“Can we go to your place?” she asks. “I think they’re watching mine.”
Again with the “they.”
“Yeah,” I say. “No problem.”
I pilot my vehicle through the parking lot, head around the side of the building.
Santucci comes out a side door.
I reach over, put my hand on top of Marny’s coiled hair, shove her down below the dashboard.
“Stay down for a second, okay?”
“Okay. And Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
I don’t say anything because Santucci is staring straight at me now.
I put on a big smile.
Santucci looks hyped up. Maybe Mr. Ceepak caught a glimpse of Marny and went inside to tell the guy who had offered to buy him a beer if he spotted the curly-haired girl in the photograph he was shoving under everybody’s nose.
“Boyle?” Santucci shouts. “Pull over!”
I give Santucci a two-finger salute off the brim of my invisible cop cap and keep on driving. He angrily signals for me to “pull over to the side of the road, sir.” I ignore him. Right now, I’m the cop. Santucci’s just the douche bag making more money than me.
I don’t think he saw Marny.
As I pull out of the parking lot, I glance up to my rearview mirror and see him stomping toward the Dumpster and Marny’s red-hot Miata.
Time for Ms. Minsky to be put in protective custody.
My apartment building used to be a motel until the owners realized they wouldn’t have to clean the toilets if they turned it into rental units.
They filled in the swimming pool in the central courtyard, unplugged the vacancy sign, got rid of the ice maker, and sold all their sheets and towels in a yard sale.
Inside my unit, it still looks like a motel. You open the door, you see the bed. You also see ugly maple paneling. Beyond the bed, I have a tiny kitchenette with a mini fridge and one of those two-cup coffee makers. They sold it to me at that yard sale. I do have a brand-new plasma-screen TV that takes up most of one wall (HBO is no longer free). I set up a lumpy recliner against the wall on the opposite side of the room. It’s where I watch football and where I’ll be sleeping tonight.
“You need the bathroom or anything?” I say to Marny.
“Thanks, Danny. Do I look awful?”
That would be impossible. Marny is built like the proverbial brick house. However, I note goosebumps on her thighs just below her cutoffs and, not that I’m looking, two Purdue pop-up indicators signaling extreme chilliness.
“You look cold,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“There’s a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I washed it two days ago.” I raise my right arm. “Scout’s honor.”
She smiles. “Thanks, Danny.”
“Go grab it. I’m going to call my partner.”
“Is he a cop?”
“Yes, but he’s one of the good guys.”
Actually, he’s the goodiest guy of all.
“I think you made the right call, Danny,” says Ceepak.
I’m on my cell phone. Marny’s still in the bathroom. I hear the shower running.
“Thanks,” I say. “She’s extremely creeped out by Santucci and, well, other cops.”
“To be expected.”
“But, we knew each other in high school … so she …”
“As I stated Danny, you made a very prudent decision. FYI, Chief Baines will soon request that Officer Santucci resign his position with the force. If he refuses, the chief will file the necessary paperwork to initiate the termination process.”
“Cool. So, what should I do with Marny?”
“Talk to her if she feels like talking tonight. Let her sleep. Then transport her to the Bagel Lagoon at six hundred hours.”
Ceepak lives in an apartment above the bagel restaurant.
“Rita and T.J. will look after her until you and I bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion.”
Great. I wonder when that might happen.
“How go the warrants?” I ask.
“Officer Diego and I are going through Mr. O’Malley’s phone records now …”
I glance at the Sony Dream Machine on my bedside table, a holdover from the apartment’s days as a motel room, and only fifty cents at the yard sale. It’s after midnight.
“… Judge Rasmussen assures us we’ll have what we need to search inside the Tangerine Street home by nine thirty A.M.”
“You might tell Rita that Marny needs clothes.”
There is a moment of silence. “Come again?”
Great. Now Ceepak thinks I have a naked female witness in my bedroom.
“I mean, she has clothes, but, well, they’re kind of grungy and, uh, not enough.”
“I see. Any idea as to size?”
“Petite. Except … you know … up top.”
“Roger that,” says Ceepak without a hint of adolescent mammary fascination. That’s my department. “Rita will know how to handle it.”
“Thanks. Oh-I saw your dad again tonight. At the club.”
“Did he ask after me?”
“Yeah.”
“How thoughtful.” And that, my friends, is Ceepak being sarcastic.
The bathroom door pops open with a push and a warble. It always does that after a shower; the steam warps the wood. Marny comes out in my bathrobe, which goes down to her toes; her hair is wrapped up in my Mussel Beach Motel towel, which I borrowed from my friend Becca’s place and mean to take back. Tomorrow.
She’s carrying her shorts and shirt, not to mention her bra and panties.
All she has on under my robe are her flip-flops.
“See you in six hours,” I say to Ceepak.
I close up my cell.
“Who was that?” Marny asks.
“John Ceepak. My partner.”
“Hey-is he the guy who was with you when you ran me and that doctor dude off the road?”
“Yeah.”
“That was hysterical! When we wrecked into all those bikes.”
Yeah. A regular laugh riot. If you forget the part about how I thought I was going to die.
“That’s kind of when it started,” she mumbles.
She goes to bed, sits on the edge. I take the recliner.
“He was my first, you know, older married guy.”
I nod. Let her talk.
“I got Gail into it.”
“How?”
