again!” she wailed. “Look, I know this is an imposition, but could you come back another time? We’re having some difficulty, a family thing-”
Marlene, however, was not having any of this. “No, Edie, we actually have to do this now. I have your bodyguard here, and he’s on the clock, and I have to start going through your list of possibles with you, before the concert, which is the day after tomorrow-”
“Oh, God! Yes, all right, you’d better come up.”
This time Edie herself came to the door to let them in. She was dressed in a navy skirt and sweater, and her face was flushed. There was music booming in the apartment, not the music of the cello but heavy, raucous, metallic rock. Marlene looked inquiringly at the woman as they stepped into the hall.
“My sister,” said Edie, as if that explained everything.
Marlene made the introductions, and Edie shook Jack Wolfe’s hand. Then she led them through a hallway lined with paintings to a small room set up as an office, equipped with a Sheraton desk, upholstered straight chairs, an Empire sofa in blue silk, and three oak filing cabinets. There was a marble fireplace, with some Meissen musicians on the mantel. The walls held framed concert posters showing Edie looking serene, wrapped around her cello. She closed the door against the din.
Wolfe was looking around like a mooncalf. Marlene noticed that he was staring at everything but the client.
“The list?” said Marlene, getting down to business.
Edie riffled through papers at the desk, apologizing. She was clearly under some tension; her face was drawn and lacked the beatific glow Marlene had observed during their previous meeting.
“Here it is,” said Edie, handing over several sheets.
It was a list of names only, and so Marlene, suppressing her irritation, had to go through them one by one with Edie, to identify the people and find out where they could be reached. This took some time. Edie offered refreshments; Marlene declined. Edie got up and paced around the room. She was extremely nervous, and Marlene wondered why.
Marlene said, “Well, we’ll check all these out. If your guy isn’t on the list himself, maybe one of these people saw something or knows something. Meanwhile, have you had any more contact?”
“What? Oh, with the Music Lover?” said Edie vaguely. “Just a note. Wait, I’ll get it.” She walked out of the room. Marlene exchanged a glance with Wolfe. In Marlene’s experience, being stalked tended to concentrate the mind of the stalkee to the exclusion of nearly everything else, but Edie seemed oddly distracted.
They heard voices off, angry ones, and an increase in the volume of the trashy rock music. The doors opened, and Edie came in. She was even more flushed, with a desperate expression in her eyes. Following close behind her was a woman wearing a thin silvery spaghetti-strap mini-dress over pink thigh-length stockings and platform shoes. She was extremely thin, her face all sharp bones around bright, heavily mascaraed blue eyes, her neck stringy and taut, her collarbones staring through pale skin that seemed too fragile to hold in her vital organs. She pushed past Edie into the room and looked at Marlene and Wolfe with sharp interest, like a predatory bird examining a fallen nestling.
“Oooh,” she said, “are these the bodyguards?”
“Ginnie, please …” said Edie Wooten. The thin woman ignored her. She looked Wolfe up and down, swaying slightly on her heels, and, apparently finding nothing to detain her, turned her gaze on Marlene. Marlene stood up and said, “Hello, I’m Marlene Ciampi.”
Edie said, “Oh, excuse me, Marlene, this is my sister, Virginia Wooten.”
Marlene was about to extend her hand but decided not to. The woman was on something, clearly. She combined the hyperactive movements of the speed freak with the slurred diction of the sedative aficionado. That suggested she was taking setups- Dexamils and Qualuudes together-or speedballs, injecting heroin and cocaine simultaneously.
“Marlene? Mah-leeeene! Mah-leen fum da Bronx? Oh, Jesus, Edie, you have no fucking class at all, do you? Where did you find this, in the yellow pages?” She laughed, a soundless giggle that contorted what was actually the (presumably) last years of an extraordinarily pretty face. The giggles died down. No one else made a sound. Edie was rending her usual tissue. Ginnie was staring intently at Marlene’s face. “My God, this is rich!” she said, snorting. “What is that, Mah-leen, a glass eye? Oh, marvelous, a one-eye private eye! You’re inimitable, Edie darling. She imagines someone is pursuing her, and then she hires a half-blind detective to stop him.” A spate of laughter that ended with a racking cough. “Get me a fucking drink, goddammit,” she snarled at her sister. Edie, her face white, dashed away.
Ginnie strode with the unnaturally careful stride of the drugged to the sofa and arranged herself on it, showing her thin white thighs nearly up to the crotch and the garters that held up her pink stockings. No tracks on the thighs, Marlene observed. She probably takes it in the veins on the tops of her feet.
Ginnie said in a mock confidential voice, “My dear little sister, you understand, Mah-leen darling, is a pather-a pathological liar. What’d she tell you? Some man was chasing her? Some bad man? Who was going to put his big weenie into her? Well, darling, I can tell you that-that the only thing that’s been between her thighs is that fucking costly Stradivarius, that absolutely no one was ever allowed to touch. Now, I, on the other hand, am the one who really needs a bodyguard.” She turned her attention to Wolfe. “How about it, Silent Sam? Would you like to guard my body?” She wriggled her hips and ran a long pink tongue around her mouth and giggled again.