“Keeps everything fresh,” said Savarin.
Milo said, “It’s a small world. Maybe one of the girls knew Angie or Christi from before.”
“You can go backstage and talk to them, but you’d probably be wasting your time.”
“Well,” said Milo, “I’m no stranger to that.”
*
Backstage was a cluttered corridor crowded with costumes on racks and makeup on tables, bottles of aspirin and Mydol, lotions and hair clips, ambitious wigs on Styrofoam forms. Three girls lounged in robes, smoking. A fourth, slender and dark, sat naked with one leg propped on a table, trimming her pubis with a safety razor. Up close, the pancake makeup caked. Up close the girls looked like teenagers playing dress-down.
None of them knew Angela Paul or Christina Marsh and when Milo showed them the death shot, their eyes grew frightened and wounded. The girl with the razor began to cry.
We muttered some words of comfort and left the club.
*
The detectives’ room was empty. We continued to Milo’s office, and he kept the door open and stretched in his chair. It was nearly 2 A.M.
He said, “So what’re they doing in Minnesota? Milking the cows? Harvesting wild rice?” He shook his head. “Milk-fed.”
I said, “Too early to start calling locals?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Want coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He pulled out the picture of Christi Marsh and stared at it. “Finally, a name.” Switching on his computer, he ran her name through NCIC, the local databases. No hits. Not even a driver’s license, and her Social Security number pulled up no record of employment.
“Phantom girl,” he said.
“If she was freelancing at a cash business,” I said. “There’d be no need for record-keeping?”
“A pro, like you suspected. So where’d she meet Angie?”
“Working at a club that doesn’t file paper. Or Angie was hooking, too. The Vice guys didn’t know Christi because she was new in town, hadn’t gotten caught.”
“Minnesota,” he said. “I’ll start calling there in a couple of hours. Got lots of calls to make. Sure you don’t want some coffee? I’m gonna have some.”
“No sleep for the weary?”
“I got out of the habit.” He pushed himself to his feet, slouched away, returned with a Styrofoam cup. Plopping down, he drank, rubbed his eyes some more.
“When’s the last time you did sleep?” I said.
“Can’t recall. What, you’re fading?”
“I’m good for a while longer.”
He put his cup down. “It’s like there are two parallel things going on, the Jerry Quick side and the Albin Larsen–Sonny Koppel side. I’m having trouble putting them together. Let’s start with Jerry: shady guy, sexually inappropriate, uses prepaid phones, travels a lot, allegedly to trade metals but doesn’t make much money at it. Doesn’t pay his rent on time, chases tail, and doesn’t bother to hide it from his wife. When he’s in town, he leaves his wife alone at night so he can enjoy his favorite stripper. Eventually, he hires her away to be his alleged secretary even though her nails are too damn long for typing. Savarin was probably right, Jerry kept Angie on the side, put her in the office as a way to make it look legit. That way, she’d be in proximity if he felt like a little desktop aerobics. Now he’s gone, and so is Angie.”
“The two of them hiding out together,” I said.
“The question is: hiding from what?”
“Things are falling apart, the scam’s gone bad. Jerry and Angie know why Gavin was murdered. Know they could be next.”
He considered that. “I still can’t see any role for Quick in the scam, but who knows what the hell he’s really about . . . okay, so maybe he even feels guilty about Gavin, but most of all he doesn’t want the truth to come out because that’ll point the finger at him as helping cause his kid’s death. He cleans out Gavin’s room, stashes Sheila at her sister’s, plans to go back home and finish the cleanup but gets scared and lams, taking Angie with him. She’s got to be freaked out, too—losing her friend, Christi. The girl she and Jerry hooked up with Gavin, to keep Gavin happy.”