by R. J. Jagger
Alabama nodded, impressed.
“It’s times like this that I’m reminded of why I let you work with me,” she said.
Wilde wrinkled his forehead.
“I work with you?”
Alabama nodded.
“That reminds me, we need to get the sign on the door changed. Winger & Wilde, Investigators for Hire. How does that sound?”
“It sounds crazy.”
She ran her fingers through his hair.
“Don’t worry, I’ll still let you pretend to be the boss.”
22
W hoever killed the pinup girl may have known her, if not personally or socially, maybe by proximity—someone who worked in the same building, rode the same trolley, something like that. She wasn’t random. She was too pretty to be random, plus the clothes fit too well. Whoever killed her knew her size, even her shoe size.
Who was she?
What was her name?
Where did she live?
Who did she know?
What were her haunts?
When did she go missing?
Where was the last place she was seen?
Wilde went through old newspapers searching for print about a missing woman. There wasn’t any, not in the last few days or even the last few weeks. He went back a full month before giving up.
Strange.
Why no print?
Was she from out of town?
The same town as the red matches?
He lit a Camel, took a long drag and sat in the window with one leg dangling out. Larimer Street below was a mess of activity and noise.
He debated about whether he should do what he was thinking about doing.
Then he did it.
He picked up the phone and dialed Jacqueline White, the Girl Friday at the homicide department.
“Don’t hang up,” he said.
“Wilde, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The line went dead.
He smoked another Camel and tried again, dialing from the windowsill.
“This is important,” he said.
A beat.
“You got a lot of nerve.”
“Look, I’m sorry about all that stuff, but this is important. I need to know something,” he said. “I need to know if any women went missing lately that weren’t reported in the paper.”
“Why?”
“It relates to a case I’m working on,” he said. “That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”
“Why in the name of hell would I even lift a little finger to help you?”
“Because it’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for someone else.”
Silence.
“I’m already on thin ice because of you,” she said. “If anyone found out—”
Wilde blew smoke.
“You’re right, I’m being selfish,” he said. “Forget it.”
Silence.
Then, “I hate you, you understand that I hope.”
“I do.”
A pause.
“Give me a little time,” she said. “Are you at the office?”
“I am.”
The line went dead.
Fifteen minutes later she called back.
“This is the last time,” she said. “Tell me you understand that.”
“I do.”
“I mean it, Jack.”
“Okay.”
“You say okay but you don’t really mean okay,” she said.
“True.”
“You’re impossible, do you know that?”
“Actually that’s not true,” he said. “I’m improbable but not impossible.”
She laughed.
In a lowered voice she said, “There was a young woman named Natalie Levine who disappeared three months ago, on March 7th.”
“Three months ago?”
“Right.”
Wilde chewed on it.
Three months.
That was a long time.
“Has there been any news of her since?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Not a heartbeat.”
“Has her body shown up?”
“Negative. No body, no news, no nothing.” A beat, then, “She lives over on Glenarm, 936. The landlord’s doing us a favor by letting the unit sit undisturbed for the time being, in case we end up with a homicide and really want to go through it with a fine tooth comb.”
“Thanks.” He wrote it down. “I’m playing at the Bokaray tonight, nine o’clock. Why don’t you stop in?”
He grabbed his hat, locked up and headed down the stairs. Blondie was parked on the street in front of the drugstore. Wilde fired up the engine and was about to pull into traffic when a body suddenly hurled over the passenger door and landed in the seat.
Alabama.
“Where we going?”
“It’s possible that the dead pinup girl is someone called Natalie Levine,” he said. “We’re going to take a look around in her house and see if there’s anything there that makes sense.” He lit a Camel and said, “Did you get the name of the artist yet?”
She grunted.
“Negative.”
He looked over and wrinkled his forehead.
It should be simple.
That’s what his expression said.
Alabama held her hands up in self-defense.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “That magazine is published by a group called Brown & Lancaster. They’re out of San Francisco. I called and talked to a receptionist. She had no idea who the artist was and patched me through to one of the uppity-ups, a guy named Martin Brown.”
“The first part of the Brown & Lancaster?”
“That’s my presumption,” Alabama said. “Anyway, he told me that the artist wanted to remain anonymous.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Why?”
“Apparently the guy has a day job he doesn’t want to jeopardize.”
“What kind of day job?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I got the feeling that it was something professional, something that didn’t mix with sleaze—a doctor or lawyer or politician or something like that.”
Wilde chewed on it.
“Your next assignment is to see if the red matches came from San Francisco.”
23
S hade and Mojag arrived in Denver just as the sun dipped over the edge of the earth and the sky softened to a watercolor pink. Neither of them had ever been there before so they drove around for a while to get their bearings. The Rocky Mountains busted up out of the flatlands twenty miles to the west and provided a navigational anchor.
A flophouse.
That’s what they were looking for as a base for Mojag, a flophouse.
It would be better than sleeping in the alley, albeit not by much. More importantly, it would be filled with transients, who generally didn’t have much love loss for the cops to begin with, and probably wouldn’t be around in six weeks to answer questions even if they did.
Colfax was one of the nicer stretches of town.
So was Broadway.
The edgier section turned out to be Larimer Street. And even edgier than that was Market Street, home to a fleabag hotel to end all fleabag hotels, called the Metropolitan. They drove by it twice and decided it would do.
They swung back around and stopped a block short.
“Okay, see that mailbox over there?”
Mojag followed Shade’s finger.
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Okay,” Shade said, “here’s how we communicate. If you spot the guy or get some information on him, get a piece of chalk or masking tape or something like that and mark the back of that mailbox with an X. I’ll come by every day and check it. If I see it marked, I’ll meet you at the pickup at ten o’clock that night.”
“How will you know where the truck is?”
“Just be sure it’s parked within a couple of blocks of here. I’ll find it.”
“Okay. Where are you going to stay?”
/>
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Somewhere.”
She got out, shut the door and leaned in the window.
“Happy hunting.”
Then she walked away.
24
W ith a newly-bought short skirt around her waist and 2” open-toed heels under her feet, Fallon strutted her bouncy little body down 16th Street through the heart of Denver. It was that magical time when the twilight began to morph into the night and the streetlights began to kick on. Cars cruised down both sides of the street, lots of cars, filled with people seeing and being seen.
The temperature was perfect.
The heat of the day had dissipated into the thin Rocky Mountain air.
She tossed her hair.
Eyes were on her.
She could feel them.
There was tension in the air. Santa Fe had it on occasion, but not this big and not outside the weekend. She’d made a good choice to leave that pathetic cow town.
Cross-streets clicked by as she walked.
Glenarm.
Welton.
Champa.
Stout.
After Lawrence she came to a street with lots of bar lights and an edgy, dangerous patina, a street called Larimer. She headed over, curious. Halfway down she turned her head and saw something she didn’t expect. Thirty steps behind her was a man. He was thirty or thereabouts, incredibly good looking, dressed in a gray suit and a red tie.
His strut was strong.
She’d seen him before.
Where?
Santa Fe.
That was it, Santa Fe.
That was some time ago, a year at least.
The last thing she needed was for someone from Santa Fe to know she was in Denver. The police were already on the hunt for whoever took that Packard, no question.
Her heart raced.
She picked up her step.
Her skirt swayed.
His eyes were on her ass.
Disappear.
Now.
Now.
Now.
She crossed the street. Two steps into it a terrible sound erupted behind her, the sound of a car slamming to a stop in a panic mode. She turned just in time to see blinding headlights barreling at her, trying to stop but going too fast.
She was going to be run over.
There was nothing she could do.
It was happening too fast.
Then, wham!
The impact came.
Her body contorted.
The world spun.
Everything turned black.
At some point later, which could have been thirty seconds or a hundred times that, colors began to reappear. She was on her back and the ground was hard.
She was in the street.
A crowd was around her, staring down. The closest face belonged to the man in the gray suit, the one who’d been walking behind her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
That might be true, it might not. All she wanted was to get up and get out. She muscled up to a sitting position.
Her head spun.
“The driver took off,” the man said. “He was driving an old pickup. He looked like an Indian.”
Fallon didn’t care.
She felt her face and head for blood or cuts and found none. Then she got to her feet. Nothing felt broken. Her legs worked. Her arms worked. Her neck had a pain when she turned her head to the left but it wasn’t anything that would kill her.
“Do you want me to call the police?”
She shook her head.
“No, it was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t look.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He helped her out of the street to the sidewalk.
“My name’s Jundee,” he said. “Technically I have a first name, James, but everyone just calls me Jundee.” He shifted his feet. “I’m an attorney.”
She studied him.
“Here in Denver?”
“Yes.”
Denver.
Denver wasn’t Santa Fe.
The corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. She held out her hand and said, “Fallon Leigh. Nice to meet you.”
25
I t turned out that Senn-Rae lived in the sixth-floor loft where she practiced law, in a separate set of rooms behind a closed door—illegal, from a zoning point of view, but economical. Wilde swung by unannounced early evening and rapped on the door with a pair of drumsticks. The door opened a few inches and got snagged by a chain. Senn-Rae’s face appeared in the sliver.
“It’s me,” Wilde said.
The lawyer let him in.
She wore a white T-shirt that ended just short of her ass. Below that were legs, bare; and feet, equally bare. Her hair was down and loose. A half-glass of red wine dangled in her left hand. A 33 spun on a record machine, Lady Day, set to a low volume. She had a book in her hand.
“This is unexpected,” she said.
“For me too,” Wilde said. “I have a gig tonight playing drums.”
“You play drums?”
“Actually play is probably too strong a word,” he said. “Beat on ’em is more accurate. Anyway, I thought you might want to come.” Wilde saw hesitation and added, “If you come, I promise to get drunk and make inappropriate advances towards you every chance I get.”
She smiled.
“Such a deal.”
“I have plans for you afterwards, too.”
“Oh really?”
He nodded.
“Do you want to know what those plans are?”
“I think I already know.”
“Actually, you don’t,” he said. “Afterwards, you and me are going to break into someone’s house.”
She wrinkled her forehead.
“Whose?”
“You’ll see.”
She shook her head.
“You seem to forget that I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I don’t do things like that. I could get disbarred. That’s why I hired you.”
Wilde shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “Then afterwards, we’ll go to Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
He looked at his watch.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Come on, throw a dress on and indulge me.”
She stared at him for a heartbeat, deciding.
Then she said, “Give me five minutes.”
Wilde watched her as she walked across the loft. Her ass swung seductively, her thighs were firm and muscular, the bottoms of her feet were dirty.
She turned when she got to the end.
He didn’t divert his gaze.
He was a predator.
She was prey.
He wanted her to know it.
She closed the door after she entered but not all the way. It hung open a foot. A shower turned on.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged wearing the sexiest black dress in the world, short and tight, the kind that breaks hearts and makes men act stupid. She rolled soft rouge lipstick over her mouth as she walked across the loft. Her hair was washed but not dry, hanging wet, even letting loose with an occasional drip. Wilde took in her every move.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“That’s an understatement.”
The Bokaray was an up-scale club with designer carpeting, textured walls, opulent chandeliers, a raised stage, a sea of tables, and two long curved bars, all set in a smoky air charged with tension, high-fashion and perfume.
A sexy vixen.
That was the best way to describe Mercedes Raine.
A sexy vixen with a honey voice and a dangerous sway.
She had her eyes on Wilde.
Ordinarily he would have been looking right back.
Not tonight, though.
When the evening was over Senn-Rae locked her arm through Wilde’s and said, “I want to come with you.”
“Where?”
“To break into that house.”
&nb
sp; Wilde shook his head.
“You’re drunk.”
She shrugged.
“It relates to my case, right?”
He nodded.
“The house belongs to the dead pinup girl on the boxcar.”
“In that case, I’m definitely going.”
“What about that lawyer thing?”
“I’ll be a lawyer in the morning. Right now I’m just your co-conspirator.”
They were at Blondie.
“Hop in,” Wilde said.
He headed downtown and parked in the alley behind Senn-Rea’s building.
She wrinkled her brow.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re drunk,” he said. “I’m not going to let you put yourself in jeopardy.”
“That’s my choice, not yours.”
Wilde stepped out.
Senn-Rae stayed put.
“Come on,” he said.
“No.”
He opened the door, pulled her out and threw her over his shoulder. Then he carried her up the stairs, all the way to the sixth floor.
“Give me your keys.”
She handed him her purse.
He fished them out, opened the door, carried her through the darkness and threw her on the bed. Then he pulled her dress up and ripped her panties off.
She pressed her lips to his.
Hard.
Wild.
Then she stuck her tongue in his mouth.
So wet.
So perfect.
26
S hade got a room at the Albany Hotel on Curtis Street, registering under the name Mandy Pandora, just in case everything that went wrong in Havana found a way here.
Havana.
She’d wait a week or two, then sneak back in and figure out how much of her network was left, if any. Right now she couldn’t even think about it.
Right now Visible Moon filled her head.
Well, that wasn’t totally true.
Part of her head rang with the fact that she’d disregarded Kent Harvin’s direct order to report for the three o’clock debriefing. He wouldn’t fire her, that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he deserved the information.
She checked her watch.
It was late and DC was even later.
