Plainclothes Naked (16 page)

“I’m calling from a pay phone, how’d you know it was me?”

Manny told her to relax. “Cops always have a lot of cell phones. Perps leave ’em in the car. I’ve never used this one before so I knew it was you. Nobody else has the number.”

Tina seemed to believe him, so Manny saw no need to tell her he was parked in the Pizza Hut across the street. He’d been following her since she left her house. After the Pawnee Lodge he’d decided to go to her place and sniff around, to check out any connection with the

Mac and Tony show. When he got there, Tina was just unlocking her Honda. So he cruised on by, pulled a U-ey and tailed her, two cars behind. When she hit the pawnshop, he parked up the street, watching her make two trips with Marv’s computer and video equipment.

Tina didn’t have a record, Manny’d already checked. But since her name might be fake, and he didn’t have her maiden, that didn’t mean much. He could have snagged her prints and run them, but if they came up in the system, he’d be obligated to do something. Even if they didn’t, the fact that he punched them up would arouse suspicion. Fay-ton kept tabs. He had nothing better to do. The chief would be thrilled to catch a man in some bit of police chicanery, to uncover some L.A.–style corruption he could scam to plant his face on the front page of the Sunday
Trumpet.
Manny could already hear the chief ’s self-righteous harangue at the arraignment. “But I thought you said she wasn’t a sus pect, Detective Rubert? I thought you said she was a grieving widow?”

Fuck that. The only way to play it was to steer clear of channels and snoop around on the home front. He was tits-deep in a criminal ven ture—protecting Tina made him an accessory to murder—and ready to make the move with Mister Biobrain. He couldn’t afford to find out after he crossed the line that his partner was hinky. Or hinky the wrong way.... The trick was not to con himself that she was solid if she wasn’t. Tina was sex-on-a-stick, so he had to be vigilant. One wrong move and they were remaking
Double Indemnity,
with the high crime of White House nutbag blackmail added to murder. And Fayton replacing the feisty Edward G. Robinson.

“Here’s what’s going on,” Manny said, keeping an eye on the lush swell of Tina’s ass in her mourning wear as she faced the pay phone. The girl had his nose open, big-time, and he had to concentrate. “I heard today the chief is suspicious about Marv. He wants to make a canoe.”

“He wants to
what?
” Tina scratched an ankle with the black high heel of her opposite foot.

“Cop-speak,” he explained. “I apologize. That’s what your jaded police-types call doing an autopsy. But don’t worry. Just tell me if there’s anything else I should know about.”

“Well,” said Tina, as Manny watched her fish in her purse for a cig arette. Who the fuck else under ninety-five smoked Viceroys? “If I told

you you might find a bit of broken glass in his stomach, would you still, you know, want to hang with me?”

“Bad choice of words, baby. In this state it’s lethal injection.”

“You know what I mean.” She was trying so hard to sound con trite, it was hard not to laugh.
This chick is evil,
Manny thought. He couldn’t explain why this made him even crazier about her. Made her more seductive than smack. Though if she eased his mind about the late Carmella, he’d feel a whole lot better about life in general.

Manny let her stew a few more seconds, then pressed on. “As long as you tell me everything, we’re cool. There’s just one thing I’m still curious about.”

“Which is?” “Carmella Dendez.” “What about her?”

“She a friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. She’s my supervisor at Seventh Heaven. She’s all right, if you don’t mind listening to fashion tips all day. Carmella thinks God made stretch pants right after He finished air and water. Which is amazing, considering what they have to stretch around when
she
wears them. Why are you asking me about Carmella anyway? You checking up on me? Gonna bust me for pilfering pillowcases?”

“Pilfering’s okay. It’s killing people that gets dicey. Somebody offed your boss on a motel bed.”

“What?”

Manny watched Tina lean her head on the glass. After a second, she straightened up, bit the filter off her cigarette, then fired a match one-handed and lit up. She blew the smoke straight at the phone booth ceiling. He had a feeling her eyes were closed.

“What happened?” she asked, in a voice that sounded older than she was.

“I’m not sure,” said Manny. “It went down at a flatback motel called the Pawnee Lodge. Ever been there?”

“No, why? What is this?” He saw her make a fist at her side. “You think
I
killed Carmella?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying, first a Seventh Heaven resident gets dropped out a window. Then a woman who works there turns up

stabbed to death. And just to make it
really
interesting, there’s you, another devoted employee, with a dead husband and a certain twisted photo you stole out of the bed of the same lady who ended up taking the shortcut from four floors up.You were me, what would
you
think?” There was silence. Tina took a fast drag on her Viceroy. Manny watched her stub out the barely smoked cigarette on the phone booth

glass, then throw it down and stomp it.

“If I were
you,
” she said levelly, “what I’d think is that I should be very fucking careful about accusing
me
of a bunch of bullshit. That’s what I’d think.”

Manny dug the rage. She wasn’t trying to cover. “I’m not accusing, Tina, I’m asking. There’s a difference. People around you seem to die a lot. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather not be one of them. We’re gonna partner up, it’s important we trust each other.”

“Is that right?” Tina clamped the receiver between her shoulder and chin. She rooted in her purse with both hands. “Well, you sure got a novel way of inspiring trust.” She came up with a scrunchie and twisted it around her hair, making a ponytail. “Maybe there’s some thing I should know about you, huh
partner?
What I’ve seen, you’re not exactly Joe fucking Friday.”

“You got me,” Manny said, relaxing. “I boiled my first wife alive for shrinking my toupee. I told her not to spin-dry and she wouldn’t listen. Other than that, I swear, I’m entirely wholesome.”

“That’s almost funny,” she said. “Except I know you’re lying. I’ve seen a picture of your wife, looking nasty, an inch from George Junior’s smiling kumquats.”

“Kumquats, I like that,” Manny said. “Except Marge never looked nasty a day in her life. And anyway, I said my
first
wife. But never mind. Just listen, and tell me the truth. Besides the glass, is there anything else you don’t want found out about how Marv died? ’Cause if there is, I’m startin’ to think we gotta cremate him. Fast.”

“I already did,” she said, adding demurely, “that’s the way he would have wanted it.”

“What are you talking about?” Now Manny was stunned, and he didn’t stun easily. “His body’s in a drawer. I went to the morgue. I
saw
him.”

“That was yesterday, sweetie. This morning he was delivered to Martino and Sons. It was a private ceremony. No family. Just Mister Edward and me. He’s been very supportive.”

“Supportive? Are you kidding me?”

Manny stared across the street at the woman in black. From this dis tance there was nothing special about her. Medium height, decent body, dirty-blond ponytail. Nothing intense but that Faye Dunaway face. Those cheekbones of death. Maybe not the girl next door, but definitely somebody the guy who dated the girl next door would love to fuck around with. If
she
wanted to. Because that’s what clinched it: Tina’s attitude. Like she was so tough she might let you think you could touch her; or maybe she’d even let you, for real. But it was her call, not yours. Never yours.

“You going to tell me how you did it?” he asked.

“How I
did
it?” Tina twisted the ponytail around a finger. “We’ve been through all that. What do you want, the receipt for the Drano?”

“I’m not talking about
that
.”

Manny watched, transfixed, as Tina hung her head and grew still. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as all that. Maybe, in some weird way, it was a mercy killing. Unless all the mercy was for herself....

Before he could go down that road, the doors of the 7-Eleven blew open and a trio of sleazoid white guys swaggered out. Each goon clutched a forty-ouncer in a bag. Two had shaved heads, and all three wore tighty-whitey T-shirts to show off their pecs and biceps. The three plunked themselves on the hood of a beat-to-shit pickup parked directly in front of the booth. Manny could hear them from across the boulevard, talking trash. He watched them unscrew the caps, tip back their bags, and guzzle as much as they could get down without gag ging.
Not good,
he thought. Maybe nothing would happen; but if something did, it would not be good.

Tina checked out the action, then turned around again, giving the boys her back. Her voice, instead of growing wary, or even concerned, grew softer, more relaxed. “What are you asking me, Manny?” It was the first time he’d heard her say his name, and it got to him.

“What I’m asking,” he said, trying to sidestep the tremor in his heart, “what I’m asking is... are you okay?”

Then one of the mooks yelled at her, and the rest joined in. “Hey

baby, forget him, whyn’t you come over here?” “Yeah, you can suck on me for free.” “I got somethin’ in my pants you ain’t gonna believe.” “Yeah, ’cause it’s so fuckin’ small. . . .” The usual witty bullshit.

Manny could see Tina stiffen. He felt powerless, watching those assholes hassling her. There was so much sadness in her body language. The way she hung her head. Her sudden stillness. As if, on top of everything else, she’d had a lifetime full of assholes hassling her, and it made her sad to have to deal with three more of them now.

When she didn’t answer, Manny plunged on with his original ques tion.

“What I really want to know, okay, is how the fuck you got them to release Marv’s body to the mortuary?”

“I didn’t,” she said, leaning against the door, blocking the comedy from the brown-bag party-boys. If they fucked with her, Manny knew, he’d have to go over, book all three, and hope she believed him when he said he happened to be driving by. Maybe he could tell her the 7-Eleven clerk called the cops.
Something
.... It was a lose-lose option. Tina had to trust him as much as he had to trust her. If she suspected he was tailing her, forget it. But he couldn’t
not
go over, if the shit hit the proverbial fan. He couldn’t just watch her get perped by a bunch of tanked-up skeeks.

Sighing, Manny pulled out his binocs for a better look. He recog nized one of the a-holes, a terminally laid-off mill-hunk named Ran ick. Ranick had more ink than Satan and thought he was dangerous. The kind of badass whose idea of a hot date was getting beer-drunk and sucker punching his girlfriend. When he had a girlfriend. When he didn’t, the nearest female under fifty would do. Manny’d hauled him in for drunk-and-disorderly enough times to get him court-ordered to AA. Apparently, he left before the miracle.

“Tina,” Manny hollered into the phone, more nervous than she was. She was about to get mauled, and
he
was the one shouting. “Tina, what do you mean you didn’t get them to release Marvin?”

“I mean
I
didn’t do it. It was Mister Edward, like I said. From the funeral home.”

“
Him?
Oh, perfect... .” “You know him?”

As it happened, he
did
know Edward. There’d been some trouble,

years ago, after the mortician mail-ordered a Korean bride. The new spouse, a comely eighteen-year-old named Kim Sung, took one look at her crater-faced beau and decided to head back to Seoul. Edward, of course, had other ideas, and things got ugly. But Ms. Sung had watched enough American TV to know about 911. “Wait, I’ve got the receipt!” Edward kept yelling, after Manny and Merch swung by to pick the girl up and haul her back to the airport.
“I’ve got the receipt!”

It was a grotesque and depressing spectacle: the outraged young Edward crying and waving his piece of paper on the front steps of his parents’ split-level on Duquesne Street, up in Tit-ville. The boy morti cian, ironically, was sporting a wifebeater. With no sleeves, you could see that even his shoulders had acne.

That shoulder acne, Manny’d suspected, is what made the terrified bride decide to hightail it back to her homeland. Keeping Edward Edward out of jail was one of the first favors a DMV-drone-turned police-chief named Fayton ever did for the town’s old money. Martino and Sons had been founded by an Upper Marilyn patriarch, the origi nal Edward Edward, a Methodist minister who also happened to be young Edward’s great-grandfather. Since much of the local populus hailed from Italy, Edward the First realized he’d get more business if folks believed their neighborhood mortuary was
paisano
-owned. So he named it after his wife’s favorite crooner,Al Martino, and never looked back.

Manny stared across the street as Tina slid the elastic off and redid her ponytail, ignoring more bons mots from the yapping drunks on the truck. She seemed to be gazing at the ground. Distracted. Only one question remained. It was not strictly relevant, but it fucked him enough to ask it anyway. “Just out of morbid curiosity, Tina, why would Edward do you such a big favor?”

“He likes me,” she said, and before Manny could pursue
that
line of questioning, she asked calmly if he’d mind holding on.

Manny watched, with mounting dread, as Tina pushed open the phone booth door and blew a kiss at the rowdy lugs in front of her. Through his binocs, Manny saw Ranick smirk at his buddies. He pimp-walked toward her, swigging his forty. When he was just outside the booth,Tina smiled in a way that soured his stomach. She licked her lips and slipped in a finger to deepen her cleavage.

Ranick, the idiot, leaned closer, and Tina, still smiling that
Do me
smile, whispered in his ear. There was a frozen moment—whatever she said must have meant something—then Ranick let go of his bottle, which shattered on the sidewalk as he staggered backward. He held his hands out in front of him, petrified. Even from across the street Manny could see the color drain from the young thug’s face. He jumped in his pickup and started it before his buds were even off the hood. “Get in,” the overgrown delinquent shouted.
“Just get in the motherfucking truck!”
Manny did not even realize he’d been holding his breath. More amazing, Tina had yet to stop smiling. But what cinched it for Manny—what wrenched his insides with that awful, delicious mixture of fear and desire that, in his life, passed for true love—was the way Tina had kept the receiver covered the whole time.
Because she did not