Bishop held her, massaged the small of her back. Stared over her head into the dark. Thinking. “He doesn’t go out to drink at the Clover Leaf anymore?”
“Not lately. Freaking wish he would. Just sits there, hogging the TV with his baseball. Sending me out for more beers.” She drew away from him. Settled wearily onto her back. Looked up through the shadows at the ceiling. “He rumbles around like some kind of thundercloud. I mean, it drives him ape-shit, just hanging around like that. It always has.” She smiled. “I guess that’s one thing, at least. I’m pretty sure he won’t last much longer before he’s gotta hit the Clover Leaf again.”
Bishop was pretty sure too. He rested on his elbow, looking down at her, stroking her hair back behind her ear. This could be his chance, he thought.
“I wish I could just stop thinking about this shit,” Kathleen said softly. “The thing is, you know, with Chris? It’s not even fun anymore. I mean, Chris could be really fun when we first started dating. Before he got thrown out of the Army. We were always laughing. That’s practically all we did.”
It was Hirschorn, Bishop thought. It had to be. Hirschorn was having Chris followed to make sure he didn’t start boozing it up again, start flapping his mouth off in the Clover Leaf again, bragging about their big operation. Hirschorn had handed Chris the word that day he yelled at him out at the airpark: Stay home, stay clean, stay sober and quiet until the operation is over. Chris knew he had to try to rein himself in. But Kathleen was right: He couldn’t hold out much longer.
“I wish it could be like this all the time,” Kathleen was saying. “You know what I mean? Just like this, we’re lying here talking, me and you. Without all the bullshit, all the complications. You know what I mean?”
Bishop wrapped a curl of her mouse brown hair around his finger. Soon, Chris would crack, he thought. A day, two days. He’d be out at the Clover Leaf again. Boozing again, talking, bragging. And this time, Hirschorn’s goons would be watching him. If Bishop could be there too, maybe he could stir things up a little. Egg Chris on, get him to cross the line somehow. Send a message to Hirschorn that he’d hired the wrong pilot. That Bishop himself might be the right man for the job.
The idea made something glitter in Bishop’s heart, some hard, cold, brilliant thing.
“You know what I mean, Frank?” Kathleen said again. She reached up and stroked his cheek. “You ever feel like that? Like it could just be you and me all the time?”
The touch of her hand brought Bishop back to her. What the hell had she been saying? he wondered. He hadn’t been paying attention at all. Stalling, he took her hand and brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. He went back over her words in his mind. Then he understood.
“Sure,” he answered her. “Sure, I do. But it’s like you said, Chris is your husband.”
Her hand slipped to the back of his neck. She drew him down to her, close. “Maybe I don’t care,” she whispered. “Maybe I don’t care anymore.”
He kissed her cheek. “You said he’d kill us.”
“I don’t care. I’m not scared of him. I don’t care what he does.” Her fingertips trailed down his spine. “You’re not scared of him, are you, Frank?”
His hand played over her breast. He kissed her neck. “Hell, yes, I’m scared of him. He’s twice my size.” His body slid over the sheets to press against her.
She held him tighter. “Frank,” she whispered. “Frank, I know it sucks, but I’m falling in love with you. I don’t care if it sucks. I just am.”
Bishop’s lips moved up over her lips. That stopped her talking anyway. Plus he was hard again so, what the hell, he climbed onto her, went into her. But this time his mind kept going. He was still thinking about Chris, about Hirschorn having him watched, about how he could push Chris over the line and send Hirschorn a message that might get him in on the action.
Kathleen whispered his name, his phony name. “Frank.” Bishop moved inside her.
They held each other close in the summer dark, he thinking his thoughts, she dreaming her dreams.
Twenty
After she left, Bishop sat on the edge of the writing desk, sat in the dark. The window was open a crack. Naked, he felt the heat from outside mingle on his skin with the cool from the air-conditioned room. He lit a cigarette. He watched the smoke trail out into the night. He watched it float over toward the house across the way.
He drew on the cigarette, distant in his mind. It was funny, he thought. Funny about her being in love with him. Funny how people don’t really see each other. Men and women. They invent each other in their minds and then they see what they invent. They don’t really see each other. Now she was in love with him and she didn’t even know his real name, didn’t know anything real about him.
Well, it was almost over. Soon he would know what Hirschorn was up to. He would have what he wanted, what Weiss had sent him for. Then he could go home and that would be the end of it.
Still. It was funny. He flicked an ash at the open window. Considered the yellow lights of Kathleen’s house through the trees. He hoped she’d keep her mouth shut about it. He hoped she wouldn’t go around telling people that she was in love. She might. Women did. Maybe she would even tell Chris in the hope that Chris and Bishop would fight it out over her. Maybe she wanted Bishop to be her white knight after all.
He thought about that. He thought about the way Chris had grabbed Kathleen that night on the porch. He thought about the way he had cuffed her, like it was nothing, like she was nothing. He thought about it and there was a flow of sour heat inside him.
His cigarette was done. He crushed it out in the ashtray, stood off the desk. He went to the closet. He had his traveling bag in there, wedged behind some boxes. The bag was empty except for his handheld computer. He kept it hidden in there. He brought the handheld out. Set it on the desk. Sat down in front of it.
He signed on to check his e-mail. There was the latest from Weiss.
JB. Investigation here shows your situation could be very dangerous. The names you sent me seem to revolve around Cameron Moncrieff, a pimp and smuggler of drugs, women, guns, etc., now deceased. Harry Ridder was Moncrieff’s gardener. He’s dead too, a suicide. Moncrieff’s “live-in caretaker,” Julie Wyant, is also missing, presumed a suicide. Whip was Moncrieff’s lover and kind of aide-de-camp, also a top Identity Man, in slam for accessory to murder and now PC’d up by law enforcement. My concern is there seems to be a connection between these people and a major whack specialist sometimes called Shadowman. If Hirschorn is also connected to him, you have to proceed with caution. I’m very serious about this. Until I know more, do not go undercover into Hirschorn’s op. Do not. If you try to get close and he gets suspicious, your life could be in danger as well as the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Wannamaker, especially Mrs. Wannamaker, as she has talked to you. I’m serious. If this involves the Shadowman, it’s dangerous stuff. Proceed with extreme caution until further notice. W.
Bishop read the e-mail. Snorted. Smiled with one corner of his mouth. He stretched his arms in the air and yawned.
Finally, he deleted the mail, turned off the handheld, replaced it in the bag. He replaced the bag in the closet.
He went back to bed. He lay with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. He thought about Chris and Kathleen, about that night out on the porch when Chris had hit her. He thought about how he was going to call Chris out, how he would push Chris over the line, and how Hirschorn’s man would be watching….
He smiled up into the dark as he thought about it. He was hungry for action and the hard, brilliant thing inside him glittered and shone.
Twenty-One
The next day, Weiss found the love of his life.
“Oh, come on, don’t just fall for her, Weiss,” Casey told him. “Have some originality.” But it was too late. The minute he saw the photograph, he was gone.
Casey, you’ll remember, was Weiss’s procuress, the woman who supplied him with whores. She was forty or so. Si
lvery blonde. A cheerful face, deeply lined from sun and cigarettes. Short, trim, liked to wear form-fitting slacks and sweaters that showed off her great ass, her great tits. Always had a warm smile for Weiss, what seemed for all the world like real affection.
They were sitting in her living room, in her penthouse in the Heights. The late morning sun streamed in through one wall of windows, through the other they could see all the way out to Alcatraz on the glittering bay. Casey was posed on the mod white sectional, leaning back, chin up, legs crossed—you know—arm stretched out along the sofa back. The good body displayed.
Weiss, across the glass coffee table from her, was in the armchair. Looking at the photograph. Gazing at the photograph.
“Oh, Jesus, Weiss, you are such a pushover, I swear. Such an old romantic.” She had a rich, sensual voice. That was also from the cigarettes. She was never without a cigarette. She brought one to her lips now. Shook her head as she watched Weiss moon over the snapshot.
Finally, reluctantly, he put the photograph down on the coffee table. He couldn’t stop looking at it though.
“I figured you’d know her,” he murmured. “Mystery girl with no background, hanging out with Moncrieff. I figured she’d been a pro at some point.”
“She was never one of my girls,” Casey told him. The smoke uncurled slowly from her mouth as she spoke. “But a friend of mine ran her for a while out of one of Moncrieff’s operations. She loaned me the picture and…” The pause was for dramatic flair. She had her tongue in her cheek as she lifted a computer disk from the sofa table behind her. “…a video!” She placed it down by the photograph. “Don’t wear yourself out.”
Weiss glanced at the disk. Touched his tongue to his parted lips. Swallowed. Casey, watching him, let out a pretty, musical laugh.
Embarrassed, Weiss forced himself to look away finally, to look up at her. She pulled on her cigarette playfully.
“Oh, you don’t have to get all blushy,” she said. “Believe me, you’re not alone. She was like that apparently. Guys fell in love with her. Older guys especially. She had that look, you know: like she just wafted down from Heaven. According to my friend, she had middle-aged gentlemen practically parked outside her window baying like hound dogs. Bringing her flowers, the moon, whatever. Which is kind of a pain in the ass, believe me, if you’re trying to run a business.” She leaned forward, tilted her head, as if to get a rightways look at the snapshot herself. “It’s the face of an angel, all right. Nice hair too.”
Yeah, it was. Very nice hair. Strawberry blond. Natural—you couldn’t fake that color. Flowing, silky, gleaming. And the face it framed—just as Casey said—an angel’s face. Wistful, distant, sweet. The sight of her struck Weiss to his hankering heart. She could’ve stepped out of one of his secret daydreams.
“Did she call herself Julie Wyant then?” he managed to ask.
“Oh yeah,” said Casey. “Just the one name, as far as I know. But my friend says there was never any paper on her. She just showed up for work one day, no background, no past to speak of. My friend says that’s how she acted too.”
“Like…What do you mean?”
“As if she’d just been born—that was the way my friend put it. Just kind of dreamy and far away, you know. As if she’d just suddenly opened her eyes and found herself here on earth with the rest of us.”
“And she never told anyone anything about herself? The other girls…?”
“Nope. Moncrieff tried to check her out once but no luck. Apparently he was in love with her too.”
“Moncrieff…?”
Casey laughed. “I know.” She arched her eyebrow wickedly. “But in his own way, I mean. He worshiped her. Went into raptures over her. As if she was one of his works of art.”
“She was his live-in caretaker, right?” said Weiss.
“Yeah, the minute he saw her, he took her out of the game. Said she was too good for it. Brought her to his house to live with him.”
“How long? Do you know?”
She shrugged, paused for thought, her cigarette halfway to her mouth again. “Couple of months, I guess. She was with him right up till the end.”
“How about her? Do you think she loved him?”
“I wouldn’t know. How the hell would I?”
“I mean, do you think she went off the bridge because he died?”
“Beats me,” said Casey. “You think she went off the bridge at all?”
The question had crossed Weiss’s mind too. No reason to be suspicious really. Except that there’d been no body. And maybe it was hard for him to believe that any face that beautiful was gone for good.
Without meaning to, without wanting to, he let his eyes wander back to the photograph again. Again, he licked his lips.
“Oh God!” said Casey. “Now what’ve I done? Forget I said it, Weiss. I was just kidding around. I’m sure she went off the bridge. She obviously went off the bridge. Don’t make some kind of quest out of it. It’ll just fuck you up, believe me.”
Weiss picked up the snapshot. Slipped it—tenderly—into his jacket. “I can take the video?” he asked.
“Like I said: Don’t hurt yourself.”
Weiss swept the disk into one big hand. Put that in his pocket too. Stood up. Casey watched him from the sofa. Amusement in her eyes, maybe a little jealousy too.
“Thanks, Case.”
“I live to serve you, sweetheart. You know that.”
He smiled. Went to the door.
“Weiss.” He paused with his hand on the knob. Looked back at her. “Baby,” she said to him—gently, really gently. “Plenty of girls go off plenty of bridges. That’s the way of things. Dollars to donuts, she’s gone.”
Twenty-Two
I worked late that night. I thought I was the last one left in the office. But as I slung my backpack over my arm and started for the exit, I saw Weiss’s door ajar, a dim, shifting light spilling out of it. I went over to see if he’d gone home, if he’d left something on by mistake. But no, he was there. Sitting in near darkness. Tilted back in his big chair, swiveling slightly to and fro. He had a glass of his beloved scotch in one hand. His computer was on, he was staring at it. The monitor was out of my eyeshot. I couldn’t see what he was watching. I could only see the dim light from it shifting on his face, in the air, on the carpet. That—the light from the monitor—was what I’d noticed spilling through the door.
I peeked in at him but, for some reason, I didn’t want to say anything. Something in his expression made me feel I should just sneak away, go home, leave him undisturbed with whatever it was he was looking at. Some sad or dreamy something in his eyes. But as I pulled back from the door, I guess he caught the movement. He glanced up, saw me. Waved me in.
“Turn the light on as you come,” he said. I did. Weiss rubbed his eyes against the glare. “Have a seat.”
I dumped my pack on the floor. Sank myself into one of the client chairs, the one at the near corner of the desk. I still couldn’t see the monitor.
“Want a drink?”
He tilted forward to slide open a low drawer. Drew out a bottle of the good stuff he liked, the Macallan. Drew out a second glass. Poured fresh shots for both of us.
“Whiskey in the desk drawer,” I said. “Like a private eye in a novel.”
We tipped our glasses to each other. “You can put it in your book when you write about me,” he said. We drank. Then Weiss reached out casually and swiveled the monitor around towards me. “Here, what do you think of this?”
I sipped my drink and watched. It was the video Casey had given him. An Internet ad for an escort service. Just a ten-second loop playing over and over again.
“What am I looking for?” I asked.
“The woman,” said Weiss as if it were obvious. “What do you think of her?”
She was beckoning from the screen. Bending forward slightly, crooking her finger, the clichéd motion. She was shown from the waist, dressed in some high-necked lacy white thing, somehow prim and sexy at
once. Because Weiss had asked me, I felt I was supposed to notice something about her, so I tried. She was beautiful certainly, there was no question about that. The red-gold hair, the ivory-and-rose complexion, the uncannily deep eyes, meltingly blue. Plus her expression was interesting. Not the usual thing, I thought. None of the routine mischief, the forced sensuality you get in most of these sex ads. Very ethereal instead, almost otherworldly. Not as if she was beckoning you to some hot triple-x party. More as if she was inviting you to float off into the clouds with her and fade away to fairyland.
She didn’t do much for me, I have to say. She was a little wan and romantic for my taste. I was about to make some childishly sardonic remark about her. But when I turned to Weiss, when I saw him, watching her image, saw the world-weary yearning, the sadness and the desire there, whatever comment I was thinking of died on my lips.
“So what about her?” was all I said.
Weiss blinked at my voice. Sat up straighter. Clicked the mouse to shut the video down. “Her name is Julie Wyant,” he told me. “She’s missing.”
I knew about this. I had overheard two of Weiss’s operatives talking about it in the hallway. They’d said she was a suicide. Dead. I found it strange that she was only missing now.
“The cops think she threw herself off the Golden Gate,” Weiss went on.
“You don’t? Think so, I mean.”
He lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. They’re probably right. That’s probably what happened. It’s just hard to tell with these things, that’s all. No one ever found her body. No one even knows who she really was or where she came from.”
“Did you run a check on her?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing. No paper, no past. Phony name, phony background. Nothing to follow. I talked to some girls who worked with her, and a couple of guys. They all described her as sort of an odd personality. Distracted, preoccupied—as if her mind was always far away. Anyway, she never told anyone anything about herself.”
Dynamite Road Page 9
