And I would. Sincerely. A movie theater with those double seats, how great would that be? Jason tells me they tilt backward. I’ve never seen an Imax movie because experiencing awe alone seems indulgent, now there’s a whole world of shared experiences that could open up to us.
Sofia sits up and sniffles. “Oh my God. I must look like a panda. I’m gonna clean up a little, okay? And get you another beer. A cold one.”
“Okay,” I say, but I would have preferred to stay like this all night, dead arm or not.
I watch Sofia pad into the bedroom and it occurs to me that she is more miserable sane than insane.
I can change that. Just give me a month. Just let me have tonight for heaven’s sake.
I have just cued up an episode of Deadwood, the one where Al passes the kidney stone, when someone knocks at the door. Three sharp regulation police raps.
Balls.
Ronelle Deacon is outside all cocked hip and coptitude, which is not a word but should be.
“Old guy buzzed me up,” she explains because Hong must have made an impression. “The balls guy, you know him?”
“Yep. Mr. Hong. He’s been cutting off the circulation for years.”
I must be squarely in the frame for something for Ronelle to track me down, and I’m hoping the preamble will give me a clue.
She throws me with: “Remember when we went at it downstairs? That was some freaky stuff.”
I glance nervously over my shoulder. Sofia does not need to hear this. Maybe I should do a cowboy accent so she’ll think the voices are coming from Deadwood.
Yeah, that’s exactly what you should do. Let your psychotic girlfriend think the TV is talking about her.
So instead I step into the hallway.
“Ronnie, what’s the deal? Did you get something on Edit? You didn’t come looking for me to reminisce. Shit, you barely spoke to me on the freaky night in question when I saved your life a couple of times.”
I figure it’s worth tossing the life-saving factoid into the mix. You never know, Detective Deacon might have a tender spot that I haven’t found yet.
Ronnie is leaning against the wall, navy raincoat hanging like a cape. She’s so casual that I’m getting seriously worried.
“Yeah, I remember that night, Danny. You put in the effort, I gotta hand it to you. All the GQ foreplay and shit, but next morning your girlfriend clocked me with a frying pan.”
“It was a lasagna dish,” I correct her. “That’s Wile E. Coyote you’re thinking of who got hit with a frying pan.”
Ronnie smiles and her teeth are like predatory Tic Tacs in the gloom. “You’re missing the point, Dan. Bitch decked me, so payback was always coming down the pipe.”
She’s here for Sofia.
I hate to trot out clichés but I have a bad feeling about this. Ronelle wouldn’t come down here personally unless there was some kind of prestige collar involved and as far as I know Sofia has only left the apartment a dozen times in the past decade, so what the hell could she have done? Did Zeb involve her in something when they were out together on his rounds?
“What’s this about, Ronnie? If it’s some penny-ante bullshit, you owe me a pass.”
Ronnie straightens, hooking a thumb behind her hip holster, pushing out the gun.
“Murder one ain’t no penny-ante bullshit, McEvoy. You think I’m working late for parking tickets?”
Murder one? My first thought is that Evelyn has had some kind of delayed reaction to the hammer blow. It’s possible.
“Murder? What are you talking about? Who is Sofia supposed to have killed?”
“You, Dan,” says Ronelle, grinning. “Well, you know, not you you. Carmine you.”
Lotta you’s in that answer so it takes me a second to unravel them.
“You’re saying that Sofia killed her husband?”
“The real one, lucky for Danny boy McEvoy.”
I am stunned. Partly at the revelation but mainly because I don’t doubt it enough.
A part of me always knew.
“Carmine is dead? Where did you find him?”
Ronnie blinks twice then sniffs like she’s gonna spit and I know there’s a hole in her case.
“We ain’t got the body per sé.”
“No body, no case. What kind of bullshit is this? Is the crime rate so low you got time to be fucking around with hearsay?”
I wouldn’t normally fire Class-A swearwords at the blues but Ronnie needs to know how against this I am.
“Hey, Dan. Mind your language. Just because I can kick your ass doesn’t mean I ain’t a fucking lady. Comprendé?”
I am unrepentant. “Well whaddya expect? Tooling in here on my night off and tossing out murder accusations without a body. I thought we were coming up on friendship, Ronnie.”
The back of my mind registers that I’ve got maybe half a minute to finish up here.
“This is business, Dan. I’m police first and foremost and I don’t let capitals walk.”
I point a finger at Ronnie but stop short of poking. “This is harassment, is what it is. Why are you even opening a book on this, after twenty years? Because you got whacked with a saucepan?”
“Lasagna dish.”
Being corrected is irritating, I see that now.
“You know what? You’ve got no paper to come in here plus you are off my Christmas list. So why don’t you clock the hell off or go pistol-whip some real criminals?”
Ronnie’s smile never dims and I realize she must have something. The idea makes me sick to my stomach.
Sofia could never survive in prison. Hell, she wouldn’t survive a trial.
“I need to know what you have.”
Ronelle walks forward and I either gotta step back or stand my ground.
Screw it. I stay where I am and order my spine to straighten up. This woman once threatened to shoot me in the privates and the aftershock of that keen moment still passes through me whenever she violates my space.
“Tell me, Ronnie.”
“I don’t need to tell you shit, civilian.”
“You can’t walk in here.”
“You ain’t the resident, darlin’. Step aside.”
“You need a reasonable suspicion at least, or else your case collapses in front of the judge.”
Ronnie’s ebony face lights up and I know I’ve played into her hands.
“Reasonable suspicion? I think you could say I have one of those.” She pulls out her iPhone and opens a sound file App.
“This is a 911 call. Came in last night, all the lines were busy so it went to overflow. We record them all. SOP. You know what that means, don’t you soldier boy?”
I have an urge to grab the phone and stomp it to smithereens. But those phones are tough little bastards so the likely outcome is that I would embarrass myself and probably break a foot to boot.
Foot to boot. I am hilarious.
I know that I am going to hear this message but I do not want to. Contrary to what Morpheus assured us with his red pill/blue pill speech, hearing the truth does not set a person free, and telling the truth usually earns the truth sayer an overnight bench in the tombs waiting for his arraignment with some public-defender kid still hungover from an evening spent sucking jello shots from a stripper’s navel. And if that image is suspiciously specific it’s only because Zeb has used me a couple of times as his one phone call.
Ronnie taps the screen with a blood-red nail and the file begins to play. The voice is low and slurred but still fills the corridor and drifts into the room behind me.
“Amazing speakers on these little things, right?” says Detective Deacon. “When I was a kid you’d have to lug around a goddamn boom box for this kind of sound.”
I don’t join in the speaker-quality discussion. Instead I listen to what my darling Sofia said to the cops when she dialed 911 in the grip of bleak depression.