Neil McMahon - To The Bone

As he was about to make his selection, the padron came in the rear door with his heavy stumping walk. He spent most of his time at his bocce court out back, working on his game, or socializing with friends, or just sitting. But he always seemed to appear for this part of the ritual, whether by radar or something as mundane as a buzzer system. His wife faded back at his approach.

"What today, Doctor? The usual?" His face was the color of saddle leather, deeply creased, sprouting a gray stubble of whiskers. He had the worst teeth Monks had ever seen. They were exposed by a knowing grin, an understanding between two men of the world.

"Better throw in a couple extra, Antonio," Monks said.

"How many you want? Three, four?"

"Make it six or eight. Hell, make it a case." The old man's grin widened. His wife backed farther away, eyes anxious, lips moving slightly as if she were saying a rosary. Antonio's thick-fingered hands carefully placed bottles of Finlandia vodka into an empty carton.

"A little drink is good for a man," he said. He said it every time.

Monks made the requisite response. "It keeps the blood flowing."

He was back in the Bronco, just starting it up, when the store's front door opened and Antonio came huffing out, waving, with something in his hand. Monks realized it was a net sack of lemons.

"You almost forgot," Antonio called.

The lemons were beautiful, fragrant and smooth-skinned, promising succulent juicy flesh inside: the perfect complement to the vodka.

"Christ, thanks, Antonio," Monks said. He lifted up in the seat, reaching for his wallet.

"No, no," the old man said, waving the money away. "On me."

Stover Larrabee was in his office drinking a can of Pabst when the phone rang. The caller was a cop named Guido Franchi, who had been a rookie with Larrabee on the SFPD. Franchi was still on the force, a detective lieutenant now.

Leaving Sacramento, Larrabee had decided it was worth checking whether Dr. Welles D'Anton had ever had any involvement with the police. Like a lot of private investigators, Larrabee had an informal and not always legal arrangement of sharing information with several cops. He had left a message for Franchi, asking him the favor.

"What do you say, Deadeye?" Franchi said.

Larrabee smiled. The same incident that had gotten him thrown off the police force – shooting a mugger with a 9mm pistol, from roughly sixty yards, at night – had won him the respectful nickname from his colleagues.

'Thanks for calling, Guido."

"How's the glossy life of the private dick?"

"No benefits or pension, that's how. You?"

"I'm retiring in three years and twenty-seven days," Franchi said with conviction.

"Not so good, huh?"

"You wouldn't like it any better than you used to, let's put it that way. On top of all the other bullshit, there's too many young cops full of steroids and attitude."

"I guess we were, too," Larrabee said. "Attitude, at least."

"Yeah?" Franchi said doubtfully. "I don't remember liking it so much. Anyway, what I got here, you never heard it from me, right? One thing I don't need right now is to piss off somebody like a big-time surgeon. I want these next three years to go real quiet."

"Capisce."

"Okay. D'Anton's name doesn't show up anywhere on the computers. I asked a few of the old-timers. Sergeant Tolliver remembered something, back about ninety-seven."

"He would," Larrabee said. Tolliver was a thirty-year veteran, a massive black desk sergeant who quietly ran things while the waves of politics swept and crashed all around him. His memory was legendary.

"I dug up the report," Franchi said.

"I'm going to owe you some drinks, I can tell."

"There's not much. Routine missing person, a young woman. No real connection to D' Anton, just a sideline. Still interested?"

Larrabee slid into his desk chair and reached for a pen. "Real interested," he said.

Julia D'Anton awoke in the late afternoon. The window shades were drawn in her bedroom, to shield her from the westering sun. She was disoriented, groggy from a long nap, and from the Vicodin she had taken. She got up, put on a robe, and went to a window to see if anyone else was home.

The only other car in the drive was Gwen Bricknell's red Mercedes convertible. Gwen usually stayed at her own apartment in San Francisco, but tomorrow they were entertaining here, and there was a lot of preparing to do.

Julia walked outside, thinking that Gwen might be swimming. The house was in a secluded little valley in Marin, near the coast, an old family place that she and Welles had expanded into a luxury getaway. The swimming pool, filled from a spring that flowed from the mountainside above, had been crafted to look like a natural rocky grotto.

But there was no one in it. Julia turned back and went into the house, through the living room, and up the stairs to Gwen's pied-à-terre here. Julia knocked, and waited, hearing the rhythmic thump of music inside. This was Gwen's private place, securely locked when she was not here. Only cleaning maids and occasional lovers were allowed in, both under her strict supervision.

Gwen opened the door, flushed and sweating, drying her face with a towel. She was wearing a spandex outfit. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. A large-screen TV showed several shapely women, also spandex-clad, dancing in swift precise unison. Like Gwen's apartment in San Francisco, like every place she had lived, this one was fitted out with an exercise studio – Nautilus weight-lifting equipment, a NordicTrack, videos of aerobics and Mari Winsor workouts and bun busters. Most mornings she was up at five a.m., putting in a fierce hour-long regimen before dressing to go to the clinic, with extra stints when she had time. She was just as careful with other aspects of her health. There were cabinets filled with vitamins, the finest skin-care products, estrogen and collagen cremes. She had tried them all, in all combinations, even getting ingredients directly from the clinic and mixing them herself.

Then there was the medicine that fueled her fierce energy – a plate with several lines of cocaine, waiting on a dresser.

"Sorry to interrupt," Julia said.

"It's fine. I was just getting ready to shower."

"I was wondering about tomorrow night. Whether Welles is coming." D'Anton usually came to the parties here, dispensing Botox injections to his female guests.

But now, nothing was as usual.

"He'll make an appearance," Gwen said. "He knows he can't let his adoring fans down." She waited for further questions, her face politely inquiring – the same look she used on women at the clinic, to put them in their place.

Julia felt her anger stir but resisted the urge to rise to the bait. She turned to go, then asked, as if by afterthought, "Did that Dr. Monks stop by?"

"Yes. I showed him Eden's records. He seemed satisfied that everything was all right."

"He's not going to be a nuisance, then?"

"I don't know about that," Gwen said. She stepped back into the room and picked up the cocaine plate, offering it to Julia.

Julia waved it away. "What do you mean?"

Gwen bent over the plate and inhaled through a plastic straw, a long shuddering breath into each nostril. She came back up with eyes bright and intense.

"I got a phone call right before I left the clinic," Gwen said. "Dr. Monks thinks Eden might have been murdered."

This evening, Martine was not there when Monks got home. He knew it before he pulled up the driveway and saw the empty spot where she usually parked her car, before the edge of his vision caught the disappearing tail of the black cat, Cesare Borgia, no doubt plotting revenge against his truant humans.

But then, there was no reason she should be.