“Yeah?”
“Yes. Dick Stensland has been handed a six-count probation indictment. Do it, and I’ll drop four of those charges and put him in front of a lenient judge. He’ll be sentenced to no more than ninety days.”
Bud stood up. “Deal, Mr. Loew. And thanks for dinner.”
Dudley beamed. “Until 7:00 tomorrow, lad. And why are you leaving so abruptly, is it a hot date you have?”
“Yeah, Veronica Lake.”
o o o
She opened the door, all Veronica: spangly gown, blond curl over one eye. “If you’d called first, I wouldn’t look this ridiculous.”
She looked edgy. Her dye job was off: uneven, dark at the roots. “Bad date?”
“An investment banker Pierce wants to curry favor with.”
“Did you fake it good?”
“He was so self-absorbed that I didn’t have to fake it.” Bud laughed. “You turn thirty, you do it strictly for thrills.” Lynn laughed, still edgy, she might touch him first just to have something to do with her hands. “If men don’t try to be Alan Ladd, they might get the real Lynn Margaret.”
“Worth the wait?”
“You know it is, and you’re wondering if Pierce told me to be receptive.”
He couldn’t think of a comeback.
Lynn took his arm. “I’m glad you thought of that, and I like you. And if you wait in the bedroom I’ll scrub off Veronica and that investment banker.”
o o o
She came to him naked, a brunette, her hair still wet. Bud forced himself to go slow, take time with his kisses, like she was a lonely woman he wanted to love to death. Lynn played off his timing: her kisses back, her touches. Bud kept thinking she was faking–he rushed to taste her so he’d know.
Lynn moaned, put his hands on her breasts, set up a rhythm for his fmgers. Bud followed her lead, loved it when she gasped and came over and over, hair-trigger. Real–so real he forgot about himself, he heard something like “In me, please in me.” He rubbed himself hard on the bed, went in her, kept his hands on her breasts like she taught him. Hard inside her–he let himself go just as her legs pulsed and her hips pushed him up off the sheets–then his face pressing wet hair, their arms locked on each other tight.
They rested, talked. Lynn talked up her diary: a thousand pages back to high school in Bisbee, Arizona. Bud rambled on the Nite Owl, his strongarm job in the morning–sitting-duck stuff he couldn’t take much more of. Lynn’s look said, “Then just give it up”; he didn’t have an answer, so he spieled on Dudley, the heartbreaker rape girl with a crush on him, how he’d hoped the Nite Owl would swing another way so he could use itto juke this guy he hated. Lynn talked back with little touches; Bud told her he was letting the Kathy snuff go for now, it was too easy to go crazy on–crazy like his play with Dwight Gilette. Lynn pressed on his family; he told her “I don’t have one”; he ran down his outlaw job: Cathcart, his pad tossed, his smut dream, the San Berdoo Yellow Pages open to printshops clicking in to the Englekling brothers plea bargain, then clicking out, back to the colored punks they had on ice. He knew she knew the gist: he was frustrated because he wasn’t that smart, he wasn’t really a Homicide detective–he was the guy they brought in to scare other guys shitless. After a while, the talk petered out–Bud felt restless, pissed at himself for spilling too much too fast. Lynn seemed to sense it: she bent down and drove him crazy with her mouth. Bud stroked her hair, still a little wet, glad she didn’t have to fake it with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Evidence–the victims’ belongings found near the Tevere Hotel; Coates’ Mere and the shotguns located: forensic verification on the piece that shot the strangely marked rounds. No grand jury on earth would refuse to hand down Murder One. The Nite Owl case was made.
Ed at his kitchen table, writing a report: Parker’s last summary. Inez in the bedroom, her bedroom now, he couldn’t get up the nerve to say: “Just let me sleep with you, we’ll see how things go, wait on the other.” She’d been moody–reading books on Raymond Dieterling, getting up nerve to ask the man for a job. The news on the guns didn’t bolster her–even though it meant no testimony. Evidence–her outside wounds had healed, there was no physical pain to distract her. She kept feeling it happen.