25

When Boyle didn’t answer his buzzer, Billy Fogue picked the front-door lock with a pocket knife and said, ‘Easy does it,’ and the door opened, revealing a narrow staircase that led to the apartment. Fogue worked his trick a second time on the apartment door. Samsa didn’t tell him to stop, that rules were being transgressed, the rights of the citizenry ignored.

Rules. Rules were what you made them. You break one, the rest collapse, the whole damn locomotive comes off the tracks at speed. He stood in the center of Boyle’s living room and watched through the bedroom doorway as Rebb and Fogue prowled around, opening and closing drawers and closets.

Rebb found a couple of dresses and held one against his body. ‘You think this is me, Billy?’ he asked.

‘Polka dots, nah,’ Fogue said.

‘Just put it back, Rebb,’ Samsa said, a little sharply, and turned away from the skimpy polka-dot number and tried not to think of the girl dressing and undressing in this apartment, mirror-gazing, applying make-up, brushing her hair, all her little vanities past and dead.

Rebb hung the dress in the closet and shut the door and hummed a few bars of ‘Polka Dots and Moonbeams’, sounding vaguely like a guy playing a trombone. ‘Hey, panties,’ he said, dipping his fingers inside a drawer and pulling out scant filmy things in an assortment of colors.

Samsa said, ‘This isn’t a goddam department store, Rebb.’

Rebb stuffed the lingerie back where he’d found it and said, ‘I’ve always been intrigued by the mysteries of female underwear. Bras especially. Hooks and clips and such.’

Billy Fogue said, ‘This place is real clean. You notice that?’

‘Speed-freaks have a lot of time and energy to kill,’ Rebb remarked.

Samsa watched them go inside the kitchen. Fogue shuffled through the drawers of a cabinet and Reb peered inside the refrigerator, which contained only a few cans of Coors and a bunch of shriveled green grapes.

Rebb said, ‘Another thing about speed-heads is they’re not famous for having a whole load of food on hand. They got no appetite.’

A herb chart hung on the kitchen wall. Samsa gazed at it. Marjoram, Thyme, Basil. How to Use Them. It was a chart he’d seen in many kitchens. There was also a Bart Simpson clock: 2:20.

He worked his tongue against the edge of his broken tooth. The absence of Lee Boyle somehow reinforced an illusion of his presence. He was missing, and yet he wasn’t. He was everywhere in this apartment, among the books on the shelves, the toiletries in the bathroom, the towels placed neatly on the rack.

Samsa wandered toward the books and found himself thinking about the distance between his smashed car and where the girl’s body had been found, and he was assailed by the notion that somebody would eventually start to think how strange it was that the lieutenant had wrecked his car at roughly the same time the girl was killed, and only a few hundred yards from where her body was found. An unhappy proximity.

Coincidence. The world was filled with coincidence. Brodsky had accepted that without any problem, Brodsky hadn’t been troubled by it at all.

Just tell them, he thought. Kill this travesty. It cuts against the grain of your whole belief system. If you ever really had one.

Who are you, Samsa?

He looked at the stereo and Boyle’s eclectic collection of CDs. A little jazz, some classical music by composers unfamiliar to him – Schoenberg, Alban Berg – as well as Bach, Beethoven. Eighties pop, Dylan Thomas reading his own poetry. One odd item, a collection of Christmas favorites sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Was Lee Boyle, pimp, a closet sentimentalist?

He felt like a trespasser, a home-invader. He stared at the coffee table, seeing, under the soft glow of an angular lamp, circular streaks where the wood surface had been cleaned.

He listened to Rebb and Fogue clattering around inside the bathroom, the sound of a shower curtain being slipped along the rail, the chink of tiny plastic hoops. What the hell do they expect to find in the shower? he wondered. This was like a recreational outing for them, where they could poke among the stuff of another person’s life. They enjoyed being snoops. He understood he should put a stop to it, tell them to cool it until Boyle showed up. They weren’t here to ransack his property, they were here to ask him some questions, that was all. But they had a momentum going now and he felt removed from whatever they were doing.

He heard Fogue say, ‘Now lookee here, Rebb. You suppose he has a permit for this?’

‘Nice little gun,’ Rebb said. ‘A Lama forty-five. Compact Frame model. The idea of him having a permit is highly implausible, I got to say. A guy like Boyle, he wouldn’t be big on paperwork. He’s an outlaw. Or he likes to think he is anyway.’

Fogue appeared in the bathroom doorway with the gun, the handle wrapped in tissue. He had a cheroot hanging from his mouth and the smell was beginning to drift through the rooms. A heavy sickening odor.

‘Item. One gun,’ Fogue said. ‘Too bad the little hooker wasn’t blown away by this very weapon. Then we’d have something straightforward.’

‘I suggest you put it back where you found it.’

‘Anything you say, Lew Tenant. Back in the tampon box it goes.’

Samsa strolled the room. He walked to the window and peered into the drab street below. He saw the pawnbroker’s sign and wondered what effect it might have on somebody to live above a business that dealt in desperation and poverty, wedding rings hocked, war medals traded away for a few bucks and never reclaimed. Maybe despair seeped through the building like a gas.

He still wore his own wedding ring. He looked at it now, a plain gold band. Why did he keep it anyhow? He had an urge to yank it off. He wasn’t married. In a sense he hadn’t been married for years and years.

He moved toward the answering machine, and pressed Playback.

The first message was a man’s voice with a pseudo-English accent: I hope I’m not pressuring you unduly, love. But time is passing. Time is indeed passing. Beep beep.

The second was from a woman. Lee, you old speed-freak, I hear you’re looking for your little Almond. Maybe I can be of some tiny assistance? Meet me at the Rialto coffee shop around four thirty, okay? Beep beep. The machine stopped.

He recognized that voice.

Cassandra.

He stood with his hands pressed against the back of the sofa, his legs spread slightly, his head inclined downward. He realized he was holding his breath and his nerves were jangling. Tiny assistance? What assistance could Cassandra possibly give? Did she know something? Had she seen something? Like what? Had she been in the vicinity and seen Almond approach his car? Was that it? But Cassandra had given no indication that she recognized him. Not a flicker, a sign. It had been dark last night anyway, moonless and rainy. And Cassandra, even if she had been around the place, couldn’t have seen much of anything.

He was jumping to wild conclusions, lost in a fog of possibilities and questions that were like darts. Stakes driven into his heart. His mind scampered this way and that, circled around on itself. Had Cassandra met with Boyle, imparted whatever information she had?

He couldn’t let that be true. In this new world of his a fact was no longer a fact, it was something you could twist. He wiped the messages from the answering machine, even as his brain was racing to the notion that there was technology capable of restoring voices from erased tapes, there were instruments and audio experts who could find traces and amplify them to the point where meaningful sounds could be discovered, and if it came to that …

He heard Rebb say, ‘Anything interesting there?’

Samsa wheeled round quickly, wondering how long Rebb had been standing in the doorway. He wasn’t breathing properly. A constriction in his throat, like a cherry stone lodged there. His chest felt tight.

‘A couple of messages, nothing that serves our purpose,’ he said.

Rebb shrugged. ‘I guess all we can do is wait for our wandering boy to show.’ He approached the answering machine and stared at it. Just for a moment Samsa thought he was going to press the playback button, and he’d hear only a blank cassette, at which point he’d realize Samsa had been lying when he’d referred to a couple of messages that were of no interest.

But then Samsa would say, I must have wiped them inadvertently.

And Rebb might think, What? Very unprofessional, Lieutenant. Wiping a tape by accident. Clumsy of you.

There’s no fucking end to this. It’s a maze. At the heart of the maze is a monster with your face.

Samsa said the first thing that came to mind. ‘You mentioned Boyle came from a rich family?’

‘You ever heard of Hugh Boyle?’

‘The tycoon?’

Thankfully Rebb had lost interest in the machine. ‘Yeah. He’s got this slew of companies all over the place.’ He sat on an arm of the sofa, took out his nail file and dug away. ‘Hugh’s the father.’

Samsa said, ‘And he disowned his son.’

‘Would you want a kid like Lee Boyle?’

Samsa heard movement on the stairs. He made a shushing gesture, index finger to his lips. Rebb stared at the door. Billy Fogue, wandering in from the bathroom, was also silent.

Waiting, waiting.

A key was turned in the lock, the door opened.

Lee Boyle entered the room.

If he was shocked to find visitors, he didn’t show it. ‘Gentlemen callers. Including Detective Rebb, unless my eyes deceive,’ he said. He walked into the kitchen and came back with a can of beer. ‘Beer’s there if you want to help yourselves, guys.’

Samsa got up from the sofa and said, ‘I’m Lieutenant Samsa.’

Boyle looked at Samsa for a moment with an odd expression, and then smiled. ‘Lieutenant. Nice to make your acquaintance.’

‘Polite fucker,’ Rebb said. ‘It’s all surface. You see those blue eyes and that face and you smell apple pie. Don’t be fooled, Lieutenant. You’re looking at low-level scuzz.’

Fogue blew smoke directly into Boyle’s face. ‘It’s question time, buddy. You ready?’

‘Is there a prize?’ Boyle asked. He seemed undeterred by the smoke, didn’t even bother to wave it away. He gazed through the disintegrating little cloud at Samsa and the smile didn’t leave his face.

Cool, Samsa thought. Or acting hard to seem so.

Fogue said, ‘The prize depends on your answers, Boyle.’

Boyle said to Fogue, ‘Do I know you?’

‘Detective Fogue. Sir to you.’ He shoved his cheroot at Boyle like a tiny weapon.

Boyle relaxed against the wall, sipping beer. He looked at Rebb and Fogue, and then his gaze settled on Samsa. ‘Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry, Half to myself I said, And what is this?’

‘He memorizes poetry like a fucking parrot,’ Rebb said.

Samsa said, ‘He’s got the poetry down all right. Let’s see what else he’s got down, shall we? Let’s see if he remembers where he was around ten o’clock last night. You recall that, Boyle?’

‘Ten o’clock, let’s see,’ Boyle said. ‘I was with a man called Jimmy Plumm.’

‘Jimmy Plumm?’ Fogue asked, and blew more smoke.

Samsa thought how crude Billy Fogue and Rebb could be, compared to Eve.

‘Moneybags Plumm will vouch for you, will he?’ Fogue asked. ‘You into him for some cash? Plumm’ll say just about anything to keep you out of trouble if you owe him. Duh. He doesn’t make a profit if you go to jail.’

‘Jail?’ Boyle stared at Samsa for a moment over the rim of the Coors can. The look, which struck Samsa as secretive and knowing, was unsettling. Had Cassandra talked to him? And what could she possibly have said? The questions were trapped in the revolving door of his head. The questions were Semtex primed and wrapped in old newspapers.

‘Excuse me. What’s this talk of jail?’ Boyle asked.

‘Fogue gets carried away sometimes,’ Samsa said. ‘What time did you leave Plumm?’

‘Around ten fifteen, ten twenty, then I went directly to a bar called Chang’s.’

‘Anybody see you there?’ Samsa asked.

‘I ran into a girl called Krystal,’ Boyle said.

‘Last name?’

Boyle shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know her last name. She’s a casual acquaintance.’

‘Then what?’

‘I left the bar. I met a man called Tom Raseci around eleven. We discussed the fact that somebody had slashed a tire on my car.’

‘Bigshoes Raseci?’ Fogue said. ‘This just gets better all the time.’

‘Without wheels, I had to contact a friend for a ride home. He picked me up at about eleven fifteen, eleven thirty. Vass, Rudolph Vass. You want his phone number?’

Samsa said, ‘We’ll get in touch with these people, Boyle.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. His palms were damp and stuck to some coins.

Boyle said, ‘I guess you’ll also get around to telling me what this is all about?’

Rebb put an arm on Boyle’s shoulder. ‘Here’s the story, Lee. Your little girl was found dead. You know who I mean? Cecily Suarez. Almond by her other name.’

‘Dead?’

‘Murdered. Sorry to break it like this,’ Rebb said in such a way that you knew he wasn’t sorry at all. ‘Somebody snapped her neck.’

‘Is this a sick joke?’ Boyle asked.

‘I wish it was,’ Samsa said. ‘But it’s not.’

‘Murdered?’ Lee Boyle looked as if he’d been struck on the face with a sledgehammer. He slumped, the beer can dangling loosely from his hand. He stared at Samsa, but he wasn’t seeing anything, his eyes had a vacancy. A sign had been turned off inside him.

The smile was gone, the face empty. The beer can, angled slightly, oozed foam. There was feeling here, Samsa thought. Something between Lee Boyle and the dead girl. A genuine affection maybe. The expression on Boyle’s face suggested he’d lost more than a hooker he had on a chain, a girl he worked. All right, he was lowlife, his world was one of dope and hookers, he had violence in his history, even so – even so Samsa felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy he couldn’t afford. He had to be hard. He had to be made of metal that couldn’t be broken. Boyle’s a suspect. Boyle has to be scrutinized.

A long silence. Fogue and Rebb had subsided surprisingly into quiet. Boyle inclined his head now, eyes shut. ‘Where did you find her?’

Rebb said, ‘You know the old Purchase property?’

Boyle shook his head.

‘That wilderness out near Chackstone,’ Rebb said.

Boyle appeared to absorb this information absently. He crumpled the beer can with a tensed hand. Foam exploded over his fingers.

‘Who’d kill her, for Christ’s sake?’ he asked.

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Samsa said.

Rebb said, ‘Which is why we’re here, blue eyes.’

Boyle said, ‘Why you’re here … Now wait a minute. Hold on. You think I might have done it? No way. She was just somebody crashing in my apartment.’

‘Somebody you took in under your mighty generous wing,’ Rebb said. ‘Some poor little thing in need of shelter.’

‘Yeah, absolutely.’

Some poor little thing, Samsa thought. He was back in the Chrysler and the sky was turning over and his world was hemorrhaging.

‘But she turned a few tricks on the side,’ Rebb said.

‘What she did in her spare time, I couldn’t begin to guess,’ Boyle said quietly.

Fogue pulled the dead cheroot from his lips. ‘You were living off her earnings, Boyle.’

‘She contributed to the rent. I never asked her how she earned her money.’

‘Ho ho ho,’ Rebb said. ‘And I’m fucking Father Christmas. See my elves, Lee?’

‘Fuck you, Rebb. She was a nice kid. I met her somewhere, she needed a place to live, and I suggested my apartment. Our paths didn’t cross a lot. It was a temporary arrangement, that’s all. What’s so terrible about hospitality?’

‘Hospitality’s just fine. I just happen to think it’s pretty scuzzy putting her to work on the streets,’ Rebb said.

‘Putting her to work? If that’s an official accusation, Mr Rebb, and if you also seriously think I had something to do with the death of this girl, then I’d better call my lawyer. What do you think, Lieutenant?’

Samsa said, ‘I think we’ll check your story, Boyle. If it hangs together, then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you? If it’s got holes, then you can bet your ass you’ll be seeing more of us. As for you pimping, I don’t give a damn. All I care about is who killed this girl. Nothing else.’

‘I think you’ll find my alibis are sound,’ Boyle said.

‘Ain’t you the lucky one,’ Fogue said.

Samsa felt weariness come down on him, a fatigue in his bones. His shoulder ached. He wanted very badly to lie down. ‘We’ll call it a night for now.’

Fogue looked disappointed. He dropped his cheroot butt casually on the rug. ‘I’m only just getting warmed up, Lew Tenant.’

Samsa walked to the door. Boyle stepped in front of him, collided with him gently.

‘Sorry,’ Boyle said.

Rebb and Fogue went out. Samsa’s way was blocked by Boyle.

Boyle said, ‘I didn’t catch your name, Lieutenant.’

Samsa stepped back from Boyle a couple of inches. The physical contact with the man discomfited him. ‘Samsa.’

‘As in S–A–M–S–A?’

‘Right.’

‘Unusual name,’ Boyle said.

Samsa tried to imagine Boyle and Cassandra meeting someplace, whispering, sharing a confidence. I saw Almond, she might say. And Boyle would say, Yeah? Where? Under what circumstances? And then what?

What did she tell him? What could she tell him?

Maybe Boyle hadn’t checked his messages, didn’t know Cassandra had telephoned. But she’d call again if she didn’t hear from him. Of course she would.

This is guilt run riot, Samsa thought. This is a mind operating on desperation. You’re walking through a forest and the trees are whispering your name and the clouds scudding overhead are spelling it out in great unfolding banners.

‘Do you have a card?’ Boyle asked.

‘A card?’

‘Yeah, you know, if I find out anything about Cecily or her movements, then I’ll know where to reach you.’

Samsa reached inside his pocket and gave Boyle one of his PD cards.

Boyle said, ‘I can’t believe somebody would kill her. She was only a kid.’

Samsa couldn’t look at him. He stepped out of the apartment and moved to the edge of the stairs. Fogue and Rebb were already halfway down. He could see them in the pale stair-light, two faint shapes. He paused and imagined he heard a sound like a dam cracking in the distance, and water, as it gathered force, spewing through.