“I’m in here most nights. Figured sooner or later you’d show up. How about buying me a drink?”
Megan was waiting at the bar, bottle of Jameson in hand.
“The usual?” she said.
Elaine nodded. Megan set up two whiskeys, neat. My client took the first in one go. Then she leaned up against me. I guess in case I was cold.
“I drink seven of these every night,” she said.
“Whether you need it or not.”
She called for number three, knocked back two, and giggled.
“You’re cute,” she said.
“You talk too much.”
“You’re still cute.”
I had heard this conversation, between a blonde and a detective, somewhere before. Elaine lit up a cigarette, blew smoke in my direction, and continued.
“Gibbons was more like a father figure. You know, that whole thing. Want one?”
I moved back a bit and watched her work. Just the slightest tremor in her hand as the shot glass went up and back down. It didn’t look easy.
“Why do you do that?”
She wiped her mouth, then at a trace of moisture at the corner of one eye.
“Keeps me straight. You know some peeps have their latte. Me, I have seven lattes. After that I look for some company.”
The bar was quiet now. Not really, but it seemed that way. She filled my eye, and I shaped my mind around it. I didn’t want to but still felt the heat. Some women were just that way with men. The crazy talk continued.
“Let me ask you something, Mr. Detective. How much do you know about rape?”
I shrugged.
“You ever know a girl who’d been raped?”
“Plenty,” I said.
“I mean really know, as in romantic.”
I shrugged again. She whetted the knife.
“Think you could, you know, be with her after something like that? No, let me rephrase, after someone had her like that?”
I took a look down the bar. Mostly because I didn’t know where else to look.
“Thought so,” she said and drained number four.
I jumped in and tried to make it better.
“You were brutalized and almost murdered, Elaine. That’s an act of violence, plain and simple.”
“Textbook answer, Mr. Kelly. They teach you that at the police academy?”
Her voice was a bit louder but still controlled. She was drunk. Just not as much as I expected.
“I know you were a cop. Gibbons told me.”
She nodded with the smallest of smiles. Looking sly for no apparent reason. Then she picked up her cigarette, almost guttered in the ashtray and drew down. I blinked and saw her at fifty-three. Alone, in a hotel bar. Still able to catch the occasional eye. Still on the hustle. She exhaled and the smoke filtered through a shaft of light coming in from the street. Now the face was relaxed repose. At fifty-three, she was pure class. On the beach, brown and healthy, she had a car with a driver, freshly cut flowers in all her rooms, and lunch on a patio with drinks. Two paths. Her future in the balance. Like everyone else, she’d make her choice. Some small decision would set the events in motion, lead her down one path or the other. Lung cancer in a trailer park or a home in La Jolla. The choice was there. Like everyone else she’d make it and never even know it.
“Your friend was trying to help me,” she said. “At least that’s what he told me. Now he’s dead.”
“You’re thinking it might be the guy who attacked you?”
“Thought about it.”
I sipped at my pint and stared at a sign that said GOOD DAY FOR A GUINNESS with a black toucan underneath.
“Makes you wonder,” I said.
She smiled again, in a way that was neither warm nor tender.
“Makes me lock the door at night.”
Megan came by. Elaine seemed better now and asked for a glass of water. I took out a notebook and a soft black pencil.
“Going to write me a letter?” she said and shook her hair free.
“Just trying to organize some thoughts here.”
“You should get a laptop.”
“You should be on a leash.”
“What’s the matter, Kelly? We’re on the same team here. You need to find the killer. If I’m right, the killer needs to find me. It works.”
“Using you as bait is a bad idea.”
“Because?”
“For one thing, dead clients tend not to pay their bills.”
“I still have a gun.”
I was delighted to hear my client was still packing and told her as much. She chewed at the corner of a fingernail and looked at herself in the bar mirror. It took her a while to get sick of that. Then she finished off numbers six and seven. Not a bother.
“Point is, Mr. Kelly, I can handle that end of it.”
For what it was worth, across a drift of smoke and chatter, she fit the part. At least on this night, in a warm bar, where talk was talk and not a matter of consequence.
I looked over my client’s shoulder, across the Shamrock, and through the front window. A dusting of snow fell quickly and softly, covering up the gray of Halsted Street. Lake-effect snow, Chicagoans called it. Beyond the white was the glare of neon, a tangle of traffic and people. A gust of wind blew the weather clear, a gap appeared between cars, and a single figure scooted across the street. Her head was covered with a newspaper. She leaped across a flow of ice and slush half congealed in the gutter and landed on the sidewalk. I was about to look back into the bar when the woman pulled her head up. For a moment, it seemed like Diane Lindsay knew exactly where I was and why I was there. For just a moment. Then surprise flooded her features. She waved, slipped toward the door, and into the Shamrock.
“Excuse me a second.”
I got up from my chair and intercepted the journalist before she got too close to my client. I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to meet. And was even less certain why I wasn’t sure. No matter, Diane was past me, Elaine already out of her chair and rearranging herself in a single movement.
“Hi, I’m Diane Lindsay.”
The two shook hands as if they had been expecting to all along. Diane sat down. Elaine sat with her. Diane talked to me, but kept her eyes on Elaine.
“The new client, Michael?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Aren’t you on television?” Elaine said.
Diane pulled off a pair of leather gloves, leaned back in her chair, and considered my client like she might a warm glass of milk on a hot summer day. Only when she was done did she speak.
“Yes, I’m on television. And your name is?”
“Elaine. Elaine Remington.”
“Nice to meet you, Elaine.”
Diane stuck a thumb my way.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you need this guy for?”
“I don’t mind at all. I was raped when I was still pretty much a kid. Mr. Kelly is helping me find the bastard.”
“May I ask why?”
