‘Suite,’ Mackey said.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Li said, and laughed. Mackey was right; he liked to laugh. ‘Her suite,’ he corrected himself. ‘Nothing in that fine suite to suggest its sole occupant was a common burglar. They have on their hands a suspicious situation, in that Ms. Fawcett will not reveal her true identity, nor have they been able to find her true identity on their own. Other than that, they have the testimony of Darlene Johnson-Ross’
‘The dance studio woman,’ Mackey interjected.
‘Yes.’ Li nodded. ‘The source of all Ms. Fawcett’s problems, if it comes to that. She is the one who informed the police that Ms. Fawcett has been operating in this city under a false name and background, and she is the one who claims to have seen Ms. Fawcett in a parked car a block from the Armory late last night.’
Mackey said, ‘Took a picture?’
Li shook his head. ‘Drove by, alone, in a moving automobile, in the middle of the night. Saw, for an instant, not near any streetlight, a blonde at the wheel of an unmoving car. While, of course, she has been obsessing about a blonde she has seen at her dance studio. On the stand, I’d demolish that identification in three minutes.’
Mackey said, ‘We don’t want to go on the stand.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Li assured him. ‘We shouldbe getting bail, we really should, since there’s so little to tie Ms. Fawcett to the crime, except for the problem of identity. Still, I could make a strong case in front of a judge, and the police know it, and don’t want to lose control of Ms. Fawcett until they find out who she is.’
‘Which is never,’ Mackey said.
‘In the interim,’ Li said, ‘they’ve put up Ms. Johnson-Ross to file a complaint against Ms. Fawcett for false statements on a credit application.’
Mackey said, ‘What credit application? Brenda paid cash.’
‘Exactly.’ Li spread his hands. ‘It’s merely a plot to stall things, delay the release. A false statement on a credit application isa misdemeanor, but the form Ms. Fawcett filled out at the dance studio was nota credit application, since she was paying cash. It’s simply a maneuver to keep her in their grasp.’
Mackey said, ‘And this Johnson-Ross goes along with it?’
‘She will, in the morning,’ Li told him. ‘They weren’t quite ready today, and I was raising a number of objections, including the possibility that Ms. Johnson-Ross might find herself facing a severe lawsuit from Ms. Fawcett once this is all over, which led Ms. Johnson-Ross to say she’d need to consult her own lawyer before agreeing to make out the complaint, so that step has now been scheduled for ten tomorrow morning.’
Mackey and Parker looked at each other. Catching the look, Li said, calmly, ‘Let me point out, the very worst thing that could happen to Ms. Fawcett’s chances to successfully put this episode behind her would be for some unfortunate accident to occur before ten tomorrow morning to Ms. Johnson-Ross. The police don’t believe in coincidence.’
Mackey said, ‘So what do you do next?’
‘Argue, dispute, disrupt,’ Li told him. ‘I will do my best to quash Ms. Johnson-Ross’s complaint, I will do my best to have bail set, but, from the way it looks at this point, I’m afraid Ms. Fawcett will be facing at least one more night of detention.’
‘You’ll do what you can,’ Mackey said.
Li shrugged. ‘Of course.’ From inside his jacket he drew a long white envelope printed with his firm’s return address. ‘My retainer,’ he murmured.
Parker took the envelope and put it away. He said, ‘She’ll send you an extra two K. You can give it to Brenda or one of us.’
Li nodded.. ‘I understand. Walking-around money.’
‘Moving-around money,’ Parker said.
3
At the beer distributor’s, Williams had drawn maps of the Fifth Street station, exterior and interior, all four floors, the streets of that neighborhood. ‘I don’t say it’s complete,’ he warned them. ‘It’s what I remember.’
They stood at the conference table, looking at the half dozen rough pencil drawings on the backs of old order forms. Parker and Mackey hadn’t had much to say to each other in the cab back to this neighborhood, nor the three-block walk through deepening dusk from where they’d left the cab, but now Parker said, ‘It’s breaking out again.’
‘I know,’ Williams said. ‘All we do is break outa things. And now break this woman Brenda out.’
Mackey said, ‘I don’t want to do it that way.’
Williams looked at him. ‘What other way is there? They got her in there. She’s locked down.’
‘I don’t know what the other way is,’ Mackey said. ‘She’s never been fingerprinted before. She’s got no record, no historywith the law. If we go in there and break her out, now she’s got a history and now they’ve got her prints and now she can’t live her life the same way she always did. There’s got to be another way.’
Parker said, ‘Li’s right, the big problem is the dance studio woman.’
‘Yeah, she is,’ Mackey said. ‘But Li’s also right that we can’t touch her. It would make things worse for Brenda because, first of all, it would prove we’re connected to her. If Ms. Johnson-Ross gets a cold sore tonight, Brenda’s behind bars the rest of her life.’
Parker said, ‘Well, we’ve only got two choices, unless we just walk away, and I know you don’t want to do that.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Mackey said, almost as though he wanted an argument.
Parker nodded at Williams’ drawings. ‘We can either go into this Fifth Street station tonight and bring Brenda out, and she lives the way you say, the way you and I live, the way Williams lives, or we go see this dance studio
