'Oh, God, yes!'
Their first encounter with the Deaf Man. The stakeout in Grover Park. Eileen and Willis sharing a sleeping bag as pretend lovers. A decoy lunch pail on one of the benches, cut scraps of newspaper inside it, instead of the fifty thousand bucks the Deaf Man had demanded.
The 'passionate couple' assignment had been the choice one; Hawes and Willis had drawn straws for it, and Willis had won. He'd worked with Eileen only once before then, on a mugging case. Now they were lying side by side, in somewhat close proximity, in a sleeping bag.
'We're supposed to be kissing,' be told Eileen.
'My lips are getting chapped,' she said.
'Your lips are very nice,' he said.
'We're supposed to be here on business.'
'Mmmm,' he answered.
'Get your hand off my behind.'
'Oh, is that your behind?'
'Listen,' she said.
'I hear it,' he said. 'Somebody's coming. You'd better kiss me.'
She kissed him.
'What's that?' Willis asked suddenly.
'Do not be afraid, guapa, it is only my pistol,' Eileen said, and laughed.
Remembering now, sipping their coffees, they looked at each other across the round table between them. Eileen licked foam from her lips.
'I didn't know what guapa meant,' Willis said.
'Rabbit,' Eileen said.
'I know that now.'
'The line was from For Whom the Bell Tolls. The sleeping bag scene between Robert and what's her name.'
'Ingrid Bergman.'
'I meant in the book.'
'I forget.'
'Ah, how soon we forget,' she said.
They looked at each other again.
'What are these ideas you've got about the Deaf Man?' she asked.
'I don't have any ideas about the Deaf Man,' he said. None at all. Not a clue.'
'Then
'I lied.'
'You didn't have to,' she said, and reached across the table and took his hand. 'But promise me something, Hal.'
'Yes?'
'Never lie to me again.'
'Okay,' he said. 'I want to make love to you.'
She burst out laughing.
'Eileen? I want to make love to you,' he said.
'I heard you,' she said.
'Eileen?'
'Yes, Hal, yes. I heard you.'
'So . . . do you think ... do you think you might . . . ?'
'Yes,' she said, 'I think so,' and reached across the table, and took his other hand in hers. 'Yes, Hal,' she said softly. Yes.'
MELISSA KNEW WHERE to find him because she'd worked for the bastard. Knew all his haunts, all his hangouts, all the places he slept and didn't sleep. He was a busy little man, Ambrose Carter was. When she located him at seven o'clock that Sunday night, it was just beginning to
grow dark.
She spotted him through the front plate-glass window, sitting at the bar, nursing what was probably a Blackjack, his favorite drink. She knew better than to go inside there, confront him where there'd be all his homies to help him out. Drag her out of there, do her fore and aft to teach her a lesson, a dozen of them, two dozen of them, however many it took to teach the little whore a lesson once and for
all.
Well, she was here tonight to teach him a lesson.
Teach Mr. Ambrose Carter a lesson.
Teach him you don't go taking money from a person, even if she was a whore, and then not deliver on your promise. You just don't do that.
Not to Melissa Summers, anyway.
She waited till he finished his drink, waited till he paid for it and came out of the bar, walking a bit unsteadily, watched him from across the street, and then caught up with him just as he was unlocking the door to his car.
'Ame?' she said.
He turned.
He was looking at a small gun in her hand. Seemed like some kind of toy gun made out of plastic.
'Well, look who the fuck's here,' he said.
'I'll need my money back, Ame,' she said.
'Get lost, ho,' he said, and went back to unlocking his car door, turning his back on her.
It was calling her a whore that did it, she supposed. He shouldn't have called her a whore. Shouldn't have turned his back on her, either. Shouldn't have dissed her that way. She thought maybe that was why she shot him twice in the back, once while he was still standing, and another time after he'd crumpled to the sidewalk.
Or maybe it was because she'd sucked too many cocks for the son of a bitch in the five years she'd worked for him.
Maybe that was it.
SHE CAME OUT of the bathroom wearing only a white garter belt and red high-heeled pumps. The garter belt, white, made her look somewhat virginal. The pumps matched her lipstick, a red much brighter than her hair, too bright to be worn by anyone but a whore. She had pulled the hair back into a ponytail that again made her appear girlish, a teenager surprised, echoing the pristine white of the garter belt. The garter belt exposed the wild red tangle of her pubic hair, enforcing the whore image
again. She was a study in contrasts tonight, Eileen Burke.
'I think I look beautiful,' she said, sounding amazed by the discovery.
'You are beautiful,' Willis said, and held out his hand to her.
She came to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He kissed first her hand, and then the faint scar on her left cheek. He kissed the hollow of her throat and her nipples. He kissed her below, where the red hair curled recklessly beneath and around the garter belt, and then he found her lips and kissed her longingly and tenderly, murmuring 'Eileen, Eileen, Eileen' against her mouth, and her hair and her ears and her shoulders and her neck, making her feel beautiful, genuinely beautiful and clean for the first time since she was raped and stabbed.
He took her in his arms and lowered her onto the bed.
Discovering her, marveling at her presence beside him, he repeated over and over again, 'Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, Eileen.' Her name. No one else's name. Hers alone.
8.
WELL, WELL, WELL, now what have we here?' Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks asked.
He was talking to the uniformed cops who'd called in what appeared to be a homicide at eight-fifteen this bright Monday morning, June 7, which was when Police Officers Mary Hannigan and Roger Bradley found what appeared to be a dead body on the sidewalk alongside what appeared to be a BMW sedan.
Long before the two officers happened across the stiff on their first circuit of Adam Sector during the first half-hour of the day shift, a great many other people had noticed it lying there on the sidewalk in a huge puddle of blood. All through the livelong night and early morning, these passersby glanced down at the body and hurried on along because, this neighborhood being what it was, nobody thought it prudent to report what sure as hell looked like a murder. Especially those good citizens who recognized the corpse as being the remains of one Ambrose Carter, an influential, what you might call, pimp.
Ollie recognized Carter the moment the ME rolled him over.
'Ambrose Carter, Pimp,' he announced, spreading his hands on the air and raising his voice to the world at large, but especially to the two Homicede cops who'd been sent over to lend authority to the vile goings-on up here in the Eight-Eight.
'I know all the girls in his stable,' Weeks said.
'Biblically, no doubt,' the ME commented drily. 'You think one of them might've aced him?' Muldoon asked.
'It's been heard of,' Mulready said. The two Homicide dicks were wearing black suits, black socks and shoes, black ties, white shirts, black snap-brimmed fedoras. They looked like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, except that they were both white. They had already decided there was nothing important for them up here. A dead pimp? Who cared?
'Shell casings there,' Muldoon said, indicating them with a nod of his head. 'I saw them,' Weeks said.
'By the way, you ever find the guy who stole your book?'
'Not yet,' Ollie said. 'But I will.' 'What book?' Mulready asked. 'Detective Weeks here wrote a book,' Muldoon said. 'You're kidding me.' 'Tell him, Ollie.'