“Where were you yesterday evening?”
“Home. I got back at about six o’clock.”
“Back from where?”
“I didn’t do it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“The Delta. Near Big Break. She called me last week and asked me to help her pick out some shrubs at a nursery.”
“Isn’t that something she could’ve done herself?”
“Well, we sort of… kind of… made friends over the years.”
“What time did Karopian’s wife find the body?”
“The newspaper said ten o’clock. She last saw him during the morning. She spent the afternoon at one of the spas in Calistoga with her girlfriends. They had dinner in Napa.”
Gage glanced at Skeeter’s wall calendar.
“I’ll check into it,” Gage said. “Fax or e-mail me a chronology of where you were every minute during those hours. And give me a call if the police pay you a visit.”
Porzolkiewski sighed. “You’ll be the first.”
Skeeter grinned after Gage filled him in, and said, “Maybe you scared the asshole to death.”
Gage didn’t smile back.
Chapter 42
B oots Marnin drove by Jeannette Hawkins’s house twice before he figured out which one it was. The first time he missed it because he’d failed to spot the faded plastic numbers against the peeling paint on the porch support. The second time he spotted both the numbers and a recycling bin overfilled with beer bottles.
He decided to postpone his visit until it was last call.
Marnin drove back through Richmond, past dope dealers, taquerias, full garbage cans, empty storefronts, and a couple of cops kneeling on the back of a homeless man in front of a shattered flower shop window. He crossed under the freeway, then slipped two blocks down a divided commercial street to Gold Rush Western Wear. The owner’s exaggerated Texas accent was way too loud and he was way too friendly, but Boots got out of there in twenty minutes with a fresh pair of Wranglers and a George Strait button-down white shirt. He checked himself in the motel mirror just before he headed out that night. He even gave himself a little wink and a nod. He looked like he was just about to walk on stage at Nashville’s Gaylord Arena.
T he next morning Jeannette couldn’t remember much of what happened.
The handsome man at the door. A gentleman. Cowboy hat held against his chest with both hands. Golly-gee-whiz shy. His father was an old buddy of Son of a Bitch from the navy.
That’s what he’d said, anyway.
Come on in. Sure he’d have a beer.
First she got jealous when he stared too long at her daughter running out the front door, no bra, boobs bouncing under her father’s faded AC/DC T-shirt. But then she got turned on when he looked back at her, a you’re-my-type-honey smile on his face.
Man, what he would’ve thought twenty-five years ago when I had tits like that.
He was already gone by the time sunlight falling on her eyes woke her up. She rolled over, sort of expecting to see him, but there was just a slight depression in the pillow.
Must’ve been a light sleeper.
She was hoping for a nice note, nothing flowery, but something anyway, even just a phone number, but she didn’t see anything.
She slid out of bed and steadied herself using the night table before shuffling to the bathroom. She examined herself in the mirror.
I look like shit. No afterglow on this broad.
She inspected the dark splotches under her eyes.
What did that cowboy want with me?
Something about Son of a Bitch. Hadn’t seen him for years.
Yeah, he called. Couple of years ago.
Anybody come by trying to find him?
Some PI a while back. I got his card somewhere.
Jeannette took a pee, slipped on yesterday’s shift, then walked into the kitchen. She decided on coffee instead of beer. She didn’t need the hair of the dog, she needed something to jog her memory.
She dumped a little too much Folgers Instant into a cup, added water, then set it in the microwave. Took her a couple of tries to set the time. Twenty seconds. Twenty minutes. Twenty-two seconds. But finally she got the numbers punched in right: two minutes. She watched the cup through the fractured glass, wondering if she was irradiating herself, thinking for the millionth time maybe she ought to get one of them gizmos to find out if the thing was leaking microwaves and giving her cancer.
Maybe later. She didn’t fear death much when she was hungover. In fact, it kinda seemed like a good idea.
She didn’t wait for the beep. One-fifty was long enough. She pulled it out. Shit. Tasted like coffee grounds. She’d forgotten to sweeten it. She ripped open a couple of McDonald’s sugar packets, then dropped in the contents and jiggled a spoon in the cup.
Another sip.
That’s better.
She stood there, staring out the kitchen window at the rusted swing set in the backyard.
That’s funny. Cowboy didn’t even know Son of a Bitch got a dishonorable discharge. It’s the kind of thing people talk about.
She turned back toward the living room. She smiled again. This time a bitter one.
Maybe his daddy liked fondling them little Okinawan girls just like Son of a Bitch.
Her eyes swept toward the telephone hanging on the wall. It seemed different. Not the phone. The wall around it. A blank spot.
Something’s missing.
Chapter 43
"Namaste.”
“ Namaste to you too, pal.” Wilbert Hawkins pointed at a plastic lounge chair on the veranda. “Have a seat.”
Prasad Naidu, deputy superintendent of the Gannapalli Police, glanced toward the central district, then shook his head. “I think we should sit inside.”
Hawkins followed Naidu’s eyes, and then scanned the street. A half-dozen buffalo were walking the dirt track, heading home from the fields on their own, and beyond them a group of men had collected at the bus stop, some looking sideways in Hawkins’s direction. He grabbed his beer from the low table, then led the deputy superintendent into the living room. Naidu shut the door behind him and sat down. He wore a long-sleeved, dark green uniform pressed like folded paper. No gun on his black belt. No badge on his shirt.
“An American is asking where you are living,” Naidu said.
Naidu’s accent was heavy, sometimes sounding to Hawkins like comical gibberish, but not now.
“Same one?” Hawkins asked.
“Different.”
“By himself?”
“With a Telegu language interpreter from the U.S.”
“Did he say who he was?”
“He said he is working for the American consulate in Chennai and is coming here to check on your welfare. No one is believing him. Half the population has applied for visas, so they know the consulate only uses local translators.”
Hawkins felt his stomach tighten. “What are people saying about me?”
“Playing dumb. He is not handing out money, yet. I think he is afraid they will figure out he is not for real once he does.”
“But they’ll take it.”
“Yes, they will take it.”
Hawkins rose. He walked into the hallway, then up the stairs into his bedroom. He returned two minutes later with an inch-high stack of hundred-rupee notes still stapled together like he had received them from the bank. Two hundred dollars U.S. He handed them to Naidu.
“Tell him I’m in Hyderabad for a few weeks,” Hawkins said. “Say I needed hernia surgery.”
“He’ll be wanting to see your house.”
“Bring him by. Walk him around the place like there’s nothing to hide. That way I can get a peek at him.”
B oots spent a jet-lagged, frustrating day trying to weasel information from a dozen different Hyderabad hospital clerks until he found a friendly one at the Deccan Infirmary, one who smiled at him and told him the doctors had recommended “Mr. Wilbert” have his surgery at the Parvatiben Gujarati Hospital in Chennai.