“nothing could scare Sy. He was a man in control, at the peak of his powers. Intellectually, emotionally, financially…” She stopped for a second. When she continued, it was with disgust, as though she’d caught us sniggering over the notion of Sy’s “powers.” She seemed exasperated with what she’d decided were our infantile, dirty cop minds. “All right, I’ll fill in the blank for you: at the peak of his powers sexually.”
Forget that her words were unfair, to say nothing of blunt, brusque and bordering on the stunningly snotty; it hardly mattered. Robby and I sat motionless as she spoke. Her voice had a deep, sensual undercurrent, a hypnotic hum. You wanted to hear whatever she had to say. She could be talking about Sy’s death, or reciting erotic poetry, or reading the ingredients off a Kaopectate label. You couldn’t resist being Lindsay Keefe’s audience.
You wanted to applaud everything. Because besides the Face and the Voice, there was the Body. She had positioned herself perfectly in front of the window. With the curtains open, the late-morning light behind her was so strong you could practically see what she had for breakfast. Everything was lit up: her legs, the line of her bikini underpants stretched over her flat stomach, her hand-span waist—and most of all, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Incredible: her boobs were flawless, the awesome ones that defy gravity and point north. And naturally, she stood slightly sideways, making sure the sunshine lit her up so you couldn’t avoid seeing the pokes her nipples made as they pushed against the gauzy fabric of the tightly tucked-in blouse.
“Sy was a great success artistically and financially. You must know that this is not an industry where people wish each other well. But would someone
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murder him because his last film won the Gold Palm at Cannes and grossed ninety-two million? Please.”
Robby was nodding at everything Lindsay said, but it was nodding run amok. His head kept bobbing up and down, nonstop, like one of those jerky dolls with springs for necks you used to see in the backs of cars.
I wasn’t nodding at all. Because, number one, although I might have been spellbound by the Voice, I still had enough brains to realize all we were getting from Lindsay were words.
She was giving a brief (but wonderfully well lit) personal appearance that would satisfy two uncouth cops—without revealing anything.
And, number two, my nodding reflexes weren’t working so well because I was genuinely stunned at Lindsay Keefe’s absolute indifference to us. Hey, we hadn’t dropped in to discuss delinquent parking tickets. You’d think, being an actress, she’d offer a few chest-heaving sobs, or at least sniffle.
All she was doing, though, was going through the motions of an interview so she wouldn’t get marked down as unco-operative—and keeping us titillated while she was at it, only because it would have been against her nature to be in the same room with a human dick and not titillate. But she totally didn’t give a shit about what we thought about her. I’d never come across that before.
Homicide is not a common circumstance in most lives and, therefore, neither are homicide detectives. I’d always gotten some reaction: respect, hostility, obsequiousness, guardedness, guile, cooperation. Forget personal qualities: to anyone remotely connected to a murder, Robby and I were figures of authority, symbols of the Law. But not to Lindsay. To her, we were clowns in cheap sports jackets.
She lifted her hair out from under her collar, letting MAGIC HOUR / 75
it fall over her shoulders. “Is there anything else you want from me?” Lindsay demanded.
Robby tried to be cool. He didn’t get anywhere. He started giving off a sour wet-wool smell; he was in a sweat of nerves and desire. “Did Mr. Spencer ever mention anyone from his past who might not wish him well?” he asked. Lindsay took a slow, deep breath, presumably to show us how she was trying to retain her composure so she could continue the ordeal of questioning. “Miss Keefe?” To be fair, Robby’s voice didn’t quite squeak, but it wouldn’t have won any prizes for resonance.
She left her position near the window and came and sat on a chair opposite us, her legs curled under her, her hands clasped in ladylike fashion in her lap. “Look, I’ve given you all the help I can,” Lindsay said. “I don’t know anything more.”
That voice! It was one of those voices you read about in old detective stories, which girls with names like Velma have: rich, luscious, like warm cream. Except the funny thing was, for all her cream and translucent skin and superior tits and blond hair and black mystery eyes, Lindsay Keefe wasn’t knocking my socks off. Sure, if your taste ran to devastating blondes she wasn’t bad. But on or off the job, I was never the kind of guy who gets off on contempt. Okay (to be fair), maybe this was Lindsay’s tough act, to hide some vulnerability—or some real or imagined indiscretion she was afraid was incriminating. Or (not to be fair) maybe Lindsay was just an insolent, contemptuous, cold, emotionally defective twat.
“Well?” she asked. “Any more questions?”
Robby wasn’t completely star-struck, but he seemed to have forgotten, momentarily, that he was the killer interrog-ator of the Suffolk County P.D. Homicide Squad and the beloved husband of Freck-76 / SUSAN ISAACS
led Cleavage. He gulped. “I think that about covers it for now,” he said.
“Fine,” she said, and stood. Robby stood too, although not without banging his shin on the white marble coffee table.
I stayed on the couch. “Did Mr. Spencer ever mention seeing any of his colleagues from his days in the kosher meat business?” Lindsay eyed me a little curiously. I hadn’t said anything beyond a “Hello” and an “I’m sorry”; until now, I’d been letting Robby do the questioning. “Why don’t you sit down just for one more minute, Ms. Keefe.” She sat, and then Robby
