I wasn’t moved to dispute him. “If Crowder found out how Nina was earning her living, do you think he might have gone gunning for Richter?”
“Maybe.”
“The same way you might have.”
He met my look with his best effort. “Except I didn’t.”
“You tossed his place.”
“Tossed?”
“Searched.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You didn’t remove all traces of Nina from Gary Richter’s apartment?”
“How could I?”
“Then where are Richter’s copies of the pictures in the Erospace exhibit?”
His surprise seemed real. “What Erospace exhibit?”
“The pictures of Nina with the flags and the knife and the slogans, on the wall of the Erospace Gallery of erotic art.”
He rubbed his face with his hand. “My God.”
“Did Richter try to blackmail you with those pictures?”
“No. I had no contact with him whatever except when I went there to ask about Nina.”
“You knew he was working with her.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She told me.”
“And sent you pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did she send you pictures?”
“Because she was proud of them. She wanted me to see her work.”
“What did you think of it?”
“I was … amazed.”
“And?”
“And impressed.”
“And excited.”
He reddened. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking you what your relationship was with Nina.”
His pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
I didn’t, either. “Were you in love with her?”
His hands made fists that lay like clamshells at his waist. “No. How dare you suggest that we … No.”
“Was she in love with you?”
“Of course not. I’m her father.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m the same thing as.”
“That didn’t stop Woody and Soon-yi. Maybe things went too far and Nina began to feel guilty about your relationship. Maybe she’s hiding from you.”
His face turned the color of the wing chair. “That didn’t happen. I won’t have you implying it did. What do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. What are you?”
He wiped his brow. “I’m a worried father. And a man who’s very much in love with Peggy Nettleton, which is a fact that seems to make you want to savage me.”
“This isn’t savagery, this is interrogation. Savagery is when I hit you with something.”
He stood up. “If it wasn’t for Peggy, I wouldn’t stand for this.”
I stood beside him. “If it wasn’t for Peggy, I wouldn’t be doing it. Do you carry Indian arrowheads on your person?”
“What?”
“Arrowheads. I hear you collect them. Do you carry one around with you?”
He nodded. “As a charm. Why?”
“Show me.”
He hesitated until he saw my smile. Then he reached in his pocket and produced a small brown stone, notched and pointed like the one in my pocket. I wished it was back where it came from. “What do you have to do with Victor Krakov?” I asked.
“Never heard of the man.”
“How about Jensen Lattimore?”
“He used to invite me to parties and approach me for financing from time to time. What about him?”
“Did you give money to him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not technical enough to evaluate his businesses.”
“Do you know a company called DigiArt?”
“No. Why?”
“Has Lattimore ever met Nina?”
“Not that I know of. Where are you going with this? Do you know something that suggests Lattimore is involved in Nina’s disappearance?”
I shook my head. “I’m just surfing.”
“Well, Jensen Lattimore doesn’t need to do anything weird with women. He can buy anything he wants and then some.”
“In my experience, rich guys tend to be turned on the most by things they can’t have.”
“Like Nina, you mean?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they fell in love and Nina ran off to Majorca with him.”
Ted shook his head. “Nina doesn’t fall in love, I don’t think. She dates, she has relationships, but they never seem to have much to do with love.”
“What do they have to do with?”
His eyes lost focus. “Making men do and say things they shouldn’t. Making them want what they can’t have.”
He was so obviously talking about himself that he didn’t try to hide it. I asked him a question other than the obvious. “Why does she do it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not very good at the Freudian stuff.”
“I think you need to convince me you didn’t sleep with her.”
He walked toward the wall, then turned back. “I didn’t. That’s not what she wanted. What she wanted was for me to want to.”
“Did you?”
“Of course. In some sense. But I never would have. I’m not a libertine, Mr. Tanner. At most I was a lonely, needful man.”
“Lonely, needful men do stupid things all the time. I’ve made a living getting them out of trouble.”
He looked at me. “Then get me out of this.”
“The marriage?”
“Of course not. The problem with Nina. Get her back so Peggy and I can get on with our lives.”
Silence engulfed us. There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to go, another question I wanted to ask. Suddenly Ted put a hand on my shoulder. “I do love her, you know.”
“Peggy?”
He nodded. “I know you and she were close. I know she admires you a great deal. And I know you will want to continue your friendship now that you are back in touch with her. I just want you to know that it’s all right with me.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome in this home at any time. And you are welcome to attend the wedding if you wish.”
“Probably not. But thanks, anyway.”
“I understand. And I will also understand if you decide to leave this mess with Nina for us to work out ourselves. There’s no need for you to—”
“I tend to see things through, as a rule,” I interrupted. “Keeps the night sweats short of flood stage.”
He blinked and looked for Peggy. “Of course. Well, if I can help, I will, but I’ve told you all I can. I don’t really know where else to turn.” His voice became oracular. “I’m beginning to be afraid something unspeakable has happened.”
“Don’t project, Mr. Evans; you’ll drive yourself crazy. Just wait for it to happen. The good news is, it always does.”
“Not always, surely.”
“You can make book on it.”
CHAPTER 22
“Who picked out the furniture for this place?” she asks.
“Who did what?”
“The lamps. Who picked them?”
“Why? What does it matter?”
“Humor me, Wellington. The boss man did, right? Jensen Lattimore picked them out himself.”
“I believe he did. Yes. He or his decorator. Why?”
“I saw them in another apartment that he decorated much like this one. I like his taste; I like his money. I want to meet him. How soon can you make it happen?”
“I’m not sure that’s in the cards.”
“It has to be, or this little party doesn’t get off the ground and I don’t go to work tomorrow. You have to promise to tell Lattimore I want to meet him. ASAP. Okay?”
“I’ll tell him, but I can’t promise anything else.”
“Oh, I think he’l
l see me. I think he’s had that in mind all along, don’t you, Christopher? Now what was it you came by for? I think you’d better remind me.”
He puts down his wineglass and takes her hand. “Promise you won’t say anything about this? It’ll be all over for me if you do. I’m the one who cut the power off.”
“Say anything to whom?”
“Anybody.”
“Lattimore, you mean.”
“To anybody.”
She nods. Without resistance, she goes where he wants to take her.
Second and Pike was one of those infarcts that inhibit the heart of most cities, a twilight zone with its own morphology, psychology, and mythology, all of it pathogenic. It’s a place where laws aren’t enforced, where morality is a memory, where common sense is as rare as good teeth. I got there just before midnight.
The light was an odd mix of moonlight and some new form of streetlamp that made it seem as if we were swimming in urine, which we might as well have been from the smell of it. The stores at street level and the offices in the towers above them were all closed but for a girlie show down the block. The traffic was sparse but what there was was menacing—boom boxes filling the air with war chants, tinted windows making even parking seem nefarious, golden wheel covers and plate brackets making the occupation of the occupants seem questionable and excessive. Although there was no obvious reason for it, and indeed plenty of reason for the opposite, the people who milled like Herefords on the corner seemed charged with industry and large with self-importance.
“Need a bag, man?”
He was toothless and ragged, his yellow eyes floating on a boiling oil of chemical intoxication, his black hands as active as moths in bright light.
“Not now,” I said with bored connivance.
“Pure China, man.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Yeah, but mine is clean.”
“Flea powder, more like it.”
“No, man. My Aunt Hazel is fly. Ask anyone.”
“Later.”
“Be sold out later.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He muttered an oath and hopped off. “We can do a deal if you put me next to Mandy,” I called after him in afterthought, but the name didn’t slow him down.
Jitters was replaced by a woman, tall and languid and anorexic, dressed in a black leotard top and a leopard skirt slit up the side to her waist. “Looking to party, handsome?” Her voice was contralto and contrived; her eyes touched on everything but me. I wasn’t even sure she was a woman.
“I’ve already got a date.”
“Yeah? With who?”
“Mandy.”
“Shit. Mandy can’t do nothing for you.”
“Why not?”
“She a channel swimmer, man. Strung out tight as trip wire.”
“Strung out on what?”
“Dog food, man.”
“Heroin?”
“Rock, too. Murder one, baby.”
“She make her connection down here?”
“Here, there, everywhere. Not hard to feed the monkey in Seattle.”
“She usually come around about now?”
“Don’t matter—I do you as good. I may lack some necessaries in the tit department, but my pussy can walk and talk and tickle your chin.”
I laughed because I thought I was supposed to. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You got a car? Do you for ten in the car. Take it clear to my belly, man, and you got the piece that can twiddle my tonsils. I can tell.” She reached out and rubbed my crotch.
I stepped back. “Maybe next time.”
“You go with Mandy, won’t be no next time.”
“Why not?”
“She a rock star, man. Fucks for bucks for the mainline.”
“I owe her money,” I said. “I need to get it to her.”
She held out a hand. “Give it to me. I get it to her.”
I smiled. “I’d take it to her place in the Regrade, but I forget the address.”
“Don’t know about no Regrade,” she said, looking past me for a hotter prospect. “Mandy nothing but a nun, man. No head, no ass, no nothing you can’t get from your old lady. I give you a pro job and there ain’t nothing not on the menu.”
Her recital was halfhearted; by the time she’d finished her pitch she had her sights on someone else. When I turned to see who my replacement was, I looked into the anxious eyes of Nina Evans’s brother.
He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking up the street, in the direction of the Regrade. As if on cue, down the walk came Mandy, at least a close enough approximation of a picture on the wall at the Blitz Club for me to make that assumption.
She was tall and thin and blonde, dressed in a baby-doll dress that barely covered her butt, with bows at the shoulders and lace at the neck. Her hair was pulled back with a blue barrette. Her tights were white but had holes at the knees and a stain at the thigh. She was sucking a lollipop and trying to look twelve. She was doing a good job of it until you got to her eyes, which jumped on and off the denizens of the corner with a frenzy born of withdrawal.
Her wits and reflexes were so scattered she could hardly stay on the sidewalk. By the time I got within ten yards of her, she had started to cry without bothering to hide it. Her lollipop fell to the ground and shattered, which meant it wasn’t candy anymore, it was trash.
I started to say something but Jeff beat me to it. I couldn’t hear what he told her, but when she heard his voice she brightened, then ran to his side and linked her arm with his. She asked him something, he answered; she got angry and twisted away. He said something else, then took her arm, then pointed. Ten yards from the end of his finger was the once-black 240Z.
After another whispered exchange, Jeff led Mandy to the car, helped her inside, then climbed behind the wheel and drove away. The tortuous Seattle stoplights worked in my favor this time, because the one at the corner of Union and Second held them long enough for me to get back to my car and follow them.
I kept my distance as the Z turned up University and left on Third and headed north through the high-rise handmaidens to the city’s power structure. When we got to Wall Street Jeff turned right, drove a block, turned left, then right, and pulled to a stop in front of a brick building that bore the name the Palms. I assumed it was meant to be sarcastic.
Jeff and Mandy held a huddled conversation, then he got out of the car and went to the passenger side and helped her to the sidewalk. She seemed on the brink of breakdown as he led her toward the building. They got in without using a key, which was another bad sign, among many. Moments later, a light went on in the unit front left, second floor.
I decided to wait and see if I could get Mandy all to myself. An hour later, the light in the apartment went off and Jeff Evans trotted out the front door, climbed into the Z, and zoomed off. I retraced his steps, which was far too easy to do.
The air inside the building smelled like smoke and rubbing alcohol. When I got upstairs, I knocked on the door three times but got no answer except for the music leaking out, an angstridden strain of a postmodern dirge that lamented everything in life but misery.
I tried the door. The knob was warm in my hand, as firm and slick as a young woman’s breast in midsummer. Since it was obvious I could do so, I opened the door and stepped inside.
The interior was dark and fetid, smelling of rancid foods and sweaty clothing and the fluids that gush from fevered flesh. The only light came through the front window, which was the only one not masked with black plastic. Evidence of another being on the premises came in the form of an ugly, fractious sound, the sound of farm animals and lawn mower engines. I edged toward its source. Mandy was naked on the bed, wearing only the diaphanous light from the moon, snoring like a long-haul trucker on a layover at Little America. Her baby-doll outfit was a wad of desperation next to the tattered pillow.
I felt her pulse—on the low end of normal but steady. Since she seemed sufficiently deep
in sleep to allow me to look around, I turned on a lamp and began to search the place without knowing what I was searching for.
Mandy’s surname was Lorenzen—that came courtesy of the junk mail sprinkled over the room like salt. And the rumors were true—Mandy was a junkie. Her works were spread like condiments across the dinette in the tiny kitchen—syringe, spoon, swabs, lighter; the rubber rope that tied off her vein guarded the rest of the works like an adder. Although there were no drugs in sight, the temperature of the spoon suggested she’d shot up in the past hour—I wondered if Jeff had shared the hit or only supplied the dust. In any event, their little pas de drug suggested that Ted Evans needed to worry less about Nina and more about his son.
When I returned to the body on the bed the scabs and bruises of intravenous drug use scowled at me, not from their usual nest at the hinge of the inner arm, but from down at her feet and ankles. The tattoo at her pubis didn’t begin to dilute the carnage.
The only other evidence in plain view suggested Mandy’s calling. There was a gross of condoms in a box by her bed, along with two tubes of KY jelly and a jar of Vaseline, plus a pan and sponge for washing off beforehand, some vinegar douche for afterward, and a collection of lingerie and leather appointments for those who like their sex with some theatrics. The indications weren’t decisively commercial until you included the credit card register on the table by the bed. Since nothing was telling me not to, I decided to dig deeper.
The clothes in the closet were soft and shear and redolent of sweat and cheap perfume. The skirts were short, the tops tight, the pants torn in provocative places. A couple of the spandex numbers would have served her well on the stage at the Blitz Club; a couple of the leather numbers would have hauled in plenty of johns on the corner of Second and Pike. None of it was clean and none of it looked comfortable.
There were exceptions to the tawdry thrust of most of her wardrobe, however. Way in the back, so you wouldn’t see them without trying, were a couple of cocktail dresses and a strapless blue ball gown with sequins that shimmered even in the light of a forty-watt bulb. The labels were Klein and Karan and Kamali, which made them a reach for a whore, at least for a whore with a habit. The dresses must have been from an earlier life, before Mandy’s had started to fracture. I still hadn’t found a reason for the fissure.
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