“You can’t treat me this way!” he blustered, red faced, more afraid than aggressive. “This is harassment and-and brutality.”
Kovac curled his lip in disgust. “Call a cop, limp-dick. I’ve got twelve witnesses who’ll swear I was playing Parcheesi at the Moose Lodge in New Hope.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah, I’m crazy,” Kovac said sarcastically. “I’m not the one meeting in a public bar to pay off the guy I hired to whack my wife.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You make me sick.” Kovac all but turned and spat on the floor. “What’d you think, David? That everyone would just assume your wife was mugged, or that some nutjob did her because of Karl Dahl?”
“I didn’t do anything to Carey!”
“And you figured you were playing it smart to be seen in public at the time of her attack, that you were extra clever, using your motive as your alibi.”
“What motive?”
“Your little plaything you got this apartment for. A junkie whore too stupid to think you’re exactly what you appear to be-a loser with a big mouth and delusions of grandeur. You’re pathetic.”
The look on Moore ’s face was priceless. Kovac smiled like a tiger. He had opened both barrels of bullshit and actually hit some nerves. A little knowledge and a lot of attitude went a long way toward rattling people with something to hide. All the years of wading hip-deep in the excrement of criminal minds had taught him more about human nature than any Ph.D. in psychology could have.
David Moore was the kind of guy who needed to feel important, needed people to think he was smart. That he had to lower himself to the standard of prostitutes to accomplish that wouldn’t matter.
“You’re thinking, ‘How do you know all that, Kovac, you dumb son of a bitch?’” Kovac said, still smiling. “I know all kinds of things about you, Sport. I know about your taste for hookers. The flowers, the gifts, the expensive dinners, paying for it all out of the family funds. I know about your biweekly habit at the Marquette, Mr. Greer. You go there to pretend you’re a big shot, don’t you? Mr. Hollywood, the film executive.
“By the way, that’s lower than low, using your wife’s maiden name. Freud would have a field day with you and your issues with women, huh? What’s that all about, David? Your mother screwed up your potty training?”
Moore was silent, seeming to be holding himself very still, as if one wrong move and his whole alternate universe would implode on him.
“What I can’t figure is where Edmund Ivors fits into this sordid little puzzle. What’s a guy like him have to gain acting as your beard, helping you out with your alibi?”
“I don’t need an alibi,” Moore said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Kovac just looked at him, stunned to silence for a moment.
“You haven’t done anything wrong? Jesus Christ, you cheat on your wife with whores, spend her money to finance your secret life. What part of that isn’t wrong?”
The elevator gave a little jerk and groan and began to descend.
Kovac hit the key for the second floor and pulled Moore out into the hall with him when the doors opened. The door to the stairs was just to the right. He gave Moore a shove in the back.
“Step into my office here for a minute, Ace.”
“Fuck you, Kovac,” Moore said, turning around.
“Are you resisting?” Kovac asked, incredulous. “Are you resisting me? ’Cause if you’re resisting, all bets are off, pal.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“You want to have this conversation downtown? ’Cause I’ll be happy to take you there and put you in the box for a formal questioning. Is that what you want?” Kovac asked. “You want to up the ante? You want to call my bluff? Go ahead. Then you can call a lawyer, and I can call Chris Logan, and he’ll have you arraigned and toss your ass in the can. And if you think a judge is going to give you bail for trying to kill one of their own, you’re even dumber than you look. Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t try to kill my wife!”
The door to apartment 214 opened and a woman stuck her head out, glaring at them. “Take your fight somewhere else, or I’ll call the cops.”
Kovac pulled his badge out of his coat pocket and showed it to her. “This is already police business, ma’am. Go back into your apartment and lock the door.”
The woman disappeared.
Kovac turned back to David Moore.
“Why didn’t you tell me a man joined your little party at the bar last night?”
Moore looked away, looked confused, shrugged, spread his hands. Only the first thing was significant.
“I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “I didn’t know the guy. Why would I mention it?”
“Because you don’t leave things out when you talk to the cops, Einstein. It tends to make us suspicious when we find out after the fact. Who was he?”
“Ivors knew him. He’s-uh-in the business. He’s a-a director of photography. He stopped by. We talked about my project.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don something. I don’t remember his last name.”
“He drops by to talk about your project. Maybe ’cause he’s interested in doing whatever he does for you, right? And you don’t remember him. He didn’t give you a business card?”
“It was a casual conversation. Ivors wanted me to meet him. That’s all.”
“So why did Ivors and your little Bird friend not say something about him to me either?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t think it was important. He was only there for a few minutes.”
“I’m supposed to swallow this load of horseshit?” Kovac asked.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“That’s a very poor attitude you’ve got, Sport. You damn well ought to care what I think. Because I have the power to take your putrid little life apart turd by turd and poke at every slimy thing crawling under your lies.
“And now I’m gonna go upstairs and talk to the little chickadee without you being there. Did you all get your lies lined up beak to tail earlier today? ’Cause I’ll be a lying son of a bitch and tell her that you talked and told me all about your plan, so she might as well too. And Edmund Ivors won’t be there to put words in her mouth this time.”
Moore ’s cell phone rang, tucked somewhere in a pocket.
“Why don’t you answer that, Dave?” Kovac suggested. “That’s probably her right now, wanting to know where the hell you are.”
Moore didn’t move.
Kovac pushed past him, took the stairs back up to the third floor, and knocked on the door of apartment 309.
Ginnie Bird opened the door immediately, her face falling as she was greeted with the unpleasant surprise of Kovac.
“Can I come in?” he asked even as he stepped inside the apartment and past her.
Moore came in behind him. “You don’t have to talk to him, Ginnie. Not without a lawyer.”
Kovac arched a brow. “Ms. Bird isn’t under arrest. Why would she want a lawyer present?”
Ginnie Bird looked like a deer in the headlights. Dumb as a sack of hair, this girl. Her assets lay elsewhere-in plain sight. Deep purple silk and lace were artfully arranged over her unnaturally round breasts and slender frame in the form of a camisole and a thong. She wore a sheer purple robe over the ensemble for her version of modesty. It barely came to the top of her thighs. She balanced on a pair of silver stilettos. All ready to offer comfort and white-hot sex to poor beleaguered David Moore.
Kovac looked around what he could see of the apartment. Hardwood on the hall floor, white carpet flowing through a dining/living room to a small gas fireplace with a granite surround. Contemporary furnishings-chrome, glass, leather.
“Nice digs,” Kovac said. “But we’re a long way from Hudson, Wisconsin. You must be very good at what you do to have a place on this side of the river and the other, Ms. Bird.”