K was showering away. Flesh tones rippled behind pebbled glass giving me a general sense of the girl, which was all I needed because it brought back crisp memories from Sunday night.
“Hey!” I called.
K stopped moving. She looked in my direction. “Mortimer?”
Goddamn, she knew my name. Either that or she’d been through my mail. “Mort,” I said.
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
I liked the sound of her voice, low, sexy, even playful—not the least bit worried that I’d found her where I’d found her. “Take your time, kiddo.”
A moment of silence. Then, “Kiddo?”
“A promise I made to myself. Nice work on the windows, by the way.”
“I’ve never seen anything like them. Have they ever been cleaned, Mort?”
Mort. At last. She wasn’t shy or backward, this one. “Not by me,” I said. “Maybe about the time Bush was first elected.”
“Which Bush?”
“Which one you think?”
“I’d hate to guess. It took me practically all morning. I didn’t get the front very well, though. A news van pulled up before I got done. I had to duck back inside.”
“Yeah? I was here earlier this morning.”
“What time? You must’ve just missed me. I had to go out for window cleaner.”
“You wouldn’t want to tell me your name, would you? And what the hell you’re doing here?”
She popped the door open, stuck her head out and smiled at me. A very pretty head, even sopping. I caught a glimpse of her shoulder, part of a thigh, calf, foot, all foamy and glistening and nicely tanned. “In a minute, okay?”
I’d waited this long. I could wait another minute. She ducked back in and shut the door.
The doorbell rang, twice.
I thought about drawing my gun. If a network bloodhound was at the door I might persuade him or her to respect the privacy of private citizens with a casual display of Second Amendment rights.
But, no…I left the gun concealed at my hip.
Just as well. Fairchild and Day were outside, Cliff in straining blues, Russell in his rumpled suit.
“You’re in,” Russ said, surprised.
“Now I know how you made detective, Detective.”
“What we’d like to do is have you come up to Mr. Sjorgen’s place, show us exactly what you did when you and Mrs. Angel went in. Reenact the scene, so to speak.” He looked past me into the house. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know where she is at the moment, would you? Your ex?”
From inside, K called out, “Mort? You there?”
“That’s not her,” I said to Fairchild.
Russ lifted an eyebrow. “That right?”
“That’s right. Dallas is at the Grand Sierra. Room 1122.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Don’t tell the media.”
“And you spent the entire night with her last night?”
“That’s right.”
He looked past me again, then over his shoulder at Clifford Day, who’d evidently been assigned bodyguard or general intimidation duty, it was hard to say which. “I’ll be damned. Mickey Spillane ain’t dead, only buried.”
“Mickey only wrote ’em,” I said. “Mike Hammer had all the fun.”
Russ shook his head. “I’m in the wrong job. So, about Sjorgen’s place? How about we go on over? The chief is there now. Bunch of forensic guys, too.”
“A party,” I said.
“Right.”
“You got some of those little hats, balloons?”
“Not yet. They’re on order.”
“We did this already, remember? This morning at Sjorgen’s, then again at the station? You guys oughta take better notes.”
“Yeah, but we could maybe do it one more time, just for fun.”
“If it’d make you happy.”
“It would.” Russ tried to look past me into the house, then he nodded at the interior. “What about her?”
“She’ll keep.” I didn’t tell him how long she’d kept already. “She’s not part of this.” And I had no intention of dragging her into it, either, at least until I figured out who she was, which was looking like a project akin to quarrying rock for Khufu’s Pyramid, dragging it miles through the Sahara, then hauling it three hundred feet up the side of Khufu’s to set it in place. About like that.
Russ shrugged. “Your call. What’s her name?”
“K.”
“Kay?”
“Yep.”
“Kay who?”
“Just K.”
“Yeah? Like Cher, huh? Doesn’t ring a bell. Maybe she could alibi you?”
Nice try, Russ. “I was with Dallas. All night long, Detective. K doesn’t know anything about any of this.”
I could tell he wanted to pursue this K angle further, but he didn’t. I closed the door in his face, shed the windbreaker, and stashed the gun under a couch cushion. No sense making waves. I went out, locked up, and got in my hotbox to follow Russ and Clifford up to Sjorgen’s place.
I hadn’t told K I was leaving. It was my turn to pull a vanishing act, and I have to admit I got a little kick out of that.
* * *
When they don’t have proof, motive, or even a murder weapon or murder site, they rarely come right out and tell you you’re a suspect, but you know. It’s in their eyes. It hides in their words, or in what they don’t say. I could feel the pressure of my status as the number one suspect in the room. The entire world was watching, and Chief Menteer’s head was on the block, which wasn’t the best metaphor under the circumstances. For the next few days he would be in the limelight with Dallas and me, until America found a newer, brighter diversion, like another Rodney King, or, if God smiled on us all, another O.J. But for now, like Tonya Harding and Joey Buttafuoco years and years ago, we were the national pastime, even if no one remembers good ol’ Joey.
And somewhere, behind this hubbub and the roar of conjecture, someone knew what was going on, someone with a sharp knife or a hacksaw and the will to use it in a most ungodly fashion.
I tried to think about that someone, what kind of a person it might be, but came up with nothing. I saw rage, lots of rage, but little else. I figured, though, if you polled every psychologist in the
