The Naked Detective(35)

Except I didn't get to walk to tennis.

With a towel around my neck and my racquets slung jauntily across my shoulder, I came out of my house to find two enormous fellows loitering at the base of the porch steps. They were wearing dark and shiny pants that strained across their meaty thighs, and big loose shirts such as one might wear a holster under. They might have been brothers, or salt-and-pepper shakers; they looked that much alike.

I gave them a friendly smile and tried to walk around them. They didn't let me.

"Lydia Ortega wants to see you," said one of them. He said it with a heavy Conch accent, in which taut New England vowels are stretched like taffy by a Southern languor and made lilting by a hint of Spanish singsong. He sucked his teeth right after he said it. His top lip crawled around on his gums.

"Ah," I said. "And how is Lydia? Tell her I'll stop by later."

"She wants to see you now," said the other goon.

Like his partner, he had a piggy nose and the ungenerous expression of someone whose features were squeezed too close together. I tried to figure if these were faces belonging to the Ortega clan. A degenerate branch, maybe. I also could not help wondering how these two guys would look in snorkels.

Showing them my racquets, I said, "I'm sorry, but I have a tennis game right now."

The first goon said, "Welluh, I think you're gonna miss it."

"I can't miss it. It's against a guy who takes defaults."

To this the large men were insensitive. They stepped in a little closer; their shadows fell across me like a mildewed blanket. I shuffled my feet but didn't move. I was pleased with myself for not being more afraid, but I knew down deep that this wasn't courage, just befuddlement. I'd never been abducted before, and I didn't know how to act. Should I scream for help? Should I fight? Pummel them with slashing backhands?

Frankly, my chances of winning by force just didn't seem that good. I let out a long slow disappointed sigh, and vaguely wondered how I all of a sudden had got so popular, and why every confrontation seemed to end with me throwing up my hands and caving.

"Okay," I said at last. "Let's go talk to Lydia."





17


Driving crosstown with the finger-breakers, I really wished that I was on my bike.

On a bike you can smell what's blooming, yard by yard. You can feel when a puff of breeze starts up from nowhere, and when it fades away, dropping one by one the fronds it had lifted. I missed my bicycle pretty badly.

We reached the giant condo and took the elevator up.

Lydia met us at her door. If she'd ever been in mourning for her father, she was out of it already. She was wearing tight cream-colored pants and a red blouse that draped in some places and clung in others. I wanted to look more closely at the clingy parts, but sandwiched as I was between her goons, I felt a little shy about it. Lydia herself seemed to feel no such hesitation. She looked me up and down, then down and up, lingering, I thought, on the zone between my sweat socks and my shorts. The examination made me feel a little cheap, but I must admit I kind of liked it. With a nod toward my racquets and my towel, she said, "Ah, it's Mr. Casual."

Frankly, I thought it was a pretty good description and I had no comeback for it.

We went into the living room. The AC was blasting, of course, and my thighs were cold. Lydia motioned for me to sit. I avoided the sectional. I was afraid it might still be damp from last night's vodka, and besides, I wanted some space of my own. I settled gingerly into an armchair. The two goons stood on either side of me like giant bookends in the shape of snarling dogs.

Lydia sat opposite me and crossed her knees with a flourish. "So," she began. "You didn't tell me you're a private eye."

Reasonably, I said, "Wouldn't be very private if I told everyone."

"But now it's in the paper;" she pointed out.

"Yes," I said. "Ironic, isn't it?"

She frowned and looked down at her lap. "Drink?"

It was something after eleven in the morning. I shook my head. She looked a little disappointed. There went her chance to have one.

She got over it. She even smiled. "Pete," she said, "I'm going to ask you some questions. And today you're going to answer them."

I waited. At the edges of my vision, I could see the knobby asses and thick arms of the men who'd brought me here. Their scarred fingers and hairy knuckles struck me as pretty good reasons to cooperate. Yet from the start the interview did not go well.

"Who's your client?" Lydia began.

"I don't have a client."

This happened to be an honest answer but it clearly didn't satisfy.

"Don't bullshit me," she said. "You working for Mickey Veale?"

"Him again," I said. "Why would I be working for him?"