"Is there a doorman at Endicott's apartment building?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"He see you go in?"
"I assume so."
"Same doorman at eight in the morning?"
"No."
"A different doorman saw you go out, right?"
"He hailed taxis for us, yes."
"Two taxis?"
"Yes. Chip was going to his office, I was coming back here."
"I'll be talking to both those doormen, you realize."
"I would hope so," she said. "You're a cop doing his job."
"What's your father's name?" he asked abruptly.
"What?" she said.
"Is it Jesse Hollis? Joshua? Jason?"
"Jesse. And it's Stewart. He's my stepfather."
"How does he spell it?"
"S-T-E-W. Why? Do you think he killed Baz?"
"Somebody did," Willis said. "Where does he live?"
"Houston," she said. "Are we finished with the third degree?"
"Not a third degree," he said. "Just…"
"Just a cop doing his job, yes, you told me."
"Yes," he said. "And no, I'm not finished yet."
"Well, hurry up and finish so we can have a drink."
He looked at her.
"Because I like it much better when you're not a cop doing his job."
"Who's Mickey?" Willis asked.
"Mickey? Oh. You have a very good memory. Mickey's a girlfriend."
"What's her last name?"
"Terrill."
"Does she weigh two hundred and twenty pounds and wear a raccoon coat?"
Marilyn's eyes opened wide.
"Does she drive a stolen Mercedes-Benz?"
Marilyn smiled.
"My, my," she said, "we've been very busy, haven't we?"
"Why'd you lie about Mickey?"
"Because I didn't see any sense in adding to your lists of suspects. Which, incidentally, I seem to be at the top of."
"Tell me what you know about him."
"Not much."
"Is he a car thief?"
"I have no idea."
"He came here, didn't he? What do you mean, you have no…"
"That was the first time I ever saw him. And the last. Look, would you mind very much if I made us some drinks? I really need one. Believe it or not, Baz's death came as quite a shock to me."
"Make yourself at home," he said.
She rose from the love seat and walked to one of the antique dressers. She opened a door. Rows of bottles and glasses inside there. She took out a bottle of gin, opened another door. A small refrigerator.
"Are you still drinking scotch?" she asked.
"Not at three o'clock in the afternoon."
"I hate scotch," she said. "What time are you off duty? I'll set the clock ahead."
"Four. Well, I'm relieved at a quarter to four."
"Break the rules," she said.
"No," he said. "Thanks."
She shrugged, cracked open an ice cube tray, dropped three cubes into a glass, and poured a healthy shot of gin over them.
"Here's to golden days and purple nights," she said, and drank.
"Tell me about Mickey," he said.
Marilyn walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it. "He was in the city for a few days," she said. "My girlfriend Didi asked him to call me. Period."
"Do you always go out with men you don't know? Strangers who may turn out to be car thieves?"
"I didn't know he was a car thief. If, in fact, he is. And I didn't go out with him. We had a…"
"You were dressed to go out. Fancy blue dress, sapphire earrings, high-heeled shoes…"
"You noticed," she said, and sipped at the gin. "How do you know I didn't get all dressed up for you?"
"Come on," Willis said.
"You have a very low opinion of yourself, don't you?"
"No, in fact I think I'm the cat's ass. And let's not start the psychotherapy again, okay? If you didn't go out with this Mickey Terrill punk…"
"We had a few drinks here, and he went his merry way," Marilyn said. "Why does he make you so angry?"
"Thieves make me angry," Willis said. "And let's not get off the track. You told me you were going out with a girlfriend. You said you were going to dinner with her."
"Yes," Marilyn said, and sipped at the gin again. "I guess I lied."
"Why?"
"Because if I told you Mickey was a man, you'd have started asking me the same questions you're asking me now, and I didn't want you to think I was the kind of girl who went out with men I don't even know, which only would have made you angry, the way you're angry now."
"I'm not angry!" Willis said.
"Oh boy, listen to who's not angry," Marilyn said, and rolled her eyes.
He didn't say anything for several seconds.
Then he said, "You're a pain in the ass, do you know that?"
"Thank you," she said, and lifted her glass to him in acknowledgment. "It's getting closer to four o'clock, you know."
He looked at his watch.
"Would you like that scotch now?"
"No," he said.
"Or would you like to come here and kiss me?" she said.
He looked at her. His heart was suddenly pounding.
"If you'd like to, then just say so," she said.
"I'd like to," he said.
"Then come do it," she said.
He went to her where she sat on the bed. He sat beside her.
"I didn't kill either of them," she whispered, and kissed him.
Their lips parted, heads tilting, tongues insinuating. He took his mouth from hers and looked into her face.
Her blue eyes flashed in the glow of the Tiffany lamp in the corner near the bed. Wordlessly, she unbuttoned her blouse. No bra beneath it, adequate breasts with good nipples. He touched her, kissed her again. She unzipped the blue jeans and took them off. His hand moved to her panties, cupped her there. She responded with an exhalation of breath that sounded like a serpent's hiss, her back arching as he lowered the panties, her hand finding his zipper, and lowering it, and reaching into his pants to free him, her eyes averted like a nun's.
The clock on one of the antique dressers ticked loudly, urging a hurried coupling, setting a tempo like a metronome, ticking into the silence as he probed her, springs jangling in accompaniment, their bodies finding at last a rhythm faster than the clock's, a bone-rattling, jarring, steady, fierce rhythm that initially forced grunts from her, and then moans, and then a high shrill keening that sounded like an Irish wake, something primitive and animal and frightening.
Their position was absurd, they were locked in intimate embrace, enclosing and enclosed, grinding, gasping, moaning, writhing—but they didn't even know each other. Drunk on the whiskey scent of her breath, dizzied by her wild keening, lost in a frantic rhythm that outraced time, Willis passionately acknowledged this ridiculous secret they were sharing as strangers, and with each animal lunge forgot more and more completely that he was a cop investigating a double homicide.
"Give it to me!" she screamed. "Oh, Christ, give it to me!"
Secrets.
She told Willis later all about her father—her natural father, he of the golden days and purple nights. The man was a drunk who used to beat her mother black and blue every time he got loaded. He tried to do the same thing to Marilyn one night, came home pissed to the gills and burst into her room while she was getting ready for bed, standing there putting on her nightgown, came in with his belt strap in his hand, and began chasing her through the house, swearing at her. She left home the next day.
"I went to the Coolidge Avenue bus terminal," she said, "in my school uniform, St. Ignatius, I used to go to St. Ignatius in Majesta, little plaid skirt and blue blazer with the school crest embroidered in gold right here," she said, and touched her left breast. "A beautiful day in May, three months before my sixteenth birthday, I took a bus clear to California. He was one son of a bitch, I'll tell you. The Irish are supposed to be the big drinkers, am I right? Well, my father was the champion booze hound in all Majesta, and his parents were born in London."