Living Proof (7 page)

"You worried or what?"

"About the reception?"

"Reception, hell. The letter."

Examining a pair of tights, Cathy shook her head. "Sticks and stones," she said.

"That's it, sticks and stones?"

One leg in, one leg out, Cathy looked across at him.

"That's it."

56 Frank breathed out noisily and shook his head.

"You're not scared?

Spooked? Not even one little piece? "

Turning away, Cathy shook her head. Of course, she was scared. Not all the time, not even often, but, sure, step into a lift and there's a guy standing there, looking over at you in a certain way walk out into the street to catch some air and the window of a slowing car slides down who wouldn't be scared. The world was full of them, God knows, it wasn't just the pages of her books. Sociopaths.

Psychopaths. Whoever was writing those letters wasn't Dear Abbey.

But admitting it to Prank, that was something else. The way it had become between them, everything was a statement of strength, not of weakness, neediness. It wasn't in her nature to be the one to back off.

"It's why you're here, isn't it?" Cathy said.

"Reason you changed your mind, flew over. Look out for me. Protect me." She made protect sound like a dirty word.

Frank was having trouble with the knot of his tie.

"And if it is?"

"You needn't have bothered. They've got professionals for that."

Resnick arrived at the hotel later than he'd intended and Mollie Hansen was already waiting on one of the leather settees in the foyer, her duty to escort Cathy Jordan and her husband to the reception. David Tyrell had claimed the task of collecting Curtis Wooife, who had flown in earlier in the day from Switzerland, which was where he now lived. The third major guest, the octogenarian British crime novelist, Dorothy Birdwell, was being driven directly to the reception by her assistant.

Mollie, Resnick thought, was looking decidedly smart, rising to greet him in a loose-fitting pearl trouser suit which might have been silk.

Something held him back from making the compliment out loud, a sense that, to Mollie, that kind of remark would be less than acceptable.

"Nice tie," Mollie said, with a little nod.

"Interesting design. Paul Smith?"

"Spaghetti vongole."

To his surprise, Mollie laughed and Resnick grinned back.

"What happened," he asked, 'when you showed her the letter? "

"Oh, for a minute or two, I thought she was going to throw a wobbly, but then she just laughed and told me for all it was worth, I might as well tear it up. That was when I told her about you."

Before Resnick could reply, the lift doors opened and Cathy Jordan appeared in an ankle-length, off-white dress from beneath the hem of which poked the toes of her boots.

Mollie moved quickly to meet her.

"Is there time," Cathy Jordan asked, after Resnick had been introduced, 'for the inspector and me to have a chat? "

Sure," Mollie said.

"I think so."

"Great!" Cathy said, appropriating Resnick's arm. "Why don't we go to the bar?"

Perched on a stool, Cathy Jordan asked Resnick to recommend a single malt and, although it wasn't really his drink, after a quick glance along the bar he came up with Highland Park.

"Two large ones," Cathy said. And to Resnick,

"Ice?"

He shook his head.

"One as it comes," she said to the barman, 'one with lots of ice.

That's L-O-T-S. " Turning towards Resnick. she made a face.

"What is it with this country? Is ice still rationed?"

He smiled.

"We're a moderate people. Maybe we don't like too much of anything."

"That include crime?"

58 "Not necessarily."

"Violent crime?"

"Well, we don't have guns on the streets..." He corrected himself.

"At least, not as many as you."

"But you're getting there."

"Maybe." He said it with regret. He knew it wasn't only the more publicised areas of the country Brixton, Moss Side where weapons were increasingly easy to obtain, increasingly likely to be used.

There were estates there in the city where firearms were heard being discharged far more frequently than gunshot wounds were ever reported. He didn't imagine their aim was always less than true.

Cathy clinked her glass against his.

"Cheers."

"Cheers," Resnick said. And then,

"Miss Jordan, about this latest letter..."

"Cathy," she said.

"For God's sake, call me Cathy. And as for the letter, it's a crock, just like all the rest. Some scuzzbag shut off in a sweaty room, only way he knows of getting off, you know what I mean?"

Resnick (brought that he might.

"Then you've no worries about security?" he said, after tasting a little of the malt.

Cathy rattled the ice cubes around a little inside her glass.

"I'm in a strange country, right. It wouldn't hurt to have someone watching my back."

"All right. Mollie's given me a copy of your schedule. Maybe we could go over it and see which events you're most concerned about?"

"Sure," said Cathy, but then became aware of Mollie Hansen hovering with intent and drained her glass in a double swallow.

"Gotta go.

Look, couldn't we meet tomorrow? Go through things like you said? "

Resnick got to his feet.

"Of course."

"Good. We Americans are big on breakfast meetings, you know."

"Here?"

"Half eight, how's that sound?"

Pine. "

"Good." And Mollie steered Cathy Jordan away towards their waiting car, while Resnick sat back oh the stool and nursed his way down the rest of his Highland Park.

Art Tatum and Ben Webster: they did it for him every time. Resnick lowered the stylus with care and watched as it slid into the groove; listened, standing there, as Tatum played his practised, ornate way through the first chorus of the tune, tightening the rhythm at the beginning of the middle eight, before stepping aside with a simple little single-note figure, falling away beneath the glorious saxophone smear of Webster's arrival. Resnick turned up the volume and wandered through into the kitchen: coffee was pumping softly inside the silver pot on the stove. He set a match to the gas on the grill, sliced dark rye bread and put it to toast. Cream cheese, not too much pickled cucumber, smoked salmon. While none of the other cats were looking, he sneaked Bud a small piece of the salmon. Some days he liked to drink his coffee, rich and dark, from one of a pair of white china mugs, and this was one of those.

Settled in his favourite chair in the living room, coffee and sandwich close at hand, album turned over and turned back down, Resnick lifted Cathy Jordan's book from the small table beneath the lamp and began to read: If anyone had told me, Annie Jones, you

"II end up spending your seventh wedding anniversary alone in the front seat of a rented Chevrolet, outside of Jake's at the Lake in Tahoe City, I'd have told them to go jump right in it. The lake, that is. But then if that same anyone had told me, the day I appeared, fresh out of law school, ready to start work at the offices ofReigler and Reigler, bright and full a/promise in my newly acquired dove grey two-piece with a charcoal stripe, skirt a businesslike three inches below the knee, that I would swap what was clearly destined to be a famous legal career or that of a lowly private eye, I would gleefully have signed committal forms, assigning them to the nearest asylum, and tossed away the key.

"You know, Annie," my mother had said, the first time I plucked up courage to explain, 'you can't really be a private eye, they only have them in the movies. And books. And besides, they're always men. "

My mom. God bless her, always seemed to have a vested interest in remaining firmly behind the times.

"Sure, Mom," I said, 'you're right. " And inched back the business card I had proudly given her, stuffing it back down into my wallet.

There'd be another time.

And so there had. My first major cheque safely paid into the bank and cleared, two other clients waiting in the wings, I had invited my long-suffering mother out for cocktails and dinner at her favourite Kansas City restaurant.

I didn't mention that, did I? About my mother being from Kansas City.

Well, that's an important part of it; it explains a great deal.

But back to cocktails. Emboldened by the second Manhattan, I had showed my mother my bank balance and launched into the spiel.

Adventure, independence, the chance to be my 62 own boss, run my own life "Mom, I'm a big girl now. This is what I want to do. You see, it'II work out fine."

Which so far, pretty much, had been true. During my time practising law I had made a lot of useful contacts, in that profession as well as the police. I was in pretty thick with a few good working journalists, too the kind that still spend more time on the street than in the office staring at their computer screen.

And Mom, I like to think, surprised herself with a smile of pride when some newfound friend asked over coffee,

"Marjorie, just what is it that your daughter does out there in California?" And my mom, smiling, saying, "Oh, she's just a private eye."

There were things about my life, though, that I didn 't tell her. A little knowledge may. in some circumstances, be a dangerous thing, but in my mother's case it's positively beneficial. I didn't tell, for instance, about the six weeks I spent in hospital after being stupid enough to get trapped up an alley with three guys who made Mike Tyson look like Mickey Mouse. Nor the occasion I stepped in front of a light and two . 38 slugs tore past me so close I swear I could feel the wind of their slipstream. And the bodies. I didn't tell her about the bodies. The one I had found tied upside down, offering freebies to half a hundred flies; the little girl I had discovered buried in a ditch. I hadn't told her about any of these things on account there was no need to upset her without cause which was why I had never told her about Diane.

My mom, you see, is strictly old school. The reason she can come to terms with what I do for a job is because, when it comes right down to it. the job I do is not that important.

At best it's a stage, a phase, it's what I do to fill in time before I finally settle dawn and get on with what the Good Lord set me on this earth for, get married, of course, and have children.

Somewhere, she has a picture of me, taken at a cousin's wedding when I was but thirteen. The same age as that poor child who ended her days in a shallow grave. There I am, on the left of the photo, wearing my pretty pink bridesmaid's dress and smiling through the jungle gym of my new braces as I cling on to the bride's bouquet which I have just caught.

When Miller and I were divorced, she took it pretty well.

"Everyone," she said, 'is allowed one false start. " Since when, despite the fact that in child-rearing terms, the years are no longer exactly on my side, she has continued, optimistically, to wait.

As, I suppose, had I. Oh, you know, a dinner date here, a concert ticket there, but pretty much I'd laid low, let my work carry the load, kept my powder dry while making sure my underwear was always clean just in case.

Diane had been a columnist for the Chronicle when I met her, women's issues mostly, date rape, who has the key to the executive wash room, the right to choose, you know the kind of thing. Her byline and a photograph (not flattering) and five bucks a word. Someone had persuaded her, with all the women Pis appearing on the bookracks, she should do a piece on the real thing.

Diane rang me and after a couple of false 64 starts we finally got to meet in a bar out by the ocean in Santa Cruz. We hadn't shaken hands before my stomach was bun gee jumping and . well, you're pretty sophisticated or you wouldn't have stuck with it this far, so you can guess the rest. That was almost a year ago almost, hell! - it-was eleven months, five days and around seven hours, and still, first thing I do once I've made sure my charge is seated safely at her table, is phone Diane's number just to hear her voice on the answer machine.

If that kind of thing happens in Kansas City - and I'm sure it does, both in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, MO then I'm sure my mother doesn 't know about it. For now, for at least as long as Diane and I go on maintaining separate apartments, I intend to see it stays that way.

Right now I check my watch against the clock on the dash and they both tell me it's fifteen minutes shy often o'clock. The coffee the woman at the reservations desk organised for me is long reduced to a residue of cold grounds and, even in the expanse of my extravagant rental, my legs are beginning to cramp up and feel in need of a stretch.

At the desk the woman remembers me and says again, if I'd care to take a seat at the bar . But I assure her I'm fine and while she sends a waiter nimbly down the carpeted stairs in search of a fresh cup of coffee. I move close enough to the stained wood balustrade to see the young woman whose safety I am charged with protecting. She's sitting at a table, center room, pretty blonde head inclined towards the pretty young man who is her dinner date, a poet from Seattle and a pretty serious one. A first collection already published by Breitenbush Books of Portland (he happened to have a copy with him and was kind enough to show me) and another from Carnegie Melton on the way. They seemed to have reached the dessert stage, so we could be on the road by ten thirty.

"They make a lovely couple, don't they?" The receptionist has come to stand next to me and I nod in agreement.

"Yes, they do."

"Do you work for Mr Reigler?" she asks.

"Sort of," I say.

By then the waiter has returned with my coffee so I thank them both and carry it outside, back into the parking lot. The air is warm enough for me to be only wearing a light sweater and even though we're close to the lake, it isn't too buggy. I stroll for a while between the cars, remembering the morning Reigler asked me to his office. It was only the second or third time I'd seen him since resigning from his law firm; the first time since his stroke. It had left him with some paralysis down the right side, not so bad that he couldn't stand, with help, and, although it was necessary to concentrate, he could speak and make himself understood. Once out of hospital and through his period of convalescence, he had insisted on coming to the office every day. Much of the time, I guessed, he just sat there and they ran things past him, playing up to the formality that all decisions were his.