“And who are you?”
“Jack Randall.” Not a flicker from the twins. Before their time, I guess, and probably no more than a blip on the screen even then. The second turned away and spoke quietly into his collar mike. The other stared impassively at me, jaws working slowly on some designer gum or coke pastille. The guy on the mike had to repeat my name. The answer took a long time coming. I was glad I didn’t have my gun anymore, or the trouble might have started there and then. I was a lone fool in Injun country, and there had been a time—a long, long time—when the only way I could get myself to sleep at night was fantasizing different ways of killing Johnny Vinaldi, when I had thought so often about his blood, his guts, his face ripped apart that it had become a nearly sexual thing. Then it had burnt out, or so I’d thought. As I stood there at that moment, I couldn’t really tell what I was going to do, but I knew that the longer I had to wait, the more ill-advised what I did was going to be.
Finally, the guy nodded at his colleague, and the gate behind them opened slowly and automatically. They both signaled for me to walk through, jerking their guns simultaneously. I wondered if they practiced it together in front of the mirror.
The Vinaldi house was a restrained pastel yellow, a shade he probably thought betokened good taste. In fact, it made it look like an oddly shaped banana that had been left out too long in the sun. The path led past a huge blocky wing, then on to a warmly lit pool area in the back. The laughter of hangers-on and coke whores echoed quietly over the water. Tanned and slick, they lounged by the pool—all of them competing to be Vinaldi’s chief confidante or main punch—none of them realizing that Vinaldi’s only meaningful allegiances were to himself, and money, and death.
By the time I. reached the gate I had attracted some attention. A couple of the men, who bore a family resemblance to each other, reached underneath their deck chairs and placed guns in clear sight on the tables. Two of the women stared at me, whispering to each other, a little pocket of paid-for beauty in the lamp glow around the pool.
And then I saw him.
Johnny Vinaldi had aged well, in fact barely at all. He stood about five ten, and was still whipcord thin. A gold necklace sparkled nicely against the major tan of his chest, and his eyes were small and black and hard in the clean lines of his face. He stood, wrapped a spotlessly white toweling gown around himself, and beckoned forward with his hand. He looked perfect, fit, and charismatic, and I wanted to kill him very much indeed.
I opened the gate and shambled out onto the flagstones that surrounded the pool. A couple of the girls were still horseplaying in the shallow end, but pretty much everyone else was watching me. I didn’t blame them. I felt I needed watching.
I stopped about three yards from him. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. A pause, with only the sound of quiet splashing in the background. There were a lot of things I might have wished to put in that hiatus—the sound of gunfire, for example—but I knew none of them were going to happen. In fact, I hoped they didn’t. I didn’t have my gun, for a start.
“Lieutenant Randall,” Vinaldi said, eventually. “What a nice surprise.”
I gazed back at him. “I hope not. And I’m not flattered by the Lieutenant.”
“A formality,” he said, inclining his head toward me. “A sign of respect.”
“Bullshit.”
“Quite.” He smiled. “Well, as you can see, non-Lieutenant Randall, my friends and I are trying to relax at this difficult time and have a pleasant evening around the pool. Drink a little wine, maybe spark a few ulcers for the fool doctors to keep themselves in business over. You don’t seem to be dressed to join us, so tell me what’s on your mind, and tell me quickly because I have a feeling I’m not going to be very interested.”
“Mal Reynolds.”
Vinaldi frowned. An act of memory, or the facsimile of one. “Your former partner. What of him? I heard he was still living out in the Portal, chasing rainbows and worrying about dead women of ill repute.”
“He’s dead.”
“That I am not especially gleeful to hear. As you know, I bear no particular ill will toward police officers unless they prevent me from carrying out my business, and Sergeant Reynolds was always too worried about the dead to cause problems for the living.”
“He tried,” I said. “We both did. You just managed to get me off the board in time.”
“I, of course, have no idea what you’re referring to.”
I couldn’t prove it, but I knew he understood exactly what I was talking about, and if I’d had my gun at that moment his head would have been spattered across his yellow walls. Maybe this thought was visible from the outside. One of the guys round the pool stood up. He didn’t come any closer, but he was letting me know he was taking a keener interest in the conversation. He was leaner than the others, and looked both dangerous and familiar.
“Jaz Garcia, isn’t it?” I asked, winking at him. “You quit poking underage girls, or does Johnny just buy them in for you now?” One of the women in the pool looked up. She didn’t look illegal, and was probably just surprised to realize she was servicing a statch rapist. Or maybe not. Maybe it gave her a thrill. I felt small and stupid and childish for thinking that, and for being there at all. Garcia’s face set unpleasantly, but Vinaldi held up a hand and Garcia stayed put like a good boy.
“Mr. Randall has been away,” Vinaldi said mildly, his head cocked slightly. “Obviously, he has been keeping low company and forgotten the niceties of conversation amongst normal people.” Then he turned to face me again. “I know nothing about Reynolds’s death. If that’s what you’ve come here to talk about, then you’re wasting my time even more than I suspected.”
“Someone clipped him. At first I thought it was because they were coming after me, and got him by mistake.”
Vinaldi laughed heartily. “And you think it was me? Tell me, why would I do that? You’re nothing. No threat to me, if you ever were. You’re not even a fucking cop anymore. Why would I waste good money having you clipped?”
“It wasn’t me they were after. Mal was investigating a string of homicides,” I said, watching Vinaldi’s reaction carefully. “Whoever killed him did so because they wanted him to stop.”
“And who are these dead people?”
“Five women. Killed in a certain way.”
“We don’t kill women, Randall. Even you know that.”
“Laverne Latoya and Louella Richardson.”
If I hadn’t been looking very closely, I wouldn’t have seen it A tiny flinch in Vinaldi’s eyelid. He turned to his hired help. “Jaz, you heard of these people?”
Jaz trotted out a dutiful “No,” still staring hard at me. Vinaldi turned back and did a theatrical shrug.
“Funny,” I said. “Louella was a regular at Club Bastard the last couple weeks—but maybe she wasn’t really your type. I gather she could read. I think Laverne was one of your dancers. I can check that out later, but you’ve already told me the answer. I found her sister half an hour ago, incidentally, OD’d on Rapt from a Weasel Enema foil. You still deal Rapt, don’t you, Johnny? I wonder if you’d slip someone a little uncut just to make sure they couldn’t tie you to a dead woman.”
Vinaldi had started to breathe a little harder. “Get out,” he said.
“Laverne and Louella got carved up. Their eyes were ripped out,” I said. One of the girls in the pool gasped quietly, a little hand fluttering up to her mouth. “Sound familiar?” Then, not thinking, I threw a curve—just saying the first thing that came into my head. “Where’s your wife? She not joining you round the pool?”
Furious now, Vinaldi took a step closer to me. The veins in his neck were standing out like cords. “She’s wherever the fuck she wants to be, for what business it is of yours.”
“Someone got away from you. Must have been kind of embarrassing.”