Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“Asking me and Conrad the same questions the other detectives did last year.”

“Like what? And, I’m sorry, who’s Conrad?”

“Conrad runs security. The cop, he wanted to see the surveillance tape of her leaving. What was she wearing? Where was she going? Any problems with her.”

“It sounds pretty basic.”

“Yeah, basic, until they start trying to lay some shit on you.”

“You think that’s what he’s doing?”

“Who knows? Fucking cops.”

“So what was the deal that night? What’d you tell him?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. Hey. But to-to you? It’s the difference between being suspects and helpful employers.”

“Who said we’re suspects?”

“You. You just said Jensen was out here yesterday asking you the same questions you’d already been asked. You know why they do that? To see if you say something different this time around. They’re looking at you. You want to stay out of a paper like mine? Help me know there ain’t shit to look at.”

Gaston looked at him, still tapping the card, Sully looking back, poker-faced, playing it straight.

“The deal was there was no deal,” he said, finally. “Conrad saw Noel out of the parking lot that night. It’s standard. We keep customers away from the girls. Some guys have a few too many, they want to chat ’em up. So the policy is the dancers wait thirty minutes after closing to leave. Conrad or a bartender or somebody walks them to their cars.”

“You looked over the security tapes that last night?”

“Made a copy for the cops when they came by last year. Jensen, he didn’t even know that. Made him another one.”

Oh, yeah, Sully thought, getting the idea even clearer that Jensen was liking Gaston or Conrad or someone at the club as a suspect, asking for a second tape, seeing if they’d give him the same one, sweating them a little bit.

“Jensen ask you anything about David Reese? Like, has Reese been coming out here, he a member of the VIP club, does he show up when Noel’s dancing, like that?”

Gaston stopped tapping the card and his face started to open up, almost as if he were going to laugh. “Reese? The David Reese? The judge? At Halo?”

Sully nodded, not grinning.

“Ah, shit. Nah. No. David Reese? We don’t discuss our clientele, but him?” Then a facial tic, a thought registering. “What, you saying he was kicking it with Noel?”

“Just checking a rumor. You hear wild stuff. You know anything about Noel’s modeling career? If she posed nude?”

“Oh, man. You’re talking about those black and whites Eric shot. Look. Here’s what I’ll do. One, make it clear in your story that she shot those on her own time, not here at the club, okay? Two, I’ll call Conrad. He’ll take you to the office, show you the tape. And I’m guessing you’d like to talk to Elissa, which is fine as long as you don’t say she works here. You saw her out there dancing tonight.”

“Elissa?”

“You probably know her by her stage name. Amber. She’s the one posed nude with Noel.”

“You shop off the rack?” Sully asked when Conrad walked him to the back room of the security office. The man looked like he could bench-press a Mercedes. Massive chest, arms, and the dude couldn’t go more than five-seven.

Conrad gave him a “pah” and kept walking through the offices in the basement. “Not since college. Custom tailoring. I got a guy, you need one.”

Once in the office, he unlocked a bookcase, pulled out a videotape, and returned to the desk. There was one small television monitor and a video deck. He popped the tape in and turned on the television. “I hope Gas told you this was short and sweet.” He motioned Sully to sit in his chair so that he could see it.

“You don’t mind me asking,” Sully said, “you were the last one to see her alive. How bad did the cops sweat you on that?”

“Some,” said Conrad. “They don’t like Puerto Ricans, you ask me.” He excused himself to the toilet.

The video was grainy security footage, taken from a second-story camera in the parking lot. Noel was a figure in a white sweatshirt with a hood beneath the security lights-you couldn’t really see her face. She paused at the door and Sully saw Conrad appear in the frame, coming outside, walking into the parking lot, she following. She had on running shoes. He could see the car’s fog lights flash as she hit the remote alarm button, and then she pulled the hood back from her hair and stepped into the car.

A moment later, she was pulling out of the lot, her turn signal winking toward the left. Conrad gave her a half wave and her arm came out of the driver’s-side window, waving back. The car pulled out of the camera’s view and Noel Pittman vanished.

Sully backed it up and watched it five or six times. It was the only time he had seen her in motion; he had still never heard her voice.

The door opened and he turned to thank Conrad. Instead, there was a young woman with long brown hair, flat-ironed, stepping just inside the door and looking for him in the semidarkness. She was wearing a black silk robe, but he already knew what she looked like unclothed and in bed.

“Hi, Amber,” he said.

He got to his bike in the parking lot, ears still ringing with the noise of the club and the sense of disappointment. You get right to the edge, think you’re onto something, and it goddamn belly flops.

Amber said she was one of Noel’s best friends, they hung out some, partied some, but they weren’t that close. She did the shoot because Noel had offered her five hundred dollars from her “boyfriend” and she was les anyway so it’s not like it was a big taboo thingy; no, she’d never met the boyfriend or heard his name; Noel was “really pretty and really nice.” Eric, the photographer, she said, had not been particularly creepy, though she had thought it was embarrassingly obvious he had an erection during the shoot.

La-de-fucking-da.

Sully straddled the bike. Before he cranked it, he pulled his cell from his pocket.

“It’s a little late, don’t you think?” Dusty said, her voice tired.

“So, okay, look-I’m finally done for the day. I’m trying, okay? I’ll come up and see you. We can catch up. You have no idea how crazy this shit is getting. I got to be back down here early.”

“It’s a little late for a booty call, Sully.”

“Since when?” Trying it as a deadpan one-liner.

Crickets.

“Okay, Christ. Look, I was playing. I just would like-”

“I know, Sully, I hear you, but I’ve been thinking this isn’t the best thing, you know? Like this? You’re still locked in on Nadia, and that’s understandable but-”

“No, no, I’m not,” he said.

“I’m not going to debate this. Last night? We went to sleep talking about New Orleans, Christmas, all that? Then it’s three a.m., you were sound asleep and mumbling. It woke me up. I had to nudge you to get you back to sleep. You were soaked with sweat. I went to the closet for a robe, a T-shirt or something, and her pictures were everywhere. That box you have of them.”

His turn to be silent, smoldering. “Look,” he finally said, “I like us together. I like-”

“And I like you, Sully. Which is one reason why I’m not coming back over there. I don’t like sleeping with ghosts. This has to be different, or it has to be better, or it has to stop. I don’t think it’s good for me. Or for you.”

Air.

“I want you to be better,” she said. “But I can’t help you with this.”

A little after nine the next morning, a hangover banging on the front of his skull, Sully clicked the off button on the recording of Reese’s meltdown and the executive conference room of the paper was silent. Edward Winters sat leaning forward in his chair, forearms on the desk in front of him.