Free Fall

'I'm crying because Mark's in trouble and he needs our help and you're quitting. What kind of crummy detective are you?'

I spread my hands. The maitre d' said something to the waiter and the waiter came over.

'Is everything all right, sir?'

'Everything is fine, thank you.'

He looked at Jennifer Sheridan.

She shook her head. 'He's a quitter.'

The waiter frowned and went away. The woman with the big hair made a tsking sound like she thought they should've done something.

Jennifer said, 'I want to be sure, that's all. If he's seeing this other woman, then who is she? Do they work together? Does he love her? Did you follow them home?'

'No.'

'Then you don't know, do you? You don't know if they slept together. You don't know if he kissed her good night. You don't even know if they left the bar together.'

I rubbed my brow. 'No.'

The woman with the big hair whispered again to the elderly man, then stood and went to three women sitting in a window booth. One of the women stood to meet her.

Jennifer Sheridan was crying freely and her voice was choking. 'He needs us, Mr. Cole. We can't leave him like this, we can't. You've got to help me.'

The woman with the big hair shouted, 'Help her, for God's sake.'

The three women at the window booth shouted, 'Yeah!'

I looked at them and then I looked back at Jennifer Sheridan. She didn't look seventeen anymore. She looked fifteen. And homeless. I dropped my napkin into the nicoise. I'd had maybe three bites. 'You win.'

Jennifer Sheridan brightened. 'You'll stay with it?'

I nodded.

'You see how it's possible, don't you? You see that I'm right about this?'

I spread my hands. The Defeated Detective.

She said, 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Cole. Thank you. I knew I could depend on you.' She was bubbling now, just like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. She used her napkin to dry her eyes, but all she did was smear the mascara. It made her look like a raccoon.

The woman with the big hair smiled and the elderly man looked relieved. The waiter and the maitre d' nodded at each other. The three women in the window booth resumed their meal. The restaurant returned to its normal course of lunchtime events, and Jennifer Sheridan finished her hamburger. Everybody was happy.

'Jesus Christ,' I said.

The waiter appeared at my elbow. 'Is something wrong with the nicoise, sir?'

I looked at him carefully. 'Get away from me before I shoot you.'

He said, 'Very good, sir,' and he got.

CHAPTER 6

At twelve fifty-five, I gave Jennifer Sheridan a lift the three blocks back to her office and then I headed back toward mine, but I wasn't particularly happy about it. I felt the way you feel after you've given money to a panhandler because the panhandler has just dealt you a sob story that both of you knew was a lie but you went for it anyway. I frowned a lot and stared down a guy driving an ice cream truck just so I could feel tough. If a dog had run out in front of me I probably would've swerved to hit it. Well, maybe not. There's only so much sulking you can do.

The problem was that Jennifer Sheridan wasn't a panhandler and she wasn't running a number on me. She was a young woman in pain and she believed what she believed, only believing something doesn't make it so. Maybe I should spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out a way to convince her. Maybe I could rent one of those high-end, see-in-the-dark video cameras and tape Mark Thurman in the act with the brown-haired woman. Then we could go back to Kate Mantilini's and I could show everyone and what would the woman with the big hair think then? Hmm. Maybe there are no limits to sulking, after all.

I stopped at a Lucky market, bought two large bottles of Evian water, put one in my trunk, then continued on toward my office. Half a block later two guys in a light blue four-door sedan pulled up behind me and I thought I was being followed. A Hispanic guy in a dark blue Dodgers cap was driving and a younger guy with a light blond butch cut was riding shotgun. His was the kind of blond that was so blond it was almost white. I looked at them, but they weren't looking at me, and a block and a half later they turned into a Midas Muffler shop. So much for being followed.

When I got up to my office I opened the French doors off the little balcony, then turned on the radio, and lay down on my couch. KLSX on the airwaves. Howard Stern all morning, classic rock all afternoon. We were well into classic rock and I liked it just fine. Lynyrd Skynyrd. What could be better than that?

It was a cool, clear afternoon and I could be at the beach but instead I was here. Portrait of a detective in a detective's office. When a detective is in a detective's office, shouldn't he be detecting? One of life's imponderables. The problem was that I didn't suspect Mark Thurman of a crime, and crime still didn't look good to me as the answer to Jennifer Sheridan's problems. If you're talking cops and crime, you're talking motive, and I didn't see it. I had been in Thurman's home and I had talked to his fiancee and his neighbors, and the crime part just didn't fit. When you're talking cops and crime, you're talking conspicuous consumption. Cops like to buy cars and they like to buy boats and they like to buy vacation homes and they explain it all by saying that the wife came into a little money. Only Thurman didn't have a wife and, as near as I could tell, he didn't have any of the other things, either.