I CALLED SPIKE A little after seven and told him I was on my way over to Spike’s. He asked if there was any reason in particular, other than me missing him.
“I want an adult beverage and I want to talk,” I said.
“Two of my three specialties!” he said.
Right before I left the house, Jake Rosen called.
“Gotta say,” he said, “my life has gotten a lot more interesting with you in it.”
“Did you call to tell me that?” I said.
“No,” he said. “I called to see if you wanted to have a drink and help me figure out where Tony Marcus might be.”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither. Lost track of him a couple of nights ago.”
“Thought you knew everything.”
“Not always,” he said. “So what about the drink?”
I told him he could meet me at Spike’s. A half-hour later we sat at a round corner table in the back room. Jake was in his basic uniform, and had ordered one of Spike’s IPA’s with a funny name. Spike and I were drinking a red wine blend that he promised me I’d love, and did, as it turned out.
“Is she a pain in the ass with you?” Jake said to Spike.
“On the contrary,” Spike said. “I find her a sweet trip downriver to a gentle shore.”
“Isn’t that a way people describe dying?” I said.
“Is it?” Spike said. “I just thought I was being lyrical.”
“Jabari and his man Gled came to my house tonight,” I said to Jake Rosen.
“They looking for Tony, too?” he said.
He drank some beer. The label said Funky Buddha.
“He wanted to tell me again that he didn’t kill Lisa Morneau,” I said.
Rosen grinned, and raised his voice slightly. “Jesus, Sunny, as opposed to what,” he said. “Making a full confession? Telling you he just couldn’t deal with his guilt any longer and had to come clean to you?”
He drank more beer. He seemed just slightly lit to me, if not drunk, as if he’d had a few before meeting us. And was still cute in a good-guy, bad-boy way, no getting around that, even if he was as full of himself as ever. Maybe when this was all over, we could go out and get lit together some night, just to celebrate.
But there was nothing to celebrate yet.
“I keep wondering why Jabari would risk going down on a murder rap when it’s Tony he’s after,” I said.
“All that matters in the end is that I’m after Tony,” Rosen said. “And I’m gonna get him before Jabari does, and even before Darcy does, unless you keep pissing people off and getting in the way.”
“I’ve clearly pissed somebody off,” I said, and told him about having a gun pulled on me outside Santarpio’s, with Richard in the backseat.
Spike had gone to check on something in the kitchen.
“Bringing a kid into it is some serious shit,” Rosen said. “But these are bad men. And bad men will do anything to hold on to what they have.”
“That’s what Desmond Burke told me,” I said.
“He ought to know,” Jake said.
“Somebody thinks I know more about Lisa Morneau than I actually do,” I said.
“Other than the guy who killed her,” Rosen said, “you were the last one to see her alive. Maybe that’s what they still want to know about.”
He finished his beer. “She didn’t tell you something at the house that could hurt Tony?” he said. He grinned. “And help me?”
“I told you before,” I said. “I’d tell you if I did.”
“Would you?” he said.
Spike sat down as Rosen stood up, reaching for his wallet. Spike shook his head. “On the house,” he said.
Rosen gave me a long look.
“I keep wondering whose side you’re on,” he said.
“Mine,” I said.
Just like Tony Marcus, I thought.
“And mine,” Spike said.
Rosen walked through the back room and past the bar and was gone. We both watched him go.
“I think he might have a thing for you,” Spike said.
“I have enough men in my life. Good and bad.”
“You never told me what you wanted to talk about,” Spike said.
“I think I may be figuring things out on my own,” I said.
“Was it at least something I said?” Spike said.
“Not exactly,” I said.
He drove me home. Even though Gled had found no further listening devices, I still decided to make the calls I needed to make while I walked Rosie. As always, I wasn’t being paranoid, just extremely alert. First I called Lee Farrell and asked him a question I should have asked him before.
Then made another call and left this message on voicemail:
“Got a proposition for you.”
Then I went upstairs and slept like a baby.
Starting to feel like a babe again.