The Naked Detective(36)
"And don't start that question-with-a-question crap. What were you doing on that boat?"
"Looking for something. Next you're going to ask me what, and I'm going to tell you I don't know."
Lydia exhaled; her breath whistled slightly. She looked sideways at her flunkies and they squeezed in closer next to me. They didn't hit me, didn't touch me, and yet I had a certain airless feeling, like when you flatten the last bubble in a Ziploc bag.
With fraying patience, Lefty's daughter said, "Okay, let's start again. Tell me who you're working for."
I tried to clarify; I really did. "I'm working for myself," I said. "I almost had a client but he died. Okay?"
"And who was he?" she pressed.
I thought it should be obvious. "The guy whose boat I got arrested on."
Lydia looked a little bit confused. "The Polish guy?"
"He was Latvian."
Her face revealed a profound lack of interest in fine distinctions among the Baltic nations.
"But that isn't who I mean," I said. "I mean the first guy who owned the boat. The guy who robbed your father's place a couple years ago."
"That bartender? He's dead?"
I leaned very slowly forward in my chair. The goons, who might very well have been the killers, after all, leaned very slowly forward with me, like we were somehow glued together. I could not hold back from saying, "You want me to believe you didn't know?"
Time got very viscous when I said that. Expressions chased one another across Lydia Ortega's face. She looked surprised, or tried to. Then she seemed angry, cornered, and I thought she'd sic the thugs on me. The anger simmered down to what might almost have been hurt; the real or fake offense then girded itself with haughtiness, a brittle resolve to seize control again.
Which she did in an instant, simply by seeming to ignore the question altogether.
"Dead," she said. "Too bad ... So. You know he robbed my father. What else do you know about it?"
I wasn't ready for the way time revved back to normal speed, for the pace of her recovery. I felt a beat behind, and spoke too fast, trying to catch up. "I know your father was pissed off enough to have him killed," I said. "I know that, on his deathbed, he was still obsessed with getting back whatever it was that was stolen."
Smugly, but not without, I thought, a certain nervousness, Lydia said, "But you don't know what that was."
"No," I admitted, "I don't. All I know is that it was in a bank-deposit pouch. As for what's inside ... maybe you could tell me."
She smiled at me sweetly, then sat up straighter and snugged her blouse so that the cloth went translucent against her bra. "You're pressing your luck, Pete Amsterdam."
To that I had nothing to say. A moment passed. Lydia crossed her legs the other way. Her slacks rustled and I watched the creases rise and fall along her thighs. In a tone suddenly executive and brisk, she said, "Well, then I guess you'll work for me."
"Excuse me?"
"You have no client. You understand the importance of the pouch—"
"I don't want to work for you."
She balled her fists, pressed them down into her restless hips, and looked insulted. "And why not?"
The question boggled tact. Could I tell her that I didn't care to work for lunatics, or nymphos, or front-running suspects? "I just don't."
Ignoring that, she said, "What's your usual fee?"
In spite of everything, I almost laughed. My usual fee? My usual fee was bupkis.
Lydia said, "Two thousand a week okay?"
"It's not about the money."
She laughed. Her red mouth got very wide and strands of sinew rose up in her neck. Even the matched goons smiled. Why did people always find this such an uproarious remark?
While everyone was feeling blithe and cheery, I said lightly, "It was a woman who put the pouch into the safe. Your father said that himself. Can you think of who that woman might've been?"
Lydia's spasm of merriment stopped on a dime. There was something unwholesome in how quickly it ended, how radically it changed. She shot me a look that almost seemed to hiss.
The look was scary, but suddenly I knew what a real detective would say right at this moment, and I did my best to say it with firmness and certainty. "Come on now, Lydia, if you want us to work together, you have to be straight with me."
With utter finality, she said, "No, I don't."
So much for that.
"That's why I'm paying you," she went on. "So I can make the rules."
"And that's why I'm declining."
Your basic standoff. We allowed it a moment to sink in. Then Lydia settled back into flirty mode and gave her hair a winsome shake. She leaned far forward and did some slick maneuver that made her boobs swell. At the same moment, her goons put their huge hairy hands on the arms of my chair. A pretty graphic carrot and stick. "Pete," she purred, "it's so much better we stay friends."