I mean, no way, I was going to detail any of this to you guys up there on that bridge. You fucking kidding me?” He mimicked himself. “ ‘Hey, by the way, LaMoia, I was scouting this peach the other night. Watching her smoke a cancer in her fucking panties on the fire escape.’ What the fuck is that about? Then, later, what was I supposed to say, ‘By the way, I may have forgotten to mention …’?”
“Wouldn’t have been too cool.”
“No shit. And these girls. I’m already down in the books on that. You know that. Something like this gets out …” He looked over at LaMoia, the pall of realization taking hold. “You understand, John,” use of the first name did not come easy for Prair, “this cannot get out.”
As the extent of his confession began to sink in, for Prair, LaMoia calculated the time needed to escape the front seat-the doors were power locked, necessitating several steps.
“I mean … in terms of helping you out … that’s been bugging me, sure it has. I’ve got a duty to help out, and I know my duty.” Prair was talking to himself now, and that bothered LaMoia all the more. “I should have said something early on, okay? I’m good with that. But you can see my side of it.”
“Of course I can.” It didn’t sound convincing, even to him.
“Something like this, and I’m done. I’m running a cash booth in a mall parking garage. Give me a fucking break.”
“There’s definitely room to work this right,” LaMoia said.
“You give anyone your source on this, and I’m fucked. You can see that, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” LaMoia said, “we’re good on that.”
“How good?”
“Let me get something straight,” LaMoia said. “You saw this other guy, the one on the fire escape, but not any kind of good look.”
“I got the hell out of there. I told you.” Prair paused, considering this. “You’re thinking it was the brother, this creep bothering Daphne.”
LaMoia said nothing. He didn’t like hearing Prair calling Matthews by her first name. He felt incredibly protective at that moment.
Prair said, “I’m good with saying I saw him, if that’s what you need, if that would help your present situation. If maybe you and I could do a little business here. Maybe you see clear to get around directly involving me in this.”
Did this clown hear himself? LaMoia wondered. He was dealing with a pathological liar, a man who’d say anything to a woman to get himself laid, anything to a fellow cop to keep his record clean. LaMoia said, “My opinion, Nate: You’ve got some issues here need working out.”
“Issues,” Prair agreed, nodding slightly. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“We’re gonna want to go over this again,” LaMoia said.
“Not officially, we’re not. No fucking way. You can forget about it. You call me in, and I’m making like Sergeant Shultz.
You’re gonna see my guild rep’s ugly ass. Me? I’ll be swigging tall boys over at the Cock and Bull.”
LaMoia’s right hand found the door lock button-he kept the move as subtle as possible. For him the air heated up a few hundred degrees. He popped the button, the loud click like a muted gunshot. “You know, Nate, shit like this works out for the best.”
“You bring me in, and I’ve got me a bad case of laryngitis.”
“SPD and KCSO, we’re talking apples and oranges here,”
LaMoia reminded. “One hand doesn’t always wash the other.
We put you down as an informer, and we can block your identity.” It didn’t work like that, but a guy like Prair thought he knew more about detective work than he actually did.
A cell phone rang. LaMoia reached for his, only to realize it was Prair’s ringing. The cop answered the phone. “The fuck you say!” His eyes tracked to LaMoia, and for a moment the detective believed he might be the topic of discussion. Had Sheila Hill jumped the gun with her phone calls? Had Prair just been alerted he was under investigation for something that showed in one of his ticket books nearly two years earlier? “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” he said. He ended the call, studied LaMoia out of the side of his eyes as if about to say something.
He then looked out the windshield at the appealing skyline.
LaMoia wished he could have enjoyed the moment. Prair said, “We’re all done here, Cool. I gotta roll.”
LaMoia felt the relief loosen his muscles and allow him to move. For a moment, he’d been frozen in the seat. “We’ll work this through, Nate. No sweat.”
“Just remember what I told you: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. But if you turn Dick Tracy on me, my memory’s gone to shit.”
“Got it,” LaMoia said, managing to open the car door and connect with the security of the sidewalk. He fingered the lump of the tape recorder in his coat pocket.
“You want me to drop you, it’s on the way.”
“I’m good,” LaMoia said.
“Whatever.”
LaMoia slammed the door shut. His left thumb turned off the tape recorder as Prair pulled into traffic. It was raining. But like everyone else in this city, LaMoia didn’t feel it.
A little over twenty minutes later, having headed directly back to Public Safety and winded from hurrying down the hall, LaMoia knocked on the office’s open door, expecting to see Matthews behind her desk. Ironically, Matthews understood Prair better than anyone-she’d freak when she heard what he had on tape. His shoulders slouched in disappointment and he turned to the secretary pool. “Matthews have a meeting or something? Where can I find her?”
“Lost time,” the closest of the secretaries answered, glancing up to the grid on the wall.
“What are you talking about?” he said, his voice noticeably louder.
“Lost time, Sergeant.”
“She’s on a wire. She’s under surveillance,” he said, though he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want her out there unprotected.
The snotty secretary answered, “So how hard can it be to find her?” She mumbled under her breath something about his being a detective after all, and the woman next to her grinned with the comment.
LaMoia said sternly, “Make some calls and find her. I’m on my cell phone.” He started off at a walk and broke into a run as he avoided the elevator and took to the stairs. He had her mobile number ringing in his ear by the time he reached the fifth floor. Her voice mail answered. What was with that?
He called Special Ops dispatch from his office cubicle.
They’d heard nothing about Matthews leaving the building.
“You check the ladies’ room?” the dispatcher asked.
LaMoia mumbled back at the man, incoherent. She wasn’t in the bathroom-he knew this in his gut. Something, someone, had drawn her out of the building, and LaMoia was bound and determined to find out what was going on. He’d find Boldt, he’d page the day-shift squad detectives to call him back. He’d check with the lab, the MEs. Anyone else he could think of.
He’d broken into a clammy sweat. His eyes stung; his palms were damp.
What the hell was happening to him?
Lost Time
In addition to the pink telephone memo that had inappropriately interrupted the interrogation of Vanderhorst, Matthews found a voice mail on her cell phone as well. “Miss Matthews?” Margaret’s warbling voice was itself enough to make Matthews feel sick. “I’m … I’ve screwed up, pretty bad. Real bad. You said to call. So … so I’m calling.” No address, no phone number.
Matthews dug around in her jeans pocket and came up with the folded memo. Thank God, she thought, glad she’d saved it.
There wasn’t any address to speak of, only the notation, “above Mario’s.” She pulled out the phone book and
