"I think that remains to be seen. I'm surprised you are calling me."
"The moth to the flame," I said. "You exercise my brain, Z. Sean and I are going to Players for a late dinner and a drink or three. Are you free?"
"Not at the moment."
"Later?" I suggested.
"I don't think I should trust you, Elle."
"Why not? I don't have any power. I'm the odd one out."
"You don't trust me," he said. "You think bad things about me which are not true."
"So convince me you're a good guy. It's never too late to make friends. Besides, it's only drinks, for God's sake. Bring your friend Lorinda. You can sell her Sean's horse over dessert. See you later. Ciao."
I ended the call, put the phone back in my pocket.
"Yes," I said to Dugan. "I have pressing business. Seems I have a date with Tomas Van Zandt." I turned to Wayne Armedgian. "Do you think you can pick up the tail from a dead standstill in a parking lot?"
I didn't wait for an answer.
"It's been real, guys," I said, and with a wave of my hand, I left the room.
I felt dizzy. I felt like I had walked up to a giant and spit in his eye. I'd managed to alienate the head of Robbery/Homicide and a regional supervisory special agent of the FBI in one fell swoop.
What the hell. I'd been the alien going in. They had excluded me, not the other way around. I would have happily told them anything about the case I could, but they didn't want me. I had just put them on notice I couldn't be bullied. I knew my rights, I knew the law. And I knew I was right: They wouldn't have had a case if I hadn't badgered Landry into it, if I hadn't called Armedgian looking for information. I wouldn't let them pat-pat me on the head now and send me to the sidelines.
I walked up and down on the sidewalk outside the building, breathing in the thick, warm night air, wondering if I'd played it right, wondering if it would even matter or if it was already too late.
"That's some set you've got on you, Estes."
Landry came toward me with a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other.
"Yeah, it's a wonder my pants fit."
"Think Van Zandt will show at Players?" he asked, lighting up.
"I think he will. He likes the game too much. And it's not as if he's in imminent danger of arrest. He knows you don't have anything on him or he'd be in jail already. I think he'll show to rub your face in it-and mine."
On impulse I took the cigarette from his fingers and took a drag. Landry watched me, inscrutable.
"You smoke?" he asked.
"No," I said on a trail of smoke. "I quit years ago."
"Me too."
"Desk pack?" I asked.
He took the cigarette back. "It's this or a flask. I can't get suspended for this. Yet."
"Weiss has a real bug up his ass."
"He's short," Landry said by way of explanation.
"I know I'm not welcome in this," I said. "But it was my case first, and I can still serve a purpose."
"Yeah, I know. You just slapped my lieutenant in the face with it."
A hint of a smile pulled at his mouth. His approval meant too much to me.
"Subtlety is overrated and it takes too long," I said. "We don't have time to fuck around."
I took the cigarette for one last puff, my lips touching where his had been. I didn't want to let myself think there was anything erotic in that, but of course there was, and Landry knew it too. Our gazes locked and held, a current running between us.
"I've got to go," I said, backing down the sidewalk.
Landry stayed where he was. "What if Dugan wants you back inside?"
"He knows where I'm going. He can come and buy me a drink."
He shook his head in wonder. "You're something, Estes."
"Just trying to survive," I said as I turned and went to my car.
As I pulled around past the sidewalk on my way out of the lot, my headlights flashed on Weiss standing in the doorway to the building. Little prick. I figured he would make trouble for Landry sharing his smoke with me, but that was Landry's business. I had problems of my own. I had a date with a killer.
38
Women. Stupid, ungrateful bitches. Van Zandt spent most of his life courting them, flattering them-no matter what they looked like-carting them around to look at horses, giving his advice and counsel. They needed him to tell them what to do, what to think, what to buy. And were they grateful? No. Most of them were selfish and silly and didn't have a brain in their heads. They deserved to be cheated. They deserved whatever happened to them.
He thought of Elle. He still thought of her by that name, even though he knew it to be false. She was not "most women." She was clever and devious and bold. She thought with the hard logic of a man, but with a woman's slyness and sexuality. He found that exciting, challenging. A game worth playing.
And she was right: there was nothing she could do to hurt him. There was no evidence against him, therefore he was an innocent man.
He smiled at that, feeling happy and clever and superior.
He snatched up his cell phone, punched the speed-dial number for the town house, and listened to it ring unanswered on the other end. His mood spiraled back down. Another ring and he would get the machine. He didn't want to speak to a fucking machine. Where the hell was Lorinda? Off somewhere with that obnoxious dog of hers. Horrible, flea-ridden beast.
The machine picked up and he left a curt message for her to meet him at The Players later.
Angry now, he ended the call and threw the phone onto the passenger's seat of the cheap piece-of-shit car Lorinda had given him to drive. He hadn't wanted to tolerate the police following him around. Following him for no good reason, he had told her. He was the innocent victim of police harassment. She had believed him, of course, despite the fact that she had seen the bloody shirt. He had excused that away, and she had believed him in that too.
Stupid cow. Why she didn't rent a better car when she traveled was beyond him. Lorinda had money she had inherited from her family in Virginia. Tomas had taken it upon himself to do the research. But she wasted it on charities for abandoned dogs and broken-down horses, instead of using it for herself. She lived like a gypsy on the farm that had belonged to her grandmother, renting out the grand plantation house and living herself-with a pack of dogs and cats-in an old clapboard farmhouse that she never cleaned.
Tomas had told her she needed to get a face-lift and a boob job, and fix herself up or she would never get a rich husband. She laughed and asked him why she should get another husband when she had Tomas to look out for her best interests.
Stupid creature.
Women. The bane of his existence.
He drove east on Southern Boulevard, thinking about the woman he was to meet. She thought she could blackmail him. She told him she knew all about the dead girl, which, of course, she did not. But she had already become a problem before that, because of the lies she told the Americans about him. Bitter, vindictive cunt. That was the Russians. A more vicious race of people had never lived.
The death of this one would be, of course, the fault of Sasha Kulak. Tomas had taken her in, given her a roof over her head, a job, an opportunity to learn from him and take advantage of his vast knowledge-in the barn and in the bedroom.
She should have worshiped him. She should have wanted to please and service him. She should have thanked him. Instead, she had stolen from him and stabbed him in the back and spread stories about him.
He had, at great cost to himself, called any clients she might have known, might have contacted after she had left him, to warn them this girl was trouble, that she was a thief and probably on drugs; to tell them of course he hadn't done anything wrong.
And now he had to deal with her friend, Avadon's Russian girl. Avadon should have fired her on the spot Friday when the girl had tried to kill him in Avadon's own stable. Incredible what these Americans would tolerate.