The Apostrophe Thief (15 page)

Marian read off the titles of the paintings and the names of the artists. “The cash value was probably inflated by the owners, but neither painting is in the Picasso class.”

“All right, we'll leave those for now. What else?”

“Xandria Priest's diary.”

“Ah,” said three voices.

Marian nodded. “That's it. You
have
to get your hands on that diary before anyone else does, Gloria—that's your story.”

“Forget the groupie pose,” Murtaugh said. “Tell Vasquez you came looking for him because somebody tipped you he might know about the diary.”

“What somebody?” Gloria asked.

“Kevin Kirby,” Marian said quickly. “You, ah, worked with him on a commercial.”

“Okay. But he's not going to lead me to the diary out of the kindness of his heart. I'll have to show him money.”

“Right,” Murtaugh said. “I'll arrange it. But he's not going to lead you to the diary in any event. If he buys your story, he'll probably want to set up a meet with Ernie Nordstrom, or just go get it from him—but don't let him put you off. You have to get that diary tonight. Make him think you're desperate.”

“Why?” Perlmutter asked. “I mean, what if Vasquez asks her why she wants it?”

“I tell him I can't tell him,” Gloria answered. “The story'll be more credible if I seem to be holding something back.” She looked at Murtaugh. “I got a good desperate-woman act.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Glad to hear it. All right, say he buys your story when you flash a wad of greenbacks at him. Then what? He tells you to meet him somewhere later and goes off alone to Ernie Nordstrom's place?”

The others nodded. “Seems reasonable,” Marian said.

“At which point it turns into a tail job,” the captain said. “And that's the part I don't like. It's got to be a two-tail. Larch is okay, but he'll know Sanchez. If he spots you—”

“Ah, Captain—” Perlmutter interrupted.

“No more overtime, Perlmutter,” Murtaugh said. “They'll have to handle it alone. But I don't like it.”

“No problem, Captain,” Gloria said. “I'll wear something flashy when I talk to him, but I'll have something dark on underneath. I can do a quick change in the ladies' room.”

They worked out a few more details until Murtaugh was finally satisfied. “That's it, then. Let's wrap this up tonight.”

“Solid,” Gloria said and waved goodbye.

Perlmutter followed her out. “Did anyone ever tell you you look like Whoopi Goldberg?”

Murtaugh watched them go. “Can she really make a convincing Hispanic?”

“Don't worry, Captain,” Marian reassured him, “tonight she'll be Chita Rivera. Something else—is there time to get a warrant?”

“Already in the works. We'll have it by this afternoon. Sergeant … proceed with caution. This Vasquez is an unknown factor. He could turn violent.”

“Gloria and I will both be careful,” Marian promised him. “Presumably Vasquez won't be armed, but we'll proceed as if he were.”

Murtaugh nodded. “That's what I like to hear.”

They were finished, so Marian got up and left the captain's office. Perlmutter was on the phone; he held up a hand to stop her. “Call for you.”

It was Holland; he wanted her to meet him for lunch.

10

The restaurant was not a new one, but Marian had never been there before—had not, in fact, known of its existence. Called Avec Plaisir, it offered some of the same menu items as Le Cirque, arguably the best restaurant in New York. But unlike Le Cirque, Avec Plaisir did not place its tables so close together as to force shoulder-to-shoulder dining. The food was delicious, the service prompt and nonintrusive, the atmosphere one of quiet composure. Avec Plaisir was, from every point of view, a find. Leave it to Holland to have found it.

Something was bothering him. Broody and distracted, he barely spoke during the first half of the meal. Eventually Marian figured it out: he'd brought her there to apologize. Apologies did not come easily to Holland.

Finally he made a stab at it. “Saturday night … after the play. When you wanted to go to the Column Left. To go dancing.”

“Yes?” It came out sounding more amused than encouraging.

“I, ah, I think I may have overreacted a trifle.”

“Hm. When will you know for sure?”

“Oh, very well, I
did
overreact, and I'm sorry. There.”

There
. “What made you so angry?” Marian asked. “You'd think we'd asked you to help bomb IBM.”

He leaned forward over his plate, as if to make sure she could hear him. “It was the music.”

That didn't make much sense. “What music?”

“The music that's played at places like Column Left. I say ‘music' because that's what other people call it, but it's not. It's uninventive noise, manufactured by the ungifted for the undiscriminating. It's music for people who don't understand music. Ear-shattering lullabies for the sleepwalking masses.”

“Gawrsh,” Marian said poker-faced. “I hadn't realized it was that iniquitous.”

His eyes narrowed. “A joke to you, but a serious matter to me. Music like that is an insult. And I was outraged that you did not acknowledge it as such.”

“Let's see if I understand you. You snubbed Kelly and walked out on me because you don't like the kind of music played at Column Left. Did I get that right?”

“Don't oversimplify.”

“Have you ever been to Column Left?”

He made a dismissive gesture. “All those places play down to their listeners. It doesn't matter whether it's pop or rock or newage.” Rhymed with “sewage.” “It's such
bad
music. And when you go to places like Column Left, you simply encourage them, don't you see.”

Marian made a noise of exasperation. “Holland, couldn't you have just said that? Couldn't you have said, ‘I don't like that kind of music and I don't want to go'? We all understand English.”

He spoke through clenched teeth. “That's what I'm apologizing for. The fact that I did
not
say that.”

She kept a poker face. “Oh. Well, I'm glad we got that straightened out. But you don't fool me. I know what you're really after. You want to come to The Esophagus with me tonight.”

He gave her a look of utter horror.

Marian laughed. “A joke. In fact, I want you to give me your word you will
not
come to The Esophagus tonight. I don't want to find you sitting in the next booth again, if The Esophagus has booths.”

“Butt out?”

“Yep. Cops aren't supposed to take dates along on busts.”

“Then you're going to wrap it up tonight?”

“Looks like it. It depends on whether Vasquez goes for some bait we're going to dangle in front of him. I think he'll bite.”

“Then you'll be … finished.”

With a shock Marian realized she'd not thought of that: if they found Ernie Nordstrom tonight, today was her last day of being a cop. She nodded dumbly.

“Excellent,” said Holland. “Are you through eating? I have something I want to show you.”

She finished her coffee and they left. Holland hailed a cab and gave an address on Lexington Avenue. After twelve minutes of Dodg'em, the taxi pulled up in front of a steel-and-glass tower.

“What's this?” Marian asked.

“Wait.”

The lobby of the building had no furnishings to distract from the august starkness of the marble walls and floors. In the otherwise unoccupied elevator, Holland pressed the button for the eighteenth floor.

“
What?
”

“Wait.”

The eighteenth floor had the same marble walls, but the floor was covered with deep charcoal-gray carpeting. Holland unlocked the door to Suite 1802 and gestured her inside. She stepped through and swallowed a gasp. The reception area alone was the size of her entire apartment. The place was new, modern, unspeakably expensive. The office suite was as yet unfurnished, so the place undoubtedly looked more spacious than it actually was; still …

Marian shot a sharp look at Holland. “I didn't know you had this kind of money.”

He shrugged. “Look in here.” He led her to a room in which the outer wall was glass. She could see the park, three blocks away. “This is your office,” Holland said. “If you want it.”

She was overwhelmed at the size of the gesture. But at the same time, she felt a flash of anger. “Holland—”

He held up a hand. “I'm not putting pressure on you. Of course there is no obligation on your part. None whatsoever. What I am trying to do, quite blatantly, is to tempt you. Is it working? You'd select your own furniture, set your own hours, turn down any case you didn't want—what else can I do to make this a dream job?” He paused. “I want you for my partner, Marian. Tell me what you want.”

She couldn't think what to say. When the silence was beginning to grow uncomfortable, she surprised both of them by walking over to Holland and wrapping her arms around him. They stood there a long moment, holding on to each other, not speaking. Finally she said, “Wait until I have tonight out of the way. Then I'll be free to decide.”

He didn't answer, but held on just a little tighter.

Marian was of the opinion that Gloria Sanchez's alternating of ethnic identities did not depend so much on the clothing she wore as on the way she wore them. Tuesday night Gloria had on a bright yellow tee with a safari jacket and jeans, plus enormous hoop earrings and lots of jangly bracelets. That morning's careful curls had been replaced by a hair style that could only be described as
wild
. Gloria had put on a lot of eye make-up; her nails were bright red and seemed to have grown an inch during the day. But most of all her walk was different, her hand gestures were different, the way she tilted her head while listening was different. She affected a Hispanic accent, but that didn't contribute to the overall picture so much as did the lilt in her voice when she spoke.

She's part chameleon
, Marian thought, feeling very plain next to her colorful friend. They'd left the car in a delivery zone near Cooper Square and were making their way down Bowery; still a half hour before midnight, the street was crowded and noisy. A lot of the street people looked like college kids, acting cool. A lot of the others … didn't. Music seeped/poured/pounded out of half a dozen places; a loud-voiced argument raged nearby. The temporary team of Larch and Sanchez had decided to wait until Waltzing Brünnhilde's final set of the evening, so Vasquez would be free afterward.

“Here 'tis,” said Gloria.

The management's sole attempt at exterior decoration was the hanging of a metal canopy on which the words “The Esophagus” had been painted. The frontage was quite narrow. “Must be a basement club,” Marian said.

Sure enough, the door opened to reveal a landing from which a staircase descended. A man dressed very much like Gloria collected a fee from them, and they made their way down into what at first appeared to be almost total darkness. When Marian's eyes had adjusted, she was not pleased at what she saw. The low lights couldn't hide all the peeling paint, the grease on the walls several layers thick, the dirt and the litter. “It's a rathole,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” Gloria agreed. “An' a busy rathole, too.” All the tables were taken; they made their way to the bar where one stool stood empty; Marian told Gloria to take it and squeezed in between her and a skinny young fellow who had his back turned.

Waiting for the next set, the crowd was good-naturedly boisterous and noisy. Marian checked her watch. “Still a few more minutes.”

Gloria was reading the signs behind the bar. “I don' beliv it—yuppie beer for seventy-fi' cents? Hey, mon, bring me a Rollin' Rock!”

“Make it two,” Marian said.

Now that her eyes had adjusted fully, Marian could see the room they were in was a large one, extending back perhaps even farther than the original depth of the building. The stage was opposite the bar at the far end; it was shallow and undecorated but surrounded by a small fortune in lighting equipment, none of it in use at the moment. The brightest thing in the room was a glowing red Exit sign on the left.

“Roberts was out sick today,” Gloria said unexpectedly. “So guess who I got partnered with.”

“Not Foley?”

Gloria made a face and nodded. “We went to check out a drive-by shootin'—nobuddy injured, jus' a lot of broken glass and damage. Your former partner gets it into his so-called mind that a new gang war's about to bust out. So he wan's to start roustin' all the gang members he knows, stir 'em up a little, you know? I kep' tellin' him he'd
start
a war, but he wouldn' listen. I had to go to Captain DiFalco to stop 'im.”

“The man's a menace.” Marian was quiet a moment, thinking of a time Foley's undependability had put her in danger. “Is DiFalco going to do anything about him?”

“Naw. We got a manpower shortage, remember?” Gloria grinned. “We don' even have a sergeant now.”

“Hm.”

Suddenly the stage lights blazed on, the stage erupted in a cacophony of electronic sound, and the audience started cheering and shouting. Waltzing Brünnhilde had arrived.

Marian looked, blinked, looked again. The four men on the stage were attired—if that was the word—in Jockey shorts.

“Why, those boys don' have no pants on!” Gloria yelled delightedly.

The band ripped into a number that drowned out every other sound in the place. The lead singer was wearing Beetle Bailey boots and a black shirt that had only the bottom button fastened. He swung his head and his long black hair swept over the dead white skin of his exposed chest. That plus garish make-up gave him a vampirish look, a look that the bare white legs somehow enhanced. Two of the other band members were wearing sneakers and the fourth had on sandals; all three wore plain shirts that didn't distract from the main man's Dracula persona. Two of the band had ponytails … but one of them was blond. Marian looked over the heads of the audience at the other one, the man they'd come to find. Vasquez was every bit as hunkish as Kevin Kirby but without the other man's attractive facial features and personable manner. Vasquez was big, heavily muscled, unsmiling. He held his guitar like a weapon, and he looked dangerous.