"They're desperate, Max. And every goddamn agency that they get passed to next tells them until there's evidence of a crime…"
She lowered her head and I took a step toward her and she put up a palm to stop me.
"I'm sorry, Max." She looked up. "What do you have for me?"
I put my hands back in my pockets. I told her about the trip to Philly and the meeting with O'Shea's ex-wife. Without getting into my background with Meagan, I gave her a rundown on my conversations with IAD.
"Christ, you'd at least think that hard-ass lieutenant up there would want to throw some help into this," she said, and I had to work to sustain a poker face.
"The ex-wife says O'Shea never got threatening. Never physical. In fact, she of all people was sure he wouldn't have the guts to carry something off like this and I gotta tell you, Sherry, I get the same vibe."
She turned her face away and looked down the shadowed street and her lips were pressed into a whitening crease.
"Be objective, Sherry. You've got an ex-cop who liked to bounce from bar to bar, dates some bartenders, has a couple of failed trips with women and the capacity for violence with assholes on the street," I said. "That's a profile that could fit me and another two dozen guys in the business we're in. Maybe he's carrying some kind of guilty stink from what happened up in Philly, but you've got nothing on him."
"We'll see," she said and pushed herself off the car with a flex of her thighs.
"What does that mean?"
"I've got a warrant to search his place," she said, walking around to open the driver's door. "One of your muggers from the other night is filing charges saying your buddy tried to kick him to death. He was bleeding and we think we might get some forensics from O'Shea's boots to match it."
I hoped my face didn't look as stunned and stupid as it felt.
"What the hell does that have to do with missing women?" I said.
"You know the game, Max. Maybe we can squeeze him. You never know what a little pressure will bring out once you have somebody inside."
She got in her car and started the engine and I stepped back as she pulled away. Maybe my former girlfriend hadn't just used me. But that's what it felt like.
After Richards left I walked back to my truck and sat in the parking lot watching the door to Kim's, grinding, nowhere to be and not feeling like going back inside. At eleven I walked over to Big Louie's, the Italian restaurant and pizzeria at the front corner of the strip mall. I got some manicotti and coffee to go. I may have even seen Carmine the delivery boy, an angular kid with coat hanger shoulders and a definite acne problem. He had a horselike face and a patch of peroxide blonde hair. He actually had some kind of tattoo on his calf that was impossible to decipher as it wrapped around a leg the diameter of a garden hose. If he tried to abduct one of the bartenders they would have slapped him silly.
Back in the truck I lowered the window to let the gathering odor of red sauce and garlic escape and had my dinner off the passenger seat. On occasion a lone man would approach the door of Kim's and I would focus my small field glasses from the glove box on him. What the hell was I on surveillance for? Had walking around on my old beat for a couple of days put me back in the zone?
I took another bite of pasta and watched a couple bend their heads together at the corner, instantly thought drug deal, and then chastised myself when I saw the flare of the man's lighter as they shared the flame to light their cigarettes. It was then that I realized the new fissure I was grinding was the man I'd seen slip away from the bar in Kim's when Richards had walked in. I'd caught the white glow of his skin between his hairline and collar as he disappeared into the dark and the smooth, athletic grace that got him to the hallway without a stumble or hesitation. There would of course be lots of reasons for someone to bail out of the back of a bar when a detective walked in the front, even if she was plainclothes, even if she just looked the part, and we both probably looked the part to someone paying attention. But the bartender had added to the feel that it wasn't right. If young Marci had some kind of drug dealing going on under the bar, even small-time stuff, they'd be careful. But there had been something in her eyes that lit my suspicion. Whether it was a carryover from my walk down South Street or not, here I was and it didn't necessarily feel wrong. Nice warm night. Box of manicotti. Hot coffee. Shit. I used to hate surveillance.
At one in the morning I decided to move. The lot was clearing and I had counted three times that a city patrol car had cruised through the center and now he was back. I watched the cop pull into a darkened spot almost in a direct line between me and the windows of Kim's, obstructing the view I'd had of Marci's bobbing blonde ponytail. It looked like he was going to stay awhile. Maybe he was there purposely to look after employees of the restaurants and the bar who were getting off work. Maybe some shift sergeant was paying attention to Richards's concerns after all. I did know that if this cop was smart he was going to notice me before long-single male in a pickup truck parked for hours and up to no good.
I started the engine and pulled out of the lot through the back street exit and swung west. There was another parking area used by movie patrons of the multiplex next door. With the right angle, I could still see Kim's front door and would hopefully see when Marci left and if she was picked up by a six-foot athletic man who shied away from the smell of cops.
An hour later my coffee was long dead and cold. The movie had let out and I'd watched couples stroll to their cars and head home, chatting about the merits of plot and pyrotechnics and performances. The last movie I'd been to was with Sherry and the damn thing was out on DVD and could have been having its broadcast debut by now. The night had settled into that long after- hours feel when the city drops in decibels and the streetlights take on a more noticeable presence and the cut of headlights across a brick facade sends shadows moving that you would not have seen at ten o'clock.
At 2:20 Marci walked out through the wide wooden door. An older man was behind her and had his fist up against the deadbolt on the inside. We both watched the girl go to a late model, light blue two-door parked right in front and unlock the driver's side. She waved at the old guy who stepped back and pulled the bar door shut. Marci backed out of her spot and came my way, her lights flashing off my truck windows as she bounced over a speed bump and then turned onto the street. All right, I thought. It was an old cop's hunch. Sometimes that's all they are. I sure as hell wasn't going to follow the girl home. I pulled out of my own parking space and as I approached the street another set of headlights met mine. They jounced over the speed bump and I caught the opaque blue tint of the light bar on top. It was the patrol car. Done for the night. Everybody out safe.
He turned left, without a signal, in the direction Marci had gone. My headlights caught the outline of a dark-haired male officer, clean-cut, and then I turned north toward the beach house. The annoying trill of the cell phone woke me the next day, snapping a dream that had me somewhere in the Everglades, someplace other than my river, someplace where I was unfamiliar and lost in a wooded hammock of gumbo limbo and poisonwood trees. It was night and I was crouched in a cover of fern, watching the glowing red spots of a gator's eyes that were becoming larger, though for some reason I felt no fear of them and as I tracked their movement through the trees they took on the shape of a car's taillights and I suddenly heard the sound of a horn in traffic which became the ring of my phone.
I swung my legs off the bed and blinked away the odd smell of the exhaust and marsh grass and picked up the cell.
"Yeah?"