Nightbird (23 page)

Danny wondered if Winters had ever mentioned this envelope to the police. Who gave it to him? He’d check with his uncle; he
knew Joe Gregory wouldn’t tell him.

“Some people were saying Gillian Stone was more depressed than anyone realized,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know about that. But I have no idea why anyone would want a terrace in this city. For the last few months of my
brother’s life, when he was in such pain, I worried about him doing something like that. I’ve stood on that balcony and looked
down. It always sent shivers through me.”

She sat back and wrote something on her pad. Danny knocked off the wine, thinking he could handle this again.

“You’ve got me thinking,” she said. “The food of the people. Not a bad idea at all. Where do I find a White Castle in the
city?”

“Sunnyside, Queens. But you’ll need a guide, and I’m the best. We’ll get a sack of everything.”

A
nthony Ryan sat at the computer in his upstairs den, scouring the Internet for drug information. He was searching for Lorazepam,
the drug Armand Coletti had told him about a few hours earlier. Also known as Ativan, it was an effective muscle relaxant,
depressant, or tranquilizer to the nervous system. Imprinted with the company’s logo, it usually appeared as a small, round,
oblong, or football-shaped tablet. Legitimate doses ranged from two to six milligrams a day.

He could hear Leigh hammering away downstairs. She’d begun the process of cleaning out Rip’s bedroom, converting it into a
pink palace for their granddaughter, Katie. She wanted it ready when Katie and Margaret returned from Ireland next year. And
as with everything Leigh did, she jumped in with both feet. The smell of paint, the rustle of wallpaper, furniture trucks
in the driveway: every day something new for Katie’s room.

The Ryans’ Cape Cod had four bedrooms. The two downstairs had belonged to Margaret and Rip. Margaret’s room, still intact,
always awaited her return from an adventure abroad or a bad marriage. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a small bathroom, all
with sharply slanted ceilings. Anthony and Leigh used one bedroom. The other, across the hall, was a guest room/den combination.
The past few years it had become more of a computer room. He heard Leigh coming up the stairs.

“You’re not in some porno chat room, are you,” Leigh said. “Hot, lonely cops, something like that.”

“Hot cops are never lonely,” he said.

She wore one of Rip’s old Baltimore Orioles T-shirts and paint-stained khaki shorts. She told him she was going to shower,
get the paint off, but he couldn’t see any paint on her. He couldn’t understand how she could paint without getting any on
her. Leigh walked to the wall and began adjusting pictures. That was how she was: whatever caught her eye that minute, that
was what she did.

Family pictures filled the walls of the den, hung frame to frame, running up the slanted ceiling. His favorites were the black-and-whites
taken in their backyard when neither the trees nor the kids were tall.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Researching that drug from Gillian’s blood test.”

“Oh,” she said. He could hear the disappointment in her voice. She wanted this case over.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “What is the Duck’s real name?”

“Why would you want to know that?”

“Just curious. I’ve heard you and Joe talk about him for years. Joe introduced me to him on the boat ride Sunday, but I didn’t
catch his name.”

“He probably said the Duck,” Ryan said. “Now that you ask, I can’t remember myself. Donald something.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No, it’s Donald, really. I can’t even remember why they call him the Duck. If I ever knew. He’s Gregory’s buddy. All I ever
knew was the Duck.”

“Men have strange ways,” she said.

“I’ll find out for you.”

“Don’t bother. I was just curious.”

Leigh dropped her clothes in the hamper and went into the bathroom. Men have strange ways, he thought. Leigh washes off mystery
paint and wonders about people’s real names. Faye Boudreau, by herself, has more strange ways than an entire village of men.

Ryan scrolled the Web page of a Nevada investigative agency until he found something that made him sit straight up. It was
a mention of Lorazepam in a report on a drug called scopolamine hydrobromide. The agency reported that both drugs were being
used by hookers as knockout drops. The hookers picked up businessmen in hotel bars in Vegas and Reno, as well as five other
states. Lorazepam was water soluble, so the hookers kept it in small plastic containers, such as those that originally contained
over-the-counter eyedrops. Odorless and colorless, it was so powerful that just a few drops in a drink could render the victim
unconscious within twenty minutes. He printed it out.

T
uesday morning Danny Eumont awoke to a banging on his door. Who the hell banged on an apartment door at seven o’clock in the
morning? Totally beyond the rules of common courtesy.

“Take it easy!” he yelled as he stumbled toward the noise.

He had no idea who it could be this time of the morning. His uncle wouldn’t bang this hard, and it wasn’t Gregory’s shave-and-a-haircut.
This knocker lacked form as well as courtesy.

“Keep your pants on,” Danny said as he peered through the fish-eye lens of the peephole. His eyes were as blurry as the optics,
but he could make out a color: blond. Big blonde, big blond hair, big blond chest.
Speaking of knockers
, his Groucho persona whispered.

“You in there sniffing my dirty underwear?” Big Blonde yelled.

“I think you have the wrong apartment,” Danny said.

“Are you Danny Eumont from
Manhattan
magazine? The pervert who stole my luggage?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Danny said, recognizing Lainie Mossberg from Tempe, Arizona.

“Is that your gig? I hope your neighbors keep an eye on their laundry with you in the building.”

“Lower your voice,” Danny said, quickly unsnapping the dead bolt. He slid back the chain lock and opened the door. “I’ve got
a lease to protect. If not a reputation.”

Lainie wheeled her Pullman into the room. She looked as if she’d been up all night. He closed the door behind her. He could
smell cigarette smoke in her clothes and big hair.

“You thought you were funny dropping me off at that hotel, a regular comedian.”

“I had an errand to run. I intended to come back, but I had car trouble.”

“Lying bastard. You weren’t even registered.”

“I panicked when you mentioned your husband. I draw the line at the H word.”

“We’re separated, idiot. He lets me crash in his place. But, don’t worry. While I was waiting for you I met this guy in the
lounge who works for the Arizona Diamondbacks, the new baseball team. I got seats whenever I want them. In the frrront rooow.
Losing you was the best thing that happened to me that night.”

Lainie wore a sunshine yellow business suit and white high heels with alligator tips. Very businesslike. She pointed to her
carry-on bag, which held the logo of the new baseball team: a turquoise
A
with the hint of a snake.

“How did you get here?” he said.

“By plane, asshole. The big bird in the sky”

“No, I mean from the airport.”

Danny looked out the window, expecting to see a cab or a broom idling at the curb. He caught his half-naked reflection in
the window but figured Lainie Mossberg was not offended by men in boxer shorts.

“I got a ride from a
nice
guy,” she said.

Danny remembered he had once been a
nice
guy who chauffeured her from an airport. He brushed his hair back with his fingers and ran his tongue over his teeth. He
tried to remember where he’d put her pink bag.

“How did you find out where I lived?” he said.

“From your own big mouth,” she said. “You bragged to me on the plane. Big-time magazine writer. How they sent you to Phoenix
to write an article on Gillian Stone.”

“Someone at the magazine gave you my address?”

“Do the math,” she said.

Danny put on his pants and found her duffel bag at the back of his closet. It was on top of the strongbox that safeguarded
his cop novel. The hot pink plastic bag looked as though it should have had a picture of Strung-Out Barbie on the side.

“You did steal it. You are a weird shit.”

“Not steal. I was going to return it.”

Lainie rifled through the bag. She pulled out everything and tossed it on the kitchen counter. Clothes, hairspray, a pair
of baby blue panties she dropped onto a stove burner. He made a mental note to check his renter’s policy.

“I see something is missing,” she said. “Apparently Mister High and Moral has no reservations about stealing the personal
drugs of another.”

“I threw that away,” he said. “I didn’t want some pot-sniffing beagle hassling me at the airport.”

“Oh yeah, right. But you did go through my stuff.”

“Only in self-protection,” Danny said.

Lainie turned the bag upside down and shook it. Bits of cracker and tissue fell onto his counter and floor as she peered inside.
Danny wondered if she was scheming to discover the loss of her life savings. Finally she found a tube of hand cream, unscrewed
the cap, and squeezed some onto her hands.

“Why didn’t you just call me at the magazine?” he said. “I would have gladly mailed the bag back to you. You could have saved
the price of airfare and still insulted me.”

“I’m here about something else,” she said, rubbing the excess cream up her arms. “I have a proposition for you. A quid pro
quo.”

“I should have told you earlier, Lainie, but next month is ring time for me. The lovely Margaret Mary Houlihan, her father
is a big Irish cop.”

“This is business, faggot. I have a business proposition for you. I have information that you can use in your story on Gillian,
but you also have to help me out.”

She brushed past him, going into the kitchen. “You at least have coffee?” she said, opening cabinets. “I’m having coffee.”

“I recommend the decaf.”

Lainie found the coffee can and washed out the pot. She kept looking around the apartment as the coffee dripped.

“This apartment is all wrong,” she said. “You have no flow. You got all your shit stacked up by the window. You need proper
flow. Read a book on feng shui, why don’t you.”

Danny’s Groucho persona whispered a crack about Chinese food, but he filed it away. Maybe he was maturing.

“Good coffee,” Danny said as he followed Lainie back into the living room, where she plopped down on the couch.

“Coffee always tastes better when someone else makes it.”

Danny sat across from her on the brown corduroy lounger that had once sat in his uncle’s computer room. Lainie removed her
relatively conservative yellow jacket and folded it carefully. Under it she wore a white tube top, a testimony to the miracle
of man-made fabrics.

“I’m going to give you a taste of what I know,” she said. “Just a taste. Then I want a commitment from you.”

“I can listen.”

“I have this girlfriend, very close. We did a lot of shit together in our lives. You don’t even want to know about it. In
and out of drug programs, some voluntary, some not. The thing is, this friend of mine is now in Silverado, which is the Betty
Ford of Scottsdale. For the past two years she’s been in the same therapy group with Lynnette Stone. Is that interesting to
you?”

“Depends on what she said.”

“My information is money. You’ll be all over it.”

Danny put his coffee on the floor. He decided he needed to buy a coffee table and brush his teeth.

“What do you want from me?” he said.

“An easy one. I have a group coming through New York next month. The same group I was with in Denver, Lunatic Nation. The
next Nirvana. They have three upcoming dates in New York. Their biggest gigs so far. I want an article on them in your magazine,
plus a review by your music critic.”

“Maybe I can manage one or the other. Maybe.”

“I need both.”

“What if the critic pans them?”

“Won’t happen. If your critic happens to lack vision, then so what. The main point is I got them coverage. Besides, no such
thing as bad ink.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

“I need a firm commitment. You’re going to love my information.”

“Like what am I supposed to love?”

“I know why Evan Stone acted crazy to you at the cemetery that day.”

“You know about that?” Danny said. He had no idea if he could arrange coverage of the new Nirvana, but he couldn’t pass this
up. “Okay, you got a deal. Now show me what I bought.”

“I get both? Article and review.”

“Twin forty-fours.”

Lainie removed her alligator-tipped pumps and sat up on the couch cross-legged. Her legs were tan and smooth, but an angry
array of tiny Band-Aids clung to her toes, like a swarm of flesh-toned worms.

“Lynette Stone has been in therapy half her life,” Lainie said, massaging her feet. “She’s a talker, too; Evan mustn’t let
her say shit at home. Lynnette’s story is that she found out she was manic-depressive in her late thirties, ten years after
the problem raised its ugly head. Ten miserable years thinking she was nuts, according to her. Well, now she thinks that maybe
that’s what happened to Gillian. She was the exact same age as Lynnette when the strangeness hit her.”

“So she believes Gillian committed suicide.”

“Of course, what else? Lynnette blames it on a bipolar disorder.”

“What does Evan say?”

“I don’t think he knows shit. He blames the sister. But Lynnette says she noticed that Gillian was starting to have problems
long before the sister got there. She says she begged Gillian to get some help, but she was too worried about her career.
Lynnette says when she was Gillian’s age she did street drugs to cope. Now she feels guilty because she thinks Gillian was
doing the same thing, and she wasn’t strong enough to help her.”

“Evan Stone never knew?”