Peter nodded. “So he says. He obviously won’t be using his real name there. And I don’t know what he looks like now, I haven’t seen him in a decade. That was our agreement.”
“But you’ve talked to him.”
“Yes. And yesterday he called me. I thought he was gone from San Francisco but he’s been here.” Peter almost sounded afraid.
“How do you know he’s at the Trompe l’Oeil? Did he tell you?”
“No. But when he called me… I could hear background noise. Music. A jazz singer. It sounded like the singer they’ve had at the Trompe’s lounge for years, a very throaty alto. I drink there. So I think that’s where he is…”
Peter, Nunn thought, was a good detective as long as all the clues involved a bar.
“Why would he call you?” Then it sank in. “You helped him hide. You helped him run.” Nunn took a step back from Peter.
“You think I’m so bad?” Peter sobbed.
Then Peter cracked. Guilt or booze finally loosened his grip, and in a low voice he confessed how he had helped Christopher fake his death and vanish.
“Christopher came up with the plan,” he said. “A replacement body. He killed an errand boy, some Chinese guy, who supplied him with hash and coke, a nobody. He stuffed his body inside the maiden.”
“Name?”
Peter thought. “He had a nickname like a James Bond character… Odd Job, or something.”
Odd Body.
“Christopher sliced off his own finger, left it in place of the dead guy’s. Did it here on the boat. I had to cauterize the wound, bandage it up for him.” Peter made a gagging sound. “Then he broke off a piece of his own tooth, put it in the guy’s shirt pocket.”
Nunn felt ill, remembering the nearly unidentifiable body. He remembered the tooth and what the forensics guy, McGee, had said about the one intact finger.
“Then you helped frame your own sister.”
“It was Christopher’s idea-every bit of it!” Peter screamed.
“Go on.”
“He had one of her blouses-he stained it with his blood after he cut off his finger. It was like he was painting it, I remember. Then he took hair from her hairbrush and put it in there with the body. And later, we had someone put hash and coke in her office for the police to find…”
Nunn listened to the murmured, slurred words with an unforgiving silence.
Then Nunn released Peter, who staggered away from him, collapsing by the sink, fingers testing his face for glass. Only a slight scrape, barely bloodied, lay along his cheek, and he almost hummed in relief.
Nunn pulled out handcuffs from the kit in the small of his back and he latched one onto Peter’s wrist, cuffing the other one to the oven handle.
“You’re not a cop anymore, you can’t handcuff me!” Peter screamed.
“Ballard had a reason to stay put. You’re on a boat that could be in international waters in short order. I’m not trusting you.”
“Nunn, please. Let me go. I told you. I’ll pay you.”
“Second bribe I’ve been offered in an hour,” Nunn said. He took the whiskey bottle and stuck it between Peter’s legs. “I’m going to call the police for you, Peter.”
Peter made a noise between a cough and a snuffle.
Nunn jumped off the Désirée and ran down the dock.
Christopher Thomas, alive, and within reach. He could finally solve the case. Maybe he could get real justice for Rosemary. Maybe he would get his job back.
And maybe, Nunn thought, he could get himself back.
31 Marcus Sakey
I’m afraid I can’t understand you.” Christopher set the duct tape on the bar beside the Colt. “You really should work on your enunciation. It separates one from the lower classes.” He picked Artie’s glass off the plush carpeted floor, washed and dried it, then poured himself a couple of neat fingers of the same single malt. “That and money, of course.”
Artie whimpered. His face was pale. Sweat dripped off his chin as he tried to crawl. It was impressive, actually. As Christopher watched, the man fought to lift one arm and flop it forward a scant couple of inches. He looked like a man possessed, as if agony were a razor-clawed demon inside his skin.
The blood that pumped from his stomach was dark against the white weave of the carpet. Almost black.
Christopher took another swallow, savored the burn. He felt alive in a way that he usually associated with sex. Not orgasm, which had a vulnerability, a giving of himself. But that perfect instant when the next Taylor-or Haile or Justine-surrendered herself. The flicker of submission in her eyes before the clothes ever came off. The moment she let go.
Only Artie wasn’t letting go, and that just stretched it out more sweetly.
Christopher watched for another moment, then turned, walked to the bedroom. Snapped on the light and looked around. One gunshot, even from a.357, would be written off as street noise, a bottle rocket, or a backfiring truck or even what it was, gunfire. No one would believe that it had come from inside a $4,000-a-night suite.
Still, best to get moving. Besides, he’d had about all the fun San Francisco was likely to afford him. Tailing Ballard, holding a knife to Belle’s pale throat, stalking the cop and Ballard’s gorgeous wife, creeping up on her like that in the dressing room, seeing her quivering in her panties, had been a kick. His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten the chance to see his children, Leila and Ben-even from a distance. Artie had ruined that with his second-rate scheming. Ah, well. Rio called.
Christopher took down a suitcase from the closet, unzipped it. Opened the room safe and began to haul out bundles of money. When he’d filled the first suitcase, he took down a second, packed it as well. From one of the American Touristers he took out a fresh shirt, patterned white cotton and French cuffs, and traded it for the rumpled one he wore. He stood in front of the mirror. A little… staid. He popped the cuff links, then shook his wrists to loosen the fabric. There. At once elegant and rakish.
He picked up his bags-it was amazing how much real money weighed, even in high denominations-and walked back into the living room.
Artie had made it almost six feet. A smear of dark blood marked his progress. His hands were coated with the stuff.
“I have to say, Arthur, you’re smarter than you look.” Christopher dropped the bags, sauntered over. “Going for the phone, very clever. I’d have guessed you would try for the door.” He raised one foot, put the arch of his dress shoe against the man’s shoulder, and pushed.
Artie toppled like a lamp. Even muffled by the gag, his scream was raw and sharp.
“But then, what would you have said if you did reach the phone?” Christopher went to the bar, picked up the heavy revolver. “Plmmmphhmmpphmmeph?” He dropped to one knee beside the onetime security guard, careful not to dip his pants in blood. “Can you hear me?”
Artie’s eyes were huge. His pupils were pinned as if he were staring at something bright and close. He made no response. Christopher leaned in and flicked the man’s stomach just above where the bullet had torn it open.
Artie responded.
“I said, can you hear me?”
The man nodded feverishly.
“You’ve probably already guessed that you’re going to die. Shuffle off this mortal coil, as it were. But how fast you shuffle is up to me. Remember that when I take your gag out. Yes?”
Again the nod.
“Excellent.” Christopher ripped off the tape and pulled Taylor’s abandoned panties out of Artie’s mouth. Christopher tossed them aside, then wiped his hands on a clean spot on Artie’s shirt. “Now.” He put the barrel of the gun against the man’s crotch, cocked the hammer back. “About that letter.”
Tired. So tired.
Jon Nunn’s shoulders were clenched like knuckles. Eyes grainy and dry. When he raised a hand to rub them, the fingers were trembling. As if he’d been running for days.