When I got out of the car a woman in a minute, buff-colored bikini and a pair of Roman-style sandals with wide ribbons laced up her calves passed through a gate and strolled over to my car.
“You’re on time,” she said. “That’s rare these days.”
“Precision is an engineer’s curse.”
“A poetic engineer. Follow me,” she said, pivoting and heading back to the gate. It wasn’t the hardest thing anyone’s asked me to do.
Inside the gate she picked up a Siamese cat that was trying to twine itself around her ankles.
“Meet Opium,” she said, holding the cat out so I could scratch its ears.
“She’s such a greeter.”
Holding the cat under one arm, she continued the trip down a curvaceous path paved with grey bricks and lined with cultivated tufts of grass and purple and yellow flowers.
“No trouble finding the place?” she asked.
“I just looked for a big gift box.”
“A gift from Angel to himself,” she said.
When we got to our destination I could see why he’d said “down at the pool.” It was settled into a hollow inside the dunes, open to the ocean on one end and encircled by more grey pavers and yellow and purple flowers. There were enough white chaise lounges and deck chairs to seat a pool party, but only two were filled—another girl and a giant, barrel-chested, pot-bellied guy, both wearing only bikini bottoms and baseball caps.
I rounded the pool following my guide. Angel watched us approach through a pair of dark green aviator’s glasses. I stood next to his chaise and waited.
“You’re Acquillo?” he finally asked, not offering his hand.
“Sam Acquillo. You can call me Sam.”
“You can call me annoyed.”
He put his hands on the armrests of the chaise and lugged himself to his feet. He was about the height of Zelda Fitzgerald and outweighed her by several orders of magnitude. He stood slightly too close to me for comfort, but I held my ground. His breath smelled of the red wine he and the girl were drinking out of little plastic bowls. When he plucked his off the armrest he saw me notice.
“It’s the pool. Can’t have glass anywhere near. You like Shiraz?”
I looked up at the sky.
“It’s too light out for wine. How ’bout a gin and tonic?”
He pointed at the woman who led me in and jerked his head at a pink bamboo dry bar wheeled up to the side of the pool.
“Jesse, get the man his daylight drink.”
He took the pressure off my personal space and pulled over a couple of chairs and a round side table. I took the one that kept the girls in view. What the heck.
“This Gelb. You know him?” he asked, settling his bulk into the painted rattan chair.
“Only to coerce.”
“He says you want to make a run at me.”
He sliced the air with a slab of hand, as if to underscore the preposterousness of the idea.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “I just want to talk to you about Iku Kinjo. You were an important client. You might be able to shed some light.”
As with Zelda Fitzgerald, his sunglasses did a lot to contain his thoughts. But there was something said in the long pause in the conversation.
“She’s dead. What other light do you need?”
“The illuminating kind,” I said.
“That’s redundant,” said Jesse, now in a chaise of her own, reading a weathered copy of
Angel ignored her.
“What’s your part in this?” he asked.
“Finder of the body.”
He made a grunt deep enough to be felt through the grey pavers.
“There’s no legal standing in that.”
“Since when did legalities trouble you?” I asked, taking a second sip from my drink. The first tasted like pure, lime-flavored gin. Jesse wasn’t much of a bartender.
Angel pointed at me. “How’s that mouth of yours served you so far? In life?”
“Intermittently.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So, any thoughts on what happened to Iku? If what I hear is correct, you had a close working relationship. They’re suggesting now it might be suicide. Any sign she was preoccupied? Or depressed?”
“No. But I am. By this conversation.”
“You’re a sensitive guy, Angel. I’ll try to soften the edges for you.”
Jesse was sitting behind him, so he couldn’t see the intimation of a grin pass over her face. I kept my gaze fixed on him so I wouldn’t give her away.
“Like you said, I had a working relationship with the woman. I didn’t know anything about her personal life. It’s all business with those Eisler people. It’s a mentality. Just get it done. Straight down the middle. Hired brains. No life, no heart.”
“So, nothing suspicious right before she died?” I asked.
He slid down in his chair and downed his bowl of Shiraz. He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm.
“Even if there was, I wouldn’t know. I was in Europe at the end of the summer. No reason to talk to her. For that matter, no reason to talk to you. So why am I?”
“Because you’re a people person?”
I think Jesse liked this one, too. But it went right by the topless girl. In fact, she never looked up the entire time I was there. Can’t please everybody.
Angel took off his baseball cap and wiped his forehead. The move dumped out a large ball of wavy black hair. It took him a few moments to get it all stuffed back under the hat again.
“Gelb told me you were locked up in a loony bin for a while,” he said. “I’m understanding now how that could be the case. Because you got to be fucking crazy to talk to me like that.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me about the last deal you two were working on.”
As if realizing there were other people within earshot, Angel twisted around in his chair and looked over at Jesse.
“Can you believe this shit?” he asked her.
She held up her book.
“Not paying attention, darling,” she said.
“Whether somebody killed Iku Kinjo or she did it herself, there’s a reason it happened,” I said. “Given your close association, I’d think you’d be curious about that. I’m curious that you’re not.”
He leaned as forward in his chair as the medicine ball of a stomach would let him.
“Why all the curiosity?” he asked.
“I was looking for her. Until I find out why she’s dead, I haven’t really found her.”
He sat back in his chair again and put his hands on the armrests, preparing to haul himself to his feet.
“I got something to show you.”
He got up and waved for me to follow. We walked over to another gate in the white fence, one leading out to a patio area with round wrought-iron tables and chairs, umbrellas and a view of the ocean through a cut in the dunes. He opened the gate and ushered me through. I walked out on the patio and looked at the ocean, which was relatively calm and blue in the fading light of the sun coming in over our shoulders from the west. It threw our shadows out from our feet, which should have told me Angel was a little too close behind.
It was an embrace to take your breath away. Literally. I looked down at his arms crossed over my chest, one hand holding the other wrist, and the contours of his arm muscles swelling with the effort. The pressure increased steadily and rapidly, until I felt my ribs about to collapse. I gathered what breath I could and held it while straining
