in several key places. Her cream satin blouse was open three buttons down and tucked into a short olive green skirt. A wide black belt was wrapped around her waist. Black stockings covered her legs, and on her feet were a pair of olive green pumps. Her thin face was lightly freckled, and the freckles were fred hthe same shade of those that were liberally sprinkled across the top of her chest. Lipstick the color of her hair was drawn across her wide mouth. Her eyes were pale green. She extended her hand. I shook it and held it until she pulled it gently back.
“You’re Jack?” I said.
“Jack can’t see you,” she said. “My name’s Lyla. Lyla McCubbin. I’m the managing editor.”
“Nick Stefanos.”
I handed her the same card I had given the receptionist, removed my overcoat, and had a seat in a high- backed chair across from her desk. Lyla sat back down and studied the card.
Her office was a clutter of newspaper and computer paper. Beside her desk was a word processor with green characters on the screen. A section of an article she was editing on the computer had been blocked off in black. Three Rolodexes, a black phone, and a blotter-style desk calendar crowded the top of her desk. Behind her on the white wall hung the office’s sole photograph, a picture of a fair-haired child standing between her parents, a young hippie family at a Dupont Circle rally, circa 1969. The child had freckles across her face, and she was holding her father’s hand. A Walkman rigged to an external speaker sat next to the computer, softly playing King Crimson’s “Matte Kudasai.”
Lyla folded her hands in front of her on the desk. “Rolanda said you wanted to speak to someone about William Henry.”
“That’s right.”
“What about?”
“His murder.”
“What have you got to do with it?”
“I’m looking into it.”
Lyla took a pencil out of a leather cup and tapped the sharp end on her blotter. “Who are you working for?”
“Myself,” I said. “And Henry.”
Lyla’s phone rang. She kept her eyes on mine and let it ring a few times before she picked it up. “Tell him I’ll call him back.” She replaced the receiver and studied my face. “So,” she said finally. “You’re a private dick.”
“ ‘A black private dick. With a sex machine for all the chicks.’”
“ ‘Shaft’?”
“ ‘You daamn right.’”
Lyla threw her head back and laughed. It was an easy laugh, from way down in her throat. I liked the way it sounded and the unconscious way her mouth opened wide when she did it.
“Well,” she said, “at least I know that we’re from the same generation.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I saw Shaft, first run, at the Town Theatre, on Thirteenth Street. 1971. My grandfather took me-against his better judgment.”
‹' wheatfont size='3'›“The Loews Palace on F Street,” she said. “That was my first downtown film experience. A Liz Taylor double bill, no less. Butterfield Eight, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“So you’re a real Washingtonian.”
“All my life.”
“Me too,” I said.
Lyla replaced the pencil in the cup, smiled, and leaned back in her chair. The movement made her camisole shift beneath her satin blouse, and I watched the rise of her freckled breasts. She crossed her left leg over her right. The muscles in her thighs became defined with the action. I shifted in my chair to get a better look. She watched me do it, and neither of us flinched.
“You came here to talk about William Henry,” she said.
“Right.”
“Any progress on the case?”
“Not with the police. Apparently things got cold, real quick. I managed to dig up some stuff on my own.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“You asking questions now?”
“Sorry,” Lyla said. She brushed some lint off the side of her skirt. “It’s a habit. You and I are basically in the same business, right?”
I nodded. “I used to read your bylines when you were still doing investigative. Before they hired Henry and bumped you up to managing editor.”
“William Henry improved on my work,” she said. “He was a damn good reporter.”
“He was a good friend too.”
“Yes, he was.” Lyla stared off toward the blank white wall to her left. “Jack had hired him, in a private interview. So on his first day of work, when he walked in, none of us knew what to expect. Anyway, he comes in, and here’s this trim, compact guy, on the short side, with long sideburns-they weren’t stylish then-and one of those Ben Bradlee striped shirts, with a rep tie. His hair was receding too, remember, and he wore wire-rims, which only added to that Ivy League schoolboy look.” Lyla ran a finger along the top of her lip. “So you can imagine that all of us so-called alternative types here didn’t trust him at first. But right away he had us all loosened up-that little son of a bitch had the driest sense of humor, and the finest heart, of anyone ever walked through that front door.”
“His death,” I said. “It wasn’t a random murder. That lead, about the light-skinned guy with the bloody shirt, seen leaving his apartment-I think that was basically bullshit, a plant of some kind.”
Lyla leaned in and said, “Tell me about it.”
“The information I got was that the murderer was let up into Henry’s apartment, by the security guard who was on duty that night.”
“Who gave you the information?” forart
“The security guard.”
“Then you should be talking to him.”
I shook my head. “He’s gone. He’s been gone, since he left the message and admitted that he was bought. I finally got hold of his mother-she says he left home a few days ago and hasn’t been back since.” I winced inadvertently at the memory of her broken voice as she said it, knowing full well that he’d never be back.
Lyla settled in her chair. “So that brings it back to us. How can I help you?”
“What was Henry working on here when he died?”
“Nothing,” she said. “The funny thing is, he had just filed his last story, a week before his death. That week, he took a few days off, though he was in and out of the office, every day. But the cops asked Jack about all that. They took all his notes, and his diskettes.”
“The cops?”
“The two investigators that were assigned his case.”
“They talk to you?”
Lyla nodded. “I didn’t have anything to tell ’em professionally. As for their personal questions, I just didn’t answer. I had the impression they weren’t going to follow up on the murder anyway.”
Lyla watched me think things over. When I looked up, she was looking into my eyes, and her mouth was open, just a little. I felt something happen between us then, but I moved on.
“It’s possible Henry was working on something you didn’t know about, isn’t it?”
“Sure. He played his cards close to the vest, when he wasn’t on a specific assignment.”
“He keep backup diskettes on his notes?”
Lyla said, “Yep.”
I said, “You give those to the cops too?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Any chance you’d print out those disks for me?”
“A real good chance,” she said.
“I’d appreciate it.”
Lyla rang Rolanda and had her retrieve Henry’s diskettes from the file room. Rolanda entered with a container, and Lyla instructed her to use the laser to print out the last two months’ worth of work. Rolanda, who
