Frank was thirty-eight years old. For one reason or another, he’d never bothered to fall in love. Maybe it was because he moved around a lot. Also, the kind of women he met tended not to want to get involved. In the past, that suited him just fine. He did care for women, though. During his years in the slammer he’d never once bent over for anyone or made anyone bend over for him. Sex, possibly because he was used to lengthy periods of abstinence, had never been all that big a deal — he thought of it as kind of like kite flying, something you did when the wind was up and you were in the mood.
This time, it was different.
Frank’s experience had always been with women who knew how to take, but weren’t all that good at giving. Lulu, he was beginning to learn, was unique in that she had an appetite for both pleasures.
Frank decided to go along with her, do the blind-man kissing thing. He paced himself, took his time. After a little while the weirdness of the situation passed away and he forgot all about himself, who he was. It was like he’d shucked his personality, kicked out of it and moved on. Somehow, he stopped being Frank Wright and evolved into somebody else entirely.
But who did he turn into? That was the part of it he didn’t even vaguely begin to understand.
His butterfly mouth fed on the nectar of her flesh. Because his eyes were shut he couldn’t see that wherever he kissed her, she blossomed a delicate pink. But he was acutely aware of the rising heat of her body, the way she warmed to him. He continued to feed on her, began to pick up the pace and then she took his head in her hands and thrashed against him and cried out and pushed him away.
He opened his eyes and found to his dismay that she was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. He offered her a corner of the sheet. She ignored him. He lit a cigarette. The sun was going down and the window was a rectangle of black randomly dusted with specks of light. Frank pulled smoke into his lungs.
Five hundred bucks. No wonder.
Lulu snuffed, got herself under control. Sighed contentedly. She said, “Tired, honey?”
Frank said, “Maybe a little.”
“How long are you staying in town?”
“Just one more night. There’s something I got to do.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask.”
Lulu snuggled up against him, rested her head on his chest. He stroked her gossamer hair. She said, “Yeah, that’s what I figured you were up to. Something you couldn’t talk about. Something bad.”
Frank said, “C’mon, really?”
“The minute I saw you, I knew all about you. Didn’t you feel that way about me?”
Frank thought about it, watched the smoke from his cigarette curdle the air. When he was confident he had it down right, he said, “When you walked through that door I told myself that if we were together all the rest of our lives, I’d never get to know a thing about you.”
Lulu giggled. She said, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“You’re right.”
She seemed so pleased with him. Frank wondered why. She rolled on top of him, sat up with her long white legs straddling him. She said, “Now it’s my turn. But there are some new rules. You can’t move, not one little itty-bitty bit. And you can’t say anything. No instructions, no requests. And no groaning or any sneaky stuff like that. My quest is to figure out what you like. If I do it right, I won’t need any hints. You understand what I’m saying, Frank?”
Frank said, “I sure hope so.” He took one last drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
She kissed him on the mouth.
Frank lay perfectly still. The day’s last sunlight streamed through the hotel window, slanting into the r6om. There were shadows everywhere but her startlingly pale body was bathed in light; it was as if the light passed right through her, pierced her through and through.
Frank tried to let go, fall away from himself, get back to that strange place where he did not know himself and had so much to learn. Her breath on his face was cool and damp.
He might have been a dead man. He floated above himself and looked down. She kissed his eyes. He did not blink.
4
The interrogation room was about the size of an elevator. A cop had once said it was small enough to give a spider claustrophobia, and it was almost true. When two detectives and a suspect squeezed in there, everybody had to breathe at once.
The walls were painted a neutral cream colour. The carpet was grey. There were three chrome-legged chairs with beige upholstery arranged around a small table. The table was bare — it held no calendar to remind prisoners of passing time, no ashtray to throw if they got mad. As a matter of fact the whole building, all six floors, was a non-smoking area. But the room was self-regulating in any event — anybody fool enough to light up with the door shut would die of asphyxiation in minutes.
The middle of the three chairs was equipped with a microphone on a flexible stainless steel stalk. A camera mounted high on the opposite wall was permanently focused on the chair.
A door to the left of the main entrance led to an even smaller adjoining room. The door was painted the same colour as the walls, so it would blend in and not draw attention to itself.
Cherry Ngo sat slouched in the chair in front of the microphone. He was about five foot eight and very thin, maybe one hundred and ten pounds. He wore a shiny black leather jacket and black jeans, cheap black sneakers, no socks. There were five — count ‘em — diamond earrings in the lobe of his left ear. A fat gold chain looped around his ankle. There was a tattoo of a red eagle on the back of his right hand. His hair hung down past his button nose and tight rosebud mouth.
Parker wondered how he could wear his hair like that, why it didn’t drive him crazy. In a tussle, it’d be the first thing she went for. She’d grab that long hank of hair and use it to drag him all over the sidewalk. Wipe that sneer off his face.
She said, “Tell me again what time it was when you first heard the car go by?”
“I dunno. Late.”
“How late?”
Cherry Ngo shrugged. “Someplace between midnight and maybe three o’clock, half past three?”
“Then what?”
“Like I already told you. Nothin’. So I went back inside.”
“No, that wasn’t how it happened. Think hard. The car came around again, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And you went out on the front porch again.”
Cherry was starting to get a thing for this lady cop who had so much patience, never raised her voice or gave him a hard look. She thought she was tough, but was too good-looking to make it work. He liked her hair, black and sleek like his, and her dark-brown eyes, liquid and depthless. The lady cop had a pretty decent body, too, long-legged and slim. Cherry Ngo smiled, flashing the kind of teeth dentists dreamt about — not much enamel but lots and lots of gold. He said, “That’s right, lady. The car came back and I went out on the porch.”
“Detective.”
Ngo frowned.
Claire Parker said, “Not ‘lady.’ Detective. Was it you who turned the porch light on?”
“I look stupid?”
Parker thought she’d take a pass on that one. “Who turned on the light, Cherry?”
“Emily”
“Emily Chan. Your girlfriend.”
Cherry Ngo smiled. His delicate face wrinkled up like a dehydrated apple and his expensive black leather jacket creaked softly as he shifted in the chair. He tilted his head to one side and the constellation of chip diamonds sparkled in the light. “Ex-girlfriend,” he said. “I don’t go out with dead chicks.” He gave Parker a look that clearly said — since there’s a vacancy, you interested?
“Okay, Emily turned on the porch light. Then what happened?”
“The car was sitting in the middle of the street. Just sitting there, right in front of the house. Didn’t have no lights on, but you could hear the engine. Not throbbing like you see on old movies. More like a kind of whining.”
Cherry worked his jacket zipper up and down as fast as he could, so it made a shrill ripping sound. The thin waterfall of gleaming black hair danced across his face, into his eyes.
Parker said, “What kind of car was it?”
“Black.”
“It was a black car.”
“Yeah, black. Or maybe blue, I dunno. See, it was dark out. What I got, X-ray vision?”
“Was it a large car, a small car … ”
“Somewhere in there. Medium? I really couldn’t say for sure.” Cherry sat up a little straighten “Wait a minute. Now I remember. Weird how the picture popped into my mind. I’m lookin’ at the lady detective’s glossy black hair — my favourite colour — and all of a sudden I see a Honda. A black Honda CRX.”
“How many people in the car?”
Cherry Ngo shrugged, played with his hair. “Windows was tinted.”
“But somebody must have rolled a window down. Or did they shoot through the glass?”
“Window came down real fast. Power-winder. Then all I could see was muzzle flashes.” Cherry Ngo made a gun of his hand. He pointed the gun at Parker. “Pow! Pow! Pow! All that noise, bullets all over the fuckin’ place. I’m standing there in the light. There’s bullet holes in the wall. I say, don’t flinch, Cherry. Take it like a man!” He leaned forward, smiling. “Tell me somethin’. How come the bad guys run around with automatics and shit like that, and all you cops got is little dinky thirty-eights?”
“Were there any marks on the car? Dents or scrapes, anything at all?”
“Was in showroom condition. Real nice.”
“You notice the plates?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, Cherry. The gunfire, then what?”
“Emily ducked back inside. At least, I thought she did. We know better now, don’t we?”
Cherry’s dark eyes searched Parker’s face. She gave him nothing, absolutely nothing.
Cherry slouched a little lower in the chair. “So what happened next? Nothin’ much. Little black car took off. Cops showed up. Somebody in the neighbourhood dial nine-eleven?”
“A concerned citizen.”
“Yeah? Thought they was extinct.”
Parker said, “Your girlfriend was shot to death and you make jokes.”
Cherry Ngo stared up at the ceiling. He crossed his legs, worked the zipper. Parker gritted her teeth. She said, “What’s wrong with you; don’t you care about her?”
Cherry said, “Laughter’s the best medicine. And she took, I heard somebody say, at least three hits. Died on her feet. Man, that’s the way I’d like to go. Fast’n’ Easy.” He grinned. “Sounds like a franchise, don’t it.”
“How old was Emily?”
“Too young to die, probably. But what if she’d made it? All that scar tissue, she’d of been ugly, miserable and lonely. So maybe it’s better this way, right?”
Parker said, “Her lower abdomen was covered with bruises. Did you beat her?”
Cherry smiled. “Her lower what?”
“Did you beat her?”
“She was always bumping into things. Clumsy. What’d I want to beat her for?”
Parker said, “Stay right where you are. I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t move an inch.”
Cherry Ngo said, “Don’t take it personal, Detective, but this fuckin’ city’s already got a big surplus of ugly broads. So I don’t think one less is worth making such a big deal about.” Parker went into the adjoining room, shut the door behind her. She was very careful not to slam it. Jack Willows sat in front of a low table that held a Hitachi colour TV, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and two Beta-format VCRS. The TV screen was split; the big picture was of Ngo’s body from the waist up; a closeup of his face was framed in a small box in the screens upper right-hand corner. The split screen allowed the operator to focus in on a suspect’s facial reaction while he was being questioned.
Problem was, Ngo had been about as animated as a brick wall. What Willows had on tape, he could have just as easily captured with a still camera. Ngo had seen a black Honda CRX, and that was it. Nothing else. He had no enemies that he knew of, no one who’d want him dead. Ditto Emily. Why anyone would empty a clip of .45 calibre bullets at either of them, he had no idea. None. And as far as Parker was concerned, if Cherry said the car was small and black, she’d put her money on a white stretch limo.
Parker rested a hip against the table. “Now what?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“He’s laughing at us, the little scumbug.”
“But not out loud,” said Willows, smiling.
“Got any ideas?”
“Let him walk. Give his bosses a chance to talk to him. Maybe they’ll give us something.”
“Gangs.” Parker said the word as if it was something you had to scrape off your shoe.
Willows ejected a cassette, checked to make sure there was plenty of tape. He didn’t trust the counter. It was an attitude problem. He’d been a cop all his adult life. Trust, whether he was dealing with machines or people, wasn’t his strong suit.
Parker fiddled with the Hitachi’s joystick, adjusting the picture so Cherry Ngo’s unlined face and depthless eyes filled the small box in the split screen. Cherry played with his hair, his jacket zipper.
Willows turned the sound down. He said, “The girl, Emily. We keep after him about her, maybe take him down to the morgue to say goodbye … think that might help?”
“He doesn’t give a damn about her. Probably he’s happy he doesn’t have to worry about her keeping her mouth shut.” Willows, not wanting to wear out his watch, glanced up at the big electric clock mounted on the wall above the television. It was 4:37. Cherry Ngo reached out and shoved the microphone to one side. He slumped a little lower in his chair and shut his eyes. Willows said, “We might as well let him go home; start patching the bullet holes in his wall.”
“And then you can go have dinner somewhere, and still have plenty of time to make it to the game, right?”
“What game?”
“The ball game. Inspector Bradley gave you a couple of free tickets.”
“Who told you that?”
“He did.”
“Well, you want to go?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe yes, and maybe no. Were you going to ask me if I didn’t bring it up?”
Willows smiled. He looked pretty good in his grey suit, crisp white shirt, matching tie. He said, “Yeah, I was going to ask you to the game. But I wasn’t going to tell you I got the tickets for free.”
“You were going to try to sell me one?”
“Suggest you buy dinner.”
“Nice, Jack. Very classy.” The clock on the wall said 4:39. It would take her an hour to get back to her apartment, shower and dress. Another hour and a half or so to eat, plus about thirty minutes’ travel time to get to the game. She said, “Let’s work on Cherry until five, then let him go.”
“We aren’t going to get anything out of him, Claire. You know that as well as I do.”
Parker thought it over, shrugged. She went back into the interrogation room to give Cherry the good news. He seemed to have decided to take a nap. She crouched down beside him. His breathing was deep and regular. A vein in his neck surged and fell.
Parker went back into the other room and collected the video tapes and Willows. They locked the door on the video equipment and slipped quietly past Cherry Ngo, leaving the door to the interrogation room wide open behind them.
Cherry wasn’t the only one who’d been caught napping.
Detective Eddy Orwell’s hand was clamped on a cheese sandwich with a big half-moon out of it. His mouth, as he sprawled in his chair, was wide open. He looked as if he’d fallen asleep getting ready for the next bite.
“Newlyweds,” said Farley Spears over the sibilant hiss of Orwell’s snoring. Carefully, he used a pair of huge stainless steel scissors to cut a long, thin strip from his brown paper lunch bag.
Parker
said, “What about you, Farley. How long have you been married?”
“Long enough so I don’t have to worry any more about getting a good night’s sleep.” The scissors flashed in the light. Spears was concentrating hard, determined to do a good job. He glanced at Dan Oikawa, who stealthily prowled the squad-room windows with an empty styrofoam take-out container held at the ready. Spears said, “How you doing, Danny?”
“Nothing yet.”
Parker said, “What’re you guys up to now?”
“Dan’s hunting for flies.” Farley laid several more strips of paper on his desk. Each strip was about half an inch wide and four or five inches long.
Dan Oikawa said, “Why aren’t there any flies in this goddamn place?”
Willows said, “Maybe Eddy’s already eaten them all.”
Oikawa smiled. “You always were a quick study, Jack. How you doing with your star witness?”
“He’s cooperative as hell. Unfortunately, it turns out he’s deaf and blind.”
Spears said, “Keep it down, okay?”
The phone rang. Willows picked up. He cupped his hand over the receiver and said, “It’s Judith. She wants to talk to Eddy.”
“Wait a minute,” said Spears. “Dan, how you doing?”
“Dead or alive, not a fly in the joint. Can’t find any spiders, either.”
“Okay, I guess we’re just gonna have to make do with what we’ve got.” Spears crept over to Orwell’s desk, pried open his cheese sandwich and shoved in a dozen strips of brown paper. He gently shook Orwell’s broad shoulder. “Eddy, wake up. You got a call.”
Willows said, “Line three.”
Orwell yawned hugely, rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
Spears snatched up Orwell’s phone, punched a button and shoved the phone at him. “It’s your wife, Judith.”
“I know who my wife is,” said Orwell grumpily. He took a bite of sandwich and chewed slowly. A strand of paper dangled from between his lips. He slurped it up like a wayward strand of spaghetti and said, “Hi baby, it’s me.”
Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 3
