My phone made the sound of Chinese wind chimes.
"Hey, Zephrya. Guess where I am."
"Looks like the Naked Ear."
" 'Looks like'?"
"You got the GPS turned on on your phone again," she said. "I could tell you exactly where you were in Beijing or Timbuktu."
Zephyra Ximenez was my lifeline in the electronic dimensions. I rarely saw her. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of her work was on the phone or online. She had a Dominican mother and Moroccan father-lineages, when combined, that gave her dark red-black skin and the kind of look that defines rather than trails after beauty. I had met her at the Ear and tried to pick her up, but she didn't have a father complex. When I told her about my work she offered me her professional services.
In the long run that was a much better deal for both of us.
"The police are after you, Mr. McGill," she said.
"Say what?"
"Lieutenant Bonilla-the last time I talked to her she was a sergeant-and Detective Kitteridge have both called and demanded your presence."
"What did you tell them?"
"That I would pass the information on as soon as possible."
"I hired a receptionist," I said. "A young woman named Mardi Bitterman."
"Really? Wow. With me, Bug Bateman, and now this Mardi, you almost have a real office."
"Yeah. From now on you can call her during business hours when you can't get me."
"Your drinks," Cylla said.
She had brought them on an old-fashioned dark-brown tray that was lined with cork.
"Is that Cylla?" Zephyra asked.
"It is."
"Let me speak to her a minute, will you, boss?"
While the young women chattered, I took my first nip of brandy and wondered at the zinging feeling in my chest. It made me happy to see Cylla laughing with Zephyra. I wanted the same youthful abandon for Angie but didn't have high hopes.
I LEFT THE BAR about midnight and walked for a while. I honestly didn't realize that I was headed for Lucy's block until I was standing there in front of her building.
The light was on in her apartment. There was jazz coming from somewhere else. I was a teenager, drunk on his first forbidden bender and smitten with passion for a girl.
At my age this feeling was better than love. It was the moment before you really knew the object of affection. Her nipples and the sounds she made in her sleep were still in the province of the unknown. She had no secrets because she was, in herself, a mystery. I had no hold on her because she hadn't yet offered me one.
Standing outside her place, I had two choices: one of them was to ring her bell.
I took out my phone, disengaged the GPS, and entered a number.
"Lieutenant Bonilla," she answered on the third ring.
"You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?"
WE MET AT A little after-hours joint on Eighty-first. The bar closed at one but the owner stayed open for cops and special regulars.
Bonilla was already there when I arrived. She was sitting in a faded red booth, wearing a steel-gray pants suit that had a definite masculine flair.
I sat down across from her and nodded.
"Have you talked to Kitteridge?" were her first words.
"Not since a while ago. He wanted me to come in this afternoon but I demurred."
"You know, you shouldn't take Carson lightly."
The lady cop was offering me good advice. She was intuitive, working outside the rote demands of her profession. She understood that there was a conflict going on in me.
Carson Kitteridge was the only innately honest senior cop I had ever dealt with. It was in his job definition to bring me to justice, whatever that meant. For all that, he played by the rules. He would never take somebody down except by the letter of the law. But Bethann Bonilla was even more rare. She had empathy for me; no love, or even real concern, just a feeling for what I was.
"What do you have on the murders, Mr. McGill?"
"I'm not on that case, Lieutenant. I don't even know what the papers say about it because I haven't had the time to sit down and read them."
"What are you working on?"
"Nothing criminal."
"Does it have to do with Wanda Soa?"
"Not that I know of."
"Then what were you doing at her apartment?"
"I've already explained that."
"Do you expect me to believe that you haven't wondered?"
"Listen," I said. "If you come to work tomorrow and nobody in the city has committed a crime, you still get paid. You could get shot in the leg and have to take six months off and they will send you a check every two weeks. I, on the other hand, have to sweat over every dollar. I don't have time to worry about some woman who called me. I don't have the luxury to be inquisitive."
"This case has Charbon very worried," she said.
That was a threat. Captain James Charbon was oil on my water. He was my own personal ton of bricks. Kitteridge just wanted me in the jail; James Charbon wanted me under it.
"What is it you're trying to get from me?" I asked. I had to.
"Anything you know."
"Okay. I want you to listen to me. I had never heard of that woman before you told me her name. I got a call but I can't be expected to identify a dead woman's voice. Maybe if you explain to me the problem I could try to find out what you need."
"There's nothing but problems. Soa's apartment was party central. We lifted eighty-six different prints from the living room alone. On the walls, on the floors, under the couch. Women and men, maybe even children. Prints everywhere but on the knife. It was wiped off with some kind of cloth that we didn't find at the scene. The gun was gone, too."
"Do you have a scenario of how the man was killed?"
"We figure that the John Doe was pointing the gun at Wanda when someone blindsided him, stabbing him in the chest. Problem was the gun went off, killing the girl. The killer fell dead right after."
"And," I continued, "the second killer wiped their prints off the haft and then took the pistol… maybe for protection."
"That's how we see it. The guy was a professional. No ID. He didn't even have labels in his clothes."
"Not much to go on," I said.
"And if I don't come up with something you can bet that Captain Charbon will dump it on you."
"If anything comes up," I said, "anything at all, I will tell either you or Carson."
"It's my case."
"Then I'll tell you."
22
It was after two when I got home. I couldn't imagine subjecting myself to the test of the stairs, so I took the elevator and opened the front door quietly, hung the hideous yellow suit on the rack in my den, and then lay down on the daybed, sighing like a black bear on the first day of hibernation. I'd only had five little glasses of cognac, but at my age, and at that hour, it was enough to make the world around me jiggle and spin-on the verge of flying apart.
Bonilla presented me with a serious problem that I identified with my seemingly permanent headache.
Captain James Charbon didn't like the stink of me. He was a hardworking official who had many open cases, and so most of the time he left me alone. But when there was an investigation on his desk-one that had my name anywhere attached-he became hell-bent on getting me charged with something, anything.
This passion was brought about by extraordinary conceit.
When Charbon was a detective working the street he prided himself on a nearly perfect success rate.