Madeleine stopped her caresses. “Did Linda mention me?”
“No, and I checked through the case file. There’s no mention of that note-leaving number you pulled. But we’ve got a policewoman planted in the girl’s cell to pump her, and if she blabs, you’re sunk.”
“I’m not worried, sugar. Linda probably doesn’t even remember me.”
I slid over to where I could eyeball Madeleine up close. Her lipstick was a bloody disarray, and I daubed at it with the pillow. “Babe, I’m withholding evidence for you. It’s a fair trade for what I’m getting, but it still spooks me. So you be damn sure you come clean. I’ll ask you one time. Is there anything you haven’t told me about you and Betty and Linda?”
Madeleine ran her fingers down my rib cage, exploring the welt scars I’d gotten in the Blanchard fight. “Sugar, Betty and I made love once, that one time we met last summer. I just did it to see what it would be like to be with a girl who looked so much like me.”
I felt like I was sinking; like the bed was dropping out from under me. Madeleine looked like she was at the end of a long tunnel, captured by some kind of weird camera trick. She said, “Bucky, that’s all of it, I swear that’s all of it,” her voice wobbling from deep nowhere. I got up and dressed, and it was only when I strapped on my .38 and cuffs that I felt like I’d quit treading quicksand.
Madeleine pleaded, “Stay, sugar, stay”; I went out the door before I could succumb. In my cruiser, I flipped on the two-way, looking for good sane cop noise to distract me. The dispatcher barked, “Code four all units at Crenshaw and Stocker. Clear robbery scene, two dead, suspect dead, unit 4-A-82 reports suspect is Raymond Douglas Nash, white male, object fugitive warrant number–”
I yanked the radio cord and hit the ignition, gas and siren in what felt like a single swipe. Pulling out, I heard Lee pacifying me with “Don’t tell me you don’t know the dead girl is a better piece of pie than Junior Nash”; speedballing downtown, I saw myself kowtowing to my partner’s ghosts even though I knew the Okie killer was a real live killer bogeyman. Jamming into the Hall parking lot, I saw Lee cajoling, wheedling, pushing, pulling and twisting at me to get his way; running up to the Bureau, I saw red.
I came out of the stairway yelling, “Blanchard!” Dick Cavanaugh, walking out of the bullpen, pointed to the bathroom. I kicked in the door; Lee was washing his hands in the sink.
He held them up to show me, blood oozing from cuts on the knuckles. “I beat up a wall. Penance for Nash.”
It wasn’t enough. I let the crimson loose all the way, smashing my best friend until my own hands were ruined and he was senseless at my feet.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Losing the first Bleichert-Blanchard fight got me local celebrity, Warrants and close to nine grand in cash; winning the rematch got me a sprained left wrist, two dislocated knuckles and a day in bed, woozy from an allergic reaction to the codeine pills Captain Jack gave me when he got word of the punch-out and saw me in my cubicle trying to tape up my fist. The only thing good that came of my “victory” was a twenty-four-hour respite from Elizabeth Short; the worst was yet to come–bracing Lee and Kay to see if I could salvage the three of us, without giving up my balls.
I drove to the house Wednesday afternoon, Dahlia kiss-off day and the one-week anniversary of the celebrity stiff’s first appearance. The confab with Thad Green was scheduled for 6:00 that evening, and if there was any way to work a patch job with Lee before then, it had to be tried.
The front door was standing open; the coffee table held a copy of the _Herald_, folded open to pages two and three. The detritus of my messy life was smeared all over it–the Dahlia, hatchet-faced Bobby De Witt homeward bound, Junior Nash shot by an off-duty sheriff’s dick after he knocked off a Jap greengrocer, killing the proprietor and his fourteen-year-old son.