Victims by Collin Wilcox Page B

When he began muttering under his breath, I smiled. There were no cigars in his desk. Since it was Sunday, and he wasn’t wearing a vest, he didn’t have any cigars with him. And the cigar store in the lobby was closed. Friedman was stuck.
    “What’ll you bet,” Friedman said, pointing to the message, “that you’ve got one, too.”
    “I don’t plan to go to my office. That way, I’ll never know.”
    “There’s no point in both of us taking Dwyer’s lip. Is that it?”
    I nodded. “That’s it.”
    “He could’ve called you at home. There could be a message beside the telephone.”
    “I plan to be in the field.”
    “Doing what?”
    “I’m going to try and interrogate John Kramer. Obviously.”
    “Before you do that,” Friedman said, “why don’t you talk to Katherine Barnes, see what she has to say?”
    “Who’s Katherine Barnes?”
    “Katherine Barnes is Charlie Quade’s latest girlfriend. See, I’ve been researching the last few years of Charlie’s life.”
    “What’d you find out?”
    Friedman spent the next several minutes covering Charlie Quade’s life from the time he lost his shield to the time of his death. It was a short story, and a sordid one. When he finished, Friedman tossed a slip of paper across the desk. “That’s her address. Charlie’s address, actually.”
    Charlie Quade’s apartment house was about what I would have expected: a cheaply built building with a gaudy facade, located in a so-so part of town, the kind of neighborhood where a showy car and a free-spending style attracts a lot of favorable attention. The interior hallways were carpeted in emerald-green acrylic; the plaster of the hallway walls sparkled with glitter. It was a three-story building. At the head of each flight of stairs, plastic flowers attached to real manzanita branches were artfully arranged against mirrored wall tiles. But the manzanita was lacquered to a plasticlike gloss. And the “rocks” that completed the neo-rustic display were actually styrofoam.
    As I pushed the bell button of Apartment 7, I noticed that there was no name card inserted in the brass slot above the button. Either Charlie had craved anonymity, or Katherine Barnes had removed the card as soon as she learned Charlie was dead.
    Out of long habit, after ringing the bell, I stepped back, unbuttoned my corduroy jacket and raised my hand to waist level, close to the butt of my service revolver. I was about to press the button a second time when I heard footsteps on the other side of the door. The tiny glass prism set into the door’s peephole flickered.
    “Yes?” It was a woman’s voice. “Who’s there?”
    I identified myself, showed her my I.D. and told her why I’d come. I heard a pained sigh, then heard the rattle of a night chain, followed by the sound of a deadbolt lock turning, and another lock clicking.
    Like Charlie’s apartment house, Charlie’s girlfriend was about what I’d expected: lots of show, but not much class. She was tall and long-legged. Her hair had been dyed to a dark, lusterless brown. The hair was elaborately piled on top of her head, secured by several rhinestone combs and clips. Her eyebrows were heavily drawn in black, her lips were heavily drawn in red. Her eyes were shadowed with iridescent green. Her long lashes were false. The skin of her face was blotched and pitted, covered over with layers of cheap makeup. Her red sweater and black toreador pants were tight-fitting, revealing in precise detail her breasts, her nipples, her buttocks, and the cleft of her pubis. But the curves were beginning to slip, and the flesh was beginning to sag. Her mouth was drawn into an expression of permanent displeasure, as if she were tasting something sour. Her eyes were narrowed, permanently suspicious. Like her mouth and eyes, her voice was hard and unfriendly.
    “What is it? I’m packing, and I don’t have much time.”
    “Are you leaving town?”
    She nodded. “That’s right. I’m going to L.A.