The restaurant was a block away from one of those sumptu-ous suburban shopping centers that attract people who need to spend eighty-five dollars for a cotton T-shirt.
Another cloudless day. Heat shimmered off the hoods of the Mercedeses, BMWs and Porsches, distorting the air, making the lot look like a slightly out-of-focus downtown Stuttgart. No Mikey. I’d been waiting for ten minutes, away from my car. All I saw was an occasional woman who had exhausted every possibility in the way of hair, makeup, nails, jewelry and clothes; one of them should have been put in a glass case in the Smithsonian just to show what we had become after eight years of Reagan.
I unbuttoned my jacket; all that accomplished was to allow more hot, humid air to circulate around my sweat-drenched shirt. Five minutes later, as I was loosening my tie, the door of a little red Miata convertible, top up, opened, and Mikey, with all the grace of sausage meat oozing out of its casing, somehow managed to emerge. He waddled across the blacktop. He’d obviously been watching me since I arrived.
We nodded at each other. He was wearing 390 / SUSAN ISAACS
sports clothes that looked more maternity than Mafia: white pants and a huge red, blue and purple flowered shirt.
“Nice car.” It was all I could think of to say.
“Not mine.” I wasn’t sure if he meant stolen or just borrowed. “Take off your jacket and open up your shirt.” He motioned me over to the far side of a garbage Dumpster and examined my chest and back for evidence of tape or wires.
While I was buttoning my shirt back up, he checked out my holster and patted down my pants, taking out my wallet, shield and handcuffs to make sure they were what they felt like. After he finished, he rumbled: “Wanna go inside?”
I shivered at the frigid blast of air-conditioning. Mikey chose a table and, without asking me, told the waitress to bring us two club sandwiches and two iced teas. “You don’t got to eat it. It’s for looks,” he explained. He had one of those Roman noses that begin at the forehead, but his nose, like the rest of him, was fat; you wanted to squeeze it and hear it honk. “So tell me about our mutual friend.”
“I don’t think she did it.”
“No shit, Ajax.” Even his earlobes were fat.
“But unless I find out who did, there’s a good chance she’ll go for a long vacation.”
“What do they got?”
“Circumstantial crap: a couple of people who’ll say Sy wasn’t going to make a movie out of some screenplay she’d written; they have a witness that he visited her house every day and they were having an affair. Either way, the D.A.
could make a case for a woman who’s been thrown over and who wants to get even.” No wonder no one had ever been able to nail Mikey. He was too smart. He just sat there, a huge flower-shirted Buddha, but I could sense him analyzing, weighing alternatives, computing—and all the while not missing a word I was saying. “The physical MAGIC HOUR / 391
evidence is more of a problem,” I continued. “Four of her hairs got caught in one of those wicker headboards where she was keeping Sy company no more than a half hour before he was killed. You know about the new DNA tests we do?”
“I know more than you know, Brady. Keep talking.”
“They just found another hair, right at the spot where we figure the killer stood when he fired.”
Mikey shook his head in disgust. His chins quivered. “Who put it there?”
“It could be Bonnie’s.”
“You wouldn’t be here if you thought that.”
“It’s not important who put it there. It’s important that I get some help. She’s going to have to turn herself in by five o’clock, or they’re going to declare her a fugitive. That wouldn’t be a plus if she has to go to trial.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Look, I have until five o’clock. Either I sit here and talk philosophy with you—I know how you like to talk about Plato—or I try to save Bonnie Spencer’s ass.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. Show some respect.” A busboy came over to pour some water. Mikey waved him off. “What do you want to know?”
“You knew about Sy paying Lindsay an extra half million?”
“Sure. The bookkeeper told me, as I’m sure you know. It bothered her, seeing the investors fucked, so she confided in me.”
“You bribed her and probably threatened her.”
“You’re tellin’ me about the five o’clock deadline, so don’t waste your time on cop chicken shit.”
“Did you threaten Sy when you found out about the extra payment? I’m not chicken-shitting you now. I’m trying to figure out his state of mind.”
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“I didn’t threaten him. I just told him what a stupid, fucking dick he was. Okay, I told him in a loud voice, and he was scared of me. I won’t deny that. But I never would have killed him or had him mussed up or nothing. We went back too far, and I’m a sentimental guy.”
The sandwiches came. Giant, first-generation-rich sandwiches, showy with frilly lettuce, wasteful, so high they were held together with toothpicks the size of small swords. I ate half of mine, Mikey ate all of his and then the other half of mine. I didn’t touch the iced tea because I was too jacked up from all the coffee I’d been drinking. Mikey talked and chewed simultaneously. Bits of bacon got spewed, and tomato seeds sprayed
