of the rum. He has steady hazel eyes set in a face that’s the caramel color of a Coach bag she owns. He is just her height in heels.
“What’s this music?” she asks.
“It’s a machine for the suppression of time,” he says.
“Pardon?”
“Levi-Strauss.”
“Levi-Strauss?”
“Yeah. Plays third base for the White Sox. How about those Marlins?”
“You’re Jimmy Paz,” she says.
“And how do you deduce that, Dr. Wise?” A grin now, small white teeth shining, like a cat.
“Sheryl said you were brainy. I don’t think many men at this party would respond to a question with a quotation from Levi-Strauss.”
“Only those on the structural anthropology softball team.”
“Of which you are a member.”
“I am. Leftbricoleur. We play ball, we down a case of cold ones, and sit around the locker room discussingTristes Tropiques.”
“Seriously, what is this music?”
“It’stimba. A Cuban record, a band called Klimax.”
“What are they singing about?”
“Yo no quiero que mi novia sea religiosa. I don’t want my girlfriend to be religious. Speaking of which, how’s our girl?”
“Oh, no, not shop! And here I thought you were dancing with me because you liked my dress,” Lorna says, not really believing that she has let this slip from between her lips.
He flings her out and leads her through an elaborate break and then snaps her back close. He smells of tobacco, not a smell she is used to on the health-conscious men she tends to hang with. Not unpleasant, though. Spicy. He throws her out again to the beat and now he gives her a long appreciative look that she feels running over her skin like heat. He says, “No, it was mainly the dress. Mainly the nondress zones, to be honest. Creamy. It makes me wish I had a long spoon.”
“I think we could use another drink,” she says.
Somewhat later they are sitting side by side on a somewhat ratty Bahama couch in the Waitses’ Florida room with that drink, Lorna’s a second foolhardy daiq and Paz with some dark brown liquid on ice. Lorna sees Sheryl zoom by with a tray of nibbles. Sheryl spots the two of them and rolls her eyes while licking her lips dramatically. Lorna sticks out her tongue.
Paz catches this action but declines to comment on it. Instead he says, “So. What do we have?”
It takes a second for Lorna to recall what he is talking about. Then she hears herself talking, the words slow and only a little slurred. She listens to the person speak, as from a great distance. “Two interviews and one notebook full of writing. From the interviews, nothing much. She’s a hard case, very smart, doesn’t want to give anything away. There’s a…I don’t know how to put it, a split in her, somewhere deep. Her usual persona is mild, saintly, lots of religious references. But occasionally, if she feels pressed…”
“Out comes the spider woman,” says Paz.
“You’ve seen it too?Her, I should say.” Lorna feels a rush of grateful relief. She has not discussed this aspect of her client with Mickey Lopez.
“Oh, yeah. I saw something when I interviewed her after the arrest. A look in her eyes. That’s when I knew we weren’t dealing with the Little Flower.”
“Excuse me, the little…”
“A saint, Teresa of Lisieux. I guess you’re not Catholic.”
“No. But I’m sure it’s not simple malingering. I’ve seen a lot of that and it’s fairly easy to tease out. We have tests that…anyway, not to get technical, but she’s for real, there really is something bent in there. That confession you got her to write tends to confirm that. She had a horrendous childhood.”
Paz listens as she summarizes the contents of the first notebook, professionally sympathetic, not particularly shocked; he has heard and seen worse. Studying the woman as she speaks, he sees something unsaid flickering behind her bland professional delivery, and he knows that she has seen the same kind of inexplicable transformation he’d seen himself. It wasn’t just a look in Emmylou Dideroff’s eyes, but what it actually was he cannot say, doesn’t want to think about, and for damned sure is not about to bring up just now.
He says, “A double murder-suicide should be easy to check. So she sets up her mom to whack her stepfather and the little brother goes down too. Quite the sweetheart. But even though she has no problem spilling that, she totally denies tossing our guy off that balcony. How do you figure that?”
“She’s not legally responsible for what her mother did. It’s no crime leaving out a key and depriving someone of tranks. But clonking someone on the head and throwing them to their death is a different story. I think.”
“So, you think we’re being gamed?”
“No, she’s not a psychopath. In fact she feels responsible for everything.”
She sees the confusion on Paz’s face, feels it in her own mind too. This is actually stupid, trying to discuss a case with a cop with her being half in the tank.
Lorna is finishing her second daiquiri now, and as she does, a young boy is standing in front of her with a tray of tall cups full of the same brew. He is dressed in a too-large maroon monkey jacket and has a clip-on bow tie loosely clutching the collar of his white shirt.
“Take another one,” he says.
“Does your mother know you’re dispensing liquor, young man?” says Lorna.
“She said Ihad to, that’s how low she is. You want a daiquiri, Detective Paz?”
“I don’t think so, John. I believe I would be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
“Wimp,” says the boy. “Wethepo-lice here,” and turns to Lorna.
“C’mon take one, Lola, it’s a party!” he says, taking the empty and placing a full cup on the wooden arm of the couch. He gives Lorna a frank once-over. “Lookin’ fine, Lola. Dress is da bomb!” He slides away into the crowded room.
“Lola?” says Paz.
“My family name around here. One of the kids called me that when she was a baby and it stuck.”
“It suits you. In that outfit.”
“You think it’s da bomb, too, hm?” She takes a sip of the new drink. She knows that if she finishes it, she will be really drunk, fraternity house drunk, as she has been careful not to be for some time. She decides to go ahead. Better to be completely incapable of speech than try to make sense of Emmylou Dideroff on half a brain. Also, she is sitting with a man who knows who Levi-Strauss is. She drinks her drink so quickly that its chill makes her jaw ache, aware of Paz watching her, that little grin playing around his broad lips. She leans toward him, a little closer actually than she had planned, her breast squashing up against his arm. “How about another little dance, Detective?” she says.
She groans and pulls the sheet up against the morning sunlight. There is a dull pain behind her eyes, and her entire pharynx feels dry enough to crackle. It is painted thick with the particularly foul rotten-molasses taste you get when you drink a lot of rum. Her mind is perfectly empty, even for a moment or two void of her own identity. Memory returns in a slow trickle: who she is, where she is (her own bedroom), her current condition. She is hungover and naked. No, not quite, she is wearing the red lace thong from last night. There memory stalls. She recalls the third daiquiri and Paz and whirling with him around the patio and his insolent, examining grin, and then a blank. It is inconceivable that she could have driven home, so someone must have driven her. She can’t recall. Did she have sex? She might have taken on the Dolphins’ defensive line for all she knows. Sheryl calls, but Lorna has no dirt to give her, and they arrange for the return of Lorna’s car amid a degree of girlish giggling that only increases the pounding in Lorna’s skull.
An hour later, the car has been dropped off, she has showered (after confirming that the only pubic hairs clinging to her skin are those she grew herself) and eaten Advil and drunk half a pot of black coffee. She is lying in the lounge chair in her office, trying and failing to get interested in a recent novel. She is restless, wired, the
