A Bitch Called Hope

by Lily Gardner

  Chapter 24

  It was still raining the next morning when Lennox’s clock radio went off. Then Dan turned over.

  “Let me see those cankles,” he said. He reached for her foot and raised it to his face. Turned it one way, then another. “I don’t see a problem here,” he said.

  He leaned over her foot and kissed the anklebone. She felt the kiss travel all through her nerve centers. Places she didn’t know she had nerves. Of course, he had to check the other foot as well. She protested, said she had to get back to work. She didn’t fool either one of them. Dan in her bed made her believe in destiny. Like how she always knew from the time she was five years old he was the one.

  The one! What was wrong with her? Telling herself having sex with Dan wasn’t breaking any laws. Telling herself it didn’t mean anything. Not really. Nine hours later she was telling herself he was the one. Why didn’t she tell herself to fuck off?

  By the time she’d dried her hair, Dan was showered and dressed. His face was all mushy like they’d really bonded. Which they had. Lennox thinking: Don’t ask me to breakfast.

  “Let’s go to breakfast,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. What was she going to say? That they couldn’t see each other until after the trial? Exactly that. After she’d had her coffee.

  They went to the Alameda Cafe, Lennox figuring they were pretty sure not to run into anyone she knew. Here she was with a sexy, sweet and available man. How ironic was that? When the trial was over, that’s what she’d tell him. When the trial was over, she could start acting like Snow White with her one true love.

  They got the elderly waitress with bright orange hair and ruined knees, who seated them at a table under the windows. She brought them coffee and took their order. While they waited for their breakfast, Lennox scanned the headlines in The Oregonian. Dan sat across from her sketching out a new office building on the brown paper spread over the tablecloth. The air around them was warmed with the smell of muffins and espresso. It seemed so lovely and natural, like they’d been together for years. Lennox told herself to relax and enjoy the moment. Dan looked up from his drawing and caught her watching him. He smiled and reached for her hand, brought it to his lips. She loved his lips. Then he stopped.

  “Sorry.” His cell was on vibrate; he drew it from his back pocket and looked at the screen. “Sorry, sorry. I got to take this.” He headed out the door, his phone pressed against his ear. He stepped beneath the cafe awning by the front door. The sky grew darker the way it does before it hails. Lennox turned the page to the funnies.

  A glint of black leather like a shark fin alerted her peripheral vision, and Lennox looked out the window. Tommy walked past. Tommy! This wasn’t his neighborhood. What were the odds? Dan still by the front door, still talking on his cell. Tommy reached the front of the cafe and kebabbed any hopes Lennox had for anonymity. She watched him glance at Dan. Go from puzzlement to recognition.

  Tommy entered the cafe, shook the rain off his jacket and hung it on a hook. And saw her.

  “Hi, stranger,” he said. “You didn’t return my call.” His look took in Dan’s place setting, his cup of coffee. He sat down in Dan’s chair.

  She had minutes before Tommy realized she was here with Dan. She watched Dan nod his head, still talking on the phone. He was darker, better looking. More substantial than Tommy. “You can’t sit here,” she said.

  “Just did.” Tommy took a sip of Dan’s coffee. He scrunched his face and spit the coffee back in the cup. “That’s nasty. Who takes sugar in their coffee?”

  She picked up the coffee mug. “You’ve got one minute to find a new table or you’ll be wearing this.”

  “I was thinking we could go to dinner? You name the place.”

  “Did you think I’d forgive you after you’d disappeared that evidence?”

  “It’s not too late to quit this case,” he said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  He said, “It uncomplicates us.” The sorry thing was how sincere he sounded. Like being married didn’t complicate them. Like her getting kicked out of the Portland Police didn’t complicate them. Like tampering with the evidence didn’t complicate them. It never occurred to him that he could cross the line so far that there was no going back.

  “There is no us,” she said. “I don’t want to see you again.”

  His gaze followed hers out the front door under the awning. “You’re with Junior? Good God, Dish, he’s a murder suspect.”

  “Is he? I thought you indicted his mother.”

  “You think you’ll screw a confession out of him?” He started laughing. “He’s playing you, Dish.”

  Maybe Tommy was right, Dan could be playing her. She’d gone through the motions of investigating Dan, but had she seriously entertained the idea that he murdered his father? She had blown it. Not only blown it, but got caught blowing it in front of Tommy.

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” she said.

  “The hell I do.”

  Dan opened the cafe door. She stood. It was all she could do to keep from bolting. Dan returned to their table.

  “Detective Pavlik is just leaving,” she said.

  Then Tommy stood up, too, still chuckling. He sauntered to the opposite side of the cafe. Lennox and Dan sat down. Dan looking as innocent as Tommy looked wise. “What’s up?” he said.

  Lennox handed the waitress Dan’s coffee mug and asked for a replacement. Just that little stall gave her a moment to gather her resolve. “Detective Pavlik is the cop running your father’s homicide investigation. He’s wondering why I’m having breakfast with a member of the family. He’s right to wonder.”

  “Is there a law against dating the relative of a murdered person?” The look on Dan’s face—no one is that guileless.

  “You’re a suspect,” she said.

  That knocked him back in his chair. “I guess I figured I’d been cleared. I figured you were over-doing the let’s keep it professional thing. What a dope I am.”

  Their orange-headed waitress came to the table with platters of eggs and toast.

  “What do we do now?” he said, his body slowly sinking on itself.

  “We might as well eat,” Lennox said.

  She felt such a complication of remorse and longing and underneath that a pulse of suspicion he might indeed be playing her. She poked the yolk of her egg with her fork, kept poking and not eating. All the post lovemaking glow had evaporated. Dan ate his breakfast in silence.

  “Maybe after the trial?” she said.

  “Sure,” he said looking like the poster boy for “glum.”

  From the look on his face she’d figured she’d shot down her chances with him. Then she started second-guessing herself. It wasn’t like she’d lose her license over sleeping with Dan. Or maybe she would. At one point she glanced over at Tommy sitting on the other side of the dining room. He’d been watching the two of them. Of course he had. His cat smile curled beneath a hooked nose in his skinny, cheating face. If she wasn’t a lady she’d go to his table, stab him in the eye repeatedly with her egg-stained fork.

  Somehow she and Dan finished their breakfast, said their awkward good-byes.

  Chapter 25

  Lennox chewed herself out all the way to her interview with Alice Stapely. They met in a coffee shop down the street from Alice and Gabe’s apartment, a place furnished with junktique sofas, tables and floor lamps, bad art on the walls, Miles Davis on the sound system. A sullen barista displaying eight piercings on her face took their order.

  From across a scarred table Lennox watched relief wash over Alice’s features when she heard that her lover was not a bank robber, replaced by disbelief and fear when Lennox theorized that Gabe was most likely a blackmailer.

  “There’s no way he would do something like that.”

  “You’d suspect him of bank robbery but not blackmail?”

  Alice went into a chorus of “Oh-my-God, Oh-my-God.” The other coffee drinkers in the shop glanced at them curi
ously.

  Alice, of course, agreed that Lennox needed to see Gabe right away. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s an artist,” Alice said.

  “Gabe will have to give the money back and tell the police what he knows. They can’t help him if he isn’t completely straight with them.”

  “What if he won’t?” Alice said.

  “He’s in danger, and he’s putting you in danger, too,” Lennox told her. They left the coffee shop, Lennox following Alice back to her and Gabe’s apartment.

  “He’ll never admit it,” Alice said. They rode the mirrored elevator to the sixth floor. “If he’s on the spot, he’ll lie.”

  “We’ve got to convince him,” Lennox said. “The longer he takes going to the police, the more chances you’re taking.”

  Alice pulled a bunch of keys from her bag and unlocked her door. “Gabey? I’m home.”

  Lennox followed her into the one-room apartment. The smell of Thai food was heavy in the air. Gabe looked up from his worktable. His features were boyish and covered in freckles, but the skin around his eyes had started to wrinkle. He looked tired.

  “Hey,” he said. His smile took in the both of them.

  Alice introduced Lennox as a friend. Alice tried to act natural, but she was full of apprehension. Anyone could’ve seen it on her if they’d been looking. Lennox saw it. She moved towards the worktable, ostensibly to shake hands with Gabe. He appeared to be outlining and crosshatching a drawing in black ink. A magnificent angel spread its wings from the corner panel across what would be the spine of the book to land in a full-page drawing of a city under siege. Hideous little trolls peered from the shadows. Lennox had read her share of Superman and Batman growing up, enough to know this was not your mother’s comic book.

  “Amazing,” she told Gabe.

  He did what all redheads do: he blushed. “Did Alice tell you she’s in the book?” He reached into a stack of pages and pulled out an unmistakable likeness of Alice. “Her name is Rafaella. She’s kind of the Maid Marian character.”

  For the moment Alice forgot to be scared and looked down shyly. “Like I really look like that.”

  Gabe explained to Lennox the iconic necessity for Rafaella’s exaggerated anatomy. The two of them were adorable. It was going to be hard to break it to Gabe that he either give it up or he’d land in jail. That was if he was lucky.

  “Alice tells me you’re going to publish this book,” Lennox said.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “That’s so great,” she said. “I’m sure it’s going to be a hit. She said you’ve got a patron.”

  His attention shifted from Lennox to Alice. Watching his face was like watching a movie, surprise replaced by feeling betrayed replaced with getting pissed. “That’s confidential,” he said in a tight voice.

  “Really?” Lennox said, keeping it conversational. “I would have figured you’d want to create some buzz.” She grinned. “You know, so more people would buy your book.”

  Gabe gathered up his work. “Alice never mentioned you before,” he said.

  “You were a witness the night Bill Pike was murdered,” she said.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “I’m investigating Bill Pike’s murder.”

  “Like I already told you guys, I spent most of the night in the kitchen.”

  Lennox leaned forward. “Come on, Gabe. You saw something that night. Somebody’s paying you a chunk of money to keep your mouth shut.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got a patron.”

  “Cool,” she said, “Who is it?”

  He stuffed his pages into a brown portfolio.

  “I used to be a cop.”

  Say the word “cop” and the “used to be” gets swallowed up. Lennox watched his already pale complexion pale some more. He was so holding. She said, “Let me tell you a statistic we cops know about. Blackmailers? Most of them end up in the morgue; I think the latest study said ninety-three percent ended up that way.” Lennox let that sink in a moment. “Another five percent end up in prison, leaving two percent that find themselves in Aruba drinking Mai Tais. Pretty shitty odds, wouldn’t you say?”

  Gabe’s freckles stood out in blotches. He was so busted; she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “Are you going to arrest me?” he said.

  “I’m here to help.” She watched his expression change from fear to suspicion. She tried to reason with him, tell him the killer wouldn’t stop with just Bill.

  “What killer?” he said.

  “You tell me,” she said.

  He swung off his stool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Give it up Gabe,” Alice said. “The book’s not worth it.”

  “You shut up,” he said. His voice a warning.

  “Don’t you see?’ Lennox said. “The killer’s going to assume you told Alice everything and he’s going to kill her, too.”

  “Bullshit!” he said. “I have a patron. You come in here pretending to be a friend. This is just bullshit. Where’s your badge? I want to see it.”

  Lennox pulled her wallet out of her bag, showed him her license. “I used to be a cop like I said. Now I’m a private investigator. If you tell me what you saw that night, I have friends. Cops who can protect you and Alice.”

  “What the hell are you doing here? This is some kind of shakedown.” He took two steps towards her and took her firmly by the elbow. His grip was stronger than what she would have expected.

  “Gabe, she can help.” Alice stood by the windows, her arms wrapped around herself. “We’ll figure out a way to pay for your book. I’ll get a second job.”

  “I thought I could trust you,” he said. Alice seemed to collapse with his pronouncement.

  “You can trust her,” Lennox said. “Gabe, you’re not going to get away with this. You’re going to get yourself killed. We can help you.”

  The words weren’t even out of her mouth and she knew what good her offer was going to be for any of them. He marched Lennox toward the door like she was a truant.

  Chapter 26

  What had happened to her powers of persuasion? Used to be, thirty minutes into an interview the witness would cave, especially a witness like Gabe. He was no kind of criminal. Why couldn’t she get him to come clean? You’re not a cop anymore. When was she going to catch on, figure out a different strategy? Lennox drove home with her tail between her legs.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon looking into the councilwoman on her “A” list. Bill Pike had been a big supporter in Geri Davis’s last campaign. According to Geri, Bill was a rare bird, a man of business and a liberal democrat. Did he ask you for any favors? Lennox had asked. And had listened to the woman turn cagey. There were a few zoning issues, but Ms. Geri Davis always voted her conscience. While Lennox was on the phone with the councilwoman, a call came in from Dan. He told her he’d acted like a kid over breakfast. He told her he was glad she was on his mother’s side. As soon as the trial was over the two of them would have a do over. He made do over sound sexy as hell.

  That night when she opened the door to the Shanty for poker night she practically skipped past the twinkle lights strung over the bar. Neon candy canes blinked red in the Shanty’s front windows. A two-foot Santa tricked out in waders, a fly rod over his shoulder, stood behind the bar next to the scotch. Lennox passed Katy, the cocktailer, told her please she’d have a Blitzen, then entered the back room.

  Even though poker night didn’t begin until eight o’clock and it was only a quarter to, all the guys were there: Ham, Fulin, Jerry, Fish and Sarge. They were seated around the table looking a whole lot like they were in the middle of a board meeting.

  “Happy holidays, gents,” she said.

  “Oh yeah,” Fulin said. “That’s coming up.” He shook his head so his hair swung back and forth way past his shoulders and on to the table like a very long and beautiful black silk scarf.

  “Watch it with the hair,” Jerr
y said. “I don’t want that shit in my drink.”

  Then the room went very quiet. Lennox could hear the Blazers game from the main bar. She hung her leather jacket on a hook next to the door and took the empty seat next to Sarge, who smelled cleanly of baking soda toothpaste. She’d been to his house a couple years ago. Not a weed in the lawn, not a blade of grass overhanging the curb and inside, not a speck of dust or whiff of cooking fumes. Lennox suspected Sarge and his wife, Jan, spent all their free time polishing the bathroom tiles and edging the driveway. There was something attractive and comforting about that.

  She nudged him. “So. How’s Jan?”

  “Fine,” he mumbled, looking at his fingernails. For the record, they were bitten to the quick.

  The room went quiet again. Eight plus years she’d played with these guys; if they didn’t have anything to say they talked trash. Or belched. This silence was starting to interfere with her good mood.

  Sarge took a tone of voice that sounded both hopeful and reproachful, like he could go either way. “A little birdie tells us you have a new sweetie.”

  All of them looked at her like she’d disappointed the hell out of each and every one of them. Most of all her best friend, Ham, who riffled a deck of cards with his thumb and looked like he was going to cry.

  “I don’t have a new sweetie,” she said. “I don’t have an old sweetie. I stand before you without any kind of sweetie.”

  Fulin said, “Cooper, what the hell could you be thinking?”

  “What’s the problem?” she said.

  Fish in a plaid shirt on his high horse. “Nothing, Cooper. Nothing at all. Oh, except you’re banging a murder suspect.”

  “Does Jesus know you use that kind of language?” she said.

  “Tommy’s telling everyone he saw you having breakfast with Dan Pike,” Fulin said. He looked down. “He said you had sex; he could smell it on you.”

  All of them looking at her like she was some kind of whack-job prison bride. There was nothing to do but deny and keep on denying. “That’s a total lie,” she said. “Tommy is a fucking liar.” She’d better not see him again; she’d eviscerate him.