I got the door open and we entered. I flicked on the light. I had one of the smallest units in the complex. The bottom floor was open-plan, with a living room flowing into a small dining area and then the kitchen beyond it, separated only by a counter with a sink. Along the right wall was a set of stairs leading up to a loft, which was my bedroom. There was a full bath up there and a half bath on the bottom floor beneath the stairs. Less than a thousand square feet in total. The place was neat and orderly but that was only because it was starkly furnished and featured little in the way of personal touches. I had turned the dining-room table into a work area. A printer sat at the head of the table. Everything was set for me to go to work on my next book — and it had been that way since I moved in.
“Nice place. You been here long?” Mattson asked.
“About a year and a half,” I said. “Can I ask what this—”
“Why don’t you have a seat on the couch there?”
Mattson pointed to the couch that was positioned for watching the flat screen on the wall over the gas fireplace I never used.
There were two other chairs across a coffee table, but like the couch they were threadbare and worn, having spent decades in my prior homes. The decline of my fortunes was reflected in my housing and transportation.
Mattson looked at the two chairs, chose the one that looked cleaner and sat down. Sakai, the stoic, remained standing.
“So, Jack,” Mattson said. “We’re working a homicide and your name came up in the investigation and that’s why we’re here. We have—”
“Who got killed?” I asked.
“A woman named Christina Portrero. You know that name?”
I spun it through all the circuits on high speed and came back with a blank.
“No, I don’t think so. How did my name—”
“She went by Tina most of the time. Does that help?”
Once more through the circuits. The name hit. Hearing the full name coming from two homicide detectives had unnerved me and knocked the initial recognition out of my head.
“Oh, wait, yeah, I knew a Tina — Tina Portrero.”
“But you just said you didn’t know the name.”
“I know. It just, you know, out of the blue it didn’t connect. But yes, we met once and that was it.”
Mattson didn’t answer. He turned and nodded to his partner. Sakai moved forward and held his phone out to me. On the screen was a posed photo of a woman with dark hair and even darker eyes. She had a deep tan and looked mid-thirties but I knew she was closer to mid-forties. I nodded.
“That’s her,” I said.
“Good,” Mattson said. “How’d you meet?”
“Down the street here. There’s a restaurant called Mistral. I moved here from Hollywood, didn’t really know anyone and was trying to get to know the neighborhood. I’d walk down there for a drink every now and then because I didn’t have to worry about driving. I met her there.”
“When was this?”
“I can’t pinpoint the exact date but I think it was about six months after I moved in here. So about a year ago. Probably a Friday night. That’s when I would usually go down there.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
I should have anticipated the question but it hit me unexpectedly.
“That’s none of your business,” I said. “It was a year ago.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Mattson said. “Did you come back here?”
I understood that Mattson and Sakai obviously knew more about the circumstances of Tina Portrero’s murder than I did. But the questions about what happened between us a year ago seemed overly important to them.
“This is crazy,” I said. “I was with her one time and nothing ever came of it afterward. Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Because we’re investigating her murder,” Mattson said. “We need to know everything we can about her and her activities. It doesn’t matter how long ago. So I will ask you again: Was Tina Portrero ever in this apartment?”
I threw my hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“Yes,” I said. “A year ago.”
“She stay over?” Mattson asked.
“No, she stayed a couple hours, then she got an Uber.”
Mattson didn’t immediately ask a follow-up. He studied me for a long moment, as if trying to decide how to proceed.
“Would you have any of her property in this apartment?” he asked.
“No,” I protested. “What property?”
He ignored my question and came back with his own.
“Where were you last Wednesday night?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, we’re not.”
“What time Wednesday night?”
“Let’s say between ten and midnight.”
I knew I had been at Arthur Hathaway’s seminar on how to rip people off until the 10 p.m. start of that window. But I also knew that it was a seminar for con artists and therefore didn’t really exist. If these detectives tried to check out that part of my alibi, they either would not be able to confirm the seminar even existed or would not be able to find anyone to confirm I was there, because that would be acknowledging that they were there. No one would want to do this. Especially after the story I just turned in was published.
“Uh, I was in my car from about ten to ten twenty and then after that I was here.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Look, this is crazy. I was with her one night a year ago and then neither of us kept in contact. It was a no-go for both of us. You understand?”
“You sure about that? Both of you?”
“I’m sure. I never called her, she never called me. And I never saw her at Mistral again.”
“How’d that make you feel?”
I laughed uneasily.
“How did what make me feel?”
“Her not calling you back after?”
“Did you hear what I said? I didn’t call her and she didn’t call me. It was mutual. It just wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
“Was she drunk that night?”
“Drunk, no. We had a couple of drinks there. I paid the tab.”
“What about back here? More drinks or right up to the loft?”
Mattson pointed upstairs.
“No more drinks here,” I said.
“And everything was consensual?” Mattson said.
I stood up. I’d had enough.
“Look, I’ve answered your questions,” I said. “And you’re wasting your time.”
“We’ll decide if we’re wasting our time,” Mattson said. “We are almost finished here and I would appreciate it if you would sit back down, Mr. McEvoy.”
He pronounced my name wrong again, probably intentionally.
I sat back down.
“I’m a journalist, okay?” I said. “I’ve covered crime — I’ve written books about murderers. I know what you’re doing, trying to knock me off my game so I’ll make some kind of admission. But it’s not going to happen, because I don’t know anything about this. So could you please—”
“We know who you are,” Mattson said. “You think we would come out here without knowing who we’re dealing with? You’re the Velvet Coffin guy, and just for the record, I worked with Rodney Fletcher. He was a friend and what happened to him was bullshit.”
There it was. The cause of the enmity that was dripping off Mattson like sap off a tree.
“Velvet Coffin closed down four years ago,” I said. “Mostly because of the Fletcher story — which was one hundred percent accurate. There was no way of knowing he would do what he did. Anyway, I work someplace else now and write consumer-protection stories. I’m not on the cop shop.”