The door to the hallway was open and the chalk figure where Maxine had died struck him. He could almost see her there again, the naked body contorted in that grotesque, stretched out, reaching pose, the metal neck brace like some bad joke.
But the bedroom itself told him nothing. There was a thin film of black dust covering everything he looked at. In here, in spite of what Bourke might say about the usefulness of fingerprints, the Homicide team had been thorough.
He realized he shouldn’t have been surprised. That was, after all, what the job was-check out everything in the hopes that something would tell a story.
Still, that left him, again, with no role.
The heat was really something, and he opened the back door, stepping out to the deck. He saw Bourke had moved down the canal, opposite the dredge, and was talking to a couple of people in yellow slickers who were combing through the goop brought up from the bottom of the canal. Those people, he thought, were earning their pay.
Taking a breath, he reentered the barge. Now the sun was lower, coming straight in through the front door, but he would rather have the light in his eyes than the stifling dead heat. The lamp that had been knocked over had not been righted. He knelt by it and saw that it, too, had been dusted for prints. The pieces of glass that had been there were gone-probably taken to the lab. Disappointed, he sat in the chair by the lamp and surveyed the rest of the room.
Nothing.
The galley was left, and it, at least, didn’t look like it had received the full treatment. Unfortunately, it was also a very small area that was very clean. The only sign that anyone had been there at all was a water glass sitting on the drain next to the sink, and that had probably been one of the techs having something to beat this heat. The sink itself was empty-no dirty coffee mugs, no dishes, pots or pans. Whoever had lived here kept the place neat.
Ling leaned against the galley door. Well, what did he expect? This was routine to the guys that did it. They wouldn’t likely miss much.
Then something struck him. He walked back into the galley and ran a finger along the window sill. No dusting powder. He had noticed it had been all over the windows in the bedroom and again in the living room. The metal spigot on the galley sink looked like a new fixture, its chrome bright and shiny. There was no dust on it. They hadn’t dusted this room!
In a way it made some sense. The line of action had clearly been from living room, through hallway, to bedroom and out the back. The team had no doubt looked into the galley and seen that nothing to do with the murder had happened in there.
But it was his only opportunity and he had to take it. They might laugh at him when the prints on the glass turned out to be a member of the Homicide squad, but he didn’t care. He’d been laughed at before. And he wasn’t going back up to Bourke empty-handed.
He took a clean handkerchief from his back pocket and carefully picked up the drinking glass, dropping it into the zip-loc bag.
Moses McGuire was behind the bar at the Little Shamrock, serving drinks to a five-thirty crowd and talking on the telephone. “I don’t know,” he said. “A black guy.”
“What’d he look like?”
“He looked black, Diz. Big, black and mean.”
Hardy, from Taylor’s gun shop on Eddy St, felt his head go light. “Did he say anything?”
“Yeah, he said something. What do you think, he just stood around? He asked for you and I said you wouldn’t be in for a while and could I give you a message and he said, ‘No, I’ll find him.’ Him meaning you.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“So what should I have done?”
“How’d he know about the Shamrock already? Who’s telling him this stuff?”
“Diz, we’re jamming here. He comes again, what do you want me to do? Then I gotta go.”
What could Moses do? Hardy knew the bar at this time on Friday nights, and if it was normal, Moses was right-it was jamming. Two deep the length of the bar.
Hardy couldn’t believe Glitsky still hadn’t arrested Baker. And now the guy shows up at Hardy’s work.
“Diz?”
“I’m thinking, Mose.”
“Think faster, okay.”
Hardy heard Moses tell people he was coming. Just a second. Be right there.
“Go tend bar,” he said.
“What about-?”
“I don’t know,” Hardy said. “Later.”
It was something Louis Baker had done in the yard. He didn’t much think about whether it did any good, or what its function was at all. But he had done it, day in and out, for the last six or seven years, and the habit wasn’t going to get broken. It was also probably what had kept him in shape. Now he took the basketball and began dribbling back and forth at the public court just up the hill from Holly Park. Except for the trees surrounding it, the court was about like the one in the yard. There were no nets on the baskets-you ran on pitted asphalt with no key, half-court or foul lines.
Mama had come back home sometime midafternoon with a load of clothes and some high-top sneakers that fit. Maybe she’d gone down to the Goodwill-you picked the right one, they could have better stuff than K-Mart.
Full dusk now, the park lights came on enough to continue. Louis hoped somebody would come by and try to get him off the court for their own game. He felt like kicking a little more ass. An hour before, he had had it out with Dido and his blood was still hot.
Warming up, he dribbled down the court, pounding the ball into the ground, laying it up to the hoop soft as patting a baby’s butt (that was for the control) and then slamming the pole coming around, getting the ball on the first bounce and doing it again, full court.
What he would do then in the yard was stand at about the free-throw line and forget about the basket. There was only the backboard, and he would stare at it, visualizing faces -other guys at the House, Ingraham, Hardy.
And he would slam the ball-two-handed shots or overhand-up against the backboard hard enough so it would come back to him at the free-throw line on one bounce max, sometimes even on the fly. Smashing the ball up against the faces he saw, grunting with the exertion, getting it out that way so the hatred and anger didn’t overtake him-so he was in control.
Dido had been strong but didn’t know how to fight, and Louis had hit him in the throat and put him down. Then, standing over him as he struggled for breath, he told him he wanted his house white again by the morning. He knew he might have to finish things with Dido, and he had come out here pumped up. But now it wasn’t Dido’s face he kept seeing on the backboard-it was the other D.A., Hardy -the one who had blown him the kiss.
He slammed the ball, barely hearing its boom against the backboard or its echo against the project houses down the hill.
Hardy’s face, smiling at him, taunting. He threw again and again until he was covered with sweat. He was in the courtroom, struggling to get at Hardy, fighting against the restraints of the guards, then later against the bars, until his arms hung down heavy as lead, useless.
He stood in the pool of artificial light, unable to lift the ball anymore, Hardy’s face still up there, smiling down at him.
Chapter Eight
Fred Treadwell had his broken ankle propped up on his coffee table. He was listening to some old Lou Reed and feeding Poppy, next to him on the couch, bits of the paté and crackers he was munching with his Chardonnay. Poppy ate almost everything he did. A dainty eater, hardly spilling any crumbs from the crackers. And he waited until Fred put the morsel right up to his mouth, then slowly took it right from his fingers. A poodle was the pet to have-neat, well-trained, smart.