“I never expect him back.”
Whoops. She hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, back the way he was.”
“Was when?”
“Back before Nika.”
“When was that, Linda?”
She liked the way he kept saying her name. He really was a nice-looking man, maybe a little old. Thirty-five? Good tan for a city guy. Maybe he did a lot of work outside.
“Pardon?” she said.
“When was before Nika?”
She waved a hand abstractedly. “Nika, that’s right. I guess late last summer, then they got married before Christmas, and that’s when everything seemed to start going wrong.”
“You mean with the business?”
“No, no, no. Not the business. That wasn’t ’til later. I mean with me and Daddy.”
Oh damn, she was going to cry again. That was the only bad thing about the pot-it got all the emotions stirred up. The trick was to quick get onto something else. “The business,” she said, “wasn’t ’til the whole thing with La Hora, like in February.”
But the man, surprisingly, didn’t pick up on that. “What happened with you and your daddy?”
He acted like he really cared. He was sitting back comfortably in his chair, hands folded across his chest, more relaxed than she was. In fact, just looking at him made her feel better. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I get all emotional sometimes.”
He nodded.
“Because before Nika… Well, you know my mom died when I was ten-that’s ten years ago, can you believe it?-and Daddy and I were always, after that, like best friends. I mean, I came to work here when he was building up the business and we did everything together, and it was like we were a team. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have girlfriends. That was cool. I mean, I wasn’t, we weren’t weird, you know. But Nika was different.”
He leaned forward. “Different how?”
“Just so, I don’t know, overpowering. And I don’t get it. Have you ever seen her or my dad?”
“I guess they were at the funeral but I didn’t know who they were.”
“Well, come look at this.”
She led the way back into her father’s office, with its big desk. And there was the picture, bigger than it needed to be in its silver frame. “Here, there’s my dad with Nika. I don’t think she’s that pretty.”
For as long as she could stand it, she glared at her new stepmother, probably only five years older than she was, though of course Nika would never say. It was, she admitted, a good picture but not a good likeness. It made her look more beautiful. And she wasn’t beautiful, not in real life.
She could tell the man only saw the outside, couldn’t tell from the picture how ugly she was underneath. He said: “I wouldn’t call her pretty at all.”
He was standing very close, right beside her. He smelled like a clean man-some hints of after-shave, maybe a pipe. But no sweat or gasoline like most of the guys she saw.
“They don’t really belong together,” she said. She realized she was still without shoes. Turning, facing the man, she raised her chin for a minute, then hitched herself onto her father’s desk. “What’s your name again?”
“Dismas. Diz for short.”
“I’m a little diz for dizzy,” she said, giggling.
“Probably better to be sitting down, then.” Unexpectedly, he reached out and touched her face, a light touch that tingled all over her. “Are you all right? Would you like some water?”
Without waiting for an answer he was gone, back quickly with her coffee cup filled with water from the fountain. It was like he knew his way around already.
She was ready for him to put his arms around her and do anything he liked at all, but instead he went to the couch and sat on the end of it. She sipped at the cup.
“So when Nika and your dad got married, things changed?”
She looked down. “He was like a different person. Just didn’t have time for me or anybody, or even the business, anymore. All he wanted to do was spend time”-a shot at Nika’s face-“with her.”
“And you think that’s been the problem with the business? I thought Ed was trying to get it back on track?”
“Oh, Eddie. Eddie was great. I didn’t mean to say he wasn’t good. At the job, I mean. Fair, and, you know, a really nice guy. No hassles, you know?” She sipped again at the water. “I can’t believe what they say, that he killed himself.”
Hardy let that go for now. “But there have been problems with the business, and they happened when Ed was managing, right?”
“Well, yes but no. It would’ve happened with anybody. It was all stuff about La Hora and El Dia.”
“You said that before. What does that mean?”
“You know El Dia, don’t you?”
He shook his head.
“Well, it’s another paper, you know, like La Hora, that wanted us to distribute it. La Hora was our biggest client but then they dropped us, took it all back in-house.” She looked around her father’s office. “And by then it was too late to get El Dia. They’d set themselves up with other distributors. Old Cruz really screwed us.” She shook her head, swinging her legs in frustration.
“Is that why it’s so deserted around here?”
Now was her chance. “That, just the slow business, and Ed’s funeral being today. There’s nobody here at all except us. Nobody’s been in at all.” Flirty eye move, shrug the breasts out. “And it’s late. I don’t expect anybody to come the rest of the day. I could even lock up now and it wouldn’t matter.”
He stood up, and she slid off the desk with a little bounce. “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Linda. Thanks.”
Another handshake. Again cool, dry, firm. She held it an extra couple of seconds, looked into his gray eyes. “We could get a drink maybe. There’s a lot we can talk about. Or just stay here,” she repeated.
A little peck on the cheek. “Thanks. I’d like that,” he said, “but I’m working now and I’ve got another appointment. Maybe a rain check, okay?”
“Sure, that’s cool.”
Out now to her desk. “Wait just a second,” she said.
She jotted her name and number on her notepad and tore off the sheet. “In case you remember something you wanted to ask.”
Then he was gone. She watched him walk across the empty lot through waves of late-afternoon heat. When he got in his car he turned back to look at the door and she waved a hand at him, but he probably couldn’t see her through the reflection.
Anyway, he didn’t wave back.
She turned the knob, locking the door, padded back to her desk and, sitting down, reached into her purse for the pack of Virginia Slims.
Linda was right, Hardy was thinking. I wouldn’t call Nika pretty. It would be like calling the Grand Canyon pretty, or Michelangelo’s David. Of course, he remembered her from the funeral, the way she kept staring at him. At least now he had a name to go with it-Nika Polk.
Where had she come from, he wondered, and what was it about sad-looking, basset-eared Sam Polk that had snagged her?
He closed his eyes, trying to visualize her again. She was tall, taller than her husband, perhaps five-eight, jet black hair over a classically hard Mediterranean face. A stunning face. Half-parted lips that she kept licking.
The only reason Hardy had caught Frannie when she’d started to faint was that Nika had been standing just behind her, and he had kept tearing his eyes away, forcing himself to look elsewhere. Frannie had been in his line of vision. It had been luck.
She had worn a simple woolen black cotton suit, severely cut, that nevertheless hadn’t diminished the thrust of her breasts above a waist Hardy thought he could encircle with both hands.
He shook his head. No, Linda, he thought, Nika ain’t that pretty at all.