Which way did you prefer her?
He glances one last time at her portrait, her eyes.
“You will not look at me,” Paris says, aloud, the sound of his voice a dagger through the stillness. Fayette Martin’s stillness.
He looks at her lips.
You will not speak.
21
Paris’s cell phone rings at Carnegie and East Ninety-third Street.
“Paris.”
“Jack, it’s Reuben.”
“What’s up, amigo?”
“I just got the full report on Fayette Martin,” Reuben says. “There’s something I think you should see.”
Paris is glad they are not meeting in the autopsy theater. The labs, although possessed of a full range of their own macabre sights and grotesque smells, at least had the occasional spider plant, the half-eaten peanut butter cup, the air of the living.
Reuben looks wiped out. He leans against a marble-topped table bearing a bank of three microscopes, listlessly drawing on a straw stuck into a beaker of flat Pepsi. On the table, to the left of the microscopes, are a pair of covered lab dishes.
“Hey, Reuben. You look like shit.”
“Just pulled a thirty-six,” Reuben says. “And, with all due respect, detective, you ain’t no
centavo nuevo
either.”
Paris has no idea what Reuben said, but figures he has it coming. “What do we have?”
Reuben considers Paris for a moment, blank-eyed, taking his time finishing his drink. He then puts the beaker of cola down, flips on the task light over the table, and says:
“We found something strange inside one of Fayette Martin’s shoes.”
“It was under the inside label in her left shoe,” Reuben says. “There was no reason to look under there so no one did. We almost missed it. Looked like an ordinary brand label you find in half the women’s shoes sold.”
“Who found it?”
“The lab was finishing up taking blood samples from the heel of the shoe and someone noticed the corner of the label turned up slightly. They peeled it up a little more and saw the edge of this sticking out. Then they called SIU.” Reuben takes a pair of evidence photos of Fayette Martin’s left shoe out of an envelope.
“Could it have gotten there at the factory by accident?”
“No,” Reuben says. “The label on the inside of that shoe was peeled back and reglued very recently.”
Paris looks at the evidence bag on the table, at the small item found in the murder victim’s shoe: a strip of purple cardboard, about two inches long by a quarter inch wide. On it are what appear to be the bottoms of red letters, as if someone had cut off the bottom quarter inch of some kind of packaging label. It looks like two, or possibly three, words. It looks like the first letter might be a
T
. Or an
I
. Or a
P
. Paris counts two letters that look like an
S
. Beyond that, to Paris, it might as well be Sanskrit. “Any fluids?” he asks.
“Just Fayette’s. We also found Fayette’s blood mixed in with the glue that secured the shoe company’s label, which means the glue was soluble at the time of her murder. This was done at the scene, Jack. And we were
definitely
supposed to find it.”
Paris thinks for a moment, asks: “Do you think we have enough of the label to get a lead on what it says? Is there software that can do that?”
“Not sure. But I know the man to call.”
“Fed?”
“Who else?”
Shit
, Paris thinks. Should he clear this with Elliott? It is up to the unit commander to reach out to another agency, especially at the federal level. If this leads somewhere, Paris is going to have to explain why he broke procedure. On the other hand, if Reuben’s contact is willing to forget the paperwork, maybe the CPD can nail this psychopath without the almighty Justice Department taking all the credit, as it usually does. The Cleveland Police Department could use the shot in the arm.
Paris asks: “How well do you know this guy?”
Reuben smiles. “Hang on.”
Reuben crosses the lab, enters his office. Ten minutes later, he returns. “I sent it over to the Federal Building via secure courier. He called to confirm receipt and said it isn’t much, but he also said he sleeps an average of two hours a day. The rest of the time he sits in front of his computer. He said the strip of cardboard is definitely cut from a commercial consumer product of some sort. He thinks he has the font and point size already. He also has the poundage of the cardboard.”
“What about the original?”
“It’s on the way back already.”
“And you trust this guy?”
“Absolutely. Believe me, if anybody is going to tell us what we have it’s Clay Patterson. He said he’ll call when and if.”
“What about the paperwork?” Paris asks.
“He says the invoice will read DigiData, Inc.,” Reuben replies. “And that they take cash.”
22
“What do you think, Bella?”
She pulls her Anna Sui from the closet, holds it up in front of her, glances at the cheval mirror. As always, Isabella’s picture, sitting atop the armoire, remains silent.
“Yeah, I think so, too. The little black dress. There’s simply no defense against it.” She laughs at her joke, then feels guilty, the way she always feels guilty having fun without her daughter.
As she steps into the shower she runs down her itinerary. She will meet Celeste on the way into town and get the money from the sale of Elton’s jewelry. Although she so desperately wants to tell Celeste about what happened at Dream-A-Dream Motel—as crazy as it sounded, Celeste is indeed the only person in the world she can trust—she has decided to wait.
She will tell her in due time.
And only if she needs to.
Jean Luc wears a Zegna wool suit, navy blue, and a subtly patterned dove gray tie. They dine at the Sans Souci restaurant at the Renaissance Hotel, the fare consisting of fusilli with roasted peppers and eggplant, sautéed scallops with fresh fennel and saffron broth, and a glorious, shared ice cream sundae topped with boysenberries and Grand Marnier.
The leisurely stroll around Public Square, watching the skaters twirl amid the Christmas lights, is even more glorious.
Jean Luc tells her about his job as the creative director for a major downtown ad agency. Jean Luc tells her that he finds her extremely attractive, in a very young Natalie Wood kind of way. Jean Luc tells her that
Smart Money
is his favorite magazine.
Incredibly, it is her favorite magazine, too. It is the only one to which she subscribes. The new issue is, at that moment, sitting in the lobby of her building.
Jean Luc asks her if she would like to have coffee, or if she would like to be taken home.
It was somewhere around the scallops that she had arrived at the answer to
that
one. She takes his hand in both of hers, squeezes gently, and says:
“Both.”
They are sitting on her couch, a single lamp lit behind them, the television on. They watch a few scenes from
Anatomy of a Murder
with Lee Remick on the AMC channel. They talk about dating, about travel, about movies, carefully skirting politics for this, their first date. By one o’clock, the coffee is gone. The film ends at one-fifteen.
Then comes the awkward silence. The first of the evening.
She decides to break it. “Well, in case I’ve forgotten to say it for the three-thousandth time, thanks for a wonderful evening,” she says, snapping on the table lamp next to the couch. She tries for levity. “I’m glad we, um, ran into each other today.”
“Uh oh,” Jean Luc replies. “Sounds like I’m leaving.”
“I have to get up, I’m afraid. Working gal.”
“Just one more cup?”
“Coffee’s gone.”
“Then so am I,” he says with a smile, rising, slipping on his charcoal gray coat. “But you’ve only begun to chip away at your debt to me. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she says, standing, trying to stretch her cramped legs without being obvious. “I intend to work it off at every Michelin-starred restaurant in a hundred mile radius of Cleveland. I pay my debts, no matter what the personal hardships.”
Jean Luc laughs. “Such nobility in the face of so many calories.”
“The food tonight was incredible. Thanks again.”
“Well . . . it was my pleasure,” he says, pulling on his leather gloves. “Beats the fare at Vernelle’s Party Center, I’ll bet.”
Suddenly, everything in the world is at a forty-five-degree angle to everything else. She is looking around her apartment, but nothing in it makes sense. The room is huge, ventless. The walls seem miles away.
She asks: “I’m sorry? Where?”
“Vernelle’s Party Center. On St. Clair Avenue. They serve chitterlings and ribs and collard greens there, if I’m not mistaken. Somehow, you don’t strike me as the soul food type.”
She can hear him speaking, but the words seem to rush by her ears, as if she is in motion. “I’ve never been there,” she says. “And you’re right. I’m not the soul food type. Way too fatty.”
“Oh, but I bet you were Willis Walker’s type,” he says. “I’d almost bet everything on that one.”
“Get out.”
“Please. Just listen to me.”
“Get out.”
“You’ll understand completely once I tell you the whole story.”
“Get
out
!”
“I’m afraid you have no choice
but
to listen,” he says, reaching slowly into the inside pocket of his coat.
“I have plenty of choices,” she answers. She squares herself in front of him, puts her hands on her hips. “I have every fucking choice there is.”
He removes his hand from the inside pocket of his coat and drops something on the coffee table in front of her. It is a three-by-five black-and-white photograph. At first, it looks like an abstract of some sort, the kind of optically challenging picture you might see in gaming magazines—
Identify This!
But when she looks at it more closely, she knows it is no game.
It is a picture of her running from Room 116 of the Dream-A-Dream Motel.
Her head swims. Tears begin to limn her eyes, despite of efforts to stop them.
How could she have been so stupid?
She tries to gather her thoughts, her breath. “What do you want?”
“I just need your help. No violence,” he says. “I’m just settling an old debt. And you can help me.”
“And this is how you
ask
me? By fucking
blackmailing
me?” She begins to pace around the apartment. Then, it hits her. “
Wait
a minute . . . you hired that guy to attack me, didn’t you?”
“He wasn’t supposed to lay a finger on you,” he says. “On the other hand, he wasn’t supposed to run away like a ten-year-old girl at the first sign of danger, either. Him coming back? That was all his idea. I guess you wounded his homeless-man pride. But, you have to admit, it made my rescue a lot more swashbuckling, don’t you agree?”
Everything that made this man attractive over dinner has now dissolved into a pool of disgust at the base of her stomach.
But, she had to confess, it’s not like she didn’t deserve having some con run on her. It’s not like she didn’t have it coming. She is, by anyone’s standards, at any time in the history of the world, a thief. And a murderer. Even if it was self-defense.
It’s just that she feels so
violated
.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks, sitting back down on the couch, her tears turning to sniffles, her mind turning to business.
“I want you to do what you do best,” he says, his face brightening, flashing the smile that got her into this mess. He sits down next to her. “Be yourself. Your charming, beautiful self.”
She draws a cigarette from the pack on the table, her hands no longer shaking.
He lights her cigarette, rests his hand on her knee, continues.
“Let me tell you a short story,” he says, offering her a starched white handkerchief. “Then I’ll go. I promise.”
For some reason, his soft, elegant voice is beginning to calm her. She is beginning to believe that he means her no physical harm, at least not at this moment. She takes the handkerchief and dabs her mascara-streaked eyes. “A story?”
“Yes. It takes place a few years ago. I was barely a teenager. If I remember correctly, the Indians beat the Minnesota Twins that day . . .”
23
CLEVELAND, OHIO
SEVENTEEN YEARS EARLIER . . .
Tony B’s emporium carries a little bit of everything—soda, chips, candy, cigarettes, condoms—but mostly it carries lottery tickets and fifteen different brands of fortified wine. Seventy percent of Tony B’s daily receipts are from one or the other. Twenty percent are from cigarettes. The other ten percent are from the idiots either too dumb or too lazy to walk the extra five blocks to buy their milk and eggs from the Kroger’s on East 105th Street.
It is late September, a steamy Indian summer day. The heat shrieks off the pavement in waves, punishing the water-starved trees in front of Tony B’s. From the apartment above the store comes the sounds of the Cleveland Indians playing the Minnesota Twins.
Tony B’s is empty, save for its proprietor, who is sitting high behind the counter, reading his paper, trying to keep absolutely still, trying to let the ancient, asthmatic air conditioner above the front door do its job.
Suddenly, something is wrong. He can
feel
it.
It is the same premonition he used to get in ’Nam, seconds before the first sniper round would crack out of the hills and send everyone at the base camp scrambling. The store is small, well lighted, and unless someone decides to lie on the floor and roll under a display, Tony B, with the aid of his three convex mirrors, can see every square inch. He knows when people are in the store. The bell on the door tells him when they come in. The bell on the door tells him when they leave. So why does he have the feeling that—