Джонатан Келлерман - Night Moves

“Have fun.”

“Since you didn’t probe for specifics, ‘quality’ means dinner at a new Argentinian place on Fairfax. I’ll relax my standards and eat grass-fed steak. He’ll do tilapia, sauce on the side, and shoot me the cholesterol glare.”

Before I drove off, I checked my own messages. Lots of junk and a call forwarded by my service from “Mr. Joseph.” That meant nothing until I looked up the 239 area code. Florida.

Lanny Joseph, the record producer who’d referred Iggy Smirch to Bitt.

I tried the number, no answer or voicemail. First thing the following morning I made my second attempt and got the woman with the Cuban accent.

“Hol’ on.”

Several minutes, then: “Doctor, buena morninga. Talking about that asshole Bitt got me thinking, thinking got me remembering, remembering popped a name into my head. I talked to her yesterday, she said she’d talk to you.”

“She being...”

“Let’s leave it at someone you’ll want to talk to,” said Lanny Joseph. “If you still want to learn about that asshole Bitt.”

“We do.”

“We?”

“As I told you, I work with the poli—”

“I got that, Doctor, but let me give you some wisdom: Go easy on that. She’s not jazzed about talking to you, singular, I did you a big favor and convinced her. But no way will she get officially involved with the cops.”

“Got it. Thanks for taking the time.”

“Iggy said your girlfriend’s beyond hot and you been with her forever. I like faithful people and also Bitt was a total asshole. Here’s the name, she’s right by you, in L.A.”

Maillot Bernard.

I was pretty sure a maillot was some kind of bathing suit — one of those factoids you have no memory of actually learning.

The Internet confirmed that and added dancer’s tights to the mix.

Artistic woman? I looked her up on the Web, found nothing, made the call.

A tentative voice trilled, “Yes?”

“Ms. Bernard, Dr. Alex Delaware.”

“Yes?”

“Lanny Joseph gave me your number.”

“Yes. I told him he could.”

“This is about Trevor Bitt.”

“Yes.”

“Could we talk about him?”

“I guess,” said Maillot Bernard. “Somewhere basically... out in the open.”

“Whatever works best for you, Ms. Bernard.”

“Best,” she said, as if learning a new word. “There’s a place on Melrose, Cuppa. Serves breakfast all day. I’m going to be there by ten.”

“See you then.”

“Wait a few minutes, come at ten after,” she said. “So I have time to figure out what I want to eat.”

“Ten ten it is.”

“Yes.” A beat. “Lanny said you’re a police psychologist, like on TV.”

“I don’t actually work for the police, more of a freelance.”

“How interesting,” said Maillot Bernard, with scant conviction. “I used to freelance as a dancer. Then I taught dance to children. Freelancing always has you wondering. When’s the next check coming in. Now I do nothing.”

“Ah.”

“Make it ten fifteen,” she said. “I’ll be wearing orange.”

Cuppa sat beneath two stories of undistinguished, brick office building. Lampshade store on one side, Chinese laundry on the other. The restaurant’s front was all glass.

Inside, a boomerang-shaped, gold-flecked Formica counter faced chartreuse vinyl booths. Bullfighting posters and a wall menu served as art. The young woman behind the counter, white-uniformed with Lucille Ball hair and crimson lipstick, had nothing to do. The pass-through to the kitchen offered a view of a white-capped man smoking an e-cig.

What had once been a coffee shop transformed to a place that sold eight-dollar mocha drinks, six-dollar Postum, and omelets/scrambles/frittatas offered with options like ramps, glassfish, Belgian wheat beer, and sweetbreads.

Cheap oatmeal, though. Three bucks and represented with pride as “ not steel-cut.”

A corner booth was occupied by a rabbinically bearded, brooding hipster genuflecting before a tiny cellular screen. Two other stations were taken up by white-haired throwbacks to the Kerouac era, reading newspapers and spooning oatmeal.

A woman in an orange dress sat in the farthest booth, watching me and ignoring a glass of red juice, a mug of something, and a bowl of what looked like lawn shavings sprinkled with fried onions.

Painfully thin would’ve been Maillot Bernard after a month of gorging.

She could’ve been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty; when emaciation sets in, distinctions blur. Her hair was long, white-blond, frizzy, her face a spray-tanned stiletto.

I waved and she smiled painfully. Enormous green eyes, contours that suggested genetic beauty long eroded. The dress looked flimsy, with glass beads studding a scoop neckline.

“Alex Delaware.”

“Mai-la.” The fingers she offered were flash-frozen shoestring potatoes. As I sat, she said, “Coffee? They do it great, here.”

“Sure.” I looked over at Lucy. She remained behind the counter and shouted, “What can I get you?”

“Coffee, any kind.”

“Be careful, that includes Jamaican Blue Mountain. Twenty bucks.”

“Thanks for the warning. What can I get for ten?”

Crimson-framed grin. “The world.”

“You have African?”

“Do we,” she said. “Kenyan’s always great.” To Maillot Bernard: “A smart one.”

Bernard said, “He’s a doctor.”

“Whoa,” said Lucy. To me: “I feel great, maybe I shouldn’t.” Grinning and giving her hips a rhumba shake.

One of the old men looked up. “Someone’s son the doktuh? You take Medi-keah?” He laughed moistly. His female companion kept eating oatmeal.

Lucy brought the coffee, winked, and left.

I said, “Mai-la, I really appreciate your taking the time.”

“Yes,” she said. “Lanny said the cops were investigating Trevor. I suppose that makes sense.”

“How so?”

She shook her head, toyed with her salad. “Confession, first: I used to like him. More than like. We were together for half a year.”

She poked some more. Up close, mowed grass was alfalfa sprouts and some sort of stunted-looking lettuce. What I’d taken for onions were desiccated threads of a bacon-like substance, maybe from an animal.

“Trevor used to be a handsome man,” she said. “Might still be.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Ages. Eons, light-years... twenty real years. I was living in San Francisco, dancing ballet, jazz, and modern interpretive.”

Her fork lowered. “That didn’t pay the bills so I also danced in North Beach clubs.”

The mecca of topless. I said, “Branching out.”

“That’s a nice way to put it,” she said. “The money was good but the decision wasn’t.”

She placed a hand on a flat chest. “They convinced me to enhance. Not only did it ruin ballet, it messed me up physically. It was just loose silicone those days, not even bags. I leaked, got infected, spent four months in the hospital, and ended up like this.”

“What an ordeal.”

“It was a long time ago.” She reached over and touched my hand. “Life’s an ordeal, no?”

“It sure can be.”

“Maybe not for you? You seem like a happy man.”

“I work at it.”

“Yes, it is work,” said Maillot Bernard. “I gave up on happiness a long time ago, am aiming for content. I think that’s a more mature emotion, no?”

“There’s an adage,” I said. “Who’s rich? Someone content with what they have.”

“That’s brilliant, Doctor — I’m enjoying talking to you, wasn’t sure how I felt about facing a therapist again. But I’m glad I agreed. So what’s the story with Trevor?”