step into a lift and there's a guy standing there, looking over at you in a certain way walk out into the street to catch some air and the window of a slowing car slides down who wouldn't be scared. The world was full of them, God knows, it wasn't just the pages of her books. Sociopaths.
Psychopaths. Whoever was writing those letters wasn't Dear Abbey.
But admitting it to Prank, that was something else. The way it had become between them, everything was a statement of strength, not of weakness, neediness. It wasn't in her nature to be the one to back off.
'It's why you're here, isn't it?' Cathy said.
'Reason you changed your mind, flew over. Look out for me. Protect me.' She made protect sound like a dirty word.
Frank was having trouble with the knot of his tie.
'And if it is?'
'You needn't have bothered. They've got professionals for that.'
Resnick arrived at the hotel later than he'd intended and Mollie Hansen was already waiting on one of the leather settees in the foyer, her duty to escort Cathy Jordan and her husband to the reception. David Tyrell had claimed the task of collecting Curtis Wooife, who had flown in earlier in the day from Switzerland, which was where he now lived. The third major guest, the octogenarian British crime novelist, Dorothy Birdwell, was being driven directly to the reception by her assistant.
Mollie, Resnick thought, was looking decidedly smart, rising to greet him in a loose-fitting pearl trouser suit which might have been silk.
Something held him back from making the compliment out loud, a sense that, to Mollie, that kind of remark would be less than acceptable.
'Nice tie,' Mollie said, with a little nod.
'Interesting design. Paul Smith?'
'Spaghetti vongole.'
To his surprise, Mollie laughed and Resnick grinned back.
'What happened,' he asked, 'when you showed her the letter? '
'Oh, for a minute or two, I thought she was going to throw a wobbly, but then she just laughed and told me for all it was worth, I might as well tear it up. That was when I told her about you.'
Before Resnick could reply, the lift doors opened and Cathy Jordan appeared in an ankle-length, off-white dress from beneath the hem of which poked the toes of her boots.
Mollie moved quickly to meet her.
'Is there time,' Cathy Jordan asked, after Resnick had been introduced, 'for the inspector and me to have a chat? '
Sure,' Mollie said.
'I think so.'
'Great!' Cathy said, appropriating Resnick's arm. 'Why don't we go to the bar?'
Perched on a stool, Cathy Jordan asked Resnick to recommend a single malt and, although it wasn't really his drink, after a quick glance along the bar he came up with Highland Park.
'Two large ones,' Cathy said. And to Resnick,
'Ice?'
He shook his head.
'One as it comes,' she said to the barman, 'one with lots of ice.
That's L-O-T-S. ' Turning towards Resnick. she made a face.
'What is it with this country? Is ice still rationed?'
He smiled.
'We're a moderate people. Maybe we don't like too much of anything.'
'That include crime?'
'Not necessarily.'
'Violent crime?'
'Well, we don't have guns on the streets…' He corrected himself.
'At least, not as many as you.'
'But you're getting there.'
'Maybe.' He said it with regret. He knew it wasn't only the more publicised areas of the country Brixton, Moss Side where weapons were increasingly easy to obtain, increasingly likely to be used.
There were estates there in the city where firearms were heard being discharged far more frequently than gunshot wounds were ever reported. He didn't imagine their aim was always less than true.
Cathy clinked her glass against his.
'Cheers.'
'Cheers,' Resnick said. And then,
'Miss Jordan, about this latest letter…'
'Cathy,' she said.
'For God's sake, call me Cathy. And as for the letter, it's a crock, just like all the rest. Some scuzzbag shut off in a sweaty room, only way he knows of getting off, you know what I mean?'
Resnick (brought that he might.
'Then you've no worries about security?' he said, after tasting a little of the malt.
Cathy rattled the ice cubes around a little inside her glass.
'I'm in a strange country, right. It wouldn't hurt to have someone watching my back.'
'All right. Mollie's given me a copy of your schedule. Maybe we could go over it and see which events you're most concerned about?'
'Sure,' said Cathy, but then became aware of Mollie Hansen hovering with intent and drained her glass in a double swallow.
'Gotta go.
Look, couldn't we meet tomorrow? Go through things like you said?
Resnick got to his feet.
'Of course.'
'Good. We Americans are big on breakfast meetings, you know.'
'Here?'
'Half eight, how's that sound?'
Pine. '
'Good.' And Mollie steered Cathy Jordan away towards their waiting car, while Resnick sat back oh the stool and nursed his way down the rest of his Highland Park.
Art Tatum and Ben Webster: they did it for him every time. Resnick lowered the stylus with care and watched as it slid into the groove; listened, standing there, as Tatum played his practised, ornate way through the first chorus of the tune, tightening the rhythm at the beginning of the middle eight, before stepping aside with a simple little single-note figure, falling away beneath the glorious saxophone smear of Webster's arrival. Resnick turned up the volume and wandered through into the kitchen: coffee was pumping softly inside the silver pot on the stove. He set a match to the gas on the grill, sliced dark rye bread and put it to toast. Cream cheese, not too much pickled cucumber, smoked salmon. While none of the other cats were looking, he sneaked Bud a small piece of the salmon. Some days he liked to drink his coffee, rich and dark, from one of a pair of white china mugs, and this was one of those.
Settled in his favourite chair in the living room, coffee and sandwich close at hand, album turned over and turned back down, Resnick lifted Cathy Jordan's book from the small table beneath the lamp and began to read: If anyone had told me, Annie Jones, you
'II end up spending your seventh wedding anniversary alone in the front seat of a rented Chevrolet, outside of Jake's at the Lake in Tahoe City, I'd have told them to go jump right in it. The lake, that is. But then if that same anyone had told me, the day I appeared, fresh out of law school, ready to start work at the offices ofReigler and Reigler, bright and full a/promise in my newly acquired dove grey two-piece with a charcoal stripe, skirt a businesslike three inches below the knee, that I would swap what was clearly destined to be a famous legal career or that of a lowly private eye, I would gleefully have signed committal forms, assigning them to the nearest asylum,
