The address was off Mammoth Road, a complex called Raleigh Court, one of those serviceable modern hives where several hundred people lived in relative privacy, though you were still aware of the opening of a door, a soft sigh of plumbing, the yip of a small dogâthings suggestive of invisible lives beyond your own, like ghosts in the walls. Danielle appeared in a sherbet orange Danskin top and loose-fitting white stretch pants, her natural hair several shades darker than platinum, though even with the stage makeup scrubbed off, no one would've taken her for a secretary in a loan office. There were still sleep lines in her face. She led me into a small living room that was wall-to-wall carpeted and furnished with little beyond a sectional couch in guacamole green velour and a TV no bigger than a drive-in theater screen. A few scattered toys and children's CDs reminded me her son must be of school ageâwhich was where he was now, she told me. Second grade. She yawned. “You want coffee or anything?” I declined. “I'm exhausted. I've danced six nights in a row.” She stretched her arms high and then sank onto one length of couch and waved at the other end, which was heaped with newspapers. “Put that stuff anywhere.”
I picked up the papers, under which was a textbook called
Take
Charge of Your Writing.
I glanced at her. “Don't tell me you want to write screenplays, too?”
“Huh? Oh. That was for an evening class at the community college. I never finished. I liked going to school, but it got in the way of work.”
“Or vice versa,” I said. It was my mantra of late.
“Whatever. A degree is nice, I guess, but it's like, all these years as a continuing ed student, trained for a job where I can earn four hundred bucks a week? On a good
night
now, I can take home six. Do the math.”
I didn't ask her to do the math of passing years and wear and tear on body and soul. People could say the same about my choice of racket. She drew her long legs up under her. The cotton stretch pants showed her dancer's body to fine effect. She yawned again and tipped her head and gave me a long soft-eyed look. “How come you never hit on me?”
“Say again?”
“You heard me.” She straightened up on the couch. “For real, I mean.”
“I never have?”
“Not even close. You aren't married, like most of the guys who come on are. You're not gay. Maybe I don't light up your dials.”
“Oh, come on. You look great.”
“Do you prefer older women?”
“Depends on what they're older than.”
“I'm serious. How come? Is it my son?”
“Your son's a peach, and so are you. But let me answer with a question.”
“Am I a virgin?”
“Who played drums for the Moses Maxwell Quintet?”
She held my gaze for a moment, as though she were actually grappling with the answer, then her eyes glazed slightly and narrowed. “That's a lowball. I don't have a clue who that is.”
I shrugged.
“Okay, mister smart-ass. Name the original guitar player for Dripping Squid.”
I didn't make even a pretense of thinking. “If I knew that, I'd ask you to elope with me.”
She stuck out her tongue. “Shaun Sullivan, later replaced by Steve Anthony. Anyway they broke up.”
“Well, there you go. Danielle, what I really need answers to has to do with this photo that I showed you.” I offered it again and she took it. “You said that Flora Nuñez and the others would come to the club. Did you know them outside of that?”
“Well ⦠a few of them I knew from night school. Flora. Her.” She pointed to Lucy Colon. “We took a class together.”
“What about the men in the picture? They're cops, right?”
“I told you that. They'd usually come by late, when they got off duty. With them it was just first names. Bob, Tom.”
“How about Paul?”
“Maybe. Yeah, I think so. But only once or twice.”
“Paul Duross?”
“I never knew last names.”
“Why Viva!?”
“Because it's open late? I don't know.” She shrugged. “Though now that I think of it, the way it got started is one night after class, we were talking and the teacher said how would we like to come to a party. I'm like, it's kind of an unusual question from your teacher, but there were the three of us, so we figured, well ⦠it couldn't hurt our grade any.”
“So you went with him?”
“Her. The teacher was a woman. We went, and from there we ended up at the club. After that, it just sort of became the place. There was one thing Flora told me, about how she had to go to courtâfor a lot of parking tickets, I think. And someone worked out a deal.”
“Say more.”
“She said he took her into a room and spanked her.”
“You mean like ⦔ I made a paddling motion with my hand.
“Yeah, like that. But according to Flora he looked pretty excited afterward, like he'd gotten off on it.”
“Who was it, do you know?”
“No, I don't. But I believe it was a cop who set it up.”
“Why not tell me this last night?”
“I guess I didn't think of it. It happened a while ago. And I don't want to mess with the court system. I've been there.”
“Did she ever say anything else about the incident? Mention a name?”
She frowned. “You're not going to tell anyone what I just told you?”
“Danielle, this may connect to an innocent man about to be tried for murder.”
This didn't seem to make her very happy. “Well, I haven't seen any of them in months. Probably since when that picture was taken. I dropped out of school, like I told you. I don't see myself as a paralegal. The teacher flunked me.” She smiled. “Must've taken it personally. Good old Carly.”
I looked at her. “Carly
Ouellette?
”
“Uh-oh. You know her, too?”
I had some other questions, but she was running out of answers, and she didn't bother to cap the yawns. I told her to get some sleep. I wished
I
could.
I sat in my car, panning for meanings in what Danielle had told me: off-duty cops, a secret courthouse spanker, and Carly Ouellette. It didn't yield gold, but it added facets to what I already knew. I needed to get access to Judge Travani again, to force him to listen. I couldn't try anything tricky. He'd see right through it; every day of the week people came before his bench and tried to con him. No, my best angle was a direct full frontal, with an element of surprise if I could swing it. I called the River Club, ready with a scam if Duncan answered, but fortunately he didn't. I asked the woman if the judge was still there. He wasn't. I tried the courthouse line, being sure to give my name. After a several-minute wait, Travani came on the line. “Rasmussen,” he said, “if you persistâ”
“Just one question, Your Honor. Who spanks the judge when
he's
been a bad boy?”
It was the blind gambit of a desperate and tired mind, a shot in the dark. At his angry “
What?”
I knew it had missed and zinged off into the void. I tried to recover with something contriteâforget wittyâbut my mind was empty. Then, in a lowered voice, he said, “I've got a hearing to get to. Call me here in an hour.”
Â
Â
I was wide awake now. I called Fred Meecham's office and Courtney answered, as I'd hoped she would. “Can you confirm something for me?”
“Hello to you, too. How are you feeling?”
“Never better.”
“Okay, I get it. Confirm what?”
She called me back in ten minutes. “Yes,” she said, “Carly Ouellette taught an intro to paralegal studies for two semesters, the last being this past spring term. The evening division of the college likes to get working professionals to teach their courses. And just an FYIâI called her number at the courthouse and she hasn't been there at all today.”
“You get a gold star on your forehead, girl.”
At 2:30 I redialed the number that had reached Martin Travani an hour before. A woman with a pinched-sounding voice answered and I asked for him.
“I'm sorry, the judge has gone for the day.”
“Could you check on that? He was expecting my call.”
“Sir, he's gone. He left some while ago.”
I had a sudden queasy feeling. “Do you know where he went?”
“Sir, the judge did not say, and that was sufficient enough for me. I did not ask.” She spoke with slow, exaggerated patience, as subtle as a band saw.
“Would you have a number where I could reach him?”
“Let me reiterate that again. The judge is not here. I don't know where he is or when he'll return. I don't have a number, and I certainly don't know what this is in regards to.” She was on a roll now, making no effort to mask her annoyance. “I answered this line because it rang, but this is not my desk, and I've got various mixed emotions about saying anything more. So please completely, totally understand meâthere is no one here.”
I was exasperated, too. “Are you there?”
“Formerly, in the old days I used to be,” she said officiously.
“Presently, at this time, I'm strictly an independent consultant.”
“Not for the economy of words, I hope,” I managed before she hung up in my ear.
I was floundering now, half-certain that something odd was going on, yet unable to see what it might be. I felt like I was in the old
New Yorker
drawing of a man in the desert, buzzards circling overhead as he's about to expire from thirst, while over the next dune, invisible to him, is
Las Vegas. For no obvious reason, perhaps other than it was close by, I remembered the phone call from Walt's Getty. How many hours ago had that been? I headed for the intersection where I knew the gas station was located. As I parked across the street, a man stepped from the gloom into one of the open bays, where he stood framed by festoons of fan belts and exhaust pipes, a ragged little cap on his head, one eye squinted against the rise of smoke from a butt hanging from his lips. Gasoline Gothic. I went over. “Are you Walt?”
“It's Waleed, actually. He's the owner. He should be back in an hour or so.”
“What about Frank?”
He sucked the last puff out of his cigarette, dropped it, and killed it with a work boot. “The wife worries that all the fumes from pumping gas will give me cancer. I'm Frank.”
“Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, Frank. I'm Alex Rasmussen.”
“Oh, yeah.” He straightened his cap. “I seen your name in the newspaper and looked you up in the book.” He motioned me and I followed him back into the garage, to a corner workbench cluttered with tools and greasy auto parts. He threw a switch and a flyblown fluorescent tube blinked once, twice, and came wearily to life. “Don't know if it means anything,” he said, “in fact, the wife said it doesn't and I shouldn't get involved, but, well ⦠this gal in the paper who got killed?”
“Flora Nuñez?”
“Uh-huh. I seen her photo and I realized she'd been in here earlier for gas.”
“When was that?”
He poked a finger at a Pennzoil calendar, at the box for Sunday past. It was the last day she'd been seen alive. “Around noon, must've been. Driving a little green car. She seemed lost, looking for how to get to Tyler Park, for an address on Georgia Ave. I said I didn't know about that, but Tyler Park was easy enough to get to. I didn't think no more about it, till I read in the paper and saw the picture, and even then I wasn't sure, but I went through the charge slips and she'd paid with a credit card, which is how I matched the name.”
“Would you happen to recall the number on Georgia Avenue?”
“Can't say I do. I thought ⦠maid. You know, going over to clean
one of them big houses. One thing I saw, there was a nun's habit lying on the passenger seatâthough she didn't look like no nun I ever knew. Anyways, I directed her. Later, after I seen the paper, I told the wife. She said I should let well enough alone, the police already arrested the fellow who killed her, and they know what they're doing. She said, âYou watch all those TV shows and all of sudden you think you're a detective? Let it be, Frank.' But I don't know, I feel a citizen's got a duty. I remembered your name from the paper.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It may be important. When she asked about the address, did she say who she was looking for?”
“No name. I told her that's a pretty chi-chi neighborhood, there were probably a few living over there.”