Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“Don’t start this shit again, David. We need to know where you were. We need to know where Steph was. We need to know how much she knows about all this. And you need to get it through your head that you’re in the deep water now. The cops will ask these questions, and a lot of others, and they won’t be as nice about it. And you can’t ignore them, or make them go away by being arrogant or angry. Cops like it when a suspect acts that way- it makes them think they’re on to something- and when the suspect is somebody like you, it makes it just plain fun.”

“Suspect?” David laughed again, crazily this time. “I ain’t no steenking suspect.”

I ground my teeth and thought hard about hanging up. Then I heard a noise like glassware in the background. “Where are you?”

“Why, you gonna join me? I thought you pretended not to go in for this stuff anymore.”

“Where are-”

“I’m in the only open bar south of Fulton Street- the only one I could fucking find, anyway.”

“Jesus- you’re talking about this in public? What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you trying to blow up your life?”

“You’re the last person to be giving out life advice, don’t you think, Johnny-boy? Like you’ve done such a bang-up job with your ownthat swell career, and all those friends.”

I counted, I breathed, and finally I gave up. I put down the phone and turned around and Clare was there, leaning in the bedroom door. The light from the street was softened by the snow, and it fell in pale pink bands across her arms and legs and small, bare breasts. Her face was in shadow, but even so I could see the worry in her eyes.

Clare wanted to come along to the 9:3 °Club, but between the snow, and my dissuasions, and maybe the gun behind my back, she gave up on the idea.

“What the hell is that?” She froze with a forkful of pad thai halfway to her mouth.

“It’s a Glock 30, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun.”

“I see it’s a gun. What are you doing with it?”

“I’m putting it in its holster and fastening it to my belt.”

“Don’t be funny. Why do you need it?”

“I’m hoping to find the guy I romped around Central Park with last night, and I’m hoping for a more sedate conversation.”

“You’re going to…shoot him?”

“I’d rather talk, but it’s nice to have options.”

“Jesus,” she breathed.

Clare ate her noodles and watched gravely as I dropped the clip out of the Glock, checked the load, worked the spring and the slide, ran the clip back up, and tucked the gun away. I was pulling a waterproof shell over my fleece jacket when she spoke again.

“Was that your brother on the phone before?”

I looked at her, surprised. I’d never discussed my family with her, and had no clue what, if anything, she knew of them. Her face was still and her gray eyes said nothing. “One of them,” I said slowly.

A rueful smile came and went. “I know the tone. My sister gets it when we talk on the phone sometimes; I get it too, I suppose. A kind of ‘I’m going to explode and I’m going to strangle you all at the same time’ thing. Only family can make you crazy like that.” I nodded. “He’s your client?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I can’t-”

Clare held up her hand. “It doesn’t matter. I was just going to say that, whatever it is you’re doing, the work agrees with you.” She saw my surprise, and smiled. “Dents and dings aside, you look better than you have in a while. You’re eating better and sleeping better, and that cloud above your head is not so dark.” She went back to her dinner and looked startled when I kissed her goodbye.

There were no taxis or Town Cars in front of the 9:3 °Club, and if there was a velvet rope, it was buried under a foot of snow. I leaned on the bar and drank my cranberry juice and surveyed the room. It was a big, rectangular space, dimly lit and done up like a seraglio in a pumpkin patch. Acres of green and orange silk covered the walls, and leafy green pennants twisted down from the high ceiling. A dance floor dominated the center of the room, flanked by round green tables on one side, and on the other by curtained alcoves with fat orange sofas. A wide stairway with translucent green risers climbed up a wall in back and emptied into more alcoves and the VIP rooms. The bar was opposite the stairs, an orange crescent topped in green frosted glass. There was a row of flat-panel monitors above it, just then looping footage of Copacabana Beach. The sound system was pumping out a low-key techno rhythm, and there were a dozen bodies on the dance floor, doing all they could with it.

I counted fifty people scattered around the place, dancers and staff included- nothing close to a typical Friday night, I was sure, but not bad for a blizzard. The shared disaster of the storm made everyone a friendly castaway, happy to be alive and happy to be there, and it lent a faintly manic tang to the proceedings. The kitchen was serving what food there was without charge, though the drinks were still ringing at full price.

Babyface- Jamie- wasn’t in the house, but the reedy-voiced man I’d spoken to on the phone was. His name was J.T., and I’d found him at the end of the bar, looking dolefully over the room. He was a skinny thirtysomething, with a tangle of peroxide hair, three days of dark beard, and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt. He was the manager, more or less, and he hadn’t been happy to see me.

“Fuckin’ A, you’re the guy who called,” he’d said. I’d nodded, and he’d frowned. “I told you, the only Jamie working here is a girl.”

“So if I ask your staff, none of them will know another Jamie?”

The frown deepened. “What are you, some kind of cop?”

“Not a cop, and not from the State Liquor Authority, either.” J.T.’s eyes darted away, and he ran a nicotine-stained hand down his narrow face. “What’s that mean?” he asked.

“It means I don’t give a shit about your hiring practices. Martians, felons, it’s all the same to me.”

He shook his head and grimaced. “No good deed, man, no fuckin’ good deed.”

“I’m not looking to make trouble, J.T. Not for you, or Jamie.”

“Then go away.”

“Talk to me about Jamie, and I will.”

J.T. fished a cigarette from his pocket and dangled it, unlit, from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know what I can tell you. It’s not like we’re running buddies.”

“You know his last name?”

“Coyle,” he said, and he spelled it for me.

“How long has he worked here?”

“About ten months.”

“Off the books?” J.T. nodded. “Because he was inside?” Another nod.

“You know what for?”

He shook his head. “I don’t press.”

“What does he do here?”

“Mostly he works the door, but he helps out with other stuff too.”

“Like?”

“Like behind the bar sometimes, or security in the VIP lounge.”

“He work every night?”

“Two, three nights a week, usually, until he started this no-show crap.”

“No-show?”

“He hasn’t been around for going on three weeks. He hasn’t called, either.”

“That’s not like him?”

“Nope. Before this he was Mr. Dependable- on time, on top of things, never any bullshit.”

“And his work was good?”

“I had no complaints,” J.T. said. “He knew when to be cool and when to be scary, and he knew how to keep the messes out of sight.”

“You didn’t worry about his…prior experience?” J.T. squinted at me. “I put him behind the bar, and that’s all cash back there. I wouldn’t do that if he worried me.”

“You know his girlfriend?”

“Nope.”

“You have an address for him, or a phone number?” J.T. pulled out a multifunction digital doohickey, and had at it with his thumbs. He read me a phone number and a P.O. box, and I copied them down. “Kind of a risk for you, taking on a guy like that,” I’d said.