Everything but the Squeal

“He always does. This was the first night I slept alone.”

“Where did he say he was going?”

She spread thin, empty hands. “He didn't.”

“You had anything?” the Mountain asked.

“Couple of ups.”

“I meant food, Apple,” he said.

She looked gravely at him for a moment. “I don't think I could,” she said. “You can call me Nora, but it's a secret.”

“Jesus,” the Mountain said, mopping himself with the rag. “What happened to your face?”

“I fell down,” she said, too promptly.

“Under anybody I know?” the Mountain asked, looking grim.

“No,” she said.

“Well, you're going to have an orange smoothie whether you want it or not.” He got up to fetch it.

“He's sweet,” Apple said, watching him.

“Sit down, Nora.” She did, looking around as though she were afraid someone would tell her to get up again. “You don't know anything about where Donnie went?”

“He never tells me.”

“He didn't have any routines?”

“No. When there's a customer, there's a customer.”

“But he always comes home.”

She started to say something, and her chin suddenly broke out in a random pattern of dimples. She swallowed and, instead of speaking, she nodded her head. She turned one palm up and rubbed at it with the other as though she were trying to erase her lifeline. For the first time I saw the narrow gold ring, too big for her, on her index finger.

“Where’d you get that?”

She looked nervous. “I didn't steal it,” she whispered.

“Of course you didn't. It's very pretty, that's all. I was just wondering where you got it.”

“My mother's,” she said. “It was hers.”

“Was she pretty?”

“I don't know.” She looked at me, trying to figure out where the question had come from. “They say she looked like me.”

“Then she was pretty,” I said. Apple ducked her head as though I'd hit her and looked at the table. “Who do you live with, Nora?”

“Donnie,” she said in a very small voice. She didn't look up.

“I meant before.”

“Nobody,” she said. “They're all dead. Or they should be.”

“Aiya,” I said in an unconscious Cantonese imitation of Eleanor.

Apple looked at me, her eyes bright. “That's a funny thing to say.”

“It's a funny world.”

“No kidding,” she said, sounding fifty.

“Here,” the Mountain said, slamming down a cup that must have held a quart. It was filled to the brim with a thick, viscous, slightly orangish fluid. “You're going to drink it if it takes all day.”

“Okay,” Apple said submissively. She looked relieved to have someone giving the orders. It took both hands, but she lifted it and started to sip.

“Don't worry about Donnie,” I said. “He'll come here sooner or later.” I pumped my voice full of an assurance I didn't feel. For a moment I imagined myself as one of the idiots in a werewolf movie who are always telling the other idiots that there's nothing to worry about: go ahead, go outside and take a leak under the full moon. We'll keep your nice Middle European food warm until you come back.

“Anyway,” the Mountain said, watching her drink, “you're staying here.” He reached out a hand the size of a Smithfield ham and touched the bruise on her cheek, so gently that she didn't seem to feel it. She kept her eyes on the surface of her smoothie, now dropping almost imperceptibly in the cup.

“Jesus,” he said. “Dorothy was like this, you know?”

“Aimee,” I said.

“Aimee,” he corrected himself. “Just like her.”

Apple turned her dark eyes first to him and then to me. “Aimee,” she said in her little girl's voice.

“Anytime,” the Mountain said flatly to me. “Anytime you need help. Any kind of help. Anytime.”

19

The Steel Table

“Damn you,” Hammond said into the phone. He sounded as though he meant it. It was getting dark, and I'd just arrived home. Two messages on my answering machine had told me that Jessica hadn't come home yet. Hammond was number three.

“Damn me? Why? Is it something I've done recently, or some kind of general principle?”

“Yoshino,” he said.

I squinted into the past. “Who's Yoshino?”

“That's hilarious,” he said.

“Oh, Yoshino,” I said. “What happened?”

“More important,” he said, “what the fuck are you up to?”

“A1, I told you. Kansas City. I showed you her picture.”

“That was one girl. Kidnapping, I think you said. You didn't say anything about a serial murderer.”

“You've got another one?” A sense of futility, familiar by now, swept over me. “Don't say you've got another one.”

“Don't tell me what not to say. And you better get your ass in here. Some people in this here building are hopping.”

“Have you got another one?”

“Yes.”

I looked around the living room. I'd lighted a fire in the wood-burning stove, and the Mozart horn concerto I'd heard at the Gursteins’ was giving the room's acoustics a workout. The computer was on and blinking at me, its dinky little fan whirring in a comfortable fashion.

“Blond?” I said.

“That'll wait until you get to the morgue.”

’Tm in the car.”

Rush hour had congealed on the freeways. The gods of weather had decided that a little sprinkle would grease the roads and slow the traffic, so Alice's useless windshield wipers were sweeping sarcastically back and forth when I turned into the neon-lighted parking lot under Parker Center, the cops' home base. I went straight to the morgue.

Yoshino let me in,looking slightly shamefaced. “Thanks,” I said nastily as she closed the door behind me.

The morgue was cold, but a lot warmer than Max Bruner's voice when he said, “She was doing what she was supposed to do.”

“Well, hey,” I said, “whatever happened to individual initiative?”

“It went out with the frontier,” Bruner said. He was wearing a cashmere jacket that would have made Miles Brand goggle with envy and a pair of fawn-colored wool slacks that proclaimed some kind of fashion statement with an Italian accent. I was almost afraid to look at his shoes. They were certain to be made of the skin of an unborn calf or something else you could wear only once without saying hello to your toenails.