“You guys from the Valley?”
Lucido shook his head. “Central Gang.”
“Then you don’t need to know.”
CHAPTER 34
Petra watched the Crown Victoria drive off the parking lot.
Isaac into something really bad.
She changed her mind about walking, decided to get her stuff, play hooky. As she reached the station’s back door, someone called her name.
She turned.
And there he was, Mr. Double Life, waving with the hand that wasn’t gripping his briefcase. Wearing what appeared to be the same clothes he’d had on in Nueva Cantina.
Had he been watching her chat with the Gang D’s? Could the kid be that savvy?
He trotted up to her. The bruise was paler but still swollen and covered with pancake makeup.
“Hey,” she said. “Been a while.”
“Sorry, I’ve been burning the midnight oil.”
Bet you have. “Dissertation stuff?”
“Mostly. Some June 28 research. Nothing to show on that, unfortunately. The librarian’s still looking.” He frowned. “To be honest, I’ve been wondering if I was wrong. Maybe I made too big a deal out of what was actually a statistical artifact.”
“You didn’t,” said Petra. She eyed the bruise conspicuously.
Isaac’s hand rose toward the spot, dropped back down. “You’re convinced it’s genuine.”
“Seems that way.” She showed him her watch. Tiny black numerals in the calendar window declared 21.
“I know,” he said. He shifted the briefcase to his left hand. His shoulders drooped.
Petra said, “You look a little beat.”
“The buses were running late so I took an alternate route, ended up walking a few extra blocks.”
Did you, indeed?
Petra said, “Must be hard, without a car.”
“You get used to it. I heard one of the Leons’ face was on TV. My father saw it on the news. I’d mentioned to my parents that you were working the case. I hope that wasn’t indiscreet.”
“Nope,” said Petra. “My name was on the broadcast.”
“So is Leon the shooter?”
She shook her head, unsure how much to tell him- now.
Engine noise made her look over his shoulder. A black SUV had entered the lot and it nosed aggressively into the first empty slot. At the wheel was one of the Downtown hotshots. Square-shouldered and confident as a movie cop. His buddy rode shotgun, same demeanor. Reflective sunglasses on both of them. The motor gunned, then turned off. Petra said, “Let’s talk later,” and held the door open for Isaac.
Reverse chivalry, he thought, as he entered the station. To her I’m nothing but a kid.
Hotshot I said, “Hi, ready for the meeting?”
“What meeting?”
“In five. We called.”
“When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
While she’d been sitting in Rodman and Lucido’s car. Short notice, like she was their handservant.
She said, “What’s up?”
Hotshot II said, “Let’s meet and find out.”
Isaac set up his computer at his corner desk. Two other detectives were in the room, Barney Fleischer and a heavy man he didn’t know, wearing an X-shaped, leather gun harness that bit into a tight green polo shirt.
He plugged in, logged on to the Doheny Library database, pretended to have something to do.
Pretended nothing had happened with Klara.
But it had and now he’d fouled things up personally and professionally.
Taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, which by itself was sleazy. The bigger issue was mixing business with… pleasure and the risk of a screwup on the June 28 investigation.
He tried to rationalize it away by telling himself that Klara had taken advantage of him. The impressionable student wanting only peace and quiet and musty books, not the clashing of thighs, the moaning…
It had been great. The second time, not the first. The first had been over before he could digest the fact that his head throbbed with surprise and orgasm. Klara had kept moving and he’d stayed hard. Cupping his face in both her hands, she’d whispered, “Yes, keep going, keep it going.”
Which, of course, had only charged him up further.
The second time had felt fantastic. For Klara, too, if writhing and mewling and having to muffle her own cries with her hand counted for anything. Afterward, she remained in place, straddling him, trapping his detumescence. Kissing his neck, scratching the back of his shirt with her fingernails, loose strands of red hair tickling his face until he could no longer stand it and he turned his head and she took it for fatigue and said, “You poor guy. All my weight on you, I’m so fat.”
She was smiling but looked about to cry, so he said, “Not at all,” and kissed her and grabbed hold of her pillowy hips through the butterfly dress.
“God, I’m still tingling,” she said. Then the tears came. “I’m so sorry, Isaac. What do you need with a fat, hysterical old woman?”
That led to his reassuring her, caressing her. Kissing her some more, though by that time his emotions had shriveled along with his penis and body contact was the last thing he craved.
She did feel heavy.
“You’re so sweet,” she said. “But this really can’t happen again. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“You agreed pretty fast.”
At a loss, he said, “I just want what you want.”
“Do you?” she said. “Well, if it were up to me, we’d fuck a hundred more times. But cooler heads must prevail.”
She kissed his chin. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? The way life gets so complicated. I’m old enough to be your mother.”
She frowned at the thought. A blade of shame cut through Isaac’s brain. He fought to banish it, focused on butterflies and flowers. Shifted his weight to let her know he was uncomfortable.
“But,” she said, finally getting off him, stepping high, as if to avoid touching him. Avoiding his eyes, too, as she rolled up her panties and put on her shoes and fluffed her fiery hair.
Isaac fixed his khakis and zipped up his fly and sat there, waiting for the rest of her sentence. Got only a weak smile. Tremulous lips.
“But what?” he said.
“But what?”
“You said ‘but’ and then nothing.”
“Oh,” she said, dropping her hand and grazing his groin with her fingernails. “But it was still fantastic. Even though I’m old enough to be your mother. We can be friends, can’t we?”
“Of course,” said Isaac, not sure what he was agreeing to.
Klara’s grin was crooked and complex. “So can we go out for coffee? As friends.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Now?”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
They left the library together and walked to a coffee shop on Figueroa, across the street from the campus’s eastern border. Passing students and faculty, people walking with people their own age.
Klara’s hips swayed and touched him from time to time. Isaac tried to put some space between them- enough to dispel any image of intimacy but not so much that she’d catch on. She kept bumping into his flank.
At the restaurant, she led him to a booth and ordered mint tea and a mixed green salad, Thousand Island on the side. Isaac, suddenly parched, asked for a Coke.
When the waitress left, Klara confided, “I always get hungry.” Her neck turned rosy. “After.”
For the next hour she proceeded to tell him about her schooling, her childhood, the young marriage she’d once thought eternal, her two gifted children, her wonderful mother who could be controlling but only with the best of intentions, her corporate-attorney father, retired only for a year before he died of prostate cancer.
When she was through, she said, “You’re a great listener. My ex was terrible about listening. Have you ever thought about becoming a psychiatrist?”