Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (21 page)

“This’ll be fun,” Tracy said sarcastically.

“It’ll be the most fun ever,” I said.

“Just think,” Tracy said, lighting a cigarette. “We could be in school.”

“Well, that does make it seem fun,” I admitted. “But I’d kind of like not to be so close to the dogs.”

We were standing near the K-9 unit. A dozen officers had German shepherds on leashes. The officers looked pissed.

We wandered away from the dogs and walked around the perimeter of the crowd. The air smelled like cigarettes and pot and homeless people. Like everything in the Lower East Side concentrated into one big bloom. The crowd was squatters and homeless people from the park and kids like us and cops. All people with too much energy and nothing useful to do with it.

Junkie Whore, the first band, took the stage. They didn’t really look like whores—they were all men in their twenties with bad tattoos and dirty clothes—but they did look like junkies.

“We need to get to the stage,” Tracy said.

I agreed. If CC was here, he would likely be by the stage with the other musicians. We were at the edge of the crowd, but as soon as the band started to play people started slam-dancing, and it was already reaching back to us. A boy shorter than me knocked into us. I shoved him back into the crowd.

“Let’s go around,” I said. “Probably we can get to the stage more easily from the back.”

Tracy agreed and we walked around the perimeter toward the stage. More people knocked into us. We shoved them back into the crowd. We made our way to the back of the stage, but no one was there.

“Claire.”

I looked around. It was Fabian, a boy I knew who went to Bronx Science. He was kind of sort of homeless—he had a home but didn’t like it very much—and so he spent most of his time hanging out down here in the park.

“Fabian,” Tracy said, after hellos. “You know Vanishing Center, right?”

“Kind of,” Fabian said.

“Are they here yet?” Tracy asked.

“Yeah,” Fabian said. “They’re in their van down on Avenue B.”

Tracy and I looked at each other and smiled. Tracy looked at Fabian and suddenly she was pretty.

“Fabian,” she said in her pretty voice. “I am such a big fan. I’m kind of, like, obsessed. Could you pleeeease show us their van?”

The van, a nondescript white Dodge, was parked on Avenue B across the street from the park. Fabian pointed it out while we were still on Seventh Street.

“I think the guys might be in there now,” Fabian said.

Tracy broke into a run first, and I followed. I don’t know how we knew, but we knew.

Chloe was in that van. We couldn’t see her or smell her or feel her. Those senses are overrated.

I knew because I felt her in our bones. Because she was my victim, and I was her detective. And when fate ties two people together, those ties aren’t given up lightly, if ever.

We heard the motor start as soon as we turned the corner onto Avenue B. By the time we’d crossed the street the van was moving. There was no way we were going to catch it, but I kept running anyway. I wanted to see.

CC was driving. In the passenger seat was Chloe.

It was less than a second. Her eyes caught mine and a look passed her face—fear, loss, confusion.

CC reached over and pulled her away from the window.

The van turned a corner and was gone. Gone.

Tracy was across the street. I jogged over to meet her.

“I saw her.”

“I know. Me too.”

Fabian came to meet us.

“What just happened?” Fabian said, confused.

Tracy rolled her eyes at me. Then she smiled and became pretty again.

“Oh my God!” she said. “CC! I can’t believe I missed him! Where does he usually go after a show? I mean, does he just hang out, or—”

“I don’t know,” Fabian said. “But sometimes he likes to go to Hell.”

San Francisco

W
EDNESDAY AT FOUR
I met Josh and the girl, Paul’s girl, at a coffee shop in Oakland. The girl and Josh were there when I arrived. It wasn’t the girl from the Swiss Music Hall—the girl in the white dress. It was a woman I knew. Her name was Sheila and she lived in Berkeley. She owned a bar on San Pablo Avenue where bands played, including, I bet, Paul’s band. I was sober and bright-eyed after three cups of tea and a real breakfast. I was turning over a new leaf, flying right and solving the case. Starting
right now.

Sheila turned to Josh and rolled her eyes and said, “You didn’t tell me it was
Claire!
”

“I didn’t know you knew her!” Josh said.

“Like the one fucking detective I’ve ever met,” Sheila said. “And you couldn’t have mentioned that?”

“If you knew a detective,” Josh said, “you could have mentioned
that
, you know?”

I sat down. “It coulda been worse,” I said. “Believe it or not, there’s people worse than me.”

“It isn’t that,” Sheila said. “I’m just so embarrassed. I thought this would be, like, anonymous.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Not unless it’s gonna make or break the case. In which case I will. Okay?”

“You won’t tell his wife?” Sheila asked. She looked regretful. Like she knew she’d done something wrong.

“No,” I said. “Not unless I absolutely have to, and I’m sure we’re all in agreement that solving Paul’s murder is more important that sparing you an awkward moment. So come on. Spill.”

Sheila gave up the drama and spilled.

“God, I’m so embarrassed,” she said again. “I met him at the bar. I knew Paul was married. I didn’t know Lydia but I knew who she was. We flirted, but, you know, it was totally innocent. Well, it started innocent. He left and it was fine. But then, total coincidence, I ran into him a few days later. At Moe’s. The bookstore.”

“What was he getting?” I asked.

She frowned, trying to remember.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I said. “Everything matters. It’s not such a hard question.”

She nodded assent: not such a hard question. “What’d you get?” I asked.

“I was buying a cookbook and a photography book. Chez Panisse and Man Ray.”

“Did you sleep together?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said defensively. “Not for a while. We ended up walking around Berkeley a little bit after the bookstore. He was this totally charming guy. So interesting, and he seemed so interested in me, what I did and what I thought about things. I don’t know. Then I ran into him again, but it wasn’t by accident—he came by the bar a few days later. His wife was on tour. He made it sound like things were pretty shitty. And we were getting along so great. Not that that makes it okay,” she added quickly. Defensively.

I looked at her. “You know, it’s not the end of the fucking world. People do it all the time.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Well,
I
don’t. And it’s just. Him and his wife, they didn’t have that much time together. If I’d known.” She stopped and frowned. “It’s just hard to talk about. I mean, I liked him. A lot. He totally—well, I don’t think he meant to hurt me. But he did.”

I wondered what Paul saw in her. She was a pretty girl, but nothing about her seemed so interesting to me. She couldn’t hold a candle to Lydia, that was for sure. I was about 99.9 percent sure she’d never killed a mouse, let alone a human. She wasn’t on my list of suspects.

“Did he like you?” I asked.

Josh cringed a little but Sheila answered honestly: “No, not really. At first he seemed to, but after we saw each other a few times he lost interest.”

I figured Sheila seemed nice. Easy. Uncomplicated. That could be attractive. And I figured Paul got bored with her real fast.

“Tell me something about Paul,” I said.

“There was something dark in him,” she said. “I don’t think any girl would have changed that. I guess I thought I could make him happy. Didn’t take long to see I was wrong about
that.
I don’t think any girl could do that. I think there was something inside him that no girl was ever gonna touch, not me or Lydia or anyone else.”

She cocked her head to the side, thought for a minute, and then corrected herself.

“I guess if he met a girl like him,” she said. “A girl as weird and dark as he was. I guess if he ever met a girl like that, it could have worked.”

T
HAT NIGHT THE SALINGERS
were playing at the Hemlock Tavern. I went by myself to see them. Less than a dozen people came. They played old country songs, Hank Williams and the Carter family. When the singer sang it was like something in her had been split open. Like she was singing from a part of her most people didn’t even know they had. Like she’d found a direct pipeline to her soul. About four people stood up front watching the band. One couple tried to swing dance but it wasn’t the right music for that and they couldn’t get a rhythm going. In the back some college kids yelled at each other, laughing. No one listened. She didn’t stop singing.

After their set I headed to the stage, where they were breaking down and putting away their equipment.
Girl, boy, girl, boy
—I decided girl, and went up to Nita, the guitar player.

“Hi,” I said. Then I realized something and I said, “I think we’ve met before.”

“Oh my God,” she said, recognizing me too. “You’re that girl.”

“That girl?” I said.

“That girl,” she said. “That girl that Paul was in love with.”

I excused myself and went to the bathroom and did two fat lines of cocaine off the top of the toilet. I looked through my bag for something more and found a Tylenol 3 I’d taken from the guy I slept with in Oakland and took two.

I waited at the bar for Nita as she finished loading up her equipment into someone’s van. She was about my age but looked hardened, leathery. At the bar she got a Red Stripe and I joined her.

“That time in Chinatown,” she said. I remembered. It had been a while since I’d seen Paul. We hadn’t spoken since I’d gone to Peru. I walked by the vegan restaurant one night and heard someone call my name. It was Paul, having tea with Nita. I went in and sat down and had tea and a slice of carrot cake with them.

“When you left, Paul said that he’d been crazy about you. That you were like the one who got away.”

I shrugged. Exes always looked attractive late at night.

“I was surprised when he married Lydia,” she said. “Really surprised. I always thought he would, I don’t know. That you guys . . .”

Her voice stumbled off as she realized she was saying something stupid. I asked her about the blonde in the white dress.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s Lucy. She’s a friend of Pete’s girlfriend. I know Paul thought she was attractive. You could tell. But cheating on Lydia—you think so?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. I didn’t see any reason to burst her bubble. “It’s more just that she might know something.”

“I knew him pretty well,” Nita said. “I don’t think anything happened.” She took a big inhale and let the air out slowly. “I don’t know. He was different this past year. He seemed depressed.” She frowned. “He was smarter than most people know,” she said. “Musicians, you know, people don’t expect much. But he read all the time, he knew all this weird shit. But he wanted to play, you know? Not read books all day. And for a long time, he did it. But then . . .”

“But then what?” I asked.

Nita shrugged. “I don’t know. Life caught up with him, I guess. He was fighting with Lydia a lot. I think he knew things were falling apart.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “It’s easy to blame her. She always wanted more from him, you know. That kind of girlfriend. The kind who gets offended so fucking easily.”

From the look on her face I figured Nita’d had a lot of those girlfriends.

“But Paul wasn’t perfect either,” she went on. “He loved her, and he even liked her a lot, but he never really—he never seemed
crazy
about her. I mean, I think he was devoted to her, and really wanted to work things out. But something wasn’t there. That extra something. Like when he saw her walk into the room—like when he saw her he was happy, you know, but it was never like
wow.
It was never that way men look when they still really love their wives. That thing in their eyes.

“And his career was going okay, but, you know, the usual bullshit. I mean, he was at that state where he was too busy to do everything he wanted but not big enough for a good manager or assistant or anything like that. He seemed, I don’t know. Just getting older, I guess. Like all of us. I mean, that’s the thing about this life. Playing music. You put all your eggs in one basket, you really devote yourself to something, and that basket—I mean, you don’t even have to drop it. It just gets old. It gets worn out. I’m kinda seeing now that no one ends up with a lot of eggs.” She made a bitter little laugh. “You sit up at night and you count people who would do you favors if you needed the money bad enough, but things don’t really work like that anymore. It’s all big corporations, and no one’s paying you to sit in on a session ’cause you’re an old friend, you know? You end up hoping someone had their first kiss to a song you wrote or took acid for the first time at one of your shows and then when they strike it, you know, strike it rich or even middle-class, they’ll invite you to come play at their fucking town fair. Their corporate retreats. That’s what I’m doing next week.” She drank some more beer and frowned. “Dental technology conference in Encino. There’s your egg. There’s what’s left of your basket.”

Silette, bitter and old, wrote in a letter to Jay Gleason: “The detective won’t know what he’s capable of until he encounters a mystery that pierces his own heart. However, I tell you, it isn’t worth it to know. I’d rather be the sorry fucking detective that I was before, and have my daughter back.”

I
FOUND LUCY, THE
girl in the white dress, on Facebook by befriending Pete from the Salingers and then his girlfriend, Kim, and through her, Lucy. I did this as Wanda DeVille, a tattoo artist in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Slight adjustments were made to Wanda’s details as needed. She was one of about ten online ghosts I’d invented and maintained. Wanda had 4,289 friends, and she’d been on Facebook nearly since it began.