Over My Live Body (18 page)

“I’ll be right over,” Quick promises. This is the response I get when I start firing questions at him. I didn’t hear from
either one of them
last night, I tell him, Curtis
or
Ivan. Did you catch Curtis? Did you get in touch with Ivan? It’s nine thirty a.m. and I haven’t slept. I switch the phone from one sweaty hand to the other. I’m wearing a dress for a change, a blue jean dress with a white Peter Pan collar and pockets that are almost deeper than the dress is long, all the better to conceal my sculpting tools. I’m worried that he might withdraw his offer to take me to check the condition of the sculptures I’m working on for my show. Quick goes so silent on me that I can’t even hear him breathing any more. I wonder if we’ve been cut off, and then he says it,
I’ll be right over
, and hangs up.

Right over
can mean anything from fifteen minutes to an hour depending on the volume of traffic he’s got to deal with on the way, so I kill time by calling Rubenstein at the Sixth to see if I can get anything out of
him
before Quick gets to him. “
I’m
sorry, he’s out.”

“He’s still sick?” I wonder if maybe the yogurt I pictured him eating non-stop got to him.

“No, he’s
in
, but he’s out in the field.” I picture him in the middle of Sheep Meadow playing catch. “Is there someone else who can help you?”

That
someone else knocks on the door a half hour of pacing later. The only thing that’s changed about him is his clothes; he looks as stoical as he did last night, if not more, and I feel self-conscious about having fantasized about him again. He gives the apartment a cursory wide-angle once-over and then focuses on me. “Are you ready?” I expect him to add
for what I have to tell you?
I nod. He follows me to the door and waits while I lock up. I hear a soft click next door. “That’s Mrs. Davidoff, my neighbor,” I say to Quick too loudly, for her benefit. “
She’s
the one who keeps an eye on things.”

“But she didn’t see anything yesterday.”

“Right.”

I lead the way downstairs, conscious of him looming a couple of steps behind me, wondering if my dress is riding up my ass in back, if I should reach behind me and tug at it or if that would seem like a
too
-obvious ploy for attention. I’m not used to wearing dresses and being chauffeured about in police cars.
There’s a whole lot going on in my life now that I’m not used to.
Before he starts the motor, Quick reaches his long arm around the head rest and retrieves a brown paper bag from the back seat. “Bagel?” He unfurls it. “There’s cinnamon raisin, pumpernickel, and whole wheat.”

I reach in the grab bag and pull out a still-warm cinnamon raisin. He takes the whole wheat. “Did you want
this
one
?
”

He shakes his head and tears off a piece of his bagel before shifting into drive. “Sorry there’s nothing to put on it.”

“The bagel’s fine as is,” I mumble through chews. “Thanks.”

“There’s more I have to tell you,” he says. I drop the bagel in my lap. He turns onto West Eighth Street, almost hitting the curb in front of the bookstore, and keeps to the right, slowing to a standstill behind a blue-and-white. “Looks like we’ve got company,” he says, not seeming at all surprised when Rubenstein comes out the double doors and strolls over to the car. Quick hands him the brown bag. “They didn’t have onion. Hope you like pumpernickel,” he says.

Rubenstein fishes the bagel out of the bag and gives it a dead herring stare. “I can live with it,” he finally decides, taking a tentative bite. He notices me. “You were over at West Tenth a couple of days ago,” he says. “Boyfriend pushed you around or something like that, wasn’t it?”

“
Some
thing like that.” I rub my hand up and down my arm. Every mention of Ivan makes something hurt, even now.

“She wants to see if her work is okay.” Quick gestures us toward the building. My hands are shaking so much I can’t even
find
my keys. I have to buzz us in. Louise looks past me at Quick lagging behind and doesn’t stop looking. She licks her lips. Rubenstein turns to Quick. “What d’
you
have?” I hear him ask and I know he’s not talking about bagels. They remind me of two four-star generals contesting each other’s war strategy as they huddle closer and closer to the statuary at the top of the stairs and further away from me so that all I can make out is “task force.” Quick all at once turns and shoots a look at me that pierces like a bullet.

“Who’s Mr. G.Q. over there?” Louise purrs.

“That’s Detective
P
.Q.,” I say. “Patrick Quick, First Precinct.”

“Appropriately named. Wouldn’t mind a quickie with him.” Louise’s pupils are so dilated that I wonder if the two detectives will suspect her of being under the influence of something other than caffeine and hormones. “Or something more enduring. So is
he
here about the note
too
?”

“
What
note?”

“The note for you that was left behind where the armatures were, the ones that got stolen…”

“
What
armatures got stolen? Louise, what are you talking about?”

“A couple of armatures disappeared during the night. You know Hannah, that bleached blond who can’t go anywhere without her iPod? Well, she took her ear buds out long enough to complain to me about it when I got here this morning and I called in a complaint, but I didn’t expect anyone to take it seriously
.
I mean
, armatures
? Besides,” Louise lowers her voice so the two cops can’t hear her, “she was convinced it was an inside job. She
specifically
mentioned
you
as her chief suspect.”

I roll my eyes and Louise nods knowingly. “So what’s with the note? Where is it?”

“
He’s
got it,” she points to Rubenstein. “When I found it, I called back, and about ten minutes later he’s
here asking for it. So I gave it to him.”

“What’d it say?”

“It was in an envelope. Heavy vellum, like the kind you’d put an invitation in. It looked like whoever left it had had an open cut; there was dried blood all over it and it had your name on the front of it, and considering what’s been happening…”

Something is
definitely
happening. Two detectives from two different precincts are here, evidence enough that they’ve got a
lot
more on their agendas than stolen art supplies unless the items in question are directly connected to what they happen to be investigating. “Yeah, I agree. Who’d want to take armatures,” I shout. “They’re nothing of value. Just
display
items.” Both Quick and Rubenstein turn and glower at me. “I’m going to check and see if my sculptures are all right,” I announce for everybody’s benefit, and walk straight to the back door and open it. The modeling stands are still lined up against the wall, sheathed in black plastic; they
seem
untouched. I walk up to one and pull a corner of the bag up gingerly, the way a coroner would to get an ID on a corpse. The featureless face of a Vestal Virgin greets me. I drop the plastic and move on to the next and then the next. I wheel around and see Quick in the doorway. “Everything seems okay here,” I say woodenly.
Except for me. I am anything but okay.
He gestures for me to come back in the lobby, and I back away from my bodybagged figures and walk right up to Quick, so close that I can see a nick just under his chin, I can practically sniff the antiseptic that he dabbed on it. “But everything’s
not
okay, is it? Or else
both
of you wouldn’t be here. Or even
you
. I mean, you’ve got more important things to do than
this
, right?” I turn to Rubenstein. “This
note
. It’s an invitation,” I mumble, “to a
private
art opening.” I don’t have to be Karnac the Magnificent to divine
that
. “Can’t I at least
see
it?”

The look that Rubenstein gives Quick fills me with the same prescience of doom as the chime and flashing light alerting me that I have new voicemail messages has lately. There’s something I don’t want to hear here and I’ve just pushed the PLAY button. Quick takes my arm and leads me to the right, stopping in front of a reproduction of a Van Gogh. “Can’t let you do that, Delilah,” he says somberly. “It’s evidence. We’re sending it out to the lab to be analyzed. See if it
is
in fact blood, and if so, whose it is.”

“In the meantime,” Rubenstein says, “while we’re looking for the person who we think might be behind this, maybe it would be a good idea if you could get out of town for a few days…”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a
show
opening. There’s a lot of work I’ve got to do.”

“That’s not for
weeks
,” Quick argues. “This wouldn’t be for long.”

“Long enough for me to fall behind. Do you think my work’s going to get done by itself? I can’t skip town and then just slap this stuff together. Rome wasn’t built in one day regardless of how this exhibit is billed. I
can’t
.”

Besides, there is absolutely nowhere I can go.

There’s a limit to how much protection we can provide if you stay at Waverly Place,” Quick says. “I might be able to arrange something temporary for you,” he adds
sotto voce
. “I should know by the end of the day. Have to make a few phone calls. I don’t like the idea of you staying at your place alone.”

“I don’t like the fact that you’re not telling me everything.”

“What I will tell you is it seems last night wasn’t the first time Curtis paid you a courtesy call when you weren’t home. He said so in the note. Among other things. We
don’t know
everything, Delilah. If we did, we’d crack this case in an hour and every other case we’ve caught and this city would have a near-zero crime rate, but that’s not the case. There’s a
possibility
that this person who you know as Curtis may be implicated in another…”

“The Majesty Moore investigation?”

“That’s being looked into,” Quick concedes. “We’re reviewing a
few
unsolved cases, not just Moore, to see if we like Curtis for any one of them. We
already
want him for questioning in regard to Vittorio’s death. I can’t tell you what I don’t know for sure. What I
do
know is I want you out of the neighborhood, at least for a couple of days.”

“I
still
have to go out to
work
,” I remind him.

Quick’s eyes cloud over like he’s been hit in the head by a brick. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he says and I know right away that the image he’s projected
isn’t
one of me modeling
clay.
He looks askance at Rubenstein. “I’m breaking protocol by doing this, Delilah,” he whispers. “This is the best I can do. I can’t promise twenty-four hour protection, but I think you’ll be reasonably safe. If you go traipsing from one part of town to the other, you
may not
be.”

“I’ve got to work on my sculptures. In
there
.” I jab my thumb in the direction of the clay studio. “And work for a drawing class tomorrow.
Also
here. I can’t afford to
not work
. But it’ll be here, in this building. That’s all the job assignments I have for the rest of the week. So far. But what if I get more in the future?” This is one f word I like the sound of. I want to feel like I
have
a future to think about here.

“If you have to go out, use your cell phone. I want you to keep it with you whenever you
do
have to go out, and don’t forget to have it charged. If you see Curtis, you hit 911
immediately
and give your location.
Don’t forget
to give your location, you got that, Delilah?” He’s talking to me like he would to a child again. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“I was planning to stay here for a few hours. In
there
.” I point toward the clay studio again.

Quick nods and walks over to the reception desk. Louise parts her M.A.C.ed-up Russian Red lips, but it’s the phone that he’s interested in. He helps himself to it and stretches the cord to the limit so no one can overhear a word, his brow furrowing like the fate of the free world is resting on this call.
Or at least mine
. Rubenstein pokes my shoulder and signals me back to the ersatz Van Gogh. “You want to lay low for a couple of days,” he says. I nod.
No shit, Sherlock
! Quick rejoins us. “Okay, it’s all set. I’ll come by here later to take you where you’re going to be staying. In the meantime you stay
here
. I don’t want you going
any
place, got that?”

“Not even to eat?”

Quick turns toward Louise, whose lips pucker in readiness to say “Yes” to anything he might suggest. “Does someone relieve you here when you get a lunch break?” he asks her. She nods, but before she has a chance to salivate, he adds, “Good. When you go out, can you pick up a sandwich for Miss Price so she can eat it in her studio?”

“
No
problem,” Louise acquiesces.

“And make sure whoever relieves you is informed about the situation. Nobody who doesn’t belong here gets in without credentials, and that includes security personnel. If anyone
tries
, call the Sixth.” Quick turns to me. “I don’t want you going
any
place until I get back.” He follows Rubenstein down the stairs.

“
I
sure wouldn’t,” Louise sighs, not too subtly rising out of her seat to get a last look, “if he were coming back for
me
.”

I cross my arms in front of me. “I don’t even know where he’s
taking
me.”

“With a guy who looks like
that,
I wouldn’t think it would make much difference if it were Heaven or Hoboken.”

I’m tempted to ask
how about if he said he was taking you to Riker’s Island
? but the look on her face tells me she’d still be willing to pack for the one-way trip. “So what
do
you want for lunch, Delilah?” Louise asks me, putting on a Mona Lisa smile, and
I realize I must have that prisoner-of-lust look on my face too.

“I’m not hungry,” I say as I saunter off to the clay studio. I pause in front of the door, then spin around and add huskily, “At
least
not
yet.
” I don’t stick around to see Louise’s reaction.