“SOMEBODY PUT A BOMB IN THE MAN’S WASTEBASKET,” Bdeniowitz explained. “Consisted of a bundle of dynamite, a windup alarm clock with nails stuck in the face, a lantern battery and a detonator. Maybe some other stuff. It’s hard to tell. We found the battery nearly intact on the roof of the building behind Lobe’s, but not much else.” He sighed. “In fact, it was a hell of a job figuring out whether or not the victim was actually Lobe. But the lab boys, they found Lobe’s dentist and enough teeth to do the match.”
Michael, the coroner’s assistant, leaning against the wall near the door, pushed his spectacles onto his forehead and scrubbed his eyes with his hands.
“We kicked it over,” Windrow said thoughtfully.
“Kicked what over?”
“The wastebasket. In the fight. We kicked it over, some trash spilled out, crumpled up bills and papers, brown paper bags, and a 1/2-gallon milk carton…” Windrow quickly sketched his encounter with Lobe that afternoon, describing how he and Sister Opium Jade had tricked Lobe into letting them into his office, how Lobe pulled a gun on them, how they wrecked the office in the ensuing struggle. “When it was over, one of the first things he did was stand up the wastebasket. Half the stuff in it was on the floor.”
Bdeniowitz shook his head in disgust. “Leave it to the apple to have a whore as his alibi.”
“Hey,” said Windrow, “she’s a nice girl.”
“What is it with you and the chippies, apple? Every time you…”
“Look, I told you what she was doing there, and I told you what I was doing there. You don’t believe me, go ask the girl. You don’t believe her, you can ask me again. Anybody with brains to think with can see we damn near got blown up with Lobe.”
Gleason sucked on a cigarette. “You think somebody was out to get the two of you?”
Windrow shook his head. “Nobody knew I was heading for him. I left headquarters and drove straight here, collected the girl. We cooked up the story on the way to Turk Street, parked, went calling on Lobe.”
“They were after Lobe,” said Bdeniowitz. But he was frowning. “There’s only one hole in your story, apple.”
“The one in my shoe?” Windrow tried to look hopeful.
Bdeniowitz shook his head. “The last page of Lobe’s appointment calendar, apple. One of those jobs with the big rings, has two pages for every day of the year and time slots?” He waved at Gleason. “We found it in the office upstairs, next to the hole in the floor.”
Gleason had his notebook ready. “Only notation for today,” he said, “was for capital M period capital W period,” he lowered the notebook and looked at Windrow, “at 2:00 this afternoon.”
Windrow looked from Gleason to Bdeniowitz and back and held up his hands: “So he had a masseuse called the Merry Widow.”
Gleason stifled a laugh.
“Yeah,” said Bdeniowitz sourly. “The Merry Widow.”
Windrow shook his head. “If the guy was clairvoyant he was a half hour off,” he said. “The girl didn’t even know where we were going until we got there, and I didn’t feel any intelligent vibrations probing my subconscious on the way over.
“What about the initials?”
“How should I know?” Windrow shouted. “I got my rocks off hitting the guy in the face. You guys know damn well I don’t sport bombs in wastebaskets. Get off it. Go through his records and see what M.W.’s he had a piece of. From what I hear they would have plenty of reason to want to blow him up… .”
The coroner’s assistant interrupted, wanting to know if he could move the corpse.
“Keep your goddam shirt on,” Bdeniowitz snapped. “Johnson!” he shouted. The uniformed officer standing guard outside Windrow’s door came in, holding the door shut behind him.
“Go across the street and bring them three hoses over here.”
Johnson looked at Bdeniowitz and did nothing.
“What the fuck you looking at?” Bdeniowitz shouted. “Go get those three chicks standing in the door across the goddam street and bring em here! Now!” His face turned purple.
“Y-yessir,” the officer said, and left.
“Watch the door, Gleason,” Bdeniowitz turned on Windrow. “If this fluff don’t corroborate every syllable of your line, I’m taking every goddam one of us downtown and we’re gonna stay there til we get it straight. I’m sick if this shit. You been a walkin’Peckinpah script for a week and if something don’t break in this case, there won’t be nobody but you and me left to hang for it.”
“Shutup,” Bdeniowitz snarled.
Bdeniowitz extracted one half of a large cigar from his inside coat pocket and Gleason torched it for him. Silence and smoke filled the room while Bdeniowitz smoked and paced. Windrow got up and added some ice to his scotch. Both he and Bdeniowitz had to step around the body lying in the middle of the room. Gleason leaned against the door and glumly chewed a cigarette.
After a while, they heard appreciative voices in the hallway and a loud wolf whistle. The door moved behind Gleason, and he stepped aside to let in Sister Opium Jade, Marlene and Candy, the three prostitutes who worked the entrance to the grocery store across Folsom Street. Michael, the coroner’s assistant straightened his glasses and cleared his throat. At Bdeniowitz’ direction Gleason closed the door on Johnson and the reporters beyond, who fired a lot of bulbs and yelled a lot of inquiries.
The three women came in with their faces set to weather whatever the police had in mind, but none of them was prepared to look at a corpse. They all gasped and became noticeably upset. Sister Opium Jade looked helplessly from the sheeted form on the floor to Windrow, her eyes begging him to get her out of there. Windrow, seated behind his desk again, said nothing.
“Well, ladies,” Bdeniowitz began, sitting on his heels and raising a corner of the sheet. “Any of you seen this woman before?”
Candy hid her face, sobbed, and refused to look. Sister Opium Jade stared in silent horror. Marlene nodded slowly, her mouth open, then shook her head.
“That means yes or no?” Bdeniowitz asked her.
“N-no,” the woman stuttered. “I mean, she could have been the one came in the building tonight, couple hours ago.” She tore her eyes from the corpse and looked at Windrow.
“Tell the man what he wants to know.”
“That’s all there is. A couple of hours ago. She was the only person I noticed since five o’clock, coming in. Everybody else was coming out, and there wasn’t anybody at all since about six. Other than that, it was just the usual cowboys and leather freaks up and down this goddam street.”
Windrow frowned.
“Got dark around six, didn’t it?” he observed.
“Yeah,” Marlene agreed bleakly. “Getting late in the year.” She shivered visibly and wrapped her thigh-high squirrel coat tighter around her. As she half turned away from the corpse on the floor, she looked old and tired. In her coat, big earrings, makeup, mini-skirt, nylon encased legs and stacked heels, she also looked ridiculous.
Bdeniowitz dropped the corner of the sheet and stood up. “Anybody else?”
Sister Opium Jade, who had also turned away from the grisly sight, shook her head. “I got here about half an hour before you guys showed up.” She jerked her head toward Windrow, started to say something, changed her mind.
Bdeniowitz caught it. He looked from Opium Jade to Windrow and back again. “Yeah?” he snarled.
“Tell him.” Windrow said, “where you were.”
“I was with him.” She shrugged, “and I was too drunk to sep across the street.”
Gleason clucked his tongue.
“Where?” said Bdeniowitz. “When? How?”
She told him the rest of the story, leaving out most of the violence.
When she finished, Candy whirled on her and said, “You told me he pounded Lobe into the floor and left him for dead!”
Sister Opium Jade looked daggers at her and said nothing.
“Dead, eh?” Bdeniowitz said.
Windrow smiled at Opium Jade behind Bdeniowitz’ back.
“I told you that cause I knew you wanted to hear it,” Opium Jade said, not too comfortably. She looked at Bdeniowitz. Bdeniowitz looked at her. “Candy used to work for Lobe,” she explained. “Secretary.”
“Hah!” Gleason said.
“He was a louse and she hates the guy. Marty only had to hit Lobe once after he threw him through the door…” she stopped and bit her lip. Bdeniowitz looked at Windrow, who wiped the grin off his face, and back to Opium Jade. “Go on,” he said. “Fill in the blanks.”
“Well, I knew that just wouldn’t be enough for Candy in the straight telling of it. You just had to’ve been there.” She cranked her hand around her wrist a couple of times. “It was OK live, but I just kind of jazzed the replay up for her, make her feel good.”
“Shit,” said Candy.
“Well,” Opium Jade shrugged. “You get bored standing on the lousy corner, and it’s cold, too. All those creeps driving by looking to do weird things to you, a girl wants a little conversation to keep her nerve up…”
“You told me he creamed that jerk like hot black coffee!” Candy screamed. “You told me—”
“Sometimes it’s like talking to yourself out there, goddamn company’s so goddamn stupid…”
“—Lobe’d never walk or talk or fuck again your lousy dick friend crippled that scum for—”
“ … discussing wigs and genitalia for godsakes…”
They went on like that for a while, being good at it. Bdeniowitz, however, had seen it more times than they’d performed it and patiently ignored them. Everybody in the room knew the two women were arguing just to avoid discussing anything factual. Finally he jerked the office door open and pushed Candy and Marlene past Johnson into the hallway. Flashbulbs popped and questions filled the air.
“Hey,” said Marlene, backing out of the door behind Candy, “doncha wanta take a statement or nothing?”
“We’ll be in touch,” said Bdeniowitz, pushing her into the hall. “Johnson.”
“But what about my important material evidence?” she said, smoothing her dress over her hip.
Bdeniowitz ignored her. “Johnson. Escort these ladies to their side of the street.”
“Not you,” Bdeniowitz said, stepping between the door and Sister Opium Jade. “You stick with us for a while longer.”
A reporter had backed Candy up against the far wall of the hallway, leaning his elbow on the wall, and was explaining his research for a big feature on prostitution, in low not to say furtive tones, as Bdeniowitz closed the door.
Bdeniowitz quickly established that Sister Opium Jade had been with Windrow for most of the afternoon and evening, until he’d left her in front of the grocery across the street at about eight thirty. He tried a few angles, mostly veiled threats, but couldn’t shake her. The coroner’s assistant allowed as how he thought the deceased had been that way since at least eight, possibly earlier. Bdeniowitz finally ordered him to remove the body.
The two coroner’s assistants produced a black rubber bag and zipped the body into it. Then they strapped it onto a stretcher, and departed with it through the crowd stacked up against the office door. Flashbulbs popped in the hall. Nobody said much until after the door had closed again. Then Gleason said, “Hey.” He walked over to the front of Windrow’s desk and picked up a light blue three by five card that lay within the chalked perimeter marking where the body had been. He handled the card by its edges.
“This yours?” he said, and showed the card over the desk to Windrow.
One side of the blue card was blank, the other had two lines Windrow recognized as Greek, though he had no idea of what they said, carefully hand-lettered in white.
Gleason stepped, behind the desk to look at the card over Windrow’s shoulder. “It must have been under the girl’s body.”
Windrow studied the card for a few seconds, then shook his head. He looked at Sister Opium Jade who, with Bdeniowitz, was looking at him. He took the card from Gleason, holding its edges between his finger tips, and showed it to Sister Opium Jade. “Greek,” she said. Tou gar douloua technae archei tou desnotou. —Diogenes.
Everybody except Windrow came on surprised.
Gleason swiveled his head from Sister Opium Jade to Windrow and back again. “Easy for you to say, Sister,” he muttered.
“What’s it mean, goddamit,” said Bdeniowitz, exasperated.
“ ‘The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.’ ” She handed the card to Gleason. “Diogenes was the name of the guy who said it.”
Everybody stared at the educated streetwalker.
Windrow stared at her too, but he was also recalling a bit of pillow talk with Jodie Ryan.
“You know,” Opium Jade coaxed, “the guy with the lantern?” She held one hand over her head and looked from one blank face to another.
“Skip it,” she muttered, lowering her hand.
“The art of being a slave is to rule the master,” Gleason repeated, as if to himself. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Right now, this Alvarez girl is looking pretty artless,” Bdeniowitz adduced bitterly, staring at the outline chalked on the bare floorboards in front of Windrow’s desk. “No matter what it means.”