He paused and watched her face. So did I. She showed nothing that I could see. Women could be tough cookies, just as tough as men, although in my experience with cookies-let’s save this one for another time. Dina was a tough cookie; leave it at that.
“Carla’s not the only murder victim in this case,” Bernie went on, “not even the only murder victim who was also a friend of yours.”
One of Dina’s eyelids twitched, always a promising sign for us.
“There are three victims,” Bernie said. “You knew two for sure, and I’ve got a hunch you knew the third one as well.” Bernie: a great interviewer, and right now-at the top of his game-he was something to see.
Dina’s eyelid twitched some more.
“How about we start with the first one-your closest childhood pal?” Bernie said.
“I already told you,” Dina said. “Carla went off to the magnet school and-”
Bernie held up his hand in the stop sign. “I’m talking about April Spears,” Bernie said. “Wasn’t she your oldest pal?” He paused. “Her mother thinks so.”
Dina’s eyes shifted. That’s a human thing for when they’ve got to come up with something real fast. Bernie says that if they’ve shifted their eyes, they’re already too slow.
She looked at him. “Why do I always get the relentless type?”
“Maybe there’s something in you that discourages the others,” Bernie said.
Her face went white.
“But none of that matters right now,” Bernie said. “What matters is why you didn’t tell me about April.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Not in so many words,” Bernie said. “But we were all around it. For example, you were vague about the Flower Mart, pretended it meant nothing to you. Care to revise that statement?”
Dina said nothing.
Bernie lowered his voice, just at the time when you might have thought he was going to raise it. “Your best friend was stabbed to death and tossed in the trash, Dina. Come on.”
Dina squeezed her eyes shut. The tiniest drop leaked from the corner of one of them. “When I heard that…” She shook her head. “It tore me apart. I’ve never been the same.”
Bernie’s face, already pretty hard, got harder. “Who killed her?”
“I don’t know.” Dina looked at Bernie’s face. “Oh, my God, you can’t think it was me. She was my best friend. We had pet names for each other, from when we could barely talk.”
“What were they?” Bernie said.
A smile crossed Dina’s face, very small and quickly gone, but she looked a little younger in that moment. “She called me Dee Dee. I called her Prilly.”
Bernie said nothing.
“Now you’re going to grill me on where I was when she was killed and can I prove it,” Dina said.
“Nope,” said Bernie. “Although I am interested in whether the police ever talked to you.”
“They didn’t.”
“Tell me about Manny Chavez,” Bernie said.
“I knew Manny,” Dina said. “He was her boyfriend for, like, six weeks. Boyfriends came and went back then. It wasn’t that serious-we were seventeen.”
“Were they having sex?” Bernie said.
“Who wasn’t?” said Dina. “She wasn’t in love with him, or anything like that.”
“Was it more serious for him?”
She shrugged. “Maybe not because of who she was, but what she was.”
“Meaning?”
“Blond and Anglo. A kind of status thing, especially for those gangbanger types.”
“Manny was in a gang?”
“He was more of a wannabe-had a Harley, which was what attracted April in the first place-but some of the others were the real thing.”
“What others?”
“Guys Manny hung with,” Dina said.
“What was the name of the gang?”
Dina shook her head. “I’m not sure it was that well organized, with a name and everything. There was one guy, a little older, maybe. I remember not liking the way he looked at me. I was crazy back then, but not foolish.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t remember. Something Hispanic, maybe.”
“Like Ramon?” Bernie said.
“Might have been.”
“Last time we spoke, you said that name meant nothing to you.”
“So? A person can’t forget minor details with you?”
Bernie seemed to think about that for a moment. “Have you seen Ramon since?” he said.
“Since… since the summer April died? No.”
“What about Manny?”
“No.”
“Heard anything about him over the years?”
“No.”
“How about lately?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t know he was stabbed to death last week?”
Dina put a hand to her chest. “I did not.”
“Happened in a foreclosed house on North Coursin Street,” Bernie said. “Only a dozen blocks from here.”
She raised her hands, palms up.
“April’s mother told me her daughter dumped Manny,” Bernie said.
“How is she?”
“Not too good. But is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she dump him?”
“I told you,” Dina said. “Back then six weeks-”
Bernie made a chopping motion. I liked seeing that, hoped it would happen again, and soon. “Her mother heard her on the phone, almost certainly with you,” Bernie said, “saying she was interested in someone else. I need that name.”
Dina said nothing.
“How much did you have to drink at the ball game?”
Dina looked surprised. I was, too. Ball game? Had there been talk of a ball game, kind of vague and “The night Carla had those box seats,” Bernie added.
Dina shrugged. “I probably had a few beers.”
“I’m guessing you’re one of those people who get more talkative after a pop or two.”
“Guess away.”
“And maybe you wanted to impress her-this successful reporter-with a tidbit of information she didn’t know.”
Silence. It went on and on. Not a complete silence for me, on account of a rat I heard creeping across the space above the ceiling.
At last Bernie said, “You’ve answered the question.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You should have said, What tidbit? The fact that you didn’t means you told Carla that Thad Perry was from the Valley or spent time here. The question is why you’re trying to hide it.”
Dina glared at him. Yes, a tough cookie.
“So far,” Bernie said, “it doesn’t look like you’re in any kind of trouble. But once a series of murders starts up,
