where to find me, sir,’ he said, then turned and walked out.
Malcherson sat quietly at his desk for a long time after he left.
43
Magozzi and Gino were at the big front table in Homicide, making copies of the reams of paperwork they’d all accumulated since the night Arlen Fischer and Morey Gilbert had been murdered. Paul Shafer was in Malcherson’s office now with a couple of his FBI henchmen, formalizing the turnover of the Fischer case and all related evidence. They’d be here in a few minutes to collect it.
McLaren wheeled in a dolly with four large boxes he’d retrieved from the evidence room. ‘This is the last of the stuff we took from Fischer’s place.’ He stopped at Gloria’s desk and wiped his forehead. ‘You want to give me a hand with this, Miss Gloria?’
She held up ten black-enameled fingers and wiggled them. ‘Look at these and tell me how much of a fool you are for asking such a stupid question.’
McLaren put a hand to his heart. ‘I am a fool. I am anything you want me to be. All you have to do is ask.’
‘I want you to be gone.’
‘I want you to be my woman.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She slammed out of her little cubicle and stomped away on her black platforms.
He grinned and wheeled the dolly over to the table. ‘I think I’m getting to her.’
‘A regular Lothario, that’s what you are,’ Gino said, grabbing a box. ‘You know, McLaren, if you ever lifted anything heavier than a pencil with those little chicken wing arms of yours, you wouldn’t have to ask a woman for help.’
‘Who’s Lothario? And where the hell is Langer, anyway? I swear, that guy finds something else to do every time we’ve got to bring these boxes upstairs.’
Magozzi stepped away from the table when his cell rang.
‘Hey, Magozzi.’
‘Hey, Grace.’
‘I saw the news. I’m sorry about your friend, Marty. That must have been terrible. Are you okay?’
God, he loved it when she worried about him. ‘Not really.’
‘Maybe I could come over tonight, cook you supper, we could open a few bottles of wine.’
Magozzi took a few more steps away from the table and lowered his voice. ‘You want to come to
‘I have a present for you.’
Magozzi’s spirits spread their little wings and tried to flap. ‘You’re not going to Arizona?’
‘Sorry, Magozzi. Annie flies in this afternoon, we all leave tomorrow.’
Splat. Spirits squashed under Grace MacBride’s boot.
‘This is a different present.’
‘So it’s a going-away present. Goddamnit, Grace, that sucks.’
‘You’ll like it. I’ll be there at seven.’
Magozzi closed his phone and decided that he didn’t give a damn if Grace MacBride went to Arizona or the moon. Gino was right. He needed a life. He needed a woman – preferably one who’d help him buy a sofa. Oh, he’d let her come over tonight, they’d eat a little, drink a little, and maybe he’d even bend her over backwards once and kiss her until her boots blew off, but then, by God, he’d kick her ass out. That’s what he was going to do.
Gino looked over at him, brows raised. ‘Grace?’
‘Yeah,’ Magozzi growled, sounding like a real man, a man who didn’t care, a man who was taking charge. He wondered if the silly grin he felt on his face spoiled the image.
Harley Davidson was behind the wheel of the custom-built forty-five-foot RV, his beefy, tattooed arms draped over the big steering wheel, his solid frame enveloped in a Connolly leather captain’s chair specifically designed to accommodate his size. It had cost twenty thousand to have the chair made; another thousand to air-express it over from the small Italian furniture company he’d commissioned for the job; another three grand to install the hydraulics. A white grin sliced through his black beard. It had been worth every penny. ‘Goddamnit, I love this thing. I’d drive her to hell and back and be a happy man.’
The storklike man next to him folded long, scrawny arms over his bony chest and pouted. ‘It’s my turn. I want to drive it. You drove to the airport, I should get to drive back. So pull over.’
Harley’s eyes darted right – you couldn’t look away from the road too long in this baby or you’d take out a subdivision. Roadrunner was in his customary head-to-toe Lycra, but today it was blaze orange. Harley felt like he was about to talk to a construction cone. ‘Roadrunner, you are never driving this machine. Get it out of your head.’
‘Oh yeah? Why not?’
‘Well, gee, lemme think. Number one, you do not, and never have had a driver’s license. Number two, the only thing you’ve driven for the past thirty years is a bicycle. The brakes are not on the handlebars in this thing, you dipshit.’
‘Would you guys quit fighting?’ Annie drawled petulantly from behind them, and Harley’s gaze jerked to one of the seven mirrors. He had three of them adjusted so he could see three different angles of Annie Belinsky sprawled languidly on one of the couches. She was wearing this skintight fawn-colored suede thing with fringe on the bottom and beads on the top and omigod, cowboy boots with spurs. ‘Christ, Annie, I can almost feel those spurs in my flanks.’
Annie glared at his back. ‘Imagine that. I’ve only been gone for two weeks, and yet somehow I managed to totally forget what a disgusting pig you are, Harley.’
‘He missed you,’ Grace said. She was slouched on the opposite couch, booted feet stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. ‘We all did.’
Roadrunner spun his chair around and faced Annie. ‘Did you bring me a present?’
‘Honey, I sure did. It’s in that little black bag right there.’
Roadrunner’s face lit up, and he started digging in the bag until he found a tissue-wrapped parcel. He ripped it open and held up a lime green Lycra cowboy shirt, complete with piping on the yoke, mother-of-pearl snaps, and a cow skull applique on the pocket. ‘Oh, man, Annie, this is great. Where did you find a Lycra cowboy shirt?’
‘Let me tell you, Phoenix is a shopper’s paradise if you’re into the Urban Cowboy look. They put a cactus, a cow skull, or a piece of fringe on damn near anything. That came from a specialty bike shop a few miles out of town.’
Roadrunner stood up, his head almost brushing the seven-foot ceiling, and peeled off his orange Lycra top.
Harley glanced at him, then did a double-take. ‘Jesus Christ, Roadrunner, is that your chest or did you swallow a xylophone?’
‘A man with boobs your size shouldn’t be criticizing.’
‘These are not boobs, they are pecs.’
Annie put her head in her hands. ‘Are you two going to be like this all the way to Arizona?’
‘You should have heard them when they were putting this rig together,’ Grace said. ‘Couple of old bickering hens.’
Roadrunner was beaming, now newly dressed in his southwestern finery. He posed in his blaze orange stick legs and his lime green shirt. ‘How do I look?’
Harley glanced at him. ‘Are you kidding? You look like a goddamned carrot.’
Annie rolled her eyes and looked at Grace. ‘How’d that thing you were working on for Magozzi turn out?’
‘Turned out great,’ Harley boomed, loath to be left out of any conversation within shouting distance. ‘Our Gracie cracked the case with that face-recognition software she put together.’
‘You go, girl. That thing’s going to make a jillion dollars when you get it down to idiot level and put it on the Web. So what was the case all about?’
Grace closed her eyes. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘The lady wants to know,’ Harley said. ‘And I’m the man to tell her. You see, Annie, this is the way it went
