good for the other buff guys. Figured you for a formfit T-shirt.”
“How about that,” I said.
He focused on the door to the deck. “Where’s your boyfriend?”
“Who?”
“Got a lot of them, huh? I guess a buff guy like you would. Nordine. Where’s Nordine?”
“I haven’t got any idea.”
“There’s a room down the hill,” a male voice said from behind Spurrier. “No one there.”
“Well, he’s somewhere,” Spurrier said.
“I’m sure he is,” I said. “But he’s not here.”
“I really need to talk to old Christy,” Spurrier said confidingly. “This thing with Max-you remember Max.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You ought to turn that water off,” Spurrier said. “There’s a drought.” I reached behind me and twisted the tap without turning my back to Spurrier. “Somebody was in old Max’s house last night. Went right through the seals. Used a key, how about that? Bled all over the place, too.”
“What do you want, Sergeant?”
“In the neighborhood,” he said again. “Guy who bled like that must have got cut up pretty good. Maybe on the arms, what do you think? Well,” he said, turning his head, “look who’s here. Hey, Chiquito.”
Orlando came into the living room, giving Spurrier several hundred volts of pure disdain. “Has he got a warrant?” he asked me.
“Everybody wants to know about warrants,” Spurrier said. “You wouldn’t know where Nordine is, would you, sweetie?”
Orlando let a beat pass before he answered. “I’ve never met him.”
“And I thought it was a small world.” Spurrier took a hand from his pocket and tugged on his lip. “Well, I’ve got something he might want to hear about, in case you ever do. Tell him old Max’s index finger showed up in Boulder, Colorado, this morning.”
For a long moment no one spoke. Spurrier looked at us expressionlessly. Then Orlando put a hand against the back of my rocking chair and said, “I beg your pardon.”
“Special delivery.” Spurrier looked from him to me watchfully. “In a nice little ice pack. Along with a bunch of disgusting letters about what kind of guy he loved best in the whole wide world and some pictures. Cute pictures, too. Him and Nordine.”
“Sent to whom?” I asked.
“The newspaper.” He gazed at us, apparently thinking of something else. “Also a note suggesting it might make a good story. HOMETOWN BOY MAKES BOYS or something. Guess old Max was still in the closet back in Boulder.” Shaking his head, he came back to us and said, “Where you from?”
“Here,” I said. “I was born where I’m standing.”
Eleanor came through the door and headed for the kitchen, passing in front of Spurrier with an incurious look. “What about lunch?” she asked me, opening the refrigerator.
“My, my,” Spurrier said, aping surprise. “The fair sex.”
“His finger,” I said. “Why his finger?”
“You’re supposed to be a detective,” Spurrier said reprovingly. “So it could be printed, of course.”
“What’s this about a finger?” Eleanor asked, holding a bottle of Evian.
“Never you mind, little lady,” Spurrier said. “Although I’m not quite sure what the hell you’re doing here.”
“Me do laundy,” Eleanor said in a singsong voice. “Velly fast, velly good. Even that coat I can get crean. Who are you supposed to be?”
“So you see,” Spurrier said to me, “I’ve got to talk to Nordine. And I figure you’re the guy who can tell him so.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Christy,” I said.
“Hell, I know that.” Spurrier’s eyes opened in mock surprise. “Oh, I haven’t made myself clear. This more or less lets Nordine off the hook.”
“You’re a policeman,” Eleanor said.
“Here to protect you, my dear.”
“I’ll take my chances with the crooks,” Eleanor said. “Is your name Spurrier?”
“Why does it let Christy off the hook?” I asked.
“Because it’s happened before,” Spurrier said, speaking as he would to a very slow child. “Max isn’t the first.”
“Ah,” I said. It was happening too fast for me.
“So if you see him-” Spurrier began, and then he stopped short and his jaw fell open. Wayde ambled out of the bathroom, naked as the dawn, across the living room and out onto the deck. “Jesus,” Spurrier said to me when she was gone, “you’ll jump anything, won’t you?”
“Next time, Ike,” I said, leaning close to him, “come alone.”
His face went white. Both hands came up in front of him, balled into fists, and Eleanor stepped between us, holding out the bottle of Evian. “Would you like some water?” she asked. “You look hot.”
“You and I,” Spurrier said over her shoulder to me, “will have to have another talk. Our last one was obviously too brief.”
“Go away,” Orlando said from the living room.
Spurrier stared at him but spoke to me. “Tell Nordine,” he said, his voice thick and tight. “Tell him he can come out from under his rock.”
“Cheer up, Ike,” I said with a courage I didn’t feel. “You’ll get a chance to punch someone out yet.”
He glared at me and then turned quickly, pushing with his fingers on the chest of the cop behind him, and they were gone.
“Okay, Simeon,” Eleanor said flatly. “Tell us everything.”
TWO
Most of the time I’m so removed from belief that I confuse it with having an opinion.
11 ~ Killing Them Twice
Norbert Schultz had teeth like a mouthful of yellow paint chips. He’d been steeping them in coffee and nicotine for thirty or forty years, and they’d finally achieved the rich and variable patina of long-buried bones. In his work as a psychiatrist, he bared them frequently on the mistaken assumption that a smile made him look friendly. What it made him look like was someone who gargled with urine.
He was showing them to me now, without even knowing he was doing it, letting me know how happy he was to see me. We’d met under difficult circumstances when he was under contract to the LAPD, lending his expertise in the case of a lad who found meaning in life by setting people on fire and had decided to target me. Schultz was back in private practice now, but he still had a pipeline to the Department, and I was taking advantage of it.
“Five of them,” he said without consulting the bulky LAPD printout on the desk in front of him. We were in his
