“So you don’t want to have drinks one night?”
“No, not really.”
“Men always say they want a woman who is willing to take the initiative, but then when we do, they think we’re pushy and desperate. Do you think I’m pushy and desperate?”
“Not desperate, no.”
“Then what is it? Are my breasts too small?”
“God, no.”
“You don’t like brunettes?”
“I like brunettes fine. Listen, Monica, this is too odd for words. I’m about to self-immolate from awkwardness. Really, I have to go.”
“Then just tell me.”
“Your breasts are fine. Better than fine.”
“No. Tell me why you’re looking for Chantal.”
“If I tell you, will you hang up and not call again?”
“I promise.”
“Okay. It’s weird and embarrassing. One night, not too long ago, I must have gotten so drunk that I don’t remember anything about what happened. But when I woke up, I had a tattoo on my chest. And on the tattoo was a name.”
“What name, Victor?”
“Chantal Adair. I don’t know how it got there, or why, but I was just trying to find her.”
“That is weird.”
“And with the juxtaposition of your stage name and last name, we thought you might be a possibility. But seeing as you’ve never seen me before and I never saw you before, then it’s pretty certain that my tattoo has absolutely nothing to do with you or your sister who went missing decades ago.”
“No, it doesn’t. Unless…”
“Thanks for calling, Monica, but I’m going to hang up now.”
“Hey, Victor, can I ask one more thing?”
“No.”
“Do you want to meet my parents?”
“Absolutely not.”
“They’d really like you. I’m going to set it up. I’ll let you know when.”
“Monica, don’t.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Monica? Are you there? Monica? Monica? Crap.”
“VICTOR CARL HERE.”
“Hi, Victor, it’s me.”
“Beth, hi. Gad, it’s been a bad night. The phone is ringing off the hook, and every call is worse than the last.”
“And here I am, right on cue. What’s going on?”
“Just stuff. The Kalakos case is getting a bit hairy. Still, I must say it’s nice for once having a case without any dead bodies floating around, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. This whole murder business you fell into is creepy. Not what I signed up for in law school.”
“Theresa Wellman is what you signed up for, I suppose.”
“That’s right.”
“Did she recover from the ordeal of my direct examination?”
“Quite well, actually. And the part after the break, when you had her discuss her treatment and her new job and the new house her parents bought for her, that was fabulous.”
“See, Beth, we work well together.”
“We do, but that’s never been the problem, has it? Are you busy tomorrow at about noon?”
“Not especially.”
“Can you meet me?”
“At the office?”
“No, someplace else.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve been doing some thinking.”
“Oh, Beth, don’t.”
“About my life.”
“Gad, Beth, whatever you do, don’t do that. Wouldn’t you just rather change the channel and see what else is on?”
“I’m taking stock, Victor.”
“Why am I suddenly terrified? This whole thinking thing, Beth, can only lead to disaster.”
“So we’ll leave together from the office, say eleven-thirty, is that okay?”
“You never said where we are going?”
“I know. See you tomorrow.”
“VICTOR CARL HERE.”
“Carl, you slimy son of a bitch. You busy?”
“Busy enough.”
“Too busy to take a drive out to meet me?”
“I guess it depends.”
“On what?”
“On who the hell you are.”
“You don’t recognize the voice?”
“Oh, it’s a game, is it? Let me guess. You sound like some sort of rutting rhino. Is it Barry White?”
“Close enough. It’s McDeiss.”
“That McDeiss?”
“Yeah.”
“Crap.”
25
There are hosts of people you don’t want to hear from late on a Sunday night. Your oncologist, maybe, or the girl you had sex with six months ago and haven’t called back since, definitely, or the highway patrol, or the marines, or your mother… well, my mother. But a homicide detective might just be tops on the list.
Detective McDeiss of the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide Unit had directed me to a street on the south edge of the Great Northeast, not far from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and just a few blocks east of the Kalakos house. The location itself offered a clue as to what it was all about, which was more than McDeiss had given me. McDeiss was a big man with a small capacity for trust when it came to me, which made some sense, since his job was to bang away my clients and my job was to frustrate him at every turn. He hadn’t given me any details, just the address, but once I found the street, it wasn’t hard to pick out the right house, what with the crowd, the cops, the flashing lights and yellow tape, the satellite trucks parked with the reporters waiting for their close-ups. I was surprised they weren’t selling T-shirts.
I parked two blocks down the street from the carnival. I had slipped on a suit – nothing more faceless than a guy in a plain blue suit – and slowly made my way toward the center of all the activity, a nondescript brick row house with an open cement porch and a small plot of scraggly grass. In front of the house, I spotted the coroner’s van, the back doors open, something dark and shapeless on a gurney inside. As I approached, the doors slammed shut. I let out a sigh of relief as the van drove off. I’d been to enough crime scenes by now to know that my stomach much prefers I show up after the corpse is taken away to the morgue.
At the edge of the yellow tape, I subtly gestured one of the uniforms over. I leaned toward him when he arrived and pitched my voice as low as I could while still being heard. “McDeiss asked me to come on by.”
“Are you the lawyer we were told to look out for?” he said a little too loudly.
“Can we keep this quiet? No need for the press to find out I’m here.”
“Sure, I understand,” he said softly, with a wink.
“I’m the lawyer, yes. Victor Carl.”
“Go on in.”
“Thanks.”
I ducked under the tape as unobtrusively as I could. Just as I reached the second step of the stoop, I heard something harsh and loud from behind me.
“Yo, Joe,” hollered the uniform. “Tell McDeiss that creep Victor Carl, you know, the scumbucket lawyer what we were told to look out for? Tell McDeiss he finally showed.”
Instinctively I turned toward the crowd of press. Flashbulbs popped. My name was called out, questions were shouted, questions about Charlie and Rembrandt and whether the murder here was somehow connected to the sudden emergence of the painting. So much for slipping in unnoticed.
I turned to the uniform. “Thanks, pal.”
“We aim to serve,” he said with a grin.
I turned again toward the pack of press and spotted a flash of red hair surrounding a pale freckled face before I ignored the shouting and headed into the house.
It was a crime scene, all right. Cops were wandering around with notepads out, technicians were testing, walls and doorknobs were being dusted, photographs were being snapped, jokes were being laughed at, hoagies were being eaten.
I started into the living room and was stopped by a uniform and told to wait while he found McDeiss.
The house was one of those places that had been decorated decades before and then left to age. I suppose if you lived there day by day you didn’t notice it so much, but coming in fresh you could see the unalloyed weight of time on the décor and the lives inside. The walls were dark where they had once been bright, the furniture was greasy, the rug was worn, and everything had a tinge of brown to it and smelled as if it had been marinating in nicotine for an untold number of years. And there was another smell, something repulsive yet faintly familiar, like rot and decay and death, like pestilence itself. It took me a moment to make the connection. It smelled like Mrs. Kalakos’s breath. And with good reason. Littered across the rug were little placards with numbers on them, next to circles drawn in chalk. And there, on the edge of the rug, in front of a fully stocked liquor cart, was the taped outline of a sprawled figure and an ugly dark stain.