“I could use a sandwich,” he declared, putting his hand out, palm up.
I reached for my wallet and drew out a ten. Before I handed it over, I sent him a piercing look. “This better be worth it, Mickey.”
He licked his broken lips. “I can tell you where I saw her, but that’s all I know.”
It was worth a ten-spot, and the department would reimburse me, so I handed over the money. “Now give.”
He looked at the bill, the cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth, lank hair falling over his forehead. “There’s an alley behind the Laughing Cow pub. Sometimes, we go there and fuck around. Like tell stories and…”
“Get high?”
“I ain’t saying. Anyway, it’s where I saw her last.”
“Have you seen any of Mason’s other girls there?”
He nodded, folding the ten carefully and stuffing it in a front pocket of his worn jeans.
“How many?”
“I dunno! Two? Three? I don’t exactly take names and numbers.”
Angelica patted him on his skinny, T-shirted chest. “Okay, okay. So you saw this girl there,” she said, pointing to Amy’s picture again.
He grunted his agreement.
“When did you see her last?” my partner asked.
“Oh, maybe three, four days ago. She and her little kid. I don’t much like having a kid there with us, but what’s she going to do with him? Anyway, he usually just sleeps on a blanket while she’s hanging around with us.”
I imagined Bear-bear curled up on a blanket in the concrete-floored alley and ground my teeth together. That was no way for a kid to grow up. Maybe he’d be happier with his grandparents. How could it be worse?
“Did she seem upset? Worried? Agitated?”
He looked me over for a moment. “She looked like she needed a fucking fix, if that’s what you mean.”
In a way, it was what I meant, but not entirely. I wanted to establish whether she’d been suicidal. “So, things seemed relatively normal with her?”
Mickey shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Say, man, how’d she die?”
“O.D.,” Angelica said quickly.
“Shit happens. She was an okay chick.”
“But Mason wasn’t hanging around with her?”
He shook his head. “No. Don’t see him too often, and usually only from a distance. Not a sociable guy, I guess.”
“Does he sell dope?”
“Yeah, I guess so, through his girls, mostly. Not directly.”
“Okay.” That was about all we’d get out of Mickey. He was getting squirmy and fidgety. Clearly he was due for a shot of whatever this week’s poison was. “If you see or hear anything about Amy, you let us know, Mickey.” That was never going to happen, but sometimes these junkies are more interested in a few bucks than in their own street safety.
“Yeah, sure.”
Piccolino and I left him there, standing in front of the graffiti on the corner bodega. No one else would talk to us. We went back to the car and I drove us to the station. I wanted to go looking for the massage parlor from our second victim’s wallet, but I had to know her identity, if possible, and at the very least, I needed the CSI pics to help witnesses identify her. There might be more information to be had as well. It was about time for some analysis.
* * *
The station house was noisy, people bustling about in the open areas, but the cubicles were quieter—at least the noise was a dull background sound instead of a headache-inducing din. Angelica sat in my office while I opened my email. Sure enough, there were some CSI reports to be read, and a preliminary autopsy report on our second victim as well. I printed it all out, and although I got an eye roll for it, Angelica said nothing.
After retrieving the documents from the central printer, I spread them out on my desk. It got way hot in my little cube when Angelica leaned over me to read the reports. Her breasts pressed against me, and my shoulder burned where they lay. The kiss we’d shared flooded my senses and it was hard to concentrate on the case. I gave myself a mental shake and focused on the job at hand.
The preliminary autopsy report was useful. Fingerprints came back positive for a young woman named Nikkol Sweeny, age nineteen, late of Glendale. Her rap sheet was short but did show a couple of charges for possession with intent to sell, neither of which stuck. Interesting enough, she was not a drug addict. She’d used, but the autopsy suggested that no drugs were in her system at the time, and none had been there recently. I pointed to a line on the report. “She was six weeks pregnant, which may or may not be important. If she was a streetwalker, she’d have some problems over that, but it’s rather a surprise that she’d have let it get to six weeks.”
“Hmm.”
I nodded. “So, it’s unlikely she was a hooker. She was strangled, and that’s for certain. Looks like bare hands. This was no suicide—pretty much as we expected—but the rose is our only connection to victim number one, since the cause of death was different.”
“Wow. This is quite a mystery.”
“Don’t like puzzles?”
“Actually, I do love puzzles, word puzzles. But I’m open to new experiences.”
“Glad to hear that.” I shuffled some of the papers around and pulled up the CSI report. We discovered that most of the fingerprints on the purse were Nikkol’s. CSI had called in Roger Tymon to get his fingerprints, so that they could determine if the second set of finger marks on the bag were his or a third person’s. They were Tymon’s. The prints on the business card were inconclusive, but it wasn’t that big a deal with the other evidence. Aside from the rose, there were no other clues in the dumpsters, which, fortunately, had recently been emptied and only held a few inches of garbage.
Piccolino asked a few questions and so did I, but although we had more information to work with, the perpetrator was still more of a mystery than a known commodity.
“Time to visit the ‘Relax Baxx’ massage parlor,” I told Angelica.
She agreed and we headed out.
Although we’d kept it purely professional all day, I could tell that Angelica was still uncomfortable about the kiss. It had taken on greater significance than it merited, perhaps, but it sat there like the elephant doing tricks in the circus.
Finally, when the tension in the car had become toxic, she said something. “I’m sorry, Jase.”
“Are we at that again? I thought we agreed that we were equally culpable.”
“Maybe, but I can’t help feeling like I screwed things up. We need to get past this.”
“We are. Give it time.”
“Maybe we should have slept together and gotten it out of our systems,” she mumbled.
My ears are good. I heard her clearly, and a hard knot formed in my gut as I imagined the two of us locked in a lover’s embrace. The kiss had been intoxicating enough; I knew that more would have been a Molotov cocktail. I didn’t know if I should say something or let it go. If I said something we’d be opening a discussion that would either drive us further apart, or bring us so close together that we’d be each other’s shadows. I decided to take a step and see where it led. I had begun to like Angelica, and the idea of getting closer was too tempting to resist. Besides, we were both grown-ups, even if one of us did look like a kid.
“Is that what you want?”
“Huh?”
“Is sleeping together what you want, Angelica?”
“No! Of course not. I just think maybe it would have broken the spell.”
“Are you mesmerized?” I watched her face, turning back to the road when I saw her frown in indecision.
“Maybe. I dunno. I don’t want to like you, but I do. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want a partner, got one, and am now getting used to having you around.”
“Exactly.” There was a lengthy pause. “Would it be so awful to sleep together?”
Again, I felt that tightening in my gut. Yes, it would be awful—awful professionally. It could only get in
the way of the police work we were sworn to do. But, God no, it wouldn’t be awful in terms of senses. I would have loved to feel her body wrapped around mine. Was she serious? Was she just throwing out what-ifs, thinking aloud? I had to know. “I can’t say. I can see potential problems with it.” I could see her fidgeting with a button on her suit coat and knew she was anxious. “It’s not like I wouldn’t like to,” I explained. “And I’m more than flattered that you’d think of it, Angelica.”
“I hear a but in there.”
“No but. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you that way.”
“We’re over-analyzing this. Can’t we just fuck and see what happens?”
I laughed. “That’s not very cautious.”
“I’m not the cautious type.”
“Yeah, I see that. Let’s deal with this massage parlor,” I suggested as we drew into the parking lot, “and then we’ll talk about it some more.”
She grumbled as we exited the vehicle. “You talk too much, Striker.”
Yeah, maybe I did.
The massage parlor was in a grubby strip mall near the poor side of Glendale, off Highland Avenue. It was situated between a sandwich shop and a movie rental place. A few cars were spread through the shallow parking lot, but we got a spot right in front of the Relax Baxx door. A small bell rang as we walked in, and we were greeted by a young woman wearing green scrubs and a bored expression. Her hair was done up in a ponytail, and her makeup was extreme. She was pretty in a floozy kind of way. The place looked like a converted dry cleaner’s. I showed the woman my badge and she straightened.
“Detectives Striker and,” I gestured, “Piccolino. Glendale PD.”
“Sure. Is there a problem?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
“Umm. I don’t know anything. I’ve only been working here a week.”
“Is there a manager?”
“Yeah. I’ll get her. Wait here, okay?”
She walked back into the bowels of the shop, leaving us to look at walls dotted with faded drawings of human bodies with the muscles labeled. There were a few stretching exercises pictured too, but the whole thing had no coherence, as though they were thrown up with no purpose. We sat down in the pair of plastic chairs backing up against the front window. Keeping the clients’ faces out of the window would be an important business requirement.
It took maybe five minutes, and I was about to get up and go into the back, when a small Asian woman with a gray streak in her jet black hair came to the counter. She was petite, slender, and well preserved. Her makeup was flawless. She smiled and offered her hand across the countertop. “I’m Susan Lee,” she said.
“Striker and Piccolino, Glendale PD,” I said, offering my badge for the second time.
“What can I do for you officers?”
“Detectives.” I withdrew the envelope with pictures of Nikkol and Amy inside and showed them to Ms. Lee. “Have you seen these women before?”
“Hmm.”
“Take your time.”
She glanced up at me, then studied the pictures a little more. “Yes, I’ve encountered them. This one,” she pointed at Nikkol, “came in looking for a job. I think her name was Nicky.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, maybe a week ago. She was personable, but not qualified. We only hire licensed massage therapists.”
That was a load of bullshit, but I let it go. We all knew what this place fronted for. “That was the only reason you didn’t hire her?”
“Yes.”
“What about this other woman?” I pointed to Amy’s picture.
“That one came in while I was interviewing the first one. They acted like friends. The friend was urging the applicant to hurry along. They had some kind of appointment to get to—maybe another interview, I don’t know. But it rushed the interview, and, frankly, it was a relief. I don’t like to waste my time on unqualified applicants.”
I wondered why a beautiful young woman like Nikkol would be rejected. I would have thought she’d be great for business, but then, I’m not a madam, and can’t say what would appeal to clients and what wouldn’t. But it was significant that Amy and Nikkol knew each other. Tying them in together meant they had something or someone in common.
I looked over at Angelica, and she shook her head subtly. My former Vice cop partner obviously thought this bordello was less important than the case we were working on. I made a mental note to let Vice know about the place. It was their job to follow up on leads like this.
“We might have more questions for you at a later date, Ms. Lee. Thank you for your time.”
Her smile returned. It was professional and polite, but never reached her eyes.
Chapter Five
The hour was growing late, and Angelica and I made our way back to the station house to gather our things and call it quits for the day. There was this thing hanging over our heads, though. The sex thing. I pondered as we drove.
Angelica was on the same track, apparently.
“Jase, the tension between us is crap. I hate it!”
It was bothering me, too. “I know what you mean. I’m not sure that having sex will fix it. It has the potential to make matters worse.”
“Stop analyzing it. Let’s toss a coin or something.”
I can honestly say, that would be the first time I’d made a decision about sex based on a coin toss. “Is that wise?”
Agitation made her little girl voice somewhat shrill. “You’re doing it again! I don’t give a fuck what’s wise. I just want to move on.”
“Thank you for that declaration of feelings,” I said with a wry smile.
She laughed, but it sounded tense. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I do like you, and I respect you, but more than that, I really want to get into your pants.”
I thought about it. Fact was, I wanted her that way too. My whole body vibrated at the thought. I weighed the pros and cons, doing precisely what Angelica would hate, but it’s part of me, part of what makes me a good detective. I’m a nitpicker, looking for details wherever I go.
Finally, I said, “Okay.”
I couldn’t tell whether the sudden white knuckles where her hands squeezed together in her lap meant she was excited or scared. Maybe both. It was a big step.
Her voice was just above a whisper when she said, “Your place or mine?”
“Mine. We’ll have a bite and then… do the experiment. I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
She shot me a look; I could feel her heated gaze on the side of my face as I drove. “Why? Are you kinky?”
I shrugged. Obviously, she hadn’t noticed my erection from the spanking she’d endured. “Every cop is a little kinky, Angelica.” There was no need to go into detail, so I didn’t.
That was met with silence.
I got us to the station and we gathered our things. There was no new email regarding the case, and it looked like things were at a standstill until the next day. I wanted to try to find more ties between Amy and Nikkol, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.
Angelica came to my cube, a light raincoat over her arm and her backpack in her hand. Her expression was a bit grim.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
She nodded—a quick, jerk of her head.
“You look like you’re going to the gallows.”
Her shoulders visibly relaxed and she gave me a tentative smile. “Sorry.”
I grabbed my coat and hat and we left the building, got into my car, and made our way to my downtown condo. It was in a decent neighborhood, certainly not swanky on a cop’s salary, but clean, comfortable, and modern. She stepped inside my ground floor suite and looked around, her eyes widening with every lamp I lit.
“It’s so clean! Do you have a cleaning lady?”
I took her coat and set her backpack down near the closet. “Yeah. She comes once a week. I’m no slob, but I don’t have much time for dusting and vacuuming.” I
gestured toward the leather couch. “Have a seat.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Her hesitant steps were kind of charming. Although I’d been a little concerned that maybe she was a tad too modern for my tastes, with her bold request for sex, I was rethinking that idea.
Her demeanor suggested that this was new to her.
“We’ll be here for a while. Want a glass of wine, or a beer?”
“You don’t happen to have any Jack, do you?”
I laughed. “I prefer Kentucky bourbon. I have some, if that would suit.”
She curled up on the couch and wrapped her arms around herself. What she was defending herself from, I don’t know. This had been her idea. “Yes, please.”
“Shot or rocks?”
“Definitely a shot.”
I went into the kitchen to fix the drinks and grabbed a few crackers and cut up some cheese while I was in there. That and a few olives and pickles and we had a little plate of appetizers. Nothing fancy, but something to make her feel welcome.
Angelica took the shot of Booker’s and downed it in one gulp. She closed her eyes, shook her head and shivered. “Yum,” she croaked.
“I can see that you love it.”
“Can I have another?”
“Maybe later. Booker’s is strong, and we want you conscious.” I shot the bourbon in my hand and felt the slow burn in my belly. “Eat.”
“I can’t eat,” she said. “I’m too nervous.”
I got up and turned on the iPod I had connected to my speakers, adjusting the playlist to focus on smooth jazz. When I had it where I wanted it, I held out my arms. “Dance with me?”
“Dance?”
“You know, move your feet around in time to music.”
Her frown was immediate. “I know what dancing is, asshole. I thought we were here to fuck.”
“You know, it really is disconcerting to hear all that swearing come from a woman who looks like a girl.”
“People have told me that before.”
“But you keep swearing. Is it defiance?”
She shrugged and turned her gaze away.
“Can you curb it? It won’t get you further in your profession or your life.”
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