But Rep didn’t go off on mindless frolics the day before a major client-hunting expedition. If he’d spent this crisp, sunny morning riding around a city he barely knew looking for potentially unpleasant people, it was because Kuchinski was right. They’d have to produce some hard data before they could expect the cops to take the invasion of Key’s apartment seriously.
Melissa opened her purse to stash the note. Her eyes fell on the three sample packs of cigarettes that Cantwell had distributed last night. Melissa had kept them to save for a colleague at UWM. She thought she detected a complicit glint winking at her from their cellophane wraps. Impulsively, she grabbed one. Fumbling with unpracticed fingers, she slit the cellophane, opened the flip-top, and extracted a cigarette. Without being asked, Mueller tossed her a Bic.
Melissa had to fuss with the lighter for half a minute before she could coax a flame from it. She raised the cigarette tentatively to her lips and awkwardly lit it. Thought she was going to cough but didn’t. Backed up and shook her head, as if to help the wisp of smoke she’d inhaled dribble out. Strolled a few steps away from the desk, tried another mini-puff, and felt dizzy for a second or two. Then her head cleared.
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying that very much,” Mueller said.
“I never really did,” Melissa said.
“How long ago did you quit?”
“I barely even started. I smoked for about two months my junior year in high school, and I don’t think I got through five packs. That was it.”
“My sister was the same way. Smoking turned her off right away.”
“It didn’t turn me off, exactly,” Melissa said around a third half-hearted puff. “At first, in fact, the sheer depravity of such wicked decadence was thrilling all by itself. And even after the forbidden fruit stuff wore off, I didn’t find smoking disgusting or repulsive. One day I just realized, ‘You know, I’m not getting this. I know it’s supposed to be really fun, but it’s just not doing all that much for me.’ So I stopped.”
“You’re a lucky young woman,” Mueller said in a tone of maternal admonition. “Anyone who dodges the smoking bullet at sixteen and then takes it up in her thirties ought to have someone go upside her head.”
“I’m definitely not taking it up,” Melissa said. She raised the cigarette again and this time managed a serious drag, followed by a reasonably competent exhalation.
“What are you doing, then?”
Melissa glanced again at the note Rep had left.
“Practicing,” she said.
She was still practicing when a uniformed Milwaukee police officer turned away from a guard at the security desk in the building’s lobby and strode toward Rep and Kuchinski. Rep noticed that the guard was pointing in their direction.
“You been letting your parking tickets pile up, boy?” Kuchinski asked.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Rep said.
It wasn’t.
“Do either of you know whose card this is?” the officer asked, showing them a somewhat dog-eared business card.
“Mine,” Rep said.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me right away, sir,” the officer said. “It’s very important.”
Chapter 10
It simply isn’t true that Brady Street, north of downtown on Milwaukee’s east side, is all bars except for an occasional coffee shop. Its several closely packed blocks have boasted at various times a socialist bookstore, head shops, the occasional gas station, and a body-piercing parlor. Mostly, though, it’s bars, with an occasional coffee shop.
The Ground Rules Café, for example, where Melissa seated herself at a white metal sidewalk table about twenty minutes after the cop had politely accosted Rep. She set a tall, cardboard cup of black coffee on the table in front of her, next to an earnest essay by a student deconstructing a Jane Austen novel that his first sentence referred to as Scents and Sensibility.
Next to the cup she placed the sample cigarette pack. She positioned it with some care, in a spot where it could be seen by someone from the second floor window of a frame building across the street whose address matched the one not crossed out on Rep’s note. The guy she glimpsed now and then through the window should be a photographer named Pelham Dreyfus.
Melissa reminded herself firmly that she wasn’t going to do anything silly. She was going to sit at the table; sip some coffee; read the essay; smoke one cigarette, without inhaling any more than she had to; and keep her eye discreetly on the window. If Pelham Dreyfus took a picture through the window, she’d see him and she’d have learned something useful. If he didn’t, she would have wasted some time.
After a fortifying drink of coffee, she picked up the pack. She took her time about it, as Cantwell had, teasing Dreyfus (if he chanced to be watching) and giving him plenty of time to react. Flipping up the top of the pack, she stole a sly glance at the window. Nothing. She paused and looked down the street, as if something had distracted her for a moment. She slowly took the second cigarette from the pack, gripping it with as much finesse as she could manage between the tips of the first two fingers of her left hand. She settled back, tossing the pack on the table with her right hand while she cocked her left elbow and rested it on the arm of her chair. She sat that way for five or six seconds, flaunting the unlit cigarette like a small flag.
She checked the window again. Nothing.
Again she glanced away. She toyed distractedly with the cigarette, as if she were thinking of something else. Twenty seconds of this, maybe, and she opened her purse. She quickly found the cheap Bic lighter she’d bought at an Osco drugstore up the block, but she went on pretending to look for it.
Another sidelong glance at the window. Nothing.
Well, she thought, here goes nothing.
She took the lighter out. She flicked it twice, with no result. Oops. She tried again. Nada. I should have sprung for a Zippo, she thought.
“Can I offer you a light?” a masculine voice behind her said.
Startled, she glanced around. The man who stood there wore a cream and mesh equipment vest and had two cameras with lenses of different lengths hanging around his neck. His elegant Calibri lighter worked on the first try.
“Thanks,” Melissa said.
She brought the cigarette to her lips and leaned toward him to accept the light. This was still an unfamiliar experience, and she concentrated on not blowing it. She almost did blow it, though, because as she inhaled a lungful of smoke and rocked gently back, she opened her eyes. When she did that she noticed a heavy, gauze-and-tape dressing running from the base of the man’s right hand to halfway up his little finger.
Take it easy, she told herself as she stifled a gasp. We’re talking about an incompetent burglar who almost blew a two-bit B&E, not a serial killer. This is still basically a lark.
***
On May 2, 1886, a small army of workers striking for an eight-hour day marched to the North Chicago Rolling Mills Plant on the south side of Milwaukee, intent on shutting it down. They met three companies of Wisconsin militia, intent on keeping it open. The strikers insisted, the militia opened fire, and all but six of the strikers ran away. The six who didn’t were dead.
Rep learned about this local tragedy, shortly before Melissa noticed Pelham Dreyfus’ bandage, by reading a historical marker at the site where the slain workers had fallen. He found himself within reading distance because that’s where his escort told him to wait until he was summoned into the Cold Coast Production building a few hundred feet away. Yellow crime-scene tape and swarming investigators kept them from getting any closer at the moment. Ninety minutes ago Cold Coast’s general manager had found Max Levitan’s body, shot through the heart at close range, in the conference room filled with Churchill books. Levitan had had Rep’s business card in his pocket.
The summons finally came. A uniformed officer escorted Rep to the building’s second floor and pointed to an African-American plainclothesman at one of th
e desks. After Detective Lieutenant Latrobe Washington introduced himself, he and Rep ran through a pro forma exchange of apologies and “no problems.” Rep explained how Levitan had come to have his card.
Occasional comments from Kuchinski had hinted that Milwaukee detectives favor a rough-and-ready business casual approach to on-the-job attire, but Washington apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. He wore a dark, two-piece suit, white shirt, and blue tie knotted right up to the throat. Rep had to look up slightly to meet the gaze of out of his well-seamed black face.
“Can you think of any reason anyone would want to kill him?”
“Nope. I talked to him for less than half an hour, but he impressed me a great deal.”
Washington showed him a letter in a glassine paper protector. The letterhead read:
UNITED STATES SENATE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
COMMITTEE STAFF
The letter thanked Levitan for his recent inquiry and said that, as it implicated potentially confidential information, it had been referred to staff counsel for review. Rep noticed that the letter was dated nine days after the demand letter he’d sent to Cold Coast Productions on behalf of Sue Key. He knew a couple of people on the committee staff, but not the one who’d signed this letter.
“This was in a personal file Levitan had apparently started on Ms. Key’s claim,” Washington said. “Do you have any idea why he’d be contacting politicians in connection with that case?”
“No,” Rep shrugged. “The Judiciary Committee handles trademark and copyright stuff, but it wouldn’t get involved in a particular case.”
“Did anyone from this committee get in touch with you, maybe hint you should back off?”
“No.”
“I take it you’ll want to help in any way that you can,” Washington said. Just a hint of a tease colored his tone.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I would.”
“In that case, could you sit down for about forty-five minutes with that notebook-toting officer over there and run through this calendar/legal claim/burglary stuff in more detail?”
“Absolutely,” Rep said.
Any prospect of reaching Wausau with the sun still shining had just disappeared, but this wasn’t negotiable. Penny-ante burglary is one thing. Cold-blooded murder is something else. Whatever Sue Key’s case might have been up to now, it wasn’t a silly-season lark for adventurous amateurs anymore.
Chapter 11
Okay, this is a little weird.
Would she mind if he took her picture? Dreyfus had asked that before he had his lighter back in his pocket. Melissa had sketched a “go ahead” shrug to accompany her murmured assent, trying for minimal politeness without encouragement. Dreyfus’ overture gave her all the information she figured to get this afternoon, so there was no reason to prolong her little charade. She had assumed he’d take a couple of shots, and then she could put the cigarette out and go back to being a grown-up.
Now, though, Dreyfus was burning film at what sounded like three snaps a second, jumping back and forth, squatting, popping up, dropping one camera and grabbing the other, shooting one-handed, asking her to take a long puff.
“Not exactly the first time you’ve ever done this, is it?” Dreyfus asked.
“No, I’ve smoked before.”
“Burn!” Dreyfus said, grinning gamely at what he apparently regarded as world-class repartée. “I mean this isn’t the first time you’ve ever had your picture taken by a professional photographer.”
Ah, Melissa thought, spotting the fraternity row pick-up line. “You must be a model.”
Melissa drew on the cigarette to stall for a second or two while she decided how to respond. Was Dreyfus’ question a possible lead-in to something that might produce more information after all? Or was it just his idea of snappy patter? As she expelled a generous burst of smoke toward the sky she decided on a guarded answer.
“I’ve had my picture taken before too,” she said. “Always with my clothes on, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Dreyfus lowered the camera and gave Melissa a steady, thoughtful look.
“If you know the drill,” he said, “I’ll cut to the chase. Twenty-five bucks if one of these runs. I’m doing this on spec, so no guarantee. But my studio is right across the street. If you’re up for a costume change, you can walk out of there in forty-five minutes with a benjamin.”
Just how stupid do you think I am? Klaxons went off in Melissa’s head. This was as NO WAY as any decision could be. What she’d picked up already seemed to pin Dreyfus as the photographer for Sue Key’s calendar-girl shot and the guy who’d broken into her flat. Melissa, right now, this very second, should mutter something about thanks-for-the-offer and take a hike.
And yet. And yet. Would her memory of the bandage and Dreyfus’ banter even interest a cop, much less pry a search warrant out of a judge? And if it didn’t, where would that leave them? Rep and Kuchinski playing guys-will-be-guys again, teaming up on some more-guts-than-brains scheme to talk their way into Dreyfus’ studio?
Melissa spent two more seconds studying Dreyfus. She didn’t see a lot of muscle on the pear-shaped torso under his equipment vest. He looked young—with a little more hair he’d seem almost boyish—but not especially fit. A stern little common-sense Melissa in her head scolded that she was rationalizing a foolhardy impulse. The pest had a point, but she decided to go ahead anyway.
If Rep pulled something like I’m about to do, I’d make him watch chick flicks for a week as penance.
“Sure,” she told Dreyfus. “I can spare just about forty-five minutes.”
***
Rep asked the younger detective with the notebook if he could call Melissa before they started, just to bring her up to speed. With no great enthusiasm but a show of patient understanding, the detective told him to go ahead.
Rep did, but got no answer. This struck him as odd, because generally the only time Melissa left her phone off during the day was when she was driving—and she couldn’t be driving now, because Rep had their car. But he shrugged and figured he’d just have to touch base with her later.
***
This is no longer weird. It just officially became creepy.
The outfit that hung from the shower curtain rod in the bathroom of Dreyfus’ studio consisted of a plaid skirt, white blouse, and gold blazer, all to be complemented by the white socks and penny loafers on the floor. “Like Erin from Happy Days being naughty” suddenly seemed a bit more sinister than it had sounded when Cantwell said it last night.
What was I thinking? had throbbed through Melissa’s brain throughout the three minutes or so she had spent so far examining these vestments. She had stolen every look she could in every direction on her way from the hallway door to here, and she hadn’t seen anything that seemed likely to shed much more light on what Dreyfus had to do with Sue Key, Vance Hayes, or anyone else. She had spotted an elaborate computer setup and desk, but it didn’t tell her anything more. She saw the usual “men’s interest” magazines lying around—Maxim, Penthouse, and so forth—and several issues of one she’d never heard of called Soldier for Hire. But she hadn’t learned anything that could remotely justify the risk she’d taken, and she didn’t think she was going to.
Which doesn’t make any difference, Melissa thought as she took a final, disgusted look at the convent school uniform, because this is over the line.
“How’s it coming?” Dreyfus asked through the door.
Melissa grabbed her purse and yanked the bathroom door open.
“You know what,” she said, “this isn’t working. I’m taking off.”
She tried to brush past Dreyfus but bumped into him instead. He didn’t back up. And he didn’t feel very soft.
“What’s the problem all of a sudden?”
“The last time I got carded was years ago,” Melissa said. “If you want pictures of a kid, you’d better find someone else.”
“Hey, no probs.” Dreyfus retreated eight inches and held his hands up, palms out, in a placatory gesture. “Just leave that to me. I won’t be using film on this shoot, like I was outside. Put that uniform on, give me some digital snaps and an hour with that computer, and I’ll have you looking as fresh-faced and dewy-eyed as you were the night of your junior prom.”
“You must really be good with that computer,” Melissa gushed.
“The best,” Dreyfus said in an aw-shucks tone that didn’t match the chilly eyes that he kept fixed on her.
“Good.” Melissa shuffled to her left to go around him. “Then do the whole thing on the computer and leave me out of it.”
Dreyfus’ right hand snapped out and grabbed her left forearm. Nothing soft about his grip, either. Lancing pain shot through to her shoulder. Her left hand went numb and she reached over with her right hand to grab her purse.
“Look,” he said, his tone still soothing, “we’re both reasonable, intelligent adults here, right?”
“We’re both carbon-based life-forms,” Melissa said. “That’s as far as I’ll go. Let go of me right now!”
“Uh huh. You hustle your way in here with some dime-store diva routine and then all of a sudden you’re too delicate to pose in a blazer? What game do you think you’re playing?”
“I don’t do kiddie porn, all right? And I didn’t hustle my way into anything. Coming up here was your idea, remember? Now let me go.”
“Answers first,” Dreyfus said, tightening his grip. “Who sent you after me? What are you looking for?”
“A benjamin. One hundred dollars.”
“Then what’s with the last-minute choke? For all you knew I was asking you up here to put on a g-string or a studded leather bustier. Sorry, I’m not buying cold feet over a schoolgirl costume. I want to know who you really are and what you really do.”
Putting Lipstick on a Pig Page 6
