“Something up, Mac?”
“For the record,” he said, “I thought your point about photography was good.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“It’s at least something, Petra. Which was more than those yahoos had to offer.” His eyes glinted. “I just got a call from one of the victims’ mother. The Dalkin kid, that freckled boy trying to look punk. Poor lady was sobbing. Begged me to say we’ve made some progress. So what could I tell her?”
He slapped his hands together hard. The sound, as sharp as a gunshot, nearly made Petra jump.
“You know what’s happening, don’t you, Petra? We hand them their prime suspect on a silver platter, they take over but don’t have the smarts to move their sorry butts and find him.” He looked around, as if seeking somewhere to spit. “Task force. All they’re going to do is keep taking meetings, with their easels and their diagrams. Like it’s a football play. They’ll probably give themselves a sweet little name. ‘Operation Alligator,’ some garbage like that.” He shook his head. Brylcreemed hair didn’t budge but his eyelids fluttered like crepe banners.
“Taking their sweet time,” he went on, “until word gets out to Selden that they’re coming for him and he rabbits. If he hasn’t already.”
He looked old, tired, miserable. Petra didn’t console him. A man like Mac wouldn’t take well to consolation.
“It’s a drag,” she said.
“It’s a super-drag. Regular Cagé au Follies.” His smile was nervous, fleeting. His neck tendons flexed and lumps formed under his ears. “That was a joke. By the way.”
Petra smiled.
Mac said, “I crack wise like that at home, everyone tells me I’m inappropriate. Believe it or not, I used to be a funny guy. Back in the service, I was part of this theater review, we had this little stage set up- in Guam- I’m talking bare-bones but we got some laughs.”
“Musical review?” she said.
“We had ukuleles, whatever we could come up with.” He colored. “No one dressed up as women, nothing like that, that’s not what I’m getting at. Just that I used to know my way around a joke. Now? I’m a humorless geezer. Inappropriate.”
His discomfiture made Petra edgy. She laughed, more for herself than him. “Come over and joke any time, Mac.”
“Sure,” he said, walking off. “We call that police work, right?”
Petra watched him vanish around a corner. People. They could always surprise you.
Returning to her desk, she saw Isaac hunched over his laptop.
She returned to the Doebbler file, studied it as if it was the Bible.
By five-thirty Friday, neither Dr. Sarah Casagrande nor Emily Pastern had returned her calls. She tried again with no success. Everyone gone for the weekend.
Suddenly all the energy generated by her brainstorm with Isaac was gone. She walked over to his desk. He stopped typing, cleared his screen. An Albert Einstein screensaver popped up. Genius in a funny bow tie. Wild hair. But ol’ Albie’s eyes…
Isaac closed the laptop. Something he didn’t want her to see?
She said, “Want some dinner?”
“Thanks, but I can’t.” He looked down at the linoleum and Petra prepared herself for a lie. “Promised my mother I’d spend some time at home.”
“That’s nice.”
“She cooks these enormous meals and gets deeply hurt if no one’s around to eat them. My father does his bit but it’s not enough, she wants all of us. My younger brother tends to stays out late and sometimes my older brother eats on the job, comes home and goes straight to sleep.”
“Leaving you,” said Petra.
He shrugged. “It’s the weekend.”
“I really do think it’s nice, Isaac. Mothers are important.”
He frowned. Klara, her kids…
“You okay?” said Petra.
“Tired.”
“You’re too young for that.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I don’t feel very young.”
Petra watched him tramp off, lugging the laptop and his briefcase. Something was definitely weighing him down. That junkie, Jaramillo, putting on some kind of pressure? Maybe she’d disobey the Downtown gang guys and confront the kid.
No, that would be a really bad idea.
Still, they’d put her in a bad position. Drafting her into the unpaid job of keeping an eye on the kid with no authority to do anything.
Babysitting, just as it had been all along.
Could she let Isaac go down without a warning? Could she afford not to?
Meanwhile, she’d use him on the June 28 killings.
The mess he’d foisted on her in the first place.
Her head hurt. Time for dinner. Another solitary night. Maybe Eric would call sometime during the weekend.
As she cleared her desk, he phoned, as if she’d conjured him. “Free?”
“Just about. What’s up?”
“Doing things,” he said. “I’d like to tell you about them.”
“I’d like to hear about them.”
They met just after six at a Thai café on Melrose near Gardner, a place favored by faux-depressed hipsters and wannabe performers. But the food was good enough to override the self-conscious atmosphere.
Petra figured she and Eric fit in, at least superficially. He was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, black jeans that drooped on his skinny frame, the crepe-soled black oxfords he favored on stakeout, his oversized, multizone military wristwatch.
Eric was as far as you could get from hip. But add up the clothes, the close-cropped haircut, the indoor complexion, the deep-set eyes and emotionless face and he looked every bit the misunderstood artiste.
With her black Donna Karan pantsuit and matching loafers, she figured she’d be taken for a stylish career woman. Maybe someone in the entertainment biz.
Hah!
The place was already starting to fill but they got seated immediately, served quickly, ate their papaya salads and panang curry with silent enthusiasm.
“So,” said Petra, “what you been doing?”
Eric put down his fork. “Looking seriously into private work. The licensing requirements don’t seem too tough.”
“Don’t imagine they would be.” He’d done military special op work, spent a tour as an M.P. detective before signing on with LAPD. All that had taught him endless patience for surveillance. Perfect for private work.
“The question,” he said, “is do I go out on my own or hook up with an established p.i.”
“So you’re definitely doing it.”
“Don’t know.”
“Whatever you decide is okay,” she said.
He rolled the fork’s handle.
Petra’s warning system, already primed by too much frustration at work, went on full alert. “Something else on your mind?”
The frost in her voice made him look up.
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
He said, “Are you upset?”
“Why would I be?”
“At me. For quitting.”
She laughed. “No way. Maybe I’ll join you.”
“Bad day?”
One eye started to itch and she rubbed it.
He said, “Paradiso?”
“That, other stuff.”
He waited.
She was in no mood to talk. Then she was, pouring it out: shunted aside on Paradiso, Schoelkopf dissing her in front of the others. Zero progress on the June 28 killings, with the target date a week away.
“Someone’s going to die, Eric, and I can’t do a thing about it.”
He nodded.
“Any ideas?” she said.
“Not about that. As far as Selden, you’re right about the photography angle.”
“Think so?”
“Definitely.”
“You’d pursue it?”
“If it was my case.”
“Well,” she said, “go and tell the geniuses in charge.”
“Geniuses are rarely in charge.” His eyes slitted and he picked at his salad. Petra wondered if he was thinking about Saudi Arabia. Or a sidewalk café in Tel Aviv.