L MIEDO. TASTE OF METAL AND THE SMELL OF sheetrock when a hammer’s been slammed through it, making a hole that looks like some animal head. Sometimes it came just as voice, soft and cloying. Sometimes heaving with breath. Every so often I’d get a glimpse of the shadow, like a cockroach skittering out of sight. And other times, good and terrible times, it would seem to sit right down with me, slipping inside and hitting my intestines like the first blood warm rush of bonded bourbon. With any luck, you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about and never will. Good for you.

It was still dark when I straggled out of bed in the morning to find the empty box of Dilley’s Chocolates. I thought I’d left both boxes in the car, but the physical evidence indicated I’d brought one in—and eaten every last piece. Just the thought of it made me feel like upchuck in a bag—but the chocolate itself made me feel worse than the alcohol the night before. At first I was constipated, then I had an explosive bout of diarrhea that still left me cramped. I tried munching on a bowl of Bran Flakes and slivers of a leopard-skin banana, which along with a mug of instant coffee that tasted like bong water, had the effect of cleaning me out well and truly. I couldn’t remember anything from the night before other than coming home and flicking on the TV. It was like El Miedo had taken a new form since my little adventure at Eyrie Street. Maybe I did need to see a therapist. Or another kind of therapist. When I’d first moved into the apartment I’d run a tight ship. Looking around at the mess now, it was obvious things were falling apart.

If you’ve ever lived alone, maybe you know what I mean. It’s not just the pile of laundry or jacking off on the toilet when other normal people are snuggled on a couch canoodling to a horror movie. It’s the real horror of seeing your face reflected in the oily water of a frying pan that’s been sitting in the sink for days, remnants of stir fry noodles looking more like dead worms than any kind of food—although I guess there are a of lot things out there that feast on worms. In fact, I’d met more than my share of them.

But maybe such squalor is only a “guy thing.” I was starting to look like a guy thing all right. And I felt like I’d had a razor bath in sea salt and lighter fluid. I fucking hated being alone. But it beat getting cozy with El Miedo over twenty quick ones and cleaning my old back-up service revolver for the umpteenth time.

I decided to grab a newspaper and nibble on some raisin toast at Cheezy’s. They had clean lavatories in case of another emergency, and the bustle of the morning crowd always cheered me up a little. I limped in and out of the shower and tried to find something decent to wear. It was starting to get desperate clotheswise—and you know what they say about clothes. How else you gonna hide the man? By the time I hit the street, the hum of the traffic had risen. Maybe it was just the sorry condition I was in, but I felt like I could hear the traffic in people’s heads. That’s never good.

When I got to Cheezy’s, I slipped into a booth near the restrooms with an early morning edition. There was no more follow-up on the Whitney case, but The Sentinel had a half-page on the Stoakes story with a photo of the jake legs out in front of the High Five. I was scanning through the rest of the paper, listening to the crash of the silverware as the Nicaraguan busboys dumped the tubs under the counter, when I caught a snippet of the tune on the radio in the background. “Maneater” by Hall and Oates. The song flushed out a dream I’d had during my uneasy sleep. I don’t think I would’ve remembered it otherwise, but it came back as clear as anything when my toast arrived.

I’d run into this girl I’d known in high school at a bar. Naomi Sparks, an alternate cheerleader I’d made out with once in my car and had never spoken to since—after she called me Mayonnaise Face. She was alone, both of us freshly separated. We had a couple of drinks, then it turned into Saturday and we were going for a picnic on the beach. I stopped by her house, which was unusually messy for a woman—like the inside of her handbag. She went into her bedroom and changed into a two-piece. She asked me if I thought it made her look fat. Naturally I said no. I didn’t care that it made her look fat, but there was something about her that didn’t sit right.

We got into my car and headed towards the beach. Then she blurted out, “Do you mind if we swing by the hospital? A friend’s in there and he’s really depressed.”

Yeah, I thought. I do mind. A hospital was the last place I wanted to go. Then she told me we were going to visit Les Frame and I felt my stomach turn.

Les had been her boyfriend in high school, always driving to the coast to surf. He later went pro and made a bit of money in Hawaii. But he got busted for drugs and came back to Cal with his tail between his legs and opened a surf and beachwear shop in the city.

He looked traumatized and pale, staring up at us from this gruesome metal bed in a private room. He called Naomi “Bubs” and started recounting in a high cracked voice what had happened to him. He’d been surfing up the Coast Highway early in the morning and had been attacked by a shark. All he remembered was hitting it on the snout as it pulled him down—trying to gouge its eyes.

While he was saying all this, my eyes were drawn to a television on an adjustable metal arm stretched out across the room. Some cooking show was on and an anonymous female hand was dusting a raw pink chicken breast with flour. Les looked spaced out—his tan faded to a color that looked a little too much like the chicken. The room went silent except for the sound of the breast sizzling in a shot of white wine—and then he burst into tears and babbled, “You wanna see it? You wanna see it?” He ripped back the sheet to reveal a mass of bandages where his groin should’ve been. Fingers sprinkled something that looked like parsley on the TV chicken that now seemed to take up the entire room.

We left Les sobbing, and drove down to the beach. There were old men scouring the sand with metal detectors. After a while we ended up kissing. Then I ran my hand along Naomi’s thigh and over her bikini—and I got the shock of my life when I saw the imprint. She was getting an erection.

I didn’t know what to make of the dream. To be honest, I usually don’t remember my dreams, and most of the time they’re about a case—something I should’ve seen earlier. That’s the thing with the job and what can drive you nuts. Everything’s important. An ash tray—a shoe lying in a street. You don’t get to say what matters. Not at the time. Later you can—if you can remember when later is. More often than not later comes in a dream.

That’s the way it was with Briannon, the lovely little tramp who shot me. She had a laugh like Stevie Nicks on nitrous oxide and a slow burn gotta-get-there bed moan like an ambulance in Friday night rush hour. I shouldn’t have had to shatter her jaw before limping out into the street with people staring at me. At that part of me. In that part of town. I should’ve seen the whole thing coming. And the damnest thing is I think I did. I actually wanted it in some way. Just not the staggering out of the bar and falling down on the sidewalk part. Polly was on to me—and so was Briannon. She knew it wasn’t her I had in my mind when I had her. She was a crutch I was using to prop up something gold and gone. So she shot that truth out of me. But she still couldn’t get that song out of my head. “Only regrets will endure … there’s still no cure … for a Wayward Heart …”

I tried to pull myself together and drove to the Precinct. I drive an old Buick Electra. It’s a classic—from an era when there was optimism to spare in America. It puts a smile on my dial. Your mileage might vary, but the roomy back seat has come in handy as a place to transact business of many kinds.

Despite my diligence, the hive was alive already, with an eager beaver sales rep from Surefire checking on field performance reports, extra security beefed up for a high profile line-up in Ms. Colby’s latest case (with poor Stutter Strothers flopping around behind her like a prick in a shirt sleeve), reminders about the Captain’s upcoming birthday and word of a demonstration of new embedded face identification technology. I thought I just might get in before Cub Padgett, but he was there, looking more boyish and dashing than ever. Made me feel like an old bloodhound trying to keep up with one of those sniffer beagles.

After the pep talk-duty roster biz, he jumped into backgrounding Susan Traynor’s ex-boyfriend. The charbroiled real estate man may have had more chips in his stack, but the wife’s ex squeeze still had a substantial operation of his own to protect, and a truck fleet means big overheads. Meanwhile there were phone lugs to be pulled. Had they been in contact in recent times? Just by phone, or had there been motel meetings? If it was a conspiracy, there had to be a plan—and that meant a communications trail.

I started checking into Traynor’s personal affairs, but to be honest I was starting to lose the juice. Maybe it really was suicide, and she should just be left alone to be rich and stacked. I had other butterflies to chase and I was thinking my net wasn’t big enough. Still I tried to focus. Couldn’t throw away all the professional disciplines because of a silk scarf—or a hypnotic voice.

If Traynor had any real wampum of her own though, any conspiracy theory would really start to wobble. Of course, there was always the chance that someone had a gripe with Whitney independent of family connections. I felt to be righteous, I should at least have a look at his books as well as the terms of the will. Were there any codicils? And the relevant insurance policies. Was anyone suing him? Any threats or hassles? Most likely we were just chasing our tails, but sometimes that’s what an old dog needs to do. It helped take my mind off McInnes and more importantly, the Eyrie Street enchantress and the Jamaican handkerchief routine she’d pulled with my mind.

Over the course of the morning, in spite of the muscle spasms and the nerve-wracking fluid feeling I had in my chest and abdomen, I made some progress. I visited Whitney’s office and his lawyer’s. Then I worked the phone lines and paid a solo call on the widow. Can’t blame a buck for trying.

She did have money of her own as it turned out. Not a fortune maybe, but her bank balance sure would’ve put pluck in my pecker. It certainly helped prop up her version of the story. Her only insight into a possible explanation was that Mr. Whitney “hadn’t been acting like himself” for a few weeks—which naturally wasn’t all that helpful. Other than that he’d gone sour on her sexually and seemed a little “body conscious,” she didn’t have anything specific.

She’d done well out of an earlier divorce, which appeared to have been no more acrimonious than usual—plus the ex-husband was alive and remarried. She had a relatively thriving business of her own booking temp office staff. The more I sniffed around, the less the conniving bimbo she seemed and the more her aggrieved and confused act seemed on the level. Why Mr. Whitney, who’d been so admiring of her physical assets, had gone cool on her was the question. I’d have been more than happy to bang her silly, but maybe he’d found another field to plow.

His past was checkered to say the least. It was more a question of who didn’t want him dead. He had a list of trust account queries from the Real Estate Board that overflowed the file and had been invasively audited by the IRS three years before. Of still greater significance was the fact that even without a probate lawyer’s opinion, it appeared that the terms of the will didn’t cover all the dealings he had in progress by quite a long shot. He owned properties in the names of other companies and had shares in companies that were tangled in a canny, and I suspected not entirely textbook way. I’m sure the IRS would’ve agreed and most of the knotwork looked like it had been arranged after the audit. Two major developments were in the pipeline, one in Cliffhaven, and he’d been making more than just inquiries regarding the Funland site. That piqued my interest. Could’ve been coincidence of course, but as I said, I’m kind of superstitious. The sure thing upshot was there were indications of a considerable amount of business activity that he’d deliberately tried to keep free of the disposition of the will. So I could make him for fraud and embezzlement—he definitely had the odor of advantage by deception. Just not suicide by arson.

For his part, the Cubster concluded that Traynor’s ex-stickman was equally skilled at questionable business practices albeit on a smaller scale. He used a silent partner to get around the problems of his criminal record, while providing the real technical smarts of running the operation. It seemed to be working out for him just grand. Far from being in hock to the finance companies with a morass of liens and penalty interest rates to confront, the balance sheet looked downright robust, and their principal bank manager spoke in glowing terms. Maybe he was a pollero or a smoke runner. I’d certainly have liked to fine-tooth his manifests. It prickled me majorly that a guy of his lack of character could be staring down the barrel of an early retirement while I was wearing a five-year-old suit that didn’t fit and driving the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper purchased from Otto the Auto King. I loved that car—but not that much. Still, you can’t fault people for getting rich in America, especially in tough times. Chris headed out to dig up some dirt on any love interest that still existed between the Big Wheel and the widow. The sand was running out on our murder theory. I needed something else to keep my head straight. My thoughts were starting to run away from me—and that was always a sign that El Miedo was laying for me.

After a can of soda and four aspirins, I was starting to feel a little less woozy when I got a call from Wardell, the fat black dude who was partners with Jimmie in the Long Room. Jimmie had been rushed to the hospital. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. Just stunned. It totally blew whatever cool I’d recouped.

Wardell’s East Texas accent swelled with emotion. Definitely a deep fried kind of guy. But he never missed a bridge shot, and that was saying something—given that you couldn’t imagine how he’d keep one foot on the floor. He was bit of a dim bulb but he had a good heart. And it made the bad news sound even worse.

Jimmie had a tumor in the pancreas. The gnarly old fool had finally hauled himself off in pain to the doc that morning like he’d promised, and an urgent CAT scan had instantly told them what he might’ve been suspecting for a long time. The growth was large and situated in a way that compromised major blood vessels and blocked the bile duct. They were doing emergency surgery to insert a stent and resolve the bile problem. Then there’d be more scans and blood tests, but the fear with a cancer that large was that there were already secondaries in the liver. Jimmie always said he was 62, but he’d been 62 for a few too many Christmases. I had a bad feeling about his chances. It was clear Wardell did too.

“Which hospital’s he in?” I asked. “I’ll go right over.”

“St. Pat’s,” Wardell sighed. “But they doin’ the proceeedshure this afffernoon. Maybe he be out and woke up in the evenin’.”

“I’ll swing by after work,” I said. “You hang tough like he’d want you to. He’s a fighter. You know that.”

“Ah knowww!” Wardell sobbed, which made me almost choke up too.

Dell and I had this thing where we’d riff on old Flip Wilson routines. He’d do a Geraldine joke and I’d do Reverend Leroy, pastor of “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.” If you’re too young to remember Flip Wilson, sorry. He was a funny man. Now to hear Wardell crying. God. He was as soft as one of Nelly’s buttercreams inside, although he could a punch a hole in a brick wall if he’d had enough to drink. I hung up and said as much of a prayer as I could stomach for Jimmie.

I knew that one-legged little palooka had a place at the Stanton Hotel but I’d never been there. He seemed to live his whole life, or what was left of it, in the gloom of his old pool hall. It was like Kelly’s Barbershop, with the crank-up chairs and jars full of combs soaking in blue barbecide. The Long Room still had brass spittoons and smelled of cigars and pastrami, the way that Kelly’s had smelled of Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic and sun-faded Argosy magazines.

Kelly’s closed last year when Strapper had his aneurism. It got turned into a health food deli selling smoothies, salads and designer sandwiches. The Long Room would go the same way when Wardell cashed out. Maybe it was better for Jimmie to go before the pool hall did. “Never ask a one-legged guy the story,” he used to quip. “When he’s ready to tell you, he’ll only lie about it anyway.” I always liked Jimmie’s lies. One of the few people I can say that about.

I went out to buy a hot dog slathered in fried onions but I ended up over at the Fresh Start Deli where Kelly’s had been. I thought some rabbit food wouldn’t hurt me, especially the disturbing way I was feeling. I settled for a Reuben Wrap and a Zinger Tea. Glancing around, it was impossible to imagine Strapper and Huxley and the other chin-waggers in the bright new feminized surrounds. I felt less out of place than I expected and left considerably less nostalgic for the chipped linoleum and sweaty Naugahyde.

When I got back to my desk, the land line was ringing and there were messages stacked up. I thought it might be Wardell with more news about Jimmie—and then I had a notion that it was McInnes, wondering how my visit to Eyrie Street had gone. I could feel Jack lurking in the background—just like El Miedo. Instead it was Lance Harrigan. He was back from his conference and had made an appointment with the shrink for me for the next week, same day.

“Why, thanks, Lance,” I grassed.

He was undeterred. My appearance and demeanor must’ve worried him.

At least I wrote down the name, address and appointment time, and then sealed it up in an envelope. Lance was an old soldier and had spent several years in the close company of Jack Daniels. But now, he’d beaten the bottle. He had a sexy second wife and was well on track to heading the Coroner’s office. I could do worse than taking a leaf out of his book. I hung up the phone and slipped the envelope into my drawer as Becker from the Two-Four dropped off the background file on Mervyn Stoakes.

When I’d seen him lying in the alley drenched in his own blood, I hadn’t taken much note of his face. Staring at an earlier pic of him from the City Directory, I saw that despite his size—and he would’ve gone 6’2” and 240 pounds—there was a meagerness in his face. A “something’s missing look,” with eyes as cold as a brass monkey. Reminded me a little too much of my reflection in the dirty sink water.

At the time of his unorthodox surgery, he’d been a 44-year-old divorced resident of Foam (a rather unfortunately-named district because the only foam on its excuse for a beach was phosphate residue leeching from the old holding tanks). He worked in the Planning department overseeing developments, subdivisions and building permits, which was a good wicket to be on for taking bribes. Someone who knew the game could quietly skim some thick cream, providing they didn’t get too greedy. I still wasn’t convinced he’d done such a perverse deed to himself. Not without drugs, and the tox scan had come back negative.

Padgett was giving testimony in the first case we’d worked. I hit the phone and made notes, tying up what loose ends that I could, and then decided to shoot over to the Records Department at City Hall and see what I could find out about the projects Stoakes had been working on. I wanted to walk. I told myself it was because of the sultry spring weather and because I still felt a little iffy. The truth was I was getting heavy flashes of Genevieve. Her body. Her feet. That voice. What in hell was her game?

I’d left the house on Eyrie Street in a state of fear. I hadn’t wanted to think of it openly at the time—it only overcame me when I found the dog collar in my pocket. I felt like I’d been selected for some black bag job and hadn’t been briefed. Now I could smell the scarf again, as if the scent was on my hands, coming out of my pores. I’d only known one woman to have that kind of effect on me. This Genevieve was disturbing my peace for real.

In the Records section of the Planning Department, I interviewed three of Stoakes’ fellow employees. All three of them had gotten wind of what had happened to him despite the media supposedly keeping his name out. You could see the revulsion on their faces.

Had he been acting oddly or out of character in any way before the incident? Two of them shrugged and said that he kept to himself so much it was hard to say. The woman in the group got a little uncomfortable at this question. I bored harder. “Confidentially,” she whispered, with a lactose intolerant expression, she thought he’d started “seeing someone” and that maybe it was “an affair he wanted to keep quiet.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked. He was divorced, but maybe the new mujer wasn’t. I could tell his co-worker hadn’t made up her mind what she’d seen. It turned out that it was just some lingerie. She’d been shopping on her lunch break over at Kettleton’s, one of the older department stores that the big chains and boutiques of the new BayFair Center were trying to drive out of business, and she’d seen Stoakes buying a watermelon shade camisole.

“So, you saw him purchasing a naughty nightie, and you figured he was up to no good?” I smiled. Can’t a poor guy do something nice for a lady without raising eyebrows? No wonder men don’t like shopping for those kinds of dainties.

“It … was a … large size,” the woman said, after much hemming and hawing.

I shrugged. Stoakes wasn’t little by anyone’s standards. Maybe he liked his jellyroll big. I didn’t see why buying a camisole was an example of acting strange—but then I’d never met him.

“And …” she added. “He was upset when he saw me.”

I shrugged this off too. Men feel shy being amongst a bunch of bras and panties. I know. They get turned on and don’t want to show it. They don’t know what to look for exactly and usually get it wrong—it’s either too raunchy or too baby doll. Plus, they’re worried someone’s going to think they’re perverts. On the other hand, given Lance’s professional opinion of what he’d done, maybe his female counterpart was on to something.

“Did he end up buying it?”

“I—I don’t know. He got so agitated I left. He didn’t come back that afternoon.”

That did seem a little queer—as in suggestive. Possibly queer in the other sense too, but I didn’t want to get sidetracked. I thanked her for her help and shifted my attention to his files. Thirty-five minutes later I hit pay dirt.

If Stoakes had been engaging in extracurricular activities, he’d also been busy on the job. In the last two months he’d considered more applications for development projects and granted more outright permits than anyone else on the payroll. The majority were based in Cliffhaven. The pits and vacant lots I spoke of? They didn’t look like they’d be empty much longer.

That was all interesting enough, but if it hadn’t been for the crash course I’d done into the complex skein of Deems Whitney’s business ventures, I wouldn’t have picked up on one detail. The only significant project that, uncharacteristically, Stoakes had not approved a planning permit for in the last few weeks was a Cliffhaven development instigated by a company I suspected Whitney to have recently invested in called Salmaxis. That name had popped up in Whitney’s records and now it popped up again. What was of particular note was that the paperwork approving the permit had been started and then put on hold with the file note, “Pending further review.” I borrowed one of the computer screens to do a company search on Salmaxis. They had UK connections but the West Coast outfit had been registered only six months before by a woman named Denita Kent, another name from Whitney’s list of associates and/or enemies. Whitney wasn’t listed as one of the directors but he had a bevy of holding companies that he could’ve used to invest in Salmaxis. ShoreGens was one such company I recalled from the morning, and sure enough, they featured prominently on the Salmaxis share register, although it looked like this had become official only in the last month. ShoreGens, when I turned over a few more rocks, was a venture capital biz that had its official address listed as none other than 4 Eyrie Street—the Managing Director, Genevieve Wyvern.

I heard in my head that satisfying clack—like when a mousetrap goes off behind the refrigerator at 3 AM.

It was too much to process there in front of a bunch of clerks. Not only were the two investigations I was working related, they connected back somehow, in some way, to Genevieve. If they were suicide, that still didn’t make her connection less any screwy. And it instantly raised a question about McInnes. What did he know about all this, and how had he come by the info? The idea that he’d also sat on the pink couch at Eyrie Street—and had maybe done a lot more—that made me sicker than the chocolate had.

Of course, I could take the bull by the horns, or rather the cow by the teats, and confront Genevieve openly. She was now a person of interest in two suspicious deaths. Part of two parallel and potentially interrelated investigations. She could pull her sleight-of-hand on Birch Ritter, the civilian, but giving false information to a peace officer was another deal altogether. I liked those odds much better and left the Records section with a dip in my hip and a glide in my stride. I’d just swing by for a knock and talk. I might have to reach out to McInnes, but not yet. I needed to gather a bit more intel on my own first.

I don’t know whether it was the rush I got over the link that had suddenly emerged between the two deaths—or whether the Reuben Wrap wasn’t sitting well with my recovering chocolate stomach—but on the way back to the station house I got nature’s call. I’m talking Code 3. Fortunately I was close to the Civic Center, and I knew they had nice clean restrooms in the rear of the lobby by the Ticketron office. I made a beeline there and was relieved to find the echoing john empty. I checked the messages on the cell while I sat there listening to the muffled strains of Billy Joel singing “Don’t go changing to try to please me … I love you just the way you are …”

I have to admit I was there longer than I expected. The hits just kept on coming, so to speak—on the piped-in music as well as the pipe out. I was at last getting around to thinking it was safe to reach for the toilet paper when I heard that old Helen Reddy feminist call to arms from the 1970’s: “I am woman, hear me roar … in numbers too big to ignore …”

I had to laugh, and that almost made me roar some more. Years and years ago that song came on and I remarked to a buddy, whose name I’ve forgotten, that I was surprised at the call for unisex toilets in the lyric. He looked at me like I was loco, and I said, “You know, the line where she says, until I meet my brother in the can.”

I thought he was going to have kittens. I wasn’t sure he was ever going to stop laughing, but when he did he said, “The line is until I make my brother understand.”

Finally, when I’d regained control, I heard other voices. It sounded like an older woman and a little boy. I could hear them stressing outside the door to the restroom. It made me sad to hear them, because I knew how big a deal going into the Men’s Room had been for me at that little kid stage. They nattered on a bit longer and then she must’ve hustled him into the Women’s Room. I heard a door whoosh and their voices faded away.

I finished up, washed long and hard and had a look at myself in the mirror. I remember as a teenager staring at my face, examining each and every acne peak and crater, then turning out the lights—as if I could change my face by changing the mirror. Now I couldn’t have picked myself out of a line-up. I looked pale and pasty, like some kind of illness or change in chemistry was at work. No wonder Lance had been adamant about me seeing a shrink—although it looked like I needed a doctor more than a psychologist. Then I glanced over and noticed the Tampax vending machine. What in hell was a Tampax machine doing in the Men’s Room? That’s typical city administration, I thought. They couldn’t put enough trashcans in tourist hubs and then they whack a white mouse dispenser in the tomcat’s toilet.

Then I got one of those famous sinking feelings. There were no distinctive white porcelain receptacles. No long silver trough with water gently running down. ¡Por Dios!, I thought. I’m in the Ladies’! The kid and the old woman are in the Men’s! It was an honest mistake, but I had to bolt out of there. And just when I did—I ran straight into a woman in a Ticketron uniform. My face went bright red and I gobbled down some air, which made me look and sound even more foolish when I blathered, “Sorry. Police. We heard there was an intruder.”

She backed out the door faster than I shot through—with the granny and the tyke out in the lobby to see the whole thing. The only sensible thing I did was not dash for the exit.