Willy shrugged. "Maybe. Obregon didn't say." The proximity of that campus to La Culebra's neighborhood wasn't lost on him. But he, like Ogden, was keeping his own counsel for the moment.
A couple of detectives entered the squad room, laughing. Ogden rose without fanfare and quietly suggested the four of them retreat to their familiar, more private lair.
Once the door was closed behind them, and they'd settled into new seats, Joe Gunther commented to Willy, "Obregon mentioned you'd asked her about the ReCoop-how it's run, funded, who's behind it. What made you so curious? You smell something there?"
Willy answered truthfully. "Not particularly. It just seemed pretty ritzy to me, given where it is, and I was surprised Mary could just walk in off the street and get in. Most of these places have waiting lists a mile long. Made me wonder, is all. I never checked it out."
He was by now fully recovered from his earlier shock, and returned to the topic that had stimulated it, asking the New York detective, "Since we're playing twenty questions, why're you so convinced she was murdered, 'specially after you almost shelved the case?"
It hadn't been diplomatically worded, but Ogden apparently had Joe Gunther's talent for forbearance. "Thank your fearless leader. He saw what we missed."
For the next twenty minutes, Ogden and Gunther briefed Willy on their theories, with Gunther going beyond the dinosaur's reluctance and telling Willy exactly what they were investigating. Gunther knew as Ogden didn't the extent of his renegade colleague's abilities and dedication, but he was also fully aware that had it not been for Ogden's status and the fact that they'd hit it off, none of the Vermont team would have stayed in this building, much less become an integral part of the investigation.
Willy, for his part, didn't press for details. In fact, he was more interested in extracting information they wouldn't know anything about.
"So basically," he said once he'd been brought up to date, "you're crunching numbers and pounding the pavement, hoping to get lucky."
"You know how it goes," Gunther agreed, having noticed that Sammie Martens hadn't said a word so far.
"Sure," Willy conceded, and played the card he'd arrived with. "Then maybe you should add the name Ron Cashman to the list. I heard he might know something, and I can't get a location on him."
Both old-timers studied him carefully. "What's his story?" Gunther asked.
Willy looked nonchalant, willing to share information, within limits. "I was chasing down the drug angle-Diablo?"
Ogden nodded. "Right, the uptown stuff. What'd you find out?"
"Nothing. My options were to poke around generally or ask the manufacturer directly if he knew Mary. The last approach seemed a little suicidal."
"That's what we were thinking earlier," Ogden admitted. "Did you find out who makes it?"
Willy feigned surprise. "You don't know that? I only heard the street name, La Culebra. Cashman's name came up as someone who'd done business with him from this part of the city. I thought it was both unusual and an interesting coincidence."
Ogden nodded and wrote the name down in his notepad.
Willy was suddenly struck by a thought. "Add Nathan Lee to that list, too, would you?"
"Why?"
Here he felt freer to be honest. "He's a friend of mine. Been helping me out-in fact, he was the one I was with in that bar-but he disappeared. I've been looking all over for him. I'm worried he got into a jam. I checked his apartment, his friends. He's vanished. Black guy, midsixties-maybe older-small and wiry."
Ogden watched him carefully. "What kind of business is he in?"
"Hustling. Nothing big time. He makes ends meet. I met him when I was on the beat and cut him some slack. He never forgot it."
Ogden got to his feet. "Let me add these to Jim's list. He's already staring at a computer. I'll be right back."
He left the room. There was an uncomfortable silence before Gunther rose, too, and said, "I gotta go to the bathroom," and followed Ogden's example.
After he'd left, the silence remained. Willy stared at his shoes. Sammie stared at him.
"How've you been?" she finally asked.
He spoke to his toes. "Okay."
Her cheeks flushed. "I'm not asking about your health."
His jaw clenched. He'd been dreading this ever since Gunther told him she'd come along. "I'm trying to set things right," he said.
"I know that. How's it going?"
Something in her voice made him look up. It was the strength he heard-familiar, natural, welcome. In his own emotional gyrations, he'd begun to blend his memories of Mary with those of Sammie, making the latter weaker and less reliable than she was. Sammie was high-strung, and he knew that he'd occasionally put her through the wringer, but she wasn't Mary. She'd be someone who would throw him out when the time came, not run to get away from him. And she certainly wouldn't seek out male companionship for security or drugs for escape. Sammie was a fighter-passionate and emotional, definitely, but tough as nails when it counted.
The way she'd just voiced that short sentence reminded him of that, and helped reestablish one of the few tethers he had to a world he felt he was only orbiting at the moment.
"Pretty shitty right now," he admitted.
"Nathan Lee?" she asked.
His face registered his surprise.
She smiled, which came as a relief. "The sphinx you're not-not with me, anyhow."
He sighed in concession. "I hadn't thought about him in years. Only did now because I needed his help. I saw it as calling in a marker, but he treated me like a friend. And now I think maybe I got him killed, like I've been doing all my life."
Sammie cupped her cheek in her hand and studied him. "Your whole adult life you've been either a soldier or a cop, same as me… except you're a whole lot older."
"Hey," he said, smiling despite himself.
"And you've been in combat," she continued. "What did you expect? That your friends wouldn't get banged up or killed? It's a dangerous life."
He frowned at the seeming banality of the comment until she added, "You should ask yourself why you chose those lines of work."
That stopped him. He actually never had, and only now wondered why not. He shared a contempt for selfanalysis that many did who needed it most, using those who overindulged in it as the reason why. Except that now, in a virtual flash, he saw that his might have been like an anorexic's view of a glutton, with no acknowledgment that the majority of humans inhabit neither extreme.
But this was a passing thought only. Willy wasn't given to clarifying epiphanies, and he answered Sammie instead with a defensive, "You saying I like this? That I do it on purpose?"
She didn't back down. "That's for you to find out, Willy. And while you're at it, ask yourself why you shut out the people who aren't likely to get killed, like your mother, or Bob, or your friends."
Willy stood up angrily, making his chair skitter across the floor. "Speaking of mothers, who elected you, all of a sudden?"
But he stopped his ineffective outburst almost as quickly as he'd started it, stalled by her simply rolling her eyes. For a moment he just stood there, breathing hard, his face red, fighting for some of the dignity she seemed to possess without effort. It was a side of her he hadn't seen in a long time, and the fact that it had resurfaced told him something he couldn't yet clearly define.
The door opened and Ward Ogden stopped on the threshold, his eyes moving between the two of them. "Everything okay in here?"
Willy retrieved his chair and sat back down. "Yeah."
Sammie let out a silent breath of air. Her show of strength notwithstanding, her heart had been pounding all through that last exchange. She was sick and tired of feeling anxious and manipulated. All it did was remind her of her poor history with men. Except that this one, she believed fundamentally, was not to be grouped with any of those preceding him. While still probably one of the worst choices for a lifelong companion, Willy had stamina and courage and a strong sense of righteousness, and the potential of being someone extraordinary, if he could beat back his own personal Mr. Hyde.