Speak of the Devil (29 page)

“No. I ain’t seen him.” She snatched the money.

“Okay. I want an address, Donna. I want a location. I’m going to drive, and you’re going to give me directions.” I hit the button on the driver’s door armrest, locking all the doors. Donna flinched slightly at the
thunk
. I loaded my voice with ice. “You take me to Angel, you’ll see the rest of the money. You play games? I pull over somewhere dark, and you’re not going to be happy.”

She tilted her chin upward defiantly. “You won’t shoot me.”

I touched her leg with the barrel of the gun and nudged at the hem of her dress. “Let’s put it this way: I won’t kill you.”

“I don’t know where he is,” she said again. A slight tremor had slipped into her voice. “Angel doesn’t live anywhere. He just crashes places.”

“You know the places he crashes. We’ll go on a little tour, you and me.”

I pulled the gun back and turned the ignition. A part of me hated having to be such a creep, but in this business, you don’t let those parts have any say in the matter. I thought of Gabriella Montero and the total lack of concern shown for her by the woman in the seat next to me. That helped. As I put the car in reverse, Donna shifted in her seat, swinging her knees over in the direction of the steering wheel. Her legs were impossible to ignore, as she knew full well. She snapped open her purse.

“Hey. I got an idea.” She looked up from her purse with dark meaningful eyes. “I can call Angel. See where he’s at.”

I swung my gun hand over the back of the seat in order to look out the rear window. “Good idea.” I eased the car backward, turning the wheel. From the corner of my eye, I saw Donna pulling her cell phone from the purse. In the brief instant before she lunged at me, it struck me how remarkably slender the phone was.

Pffffffffffffff!

Pepper spray. I jerked my head as it hissed from the tiny canister. A lot of it went directly into my mouth and I immediately gagged, but enough also misted into my eyes. Within a second they felt like they were on fire. I dropped the pistol onto the back floor as I pawed at my face. Donna cursed at me in Spanish, throwing herself across my lap. I heard the
thunk
of the doors unlocking. Grabbing wildly, I managed to get ahold of Donna’s hair.

“Fucker! Let go!”

My cheeks took a raking from her dangerous nails and I lost my grip on her hair. But I got my first burning gasp of air. I tried to see through the tears welling up in my eyes, but there was only a yellow blur moving off my lap. I swung at it. My hand hit something hard. Her purse. I grabbed at it. Donna tried to wrest it from my grip, then lowered her head and sank her teeth into the back of my hand. I jerked at the purse and heard its contents spill out. Donna slapped at my face, then the passenger door opened and I lunged, but my hand managed to grab only part of her leg. A second later, I took a sharp hit on the side of the head. I released the leg and the door slammed closed. From the swiftly receding sound—a slowly syncopated
click, click, click
—I gathered that Donna had hit me in the head with her stiletto heel and hadn’t stopped to put the shoe back on.

I remained sprawled on the front seat, working to find just one complete breath. Tears from my burning eyes were running down my face. How
stupid
. How utterly stupid of me. I tried to open my eyes again, but the burning sensation overcame me. I touched the spot on my head where I’d been hit. It was wet with blood.

Then I heard voices approaching. Chief among them was Donna’s.

“There! That green one.”

I shoved myself into a sitting position and beat spastically with my hand until I found my armrest, managing to find the door lock just as the voices reached the car.

“That’s it.” Donna again. “Right there. He tried to rape me.”

Someone pulled at the door. “Open the door, motherfucker, or I’ll fucking smash it the fuck in!”

I rubbed at my eyes and squinted through the blazing tears. I couldn’t tell how many of them Donna had summoned, but however many they were, they began rocking the car.

“Get the fuck out of the car, you pussy!”

The engine was still running. When Donna had blasted me with the pepper spray, the car had bumped harmlessly into the one parked behind me. My chest felt as if it had collapsed under a weight of bricks. I straightened in the seat and took hold of the wheel. I couldn’t see past the front of the car.

“He’s trying to get away!” Donna screamed. “Stop him!”

The rocking became more violent, and it was joined by a pounding. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I found the transmission and shoved it into drive. The pounding grew louder, then there was a
pop
, and bits of glass flew against me. The passenger-side window had been smashed. I could make out an arm coming through.

I twisted the wheel as far to the left as it would go and stomped on the gas. My fender grazed the car in front of me, but not enough to stop me. I swung the car out onto the street. Several people were running alongside me, shouting. There was a loud
bump
and the car shuddered. I might have hit someone, but I wasn’t about to stop and find out.

I leaned forward on the steering wheel just as headlights appeared directly in front of me, accompanied by a loud car horn, which was the only way I knew I had drifted to the wrong side of the street. I jerked the wheel, trying to find my lane. I glanced in the rearview mirror, seeing only a receding yellow blur floating amid several darker ones. Up ahead, I saw a red light approaching. Seeing no other lights, I went through the intersection, then rolled my window down, let off the gas somewhat and stuck my head out into the cold night air. It stung like hell, but it was the only way I could breathe.

Holding the steering wheel with one hand, rubbing my eyes with the back of the other hand, all the while hacking like a retired coal miner, I made my way at a crawling pace out of Fort Petersen. When I reached Flatbush, I pulled over and called Margo. I draped myself halfway out the car window and fought through the crappy connection.

“I need you to call me a cab,” I said. The words were like razor blades running on the inside of my throat.

There was a pause. “Okay. You’re a cab.”

My upper body collapsed against the side of the car. Laughing hurt even more than speaking, but I had no control over it. I was still holding the cell phone, though not to my ear. I could hear the buzzing of Margo’s voice.

“Fritz? Fritz?”

MARGO POKED HER TONGUE AGAINST THE INSIDE OF HER CHEEK AND said nothing as I pulled Betty from my pocket and set it on the dresser. She was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a mug of warm mulled cider and rum. I looked at her in the dresser mirror.

“The pimp,” I said to her unasked question. “He had a knife, I had Betty.” I set my .38 on the dresser, next to the blackjack.

“Mr. Arsenal,” Margo said in her quiet voice.

I leaned closer to the mirror. Margo had dabbed iodine on the several scratches I’d suffered from Donna Bia’s fingernails. I looked like an Indian in his war paint. My eyes were still red, but much of the stinging had subsided. I had a walnut-sized lump just above my left ear, where Donna’s stiletto heel had done its damage. Hellcat, indeed. Lance Jennings hadn’t been kidding. I recalled Donna swinging her dishy brown legs in my direction and giving me that dark smile, just seconds before hitting me full force with the spray.

“What are you going to do about the car?” Margo asked, blowing lightly into her cider.

“The easiest thing is to report it stolen. There’ll be a lot less explaining to do to the rental company if I say somebody stole it. It’s insured against the damage.”

“What about wasting the police time?”

I turned from the dresser. “I can call Captain Kersauson. I’ll tell him not to bother.”

Margo took a sip of cider. “So how much money did you end up handing over to all these sexy women tonight?”

“They weren’t all sexy.”

“How much?”

“I took a thousand with me. I came back with just under half.”

“How sexy was the sexiest one?”

I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off. Gingerly. The evening’s festivities had kicked up the injury in my shoulder. I balled up the shirt and made a two-pointer on the chair in the corner. I stepped over to the bed and snapped my fingers. Margo handed me the mug. “Yes, Allah.”

I took a sip. Nutmeg. Cinnamon. Cider. Rum. My raw throat welcomed the blend. So did my bloodstream. “The sexiest one? That would be the girl who slapped me around. More curves than the Daytona Speedway.”

“Aren’t you funny.”

“You asked.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small silver tube. Margo made a quizzical face. “Is that what I think it is?” I twisted the bottom of the tube, and a soft ruby nub emerged from the top. Margo placed a finger on her chin. “I think something a little softer would suit you better.”

I set the lipstick on the bedside table and pulled a similar shape from my pocket. This one was a transparent vial. It was three quarters filled with what the police like to call a powdery substance. I set the vial down next to the lipstick.

Margo asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s my catch of the evening. While I was flailing away blindly—literally—after the lovely Miss Bia sprayed me, I managed to catch her purse and knock some stuff out.”

Margo picked up the vial and held it up to her face. “Artificial sweetener?”

“I guess one could make the argument.”

“What is it? Cocaine? Heroin?”

“One of the above. Or some such cousin.”

“So your take for the evening was drugs and cosmetics. This cannot have met expectations.”

I pulled one more thing from my pocket.

“That’s not yours,” Margo said.

“It’s Donna Bia’s.”

“You got her cell phone?”

I weighed the weightless thing in my palm. “Yep.”

“You’re looking smug.”

“I’m feeling smug.”

“Okay, Mr. Smug. Why don’t you put away your toys and come to bed?”

She hopped off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. I pulled open the drawer on the bedside table and stashed the goodies. I finished off the cider and rum, kicked off the rest of my clothes and fell heavily onto the rack. The bathroom door opened, then closed, and the overhead light went out. My former boss’s daughter crawled into bed next to me. I sniffed the air.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Eau d’intrigue?”

“I’m not as curvy as a racetrack. I thought a little booster might be nice.”

“You don’t need no stinkin’ booster.” I turned to her. “Besides, you’ve got plenty of curves. Who says you don’t?”

“I can tell I ain’t no Donna Bia.”

“And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

Margo turned to me. Her fingers found the back of my neck and started playing little games there.

“Try,” she whispered.

I WOKE SOMETIME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. MARGO’S HEAD WAS tucked under my chin, one of her legs thrown across mine. Her breathing was barely audible, like a tiny teapot not quite coming to a boil. My right hand was resting against her bare back. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been doing it, but I realized I was running my thumb gently back and forth against two of her vertebrae. Not waking, she muttered something in her sleep and nestled even closer.

I looked up at the ceiling. Margo’s bedroom is a corner room. Two windows. South and west. One of the windows—the one at the fire escape—has a security gate. Ambient light from outside hits both windows and sends elongated patchworks of shadows onto the ceiling. It’s never quite the same pattern twice; it’s a little like clouds in that way. When a car travels down the street, a new shadow appears, sliding along the ceiling atop the others. Sometimes it looks to me like a guillotine blade whooshing down. Margo will occasionally stay awake simply to watch the shifting patterns. She claims it’s one of her favorite features of the apartment.

As I lay looking up at the patterns, one of those car-induced shadows ran its diagonal course along the ceiling. It was followed immediately by a second one, this one moving faster. I heard a squeal of brakes, and the second shadow halted partway along the ceiling. I heard the
thump
of a car door closing. A few seconds later, Margo’s front door buzzer went off.

“Shit.”

Margo stirred as I peeled her off. “What is it?”

“Company.”

I got out of bed and reached for my pants. Margo scooted up onto one elbow. A gash of pale light cut across her face.

“What time is it?” She leaned sideways and squinted at her clock. “It’s three-thirty.”

The buzzer sounded again. I pulled on my shirt. Margo slipped out of bed and into her bathrobe in one liquid move.

“Don’t get up,” I said.

“It’s my apartment.” The sleep was gone from her voice, replaced with irritation. She went into the hallway and hit the intercom button. “Who is it?”

The crackly answer came back: “Malone.” I joined her in the hall.

“It’s you,” Margo said humorlessly. “You’re here and you’re down there at the same time. Ain’t you something?”

I pushed the button to buzz open the front door. I went back into the bedroom and got my .38 and tucked it into the waist of my pants.

“Why don’t you wait in the bedroom,” I said to Margo.

“Who do you think it is?”

I stepped to the door. The across-the-hall neighbor was a photographer. Several months back, he was backing out of his apartment carrying a tripod on his shoulder and somehow managed to land one of the hard rubber feet directly on the peephole in Margo’s front door, making a spiderweb of the tiny lens. I looked through the peephole now, but all I could see was a triangular view of the carpet. I heard the sound of steps in the stairwell, and a moment later, the edge of a shoe nosed into view.

A loud knocking sounded.

“Don’t open it,” Margo hissed.

We both knew it was a hollow request.

A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, I WAS WORKING A CASE FOR A WOMAN WHO was being stalked by her former employer, an art appraiser at Sotheby’s. The man’s inappropriate attentions while the woman was in his employ had spurred her to look for another job; she landed a parallel position with a smaller auction house. Marlborough’s, on Lexington Avenue. It was soon after the woman started the new job that she began noticing her former boss lurking outside Marlborough’s, as well as showing up on her subway platform at both ends of the workday. He also phoned her frequently at work, offering up perfectly transparent work-related pretenses for the calls, and also at her home, although these calls—technically anonymous and conducted in an ill-disguised low breathy voice—were characterized primarily by utterings concerning underwear and puckered flesh. A friend of a friend of a friend referred the woman to me, and I had agreed to stalk the stalker, in order to corroborate the woman’s tale of harassment so that she could take appropriate legal action and keep the unhinged art appraiser away from her. There was no indication—neither from a look into the man’s past, which I undertook to investigate, nor in his actions—that the art appraiser posed an actual bodily threat to my client. He was a perv and a pest, and she wanted him officially designated as such so that action could be taken to get him out of her life.