stores?'
'Beats me,' Wenden said. 'I thought about gold smuggling, but that doesn't make sense; gold is available everywhere, and the market sets the price. Also, gold is too heavy to smuggle in bars and ingots. Got any ideas, Terry?'
'Nada,' Ortiz said, and finished his beer. 'I thought maybe he might be bringing in gold bars with the insides hollowed out and stuffed with dope. But that wouldn't work because, like you said, gold is heavy stuff and someone would spot the difference.'
'So?' John said. 'Where do we go from here?'
'This is too juicy to drop,' Ortiz said. 'I think maybe I should take a look at Stuttgart Precious Metals. It could be just a front, and instead of gold, their vault is jammed with kilos of happy dust. I'll case the joint, and if it looks halfway doable, maybe we should pull a B and E. John?'
'I'm game,' Wenden said.
Ortiz turned suddenly to Dora. 'You got wheels?' he asked.
'A rented Ford Escort,' she said.
'Lovely. We may ask for a loan.'
'If you need a lookout,' she said, 'I'm willing.'
'I love this woman,' Terry said to Wenden. 'Love her.' He stood up, pulled on his jacket and a black leather cap. 'I'll check out Stuttgart and let you know. Thanks for the refreshments. You coming, John?'
'I think I'll hang around awhile,' Wenden said.
The narc raised his hand in benediction. 'Bless you, my children,' he said. He took two pretzels from the bag and left.
Dora laughed. 'He thinks we have a thing going,' she said.
'I thought we had,' John said. 'May I have another beer?'
She brought him a cold can. 'John, I didn't want to say anything while Terry was here, but you look awful. You've lost weight, and even the bags under your eyes have bags. Aren't you getting any sleep?'
'Not enough. I have to go for a physical next month, and the doc will probably stick me in Intensive Care.'
'I worry about you,' she said.
'Do you?' he said with a boyish smile. 'That's nice. Listen, enough about me; let's talk about the big enchilada: the three guys who got capped. You hear anything new?'
Dora told him about her conversations with Felicia and Eleanor, and how the former planned to marry Turner Pierce. She told him nothing of what she had learned from Gregor Pinchik and his merry band of hackers.
'You think Felicia is hooked?' Wenden asked.
'Definitely. She should be under treatment right now.'
'Where is she getting her supply?'
'Eleanor says Turner Pierce is her candyman. But Eleanor is so bitter about the divorce, I don't know if she's telling the truth.'
John shook his head. 'We find coke under the floorboards in Father Callaway's pad, Felicia is snorting the stuff, and now Ramon Schnabl, a drug biggie, turns out to have some connection with Starrett's gold trading. Maybe it all fits together, but I don't see it. Do you?'
'Not yet,' Dora said. 'Do you have anything new on the three homicides?'
He brightened. 'Yeah-we finally got a break. At least I hope it's a break. Remember I told you we were checking out all the stores, bars, and restaurants in the neighborhood of the Church of the Holy Oneness, to see if Loftus-Callaway had been in the night he was offed. We finally got to a scruffy French restaurant on East Twenty- eighth Street, and an old waiter there says he thinks the good Father was in that night.'
'John, it's taken a long time, hasn't it?'
'You think it's an easy job, that you just walk into a joint, flash a photo of the dear departed and ask if he was there at a certain time on a certain date, and then people tell you? It's not that simple, Red. Clerks and bartenders and waiters have so many customers, they forget individual faces. And also, it's hard to find out who was on duty that particular night. And then it turns out that one of the waiters has been fired, or quit for another job, or maybe moved out of the state. And then he's got to be tracked down. Believe me, it's a long, ass-breaking job, and chances are good it'll turn out to be a dead end. But it's got to be done. So as I said, we finally found this restaurant on East Twenty-eighth where a waiter remembers Callaway being in the night he was killed. The reason the waiter remembers him was that the noble padre didn't leave a tip. The moral of that story is: Never stiff a waiter.'
'Was Callaway alone or with someone?'
Wenden looked at her admiringly. 'You're pretty sharp-you know that? I'm sorry for that crack I made about you being an amateur. But I did say you were a talented and beautiful amateur. That helps, doesn't it?'
'Some,' Dora said, but it still rankled. 'Who was Callaway with?'
'The waiter says he sat in a booth with a young woman. But the waiter is so old that to him a 'young woman' could be anyone from sixty on down.'
'What's your next move?'
'I went to Mrs. Olivia Starrett and got photographs of Eleanor, Felicia, and Helene Pierce. They're color Polar- oids taken at a dinner party last Christmas at the Starretts' apartment. I'm having blow-ups made, and I'm going back to that waiter and see if he can pick out one of them as the woman who sat in the booth and had drinks with the recently deceased. It's a long shot, but it's all I've got.'
'It sounds good to me,' Dora said enthusiastically. 'I think you're doing a great job.'
'Tell that to my boss,' the detective said mournfully. 'He thinks I'm dragging my feet. Actually, I'm dragging my tail. Order me to go home, Red, and get some sleep.'
'Go home and get some sleep.'
'Yeah,' he said, 'I should. Remember the night you let me crash here?'
'Not tonight, John,' Dora said firmly.
'You don't trust me?'
'I don't trust either of us. Besides, you're too bushed even to go through the motions.'
'You're right,' he said, groaning. 'I feel like one of the undead. Well, thanks for everything, Red.'
'John, drive carefully.'
He stared at her with eyes heavy with weariness. 'No decision yet, huh?' he said.
'Not yet.'
'But you're thinking about it?'
'All the time,' she said, almost angrily.
'Good,' he said. 'It would work for us, Red, I know it would.'
They embraced before he left, hugged tightly, kissed long and lingeringly. Finally Dora pushed him out the door and turned her head away so he wouldn't see the tears brimming.
She cleaned up the pretzel crumbs, still snuffling, a little, and dumped the empty beer cans. She took up her pen and notebook but sat for several moments without scribbling a word. After a while she was able to stop brooding about John Wenden and concentrate on what she had learned from ballsy Terry Ortiz.
She figured he'd probably go ahead with a break-in at Stuttgart Precious Metals, and John would help him, and so would she. She knew what they would find-and it wasn't drugs. But she'd never tell the detectives what she had guessed; it would bruise their masculine egos. Let them go on thinking she was an amateur.
Chapter 41
Numbers had always fascinated Turner Pierce. He even gave them characteristics: 1 was stalwart, 3 was sensual, 7 was stern, 8 was lascivious. But even without this fanciful imaging, numbers had the power to move the world. Once you understood them and how they worked, you could exploit their power for your own benefit.
But now, in his elegant, number-ordered universe, a totally irrational factor had been introduced. The presence of Felicia Starrett was like the 'cracking' of a functioning computer by the invasion of a virus. The software he had designed to program his life was being disrupted by this demented woman.
