Phil Donovan was pissed. All those years he tried to get along with people, no matter what colour they were or how big an ass they could be, he’d always made an effort and where’d it get him?
He made an effort. Found a way to work with Fat Eddie, never made wisecracks about him like the other clowns did. Worked with Howie what’s-his-name, that chink over in Forensics, got along great with him. Didn’t bitch when they teamed him up with Fox, told him he had to take orders from a black man. And where’d it all get him? Flat on his ass is where. One day he’s an acting louie, the next day he’s back to sergeant. Who the fuck they think they’re dealing with?
Donovan twisted a paper clip in his hand into a knot, swiveled in his chair, tossed it at the wastebasket and missed.
Which put him over the edge. Rising from the chair he took one step toward the wastebasket, drew his right foot back and launched the gray plastic receptacle in a short arc that ended against the radiator on the far wall.
“Gotta keep your head down, boy.”
Donovan turned to see Danny Scrignoli watching him from the open doorway, grin on his face, stick of gum in one hand. The undercover cop was wearing a suede windbreaker with grease marks on the collar, red wool turtleneck, black chinos and a pair of beat-up Adidas.
“You can tell if you made it through the uprights from the crowd noise, see,” Scrignoli said. “Didn’t your coach tell you that? You wait to hear the crowd, then you lift your head.”
“The fuck you want?” Donovan sat down in the chair again, leaned back, lifted his feet to the corner of the desk.
Scrignoli spread his hands and looked around the room. “Want?” he said in exaggerated surprise. “I don’t want anything, man. What’s to want?” He popped the gum into his mouth and talked around it. “Question is, what the hell do you want, man? Word’s out Vance dropped you back to sergeant and now you’re ready to slip his balls in a wringer. What, you wanta make captain overnight? You want Fat Eddie’s job? You know what Ollie Schantz said about Fat Eddie’s job, being a captain here?”
Donovan picked up another paper clip from the desk, started twisting it in and out of shape. “You think I give a shit?”
“No but I’m gonna tell you anyway. ’Cause that’s the kind of guy I am.” Scrignoli leaned against the open door, chewing with his mouth open, looking like the street-smart punk he pretended to be in undercover work, busting heads and asses on Mass Avenue. He leaned forward to catch Donovan’s eye and frowned. “You remember Schantz? You ever meet Ollie?”
“Couple times. What about him?”
Scrignoli laughed. “Funniest son of a bitch you’d ever wanta meet. He had more lines. . . .” Scrignoli folded his arms and smiled down at his sneakers. “Talkin’ about Fat Eddie one day, this was ’way before Vance made captain, he’s still Sergeant Eddie Vance. Ollie’s over there, end of the hall, watchin’ Eddie whose belly’s spillin’ out over his pants and he’s tryin’ to be Paul Newman. Eddie’s glasses are slidin’ down his nose and he’s pullin’ at that mustache of his, always looks like a toothbrush, sweet-talkin’ some new honey in the steno pool, just started the day before. She’s lookin’ around saying to herself, ‘Where’d this loser come from and when’s somebody gonna take him away and lock him up?’ And Ollie and me and a couple other guys, probably McGuire and ol’ Dave Sadowsky, we’re watchin’ from the doorway, and Ollie says to us, ‘You know somethin’?’ he says. ‘Eddie Vance couldn’t get laid in a woman’s prison with a fistfulla pardons,’ and that did it.”
Scrignoli grinned and shook his head at the memory.
“Christ, we laughed so hard everything stopped in the steno pool and Fat Eddie stood there lookin’ over at us until Kavander, he was captain then, he comes out of his office and yells across at us, ‘You comedians want a laugh, I got a couple autopsies you can look at.’ Then he points at Fat Eddie and says, ‘Vance, stop trying to fuck the stenos. It slows down their work and annoys ’em all to hell.’”
“Terrific,” Donovan said dryly, but he permitted a small smile to play at the corners of his mouth.
“Hey, speakin’ a McGuire, you hear he just about offed a pervert over at the Flamingo last night?” Scrignoli’s expression changed to one of admiration. His eyebrows shot up his forehead, his jaw ceased its ferocious chewing and his bottom lip shot out. “Christ, I’d just dropped him off there maybe ten, fifteen minutes before. I’m a couple blocks away and McGuire’s preventing a homicide.”
Donovan tossed the paper clip across his desk. “Big deal. Now everybody’s sayin’ he’s a hero. Never heard such bullshit.”
Scrignoli stepped into the small office and closed the door behind him. “What, you got something against Joe?”
“Nothin’ except maybe he’s weaselin’ sideways out of a possible murder one, murder two maybe.”
“You mean the woman over on Newbury Street?”
“Yeah. Used to be my case, Tim Fox and me. Now Fox thinks McGuire’s a goddamn altar boy and me, I guess I’m just another nigger-baitin’ freaked-out cop. So here I am, waitin’ around for somethin’ to happen and Fox, he’s off runnin’ the case on his own like he’s General MacArthur.”
“You don’t think McGuire did that woman.”
“I think he knows more than he’s lettin’ on.”
“Like what?”
Phil Donovan rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Like maybe what she had on him.”
“You wanta tell me about that?”
“She was ballin’ men and blackmailing them. I think she had something on McGuire and was usin’ it on him.”
Scrignoli gave a short, sharp laugh. “You gotta be kiddin’ me. What’s she gonna get from McGuire? Guy doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”
“I dunno. Drugs, maybe. Inside information. Hell, her own landlord said she was scared shitless of somebody she knew. McGuire’s got a way, okay, he had a way of scaring people, intimidating them.” He shook his head. “Somethin’ fits there, damn it. He knows somethin’ he’s not tellin’ and it’s behind the whole thing. You know, we never did a search of his room. What’s he got up there we should know about? Guy’s a murder one suspect and nobody even gets a warrant to search his place?”
“Probably done it now, after last night.” Scrignoli thrust his hands in his pockets.
“Bullshit. All they’re lookin’ for last night is felonious assault stuff, the broad bein’ worked over on McGuire’s bed. They got the victim, a witness, the perp.” Donovan shook his head. “There’s somethin’ there, damn it.”
Scrignoli rested his hand on Donovan’s shoulder. “You better get over this one,” he said. “McGuire’s not the guy, you’re not on the case, Tim Fox is as good as they come around here and Fat Eddie’ll make you golden again in a couple of months. Just gotta keep the faith, boy.”
Donovan looked up, mildly amused. “Faith? Who the hell are you, Billy Graham?” he said.
McGuire stared at each of them in turn for several minutes before deciding he liked the brown-haired one best of all. She had the kind of wide-eyed innocence that always appealed to him in young women. And she was dressed more conservatively than the others. Nice red gingham apron, little matching bow in her hair. The blond next to her looked like a tart in one of those fifties sheath dresses that clung to her ass, even under the cheeks. The redhead was a phony, anybody could spot it. Probably had a nose job too, real noses don’t turn up at the tip so neat. But there was a real body on the black-haired honey at the end, look at that chest. Jesus. He reached an unsteady hand toward her. Footsteps and the aroma of coffee drifted down the hall. Billie would catch him in the act but McGuire didn’t care. His fingertips brushed the oversized breasts.
“You’re awake.”
Billie was wearing a silky sky-blue robe trimmed with white lace. Her blonde hair was gathered on the crown of her head, a few strands permitted to fall across her face. She carried a tortoiseshell tray bearing two cups of coffee, two glasses of orange juice, a stack of raisin toast and the morning newspaper.
“You like my dolls?” She set the tray on the bed next to McGuire. “That’s Carmella, the one you were reaching for. She’s Spanish. I mean, I didn’t get her in Spain, I’ve never even been to Spain, but I saw a picture of a Spanish woman once and I thought, ‘She looks like my black-haired doll,’ and Carmella, I don’t know where that came from, I just like it.”
McGuire pulled his hand away from the dolls lined up on the table next to Billie’s bed.
“You probably think it’s nuts, a woman my age collecting dolls, but . . .” Billie shrugged. “It’s harmless, just a hobby. Actually, a lot of girls at the club collect dolls. Terri does, she gave me Cheryl, that’s the blonde doll, one night. You take your coffee black, right?”
McGuire nodded and raised himself to a sitting position.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Okay.” McGuire took the coffee from her. “I slept fine.”
“Damn right, all the pills I gave you. How’s your headache?”
“Gone.” McGuire sipped the coffee. Something floating within his head collided gently against the inner walls of his skull. “Thanks.”
Billie sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. “You want a shave later, I got a razor in the bathroom. Old boyfriend of mine left it here. Long time ago.”
McGuire nodded.
“I don’t do what MaryLou does, you know.” Billie picked at her fingernails, her head down. “Never turned any tricks. You start that, where the hell’re you gonna end up, right? I mean, all there is for you is gettin’ beat up, maybe killed. I know some girls who just disappeared one night, never seen ’em again. I knew one, Molly or Dolly or something, little bitty thing, they found bits of her floating in the harbour, a leg here, an arm there. Never did find her head. Jesus, I don’t want to wind up like that. What I’m saying is, I don’t hook, Joe.”
“I know.” McGuire sampled the orange juice.
“I could, easy. Could use the money too. MaryLou, Terri, Josie, sometimes they make an extra thousand a week easy, right in their pockets. That’s tempting, you know.”
McGuire grunted, drained the glass of juice.
“I just wanted you to know I never did that, Joe.”
“I hear you, Billie.”
“I don’t even have any boyfriends anymore.” She dropped her hands in her lap and stared out the window, the winter sun shining weakly through layers of grime. “Used to but he got . . . he got sent away.”
“For what?”
“Assault with intent. Somebody promised him a couple a thousand dollars to rough up a guy, owed the other guy money. My boyfriend and a buddy, they got caught doing the guy with a crowbar. Guy recovered, he’s walking the streets today. But Gene, that’s my boyfriend, used to be my boyfriend, he gets five to ten upstate. His buddy, who turns evidence against him, he gets two years suspended.”
“Five to ten?” McGuire sampled more coffee. “Not a first offence term.”
“Gene’s had a rough life.”
“Bet the guy he worked over with the crowbar will too.”
Billie shrugged. “Thing is, that was nearly six months ago and I’ve been on my own ever since. You know, at the beginning I told him, I told myself, I said I’d wait for Gene, go see him once, twice a month, but Gene’s having a tough time in there. Been in a coupla scraps already, he’s in solitary now for two months, can’t have visitors. Way he’s goin’, I’ll be an old broad by the time he gets out and I don’t think it’s fair for a woman like me to spend the best years of her life alone, do you?”
McGuire sighed and set the coffee cup aside. “Your call, Billie. Your life, your call.”
“One thing Gene did, just on the side, you know, was use. A little snow, he tried horse once, made him sicker’n hell so he laid off it. He liked downers, codeine and ’ludes.” She slid the tray, her food untouched, from the bed and stretched out beside McGuire. He could smell her cologne, lilacs and cinnamon. “Left some here at my place, never kept any where he lived.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I know you need them. I know Django’s your source. He really likes you, Django I mean. Says you’re his man. He knows you’re in pain. Hell, everybody can see you’re in pain. Stuff I got, stuff Gene left here, you can use. Long as it’s here, you can use it.”
She moved closer to him, and one hand reached out to stroke his shoulder. “Jesus, you know what it’s like to stand up there at the club, night after night, gettin’ those guys turned on, gettin’ yourself turned on, then comin’ back here alone?” Tears began to flood her eyes. “It’s hell, man. Sometimes it’s fuckin’ hell and . . . and I almost wish I could do what MaryLou does, not now, not after what happened last night, but sometimes I wish I could do that just once, you know?”
“You’ve been good to me,” McGuire said.
“Oh, Christ, you haven’t seen anything yet.” She pushed herself onto her hands and knees over him, lifted one hand, brushed the tears from her eyes, then sat up and back on her haunches. “You haven’t seen a damn thing yet,” and she shrugged out of the robe, letting it fall to her waist. Raising both hands she stroked her breasts, watching McGuire’s eyes, and McGuire realized that everything Billie was about to do was an extension of her act at the club, the teasing, the posing, the surrender, the need to be used, and it swept a wave of overwhelming sadness through his soul.
He lay back and closed his eyes and Billie was bending over him again, brushing her breasts against his cheek, swinging them back and forth, their texture like crumpled silk within cool satin. He reached for her and Billie stretched herself prone over him, the rhythm of their breathing syncopated, their hands moving over each other’s bodies in search of forgiveness, acceptance, defiance against what time was doing to them.
Tim Fox hoped Fat Eddie never assigned another partner to him, never found him anybody, just left him alone to do his job. He worked better that way, nobody to adjust to.
But somebody new would be sent to work with him, somebody junior probably, because you needed corroboration and you needed backup, you needed somebody to talk to, bitch at even, otherwise the job would kill you one way or another.
He wheeled the gray Plymouth into a loading zone on Lansdowne Street and remained behind the wheel for a moment. Fat Eddie would have a new partner for him this afternoon, some whistle looking to move up to a gold badge. Bunch of crap. Fox didn’t care. Whoever Fat Eddie chose, he’d be better than Donovan.
Fox stepped out of the car, tightened the belt around his Burberry and started across the street toward the low yellow-brick building with the faded sign proclaiming Van Ness Plumbing Supplies—Wholesale Only.
Inside, in a tiny reception area furnished with two plastic and metal chairs, Fox told the woman behind the sliding glass window that he was from the Boston Police Department and he had come to see Steve Peterson. Within a minute the door to the office area swung open and a man with short-cropped gray hair growing out of a bullet-shaped head stood looking directly at Fox. His body was blunt, like a tree trunk, and he wore a creased white shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows, a striped tie pulled away from his collar and blue trousers with red fireman’s suspenders. The man introduced himself as Steve Peterson, shook Fox’s hand once and turned to lead the detective through a maze of filing cabinets, computer desks and shipping cartons to a glass-walled office in a far corner.
“You here about Heather?” Peterson said, fishing a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of a suit jacket draped over the back of his desk chair.
Fox nodded and sat in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs across from Peterson. From somewhere beyond the walls of the office carne the sounds of forklift trucks and the shouts of young men.
“Already talked to some detective, coupla days ago. Irish guy, Donovan, something like that.” Peterson had a gruff voice and a directness that acted as a barrier against small talk.
Tim Fox had heard that voice before.
“This is kind of a follow-up visit,” Fox said. “Just take a minute.”
“Other guy didn’t want much except to know where I was the night Heather was killed. So I told him. Same’s I’m gonna tell you.”
Tim Fox withdrew his notepad and sat with his pen poised. “Did you call your former wife the evening she was murdered?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did.” Peterson placed a cigarette in his mouth and left it there while he talked. “It’s on the answering machine, right? Knew you guys would hear it. I called her from here about, I dunno, quarter after seven, seven thirty, something like that.”
“From the sound of the tape, you were pretty upset with her. You want to tell me about that?”
Peterson pulled a battered Zippo from his trouser pocket, lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “You know what she was doing?” he asked, avoiding the detective’s eyes.
“Doing?”
“Her scam, the pictures and all that shit. Don’t tell me you don’t know about it. Other guy did, the Irish cop.”
Fox nodded. “We know about it,” he said. “We just want to know how you fit in.”
Peterson studied the end of his cigarette. “Listen, maybe I should get a lawyer in here while I’m talking to you.”
“Can if you want to.”
“I mean, I didn’t kill her, understand. Like I told the other guy, I’m living with a woman over in Charlestown, she’s got a couple of kids. I was home there by eight o’clock, her and the kids and I went out for dinner, and I was in bed by eleven. I can prove it.”
“So far you’re not a prime suspect in her murder, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tim Fox said.
“Yeah, well, all this shit’s upset my girlfriend all to hell but she knows, she told the other cop where I was, offered to sign an affidavit, whatever he needed.” Peterson took a deep pull on his cigarette and released the smoke slowly. “Heather was a pain in the ass to me in more ways than you’ll ever know but I didn’t kill her. Felt a little bad when I heard about it, understand. Not too bad, mind you, just a passing twinge.”
“How long were you married?”
“About two years. I refer to it as the Heather Incident. Second marriage for me and my last.”
“When were you divorced?”
“Three years ago. We kind of kept running into each other. Or she’d phone me for a favour, some damn thing. Most of the time I’d tell her to go take a flying leap but every now and then . . .” Peterson took another long pull on his cigarette, leaned his head back and aimed smoke rings at the ceiling.
“How involved were you in the blackmailing?” Fox asked.
Peterson swung his chair sideways to the desk, tapped the cigarette against a glass ashtray and spoke without looking at Fox. “This is where I gotta be careful,” he said. “See, I was never involved at all. It didn’t surprise me what Heather was doing. She was screwing around on me when we were married, that’s what broke it up, the marriage.” He smiled coldly. “Heather got off on the power more than the pleasure. I’m telling you, I was married to one strange woman.”
“But you knew she was blackmailing men.”
“Oh, sure. She bragged to me about it. Pulled up here once in her shiny new car, BMW. Showing off. Talked about leaving for Europe on the Concorde, all of that shit. Rubbed my nose in it.” He shook his head. “Jesus, she was a strange broad, I’m telling you.”
“She try to involve you in it?”
“Yeah.” Peterson butted the cigarette in a sudden violent motion, and Fox noted the man’s deep chest, powerful biceps and aggressive manner. “Near the end. That’s where I gotta be careful, like I said.” He turned to face Fox, resting his forearms on the desk. “You don’t give a damn about criminal intent, do you? You know, just talking about doing something with somebody, something that might be construed as illegal? Is that, what? Conspiracy?”
“Was the other person Heather?”
“Could be.”
“There’s no way we’re going to pursue a conspiracy case where the second party is dead. Especially if she was a homicide victim. No way at all. You want to talk, go ahead, but I don’t give a damn what you and your ex-wife might have speculated about. Unless it concerns her murder.”
Peterson stared back at Fox in silence. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay, I hear you.” He leaned back in his chair. “Look, I’ve been working in this dump for over twenty years. I bought a big piece of it a few years ago, right around the time everybody in the state decided they didn’t want any more bathrooms. That’s me, the guy with great timing, okay?”
Fox watched him in silence, waiting for him to continue.
Peterson breathed deeply once, picked up his package of cigarettes, thought better of it and tossed them aside. “She calls me, couple of weeks ago, says she’s on to something big. Too big for her, she could use some help.”
“What kind of help?”
Peterson shrugged. “Kind of a partner. For protection. She never admitted what she was doing, the scam with the pictures. See, she never laid it out for me in detail but she let me know, bit by bit. You know, brag about her new boyfriend of the month. No names, but she’d tell me they gave her big chunks of money and I’d ask why and she’d laugh and say there were two things she knew best. ‘Two things I know best are fucking and photography,’ she’d say and laugh like hell. Plus she’d talk about all the money she had invested. I knew she wasn’t making it all as a photographer’s agent.”
“How’d you feel about that?” Fox asked.
“About what? About my ex-wife screwing other guys? It was old news to me. Old news when our marriage split up, old news now. Didn’t bother me none.”
“So why did she suddenly need a partner?”
“She was going after some kind of score from a big name and she wanted some backup, somebody who knew what was going on in case she messed up.”
“She offer you money?”
Peterson nodded. “Not a hell of a lot. Ten thousand up front and a couple of grand a month just to hold on to some stuff for her, I don’t know what. Right now I could use it, the money. This place was bleeding, still is. The bank, wise asses over there, they’d just told me I couldn’t draw more’n twenty-five grand a year in salary for Christ’s sake until things get turned around and that’ll take maybe a year. They saw me taking out more, they’d call their loan, that’s the only deal they offered. So when Heather starting talking about how she’d pay for some help, I jumped for it. I said, ‘Sure, long’s I don’t have to get rough with anybody, do anything too illegal myself.’”
“Why did you call her the night she was murdered?” Fox asked.
“She never came through.” Peterson picked up the cigarette package again and toyed with it as he spoke. “She was supposed to meet me with the ten grand. Said she’d be home that night, I was to call and we’d meet somewhere. I mean, this was important to me, you know? One day the bank’s saying they’re ready to close me up, put me out of business after years of pouring my sweat into this place, the next day Heather offers me enough money to pull me through, just for backing her up, holding on to some stuff, let some guy know she wasn’t strictly freelance. I counted on that. Then I call and she doesn’t answer and I know she’s home because . . .”
Fox waited a moment before asking. “Because what?”
This time Peterson removed a cigarette from the package. “Because I went over to her place and rang the bell. About six o’clock.” He placed the cigarette in his mouth, flicked the Zippo lighter and brought the flame to the tip. “She answered on the intercom and told me there was a change in plans, somebody else might be doing the deal for her. Told me to call later, she couldn’t talk just then.”
“You figured she was backing out?”
Peterson filled his lungs with smoke and exhaled slowly. “That’ve been like her.”
“And you’d already spent the money she promised you.”
“Something like that.”
“Where’d you call her from, when you left the message on her machine?”
“Here. I came back here really pissed.”
“If you’ve got anything else for me, I need to know,” Fox said.
Peterson took another long puff on his cigarette and stared past the detective, lost in thought. Finally, he said, “Yeah,” set the cigarette on the ashtray, then stood and walked to the door where his suit jacket was suspended on a brass hook. Reaching inside he withdrew a black leather wallet and returned to the desk. He took a business card from the billfold, glanced at it absently and tossed it to the detective. “She gave me this when we first started talking.”
Tim Fox picked up the card, printed on heavy linen stock, and turned it over. The lettering was in gold script: Bedford Investments Incorporated. An address on Winthrop Square appeared beneath it followed by a name: Harley DeMontford. “This the man she was blackmailing?” Fox asked.
Peterson nodded. “He owns the joint, the Bedford outfit.”
“Why’d you take so long to give it to me?”
The other man smiled and tapped the end of the cigarette on the ashtray. “Can’t you figure it out?”
“You were thinking about running your own scam on the guy?”
“You got it. But it never got past the thinking stage.”
“Smart move.”
“Yeah, I’m an upstanding Boston citizen.” Peterson placed the cigarette in his mouth. “Truth is, I woulda done it except when I heard all the details about what happened to her. How bad she was beaten up. If this guy’s involved and he did that to Heather, maybe I should stay away from him.”
“You figured this DeMontford, he’s the one who killed her?”
“She was scared shitless of somebody,” Peterson said, squinting through the cigarette smoke at Fox. “Something about the guy or the deal really spooked her. And believe me, Heather didn’t scare easy.”
“We might have to talk to the woman you’re living with again, double check your alibi.”
“You do that.”
“You going to the funeral this afternoon?”
“Hell, no.”
Fox rose to his feet. “We’ll need to talk to you again.”
“Anytime.”
Fox was at the door when Peterson said, “The bank’s shuttin’ me down, end of the month, looks like. Coulda held them off with the money Heather promised.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Fox said. “Things are tough allover.”
Peterson swore under his breath and stabbed the ashtray with his cigarette.
“You want me to make some more coffee?”
Billie was speaking to McGuire but her eyes were fixed on the stained gray rug beneath her bed. She lay on her stomach, her head over the edge of the mattress, one arm dangling to the floor, a finger tracing patterns in the cheap carpeting. A bed sheet lay across her lower body, placed there by McGuire, who reached to stroke her shoulder before rolling onto his back.
McGuire said, “No, thanks.” He was looking up at the ceiling, finished in cheap stucco-like white paint, creating patterns by joining with imaginary lines the small gravelly lumps scattered randomly above him. A triangle there, a parallelogram here, and over there a diamond . . .
“Lemme guess,” Billie said. “You never had this problem before, right?” When McGuire didn’t answer Billie rolled on her side, facing him. Her voice had lost its warmth, its caring tone, its seductiveness. “I mean, isn’t that what you’re supposed to say? ‘Gee, I never had this problem before.’” Charging each word with sarcasm. “‘I’ve always been able to get a diamond cutter up, first snap of a brassiere.’ That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?”
“Billie, I’m sorry.” McGuire rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I’m really sorry.”
“You know how many guys I’ve had up here in the last five, six months? You know how many I’ve invited home with me?”
“No idea.”
“One, that’s all. Well, one plus you. No, two. Okay, two guys and you, that’s only three in, what’d I say, four, five months? What I’m sayin’ is, I’m no slut, Joe. No cheap lay. I gotta care about the guy before I let him into my bedroom, you hear what I’m sayin’?”
“You want me out of here, Billie, I’m going.”
Billie rolled onto her back and folded her arms across her chest. “I mean, hell, Joe, you gotta see my point. Six times a day I get up on that goddamn stage and show my crotch to a bunch of guys I ain’t never seen before and hope to hell I never see again and I know I’m turnin’ them on. I know it. They’re all picturin’ themselves with me in bed. I take care of this body, Joe, you see that? I’m not stuffin’ myself with grease, I don’t smoke too much, I do fifty sit-ups a day. Guys appreciate it, right?”
“I appreciate it, Billie.” McGuire sounded weary, ready to roll over and sleep.
“Yeah, well, your cock doesn’t.”
As soon as she said it, Billie felt like a shit and she reached across to stroke his face with her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Then, “It’s the drugs, isn’t it? The drugs can do that, can’t they?”
“Probably,” McGuire said.
“So drop ’em.”
“I get pain. Too much pain. Migraines, they feel like.”
“And you start throwin’ up, right?”
“The pain gets that bad, yeah, I do.”
“And you get the shakes, you sweat like a pig, your ears start to ring.”
McGuire turned his head slowly to look into Billie’s eyes.
“You’re wired, you dumb shit,” Billie told him. “You’re fuckin’ fried.”
“I’m not a junkie.”
“Yeah, and these melons on my chest aren’t tits either, I just got a couple a swollen glands. Who’re you kiddin’? You got so many chemicals in your system, no wonder your dick’s in a coma. Same thing happened to Gene, my boyfriend, when he was usin’. It’s all connected, McGuire. You want drugs, you forget about screwin’. You wanta get it on, you better cut back on the chemistry. Hell, every basket case on the street knows that except you.”
“I’m not taking that much,” McGuire said lamely.
Billie erupted into a long rattling sarcastic laugh that descended into a racking coughing fit until she rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom, tears in her eyes, McGuire turning his head to avoid the sight of her nakedness.
Bedford Investments Incorporated said the sign on the twin walnut slab doors as Tim Fox pushed through them to enter a dimly lit reception area finished in deep reds and gray tweeds. The woman behind the reception desk looked up at him brightly until he showed her his detective badge, slid a card across to her and asked to see Mr. DeMontford.
“He’s out of town,” she replied. “I don’t expect him back until tomorrow.”
“Where is he?” Fox demanded.
“Florida.”
“You know his hotel?”
“Yes, but he won’t be there right now. He’s in meetings all afternoon.”
Fox pointed at his card. “You call him, you tell him I want to talk to him. Either he calls me or I’ll send somebody to find him.”
The woman bit her lip. “Will he know what this is about?”
“Damn right.” Fox flashed her his warmest smile and left.