In traffic, in Drelincourt’s Mercedes a half-hour later, Martin couldn’t think with the top down. There was something about this case he wasn’t getting; he still couldn’t quite figure the right line to take for the defense.
“Do you think you could put the top up for a bit?” Martin said. “It’s the glare.”
“You’re the boss,” Drelincourt said, and he pulled over to the curb, hopped out, and released the top. When it came up to the pegs, both of them took one of the chrome latch handles and pulled it closed. They sat there for a while, the Mercedes ticking over quietly, waiting for a break in the rush-hour traffic.
“I told you they were slippery characters,” Drelincourt said. “Club people. I should know, I used to play in a band called Solon. Ever hear of us?”
“No,” Martin said.
“We were among the best of the second rank. No recording contract but almost a couple of times, and a pretty good following at the colleges. We worked the circuit from Austin to Athens for a few years, and we worked the beaches. If I had a dollar for every time some club screwed us over...”
He pulled into traffic now and pointed the star on the grill up 13th toward Logan Circle. “That girl, Daisy, told me she’s being threatened,” Martin said. “I’m sure the others would tell me the same thing if...” He didn’t finish.
Drelincourt offered a shrug that impressed Martin as particularly Gallic. “This Smerdnakov, everyone’s heard of him, right?” he said.
“I hadn’t,” Martin said. “Until a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh, yeah, one of the biggest operators in New York,” Drelincourt said. “Russian Mafia. Nasty character. You know that by now, I hope.”
“Whatever the man’s done in the past is none of my concern,” Martin said. “I just want to get to the bottom of what happened that night. Daisy said the other Russians were big guys with tattoos. Well, Smerdnakov is a big guy with a tattoo. Also, she said he took his tie out of his pocket when he strangled her. Why was his tie in his pocket?”
“He was dancing, right?” Drelincourt said. “Probably got sweaty and took it off.”
“Exactly,” Martin said, excited. “And it could be the tie fell out of his pocket — I mean, they dance pretty vigorously at those places, don’t they? — and then someone else got their hands on it. I think we could be looking at a criminal conspiracy here.”
Drelincourt smiled into the faint blue striations of the windshield glass. “I’ve got to hand it to you, you’re really trying to believe. You really think he’s innocent? I mean, look where he comes from.”
“Like I said, you can’t try the man’s whole life,” Martin said wearily. “You’ve got to take one crime at a time.”
Drelincourt was silent as they swung into the mess of cars going pell-mell around the circle.
“The courts are in sad shape these days,” Drelincourt said when he had picked up 13th Street again. “Overheated, flooded, bursting at the seams. Larceny, rape, homicide, fraud, drugs, grief, misery. You know what I think? I think we need the Inquisition back.”
“You mean, like in Spain?”
“That’s right,” Drelincourt said. “Catch crime at the root, where it starts. Here...” He tapped his black jacket over a spot closely approximating the heart.
Martin’s apartment seemed empty tonight. He paced the single messy room, stood rocking on his heels in the alcove that formed part of the turret, surrounded by windows overlooking the traffic on Massachusetts. There was plenty of work to do, but he couldn’t concentrate tonight. He kept thinking about the way Daisy the barmaid swung her hips away from him across the dance floor, and he thought of her small, sharp breasts, her thin, hungry look. Suddenly, he got a flash of her on her back, legs open, abandoning herself to pleasure. What was the word she had used. Orgasming.
Martin went straight to the phone and called Dahlia. She picked it up on the second ring, but her voice sounded hollow on the other end.
“What are you, on speakerphone?”
Dahlia laughed. “No, silly, I’m taking a bath.”
“In the tub?” Martin felt a pleasant swelling between his legs.
“That’s right, I’m soaping my luscious curves as we speak.”
“How would you like me to come over right now and scrub your back?” Martin said, and it surprised the both of them. Usually she was the one to make the first move.
Dahlia hesitated; then she laughed again. “Honey,” she said, her voice an octave lower, “you’re turning into a little wild thing lately. Must be the moon.”
“Something like that,” Martin said. “How about it?”
“All right then,” Dahlia said. “Get your butt over here before the water gets cold.”
They made love once in the tub — a painful process, during which Martin hit his forehead on the faucet — and in the bed afterward. Then Dahlia got hungry, and Martin crawled out from between the sheets and went into the kitchen to make popcorn. He stood stark naked in her perfect kitchen, waiting for the kernels to pop. His feet were cold against the floor of painted Mexican tiles. The whole place was spotless, done in a trendy southwestern motif that he found vaguely irksome. A maid came twice a week; it was impossible to sit on any of the furniture in the living room without messing the slipcovers and sending Dahlia on a tirade. Usually he found it extremely uncomfortable here and couldn’t wait to leave, but not tonight. Tonight it seemed like home.
He took the bowl of popcorn, buttered and salted and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, back to bed. They sat there eating, absently watching an old movie on AMC with the sound turned off. It was a World War II drama, set in Italy with William Holden playing a war-weary soldier and some woman Martin couldn’t identify playing a war-weary WAC. These characters seemed to lose each other, find each other, and lose each other again. It was hard to tell much more without sound.
“Better this way,” Dahlia said. “Then we can make up the plot ourselves.”
“Right,” Martin said. “It’s about two lawyers falling in love during World War Three.”
Dahlia frowned. “How’s the case going?” she said.
Martin told her. “The guy’s a gangster,” he concluded. “Involved in some pretty bad shit. But I still think he’s innocent of this murder. I think he really loved the woman who was killed; he just doesn’t show it like everyone else. If you ask me, he was set up by one or more of the other Russians there that night. They were probably gangsters too.”
“Russian gangsters,” Dahlia said, shaking her head. “That’s what gets me. They come over here to our country, we let them in, and they proceed to make life worse for everybody. It’s not just the Russian gangsters, it’s all the other gangsters from all over the world who just have to come to the good old U.S.A. to commit their crimes. You want my opinion?”
Martin sighed. “Everyone’s a social critic,” he said.
“It’s our Anglo-Saxon legal system. English common law. It only works for Anglo-Saxons. Everyone else abuses the fuck out of it. Who the hell came up with this innocent until proven guilty crap? Thomas Jefferson? They don’t do it that way in France, you know.”
“Wait till you’re arrested for something you didn’t do,” Martin said. “Then call me. I think you’ll change your mind.”
She ignored him. “Every nationality gets the legal system it deserves. The Russians lived under totalitarian regimes for centuries. You know what they did to gangsters in the old days under communism? Hell, they just took them out back and shot them.”