Through The Grinder

that you knew her from school or something?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “Her name is Sally McNeil. Crazy girl. Back in college, she changed it to ‘Sahara’ to sound more exotic.” He laughed. “I know her from college, that’s all. We hadn’t spoken for years — not since Maxi and I moved East, anyway. So we just had drinks at a bar that night, and I walked her home. I’ll probably stay in touch with her to be honest with you, but just as a friend.”

Why was he speaking about her in the present tense? The woman had been killed this morning…unless…he didn’t know she’d been killed yet…my god…he doesn’t know….

“Just last night, she e-mailed me the phone numbers of two old friends I hadn’t seen in years. They’d dated her — in succession. To be honest, I never saw why. She’s such an artsy phony. Pretty superficially out for herself, too, you know? Not my type at all…you know why?”

“No.”

He smiled. “You’re my type.”

Bruce leaned in. I leaned back.

“And what about other women? You mentioned Valerie Lathem already…and that didn’t work out…but you said you tried on-line dating?”

Bruce laughed. “You’re seriously going to give me the third degree?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. All right. For me, dot-com dating was an unmitigated disaster. It just was the wrong thing for me to get involved with.”

“How many women did you meet?”

“About six or seven, I guess. Maybe ten tops.”

“Anyone in particular strike your fancy?”

“If that’s a cute way of saying did I sleep with any of them, yes, I did. One of them.”

Oh, god. I didn’t know if I really wanted to hear this, but it wasn’t just me wondering, it was Quinn…

“Tell me. I want to know. Who was she? Did you practice safe sex?”

“Of course, I practiced safe sex, and her name is Inga Berg. She lives in one of those new condos by the river, and I used to see her at the Blend, although not lately, and frankly, I’ll be happy if I never see her again.”

I noticed Bruce’s verbs were present tense. He was talking about Inga as if she were still alive. Like Sally McNeil, he didn’t seem to know about Inga’s death. It wasn’t all that hard to believe, actually, since the news of Inga’s plunge hadn’t hit the front page of the papers like Valerie’s had. With all the crime and death in this city, Inga’s was just one more. There’d been a small item in two of the tabloids, but that was it. If you weren’t a daily reader of either paper, you could easily have missed it.

“You want my unvarnished word for her? You’ll probably think I’m a pig, but I found her…” He sighed. “Disposable.”

“Oh, that’s not a good word to use, Bruce.”

Especially when Quinn questions you tomorrow or the next day, or whenever he’s got enough of a case to pressure you into a “confession.”

“I’m sorry, but Inga Berg is such a psycho. She’s attractive, sure, but she made me sorry I got involved with her in pretty much less than two weeks.”

“So you went to bed with her?”

“No bed was involved.”

Not the SUV. Please not the SUV.

“I want to know.”

Bruce sighed. Not happily. “Your really want me to totally wreck the romantic ambiance of this evening of ours, don’t you?”

“I just…I just need to know…”

“Fine, you want to know everything, I’m an open guy, I want you to trust me, so I’ll let you know everything. Inga wanted to sleep together from the beginning. She wanted to do it in her new SUV on the roof of her building, but I said no. We ended up against the wall of her apartment’s living room the first night. After that, she wanted to hook up in public places, which I dissuaded her from.

“Our last night together, she’d taken her panties off at dinner, put my hand under her skirt, which gave the waiter a thrill but not me, frankly. Then she went crazy in the back of the cab home. She was just all over me…I wasn’t that turned on by her, but she was aggressive and I went with the momentum. But the event was more sordid than sexy, frankly.”

“Really?”

“Really. The idea of this stuff may fly in a fantasy porno magazine, but in reality, when you’re not young and drunk and you can’t stop worrying about one of your crews showing up on time for an important job the next day, it’s just…skeevy. The cab driver kept glancing in his mirror and…”

Bruce took a long swig of wine. “I’m just not an exhibitionist, I guess. When she got out of the cab, she was half naked, and didn’t seem to care. So I made sure she got up to her apartment safely — then I left. For good.”

“I see.”

“I like sex. I like hot sex. But I’m a conventional guy, Clare. I actually like the finer things. I like romance. I like elegance. To be blunt, I don’t want to worry about a woman I’m escorting embarrassing me. I’ve got too much on the line with my business, city officials, my work, everything I’ve built. I think at least one former president will agree that we may all be just one intern away from disaster. Anyway, the bottom line is, my work aside, I could never respect a woman that out of control. And if I can’t respect a woman, I can’t love her, can I?”

I swallowed uneasily. He sounded angry now. This really was turning into a wrecked evening. But…I had my answers.

Bruce had a plausible reason to leave the Cappuccino Connection with Sahara McNeil. And I’d always known Inga Berg liked to “shop and drop” men. Now I also knew she could be a reckless woman, one who could have gone out with any number of men who’d snapped and gone violent on her. And, clearly, Bruce was not the SUV guy. Unless he was lying to me, but with the wine and the emotion in his voice, I could tell he wasn’t.

“Thanks for being honest, Bruce. I needed to hear what you had to say.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

“I’m not.”

He sighed and poured more wine. We’d come to the bottom of the bottle.

“You’re entitled to ask me the same questions,” I told him.

“I don’t need to. I’m with you now, no matter who you saw in your past, and I’m interested in being with you — and making you happy enough to want to be with me…maybe even…eventually…exclusively.”

Whoa. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?

“You haven’t known me very long to say a thing like that,” I said softly.

“Clare, I’m too old and too freaking busy to play games. These days, it doesn’t take me long to know what I want. But…I can see you need time…and I can respect that.”

“I think I know what I want, too, Bruce,” I said softly. “You won’t have to wait long.”

He smiled. “Good.”

I smiled, too. “Are you ready for some cappuccino, maybe?”

“Sure,” he said.

I set up the Pavoni for him on the scratched counter of the old, unfinished kitchen, filling the water reservoir, plugging it into the electric socket, and quickly assembling the portafilter parts. This was an extravagant home machine model — probably worth around four hundred dollars — and it included its own grinder, doser, espresso maker, and steam wand for creating foamed milk.

I hated to tell him I still had the five dollar stovetop machine my grandmother had brought over from Italy with her — and it still made the best espresso in town as far as I was concerned.

“Remember the night I met you at the Blend?” asked Bruce. “I warned you I can drink espressos all day and night, but I can’t for the life of me make them myself.”

“It’s not that hard. Remember, you’re a man who can improvise, right?” I teased.