Finnegan's Week (25 page)

The condo was tasteless enough to've been decorated by a Mafia wife. All it needed was a couple of candelabras, and a harp next to the pink marble fireplace.

While she was mixing him a vodka on the rocks, it came to him again, that worrisome moment on the elevator.

When she gave him the drink she pressed close and kissed him on the mouth.

“Mmmmm,” he said. “You taste like gin. Sweet.”

She smiled and said, “Take off your jacket?”

“In a bit,” he said, “but tell me something.”

“Sure, if it has nothing to do with age or money.”

“This is the
thirteenth
floor.”

She smiled and said, “We're not superstitious in this building. We have a thirteenth floor and I choose to live on it. Are
you
superstitious?”

“I didn't think I was,” Jules said. “I'm usually too secure to worry about such things, but there're some bizarre goings-on in my life these days.”

“Such as?”

“Things in my business that I don't understand. Inexplicable things're happening and I feel I'm losing control right when everything seemed to be crystallizing for me.”

“Well, catch up with the drinks and you'll forget all about boring business problems. Come over here.”

Jules followed Lou Ross to the view window. She took his hand and they clinked glasses. “See that?”

“Beautiful,” he said, not taking his eyes off her.

She loved it. “The view, I meant. The glorious harbor view.”

“That too,” he said.

“One question from me and then we'll drop the topic of business,” she said. “What
are
you gonna to do when your escrow closes?”

“I have an investment idea,” he said, “if I can scrape up a few partners.”

“Willis told me you've had problems in the past. That investors've lost money with you.”

“I lost more than they did. Hard times. It won't happen again. I've learned about plunging in too deeply.”

“Sometimes plunging in deeply pays off,” she said.

He grinned wryly, and said, “I'll remember that.”

“If our friendship …
blossoms
as I hope it will, I might consider investing in your next project, Jules.”

He leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder, saying, “You wouldn't be sorry.” Thinking, she could use some fade cream for that liver spot.

“Don't try to con me, pretty boy,” Lou Ross said. “I'm not a fool.”

“Do I look like a con man?”

“That's part of your charm,” she said. “I think we can be good for each other, but if I ever hear that you're involved in anything shady or remotely illegal, well … you
won't
be having any more Chinese suppers on the thirteenth floor. Nor will I entrust you with a dime of my money. Okay?”

Jules didn't like this at all. Losing control to a woman? An
older
woman? The kind he'd always been able to manipulate with ease? Her brown eyes didn't blink as they stared into his. She wore contacts, and up close, mood lighting or not, he decided she was at least sixty years old. Losing control to a goddamn senior citizen!

“Whatever you say, Lou,” he said, trying to smile earnestly. “I've had feelings for you since the first time we met.”

“I love a rogue,” she said, kissing him again, touching his lower lip with her gin-flavored tongue, “as long as he's not
too
much of a rogue.”

There it was again, the nagging little thought. He turned away for an instant and looked at the street below. “It doesn't bother you? Living on the thirteenth floor?”

“What's the matter, Jules?” she asked. “Are you afraid of omens?”

“Only lately,” he said. “Something strange is happening.”

“Is it mysterious?”

“Yeah, mysterious.”

“Do you love mysteries?”

“I've always hated them.”

“We can eat later,” she said. “I wanna show you the master bedroom.”

It was a nest of apple green and orange satin. The tufted chaise was covered in it, ditto for the king-sized bed, including the headboard. The drapes were done in canary taffeta, and there were some lovely Lalique pieces scattered about, but a nice alabaster lamp was lost in the mess of colors. When they stepped inside the dressing area she kicked off her pumps.

Jules did
not
perform well that evening. He couldn't stop thinking about the thirteenth floor.
Was
it an omen? Finally though, he blamed it on all the goddamn satin and the clash of vulgar tropical colors. It was like being trapped inside a coffin in Haiti.

C
HAPTER
20

F
in and Bobbie were having an amazed conversation by the time their third drinks arrived, and he was as amazed as she.

“Wait'll I tell Nell Salter tomorrow,” he said. “Nell talked to Jules Temple on the phone, and we both talked to the truckers, but
nobody
told us about you!”

“It's obvious they didn't want us to get together,” Bobbie said.

“The truckers I can understand,” he said. “Your instinct could be right. They might be your shoe thieves, but what about Jules Temple? Why didn't he tell Nell about you? I'd say it was relevant that two different investigators were interested in Green Earth for two different reasons tied together by the same employees.”

“Pretty weird stuff,” she said, slurring the
s
.

“Wanna have dinner, long as we're here?”

“Super,” she said, slurring again.

“My treat?”

“Dutch treat.”

“I'll flip you for it afterward.”

“Okay.”

The restaurant was about half filled by then, and Fin signaled for menus. Bobbie was still wearing the blazer over her pink cotton shell. While reading the menu she started to take off the jacket, then remembered her sidearm and kept it on.

“I can take the gun to the car for you,” he said, “if you're too warm in the jacket.”

“It's okay,” she said.

“A forty-five?”

“Yeah.”

“Guess the navy and marines won't abandon the forty-five till they get Star Wars lasers.”

“It's a pretty good gun though, the nineteen eleven model.”

“Awfully big gun for …”

“Don't say a little girl, okay?”

“Why?”

“I don't want people to think a me like that. Do you know when you ordered the last drink you said, ‘Ready for another,
kid?'
That's what you said.”

“Did I?”

“I'll be thirty in a few years and I'm a good investigator. I don't have your experience but my forty-five's loaded and I got two extra magazines in my purse and I'm not a kid or a little girl.”

Fin knew she was too polite and much too “navy” to have said that without a belly full of booze, but he was touched. “No, you're
not
a kid,” was all he could say, and zing went the strings of his heart!

Then she grinned sheepishly and said, “But we're not allowed to carry it with a round in the chamber so I couldn't win a quick-draw contest with anybody.”

After the waiter took their identical orders of sea bass, Fin decided that he might give an arm or maybe a leg to be ten years younger. Well, a toe maybe, the little one with fungus on it. If he was still forty he wouldn't feel that this infatuation was so preposterous. But of course the more he drank the
less
preposterous it seemed to be.

When she went to the rest room, he looked her over from the rear. She was a lot shorter than Nell Salter and maybe wore one size larger. Or did height have something to do with dress sizes? But she walked like a little athlete, and he was certain she had a very firm body. He
wanted
to be ashamed of himself.

The food came while Bobbie was gone, and he slipped his credit card to the waiter so she couldn't argue about paying. When she got back he stood up until she was seated. He could see that he scored big with that move.

“The fish is real good here,” she said. “Not too much junk on it.”

“I'm glad we came.”

“Me too,” she said, “except I always eat too much sourdough bread.”

“Just be glad they still got the kinda joints that
serve
sourdough bread. My third ex-wife used to drag me to places where they sold you smoked-duck pizza topped with papaya, or ahi dunked in raspberry mango sauce. Anyway, you're too young to worry about calories.”

“There you
go
again,” she said.

“Sorry.” Then to the waiter, “Bring us a nice bottle of white wine.
Not
Chardonnay. You pick it.” Turning to Bobbie he said, “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Chardonnay also reminds me of porcini mushrooms, tofu and blue-corn tortillas.
And
my third ex-wife who almost wrecked my health by smoking like Tallulah Bankhead.”

“Who?”

“If I said Bette Davis would it make any difference?”

“Who's she?”

“Never mind,” he said.

When the waiter brought the wine and a wine bucket, Fin said, “Let the lady taste it.”

She smiled self-consciously, but performed the ritual she'd learned from her former boyfriend. She examined the cork and sniffed the bouquet.

“Real good,” she told the waiter. “I
think
.”

Fin was surprised at how much wine she could put away. She guzzled it.

When it was time for dessert Bobbie pointed to one on the menu and said, “You know what this is?”

He read it and said, “Crème brûlée. Yeah, that's outta style now, so let's have it. All it is, it's your mom's egg custard with burnt sugar on top.”

“I got a theory about Jules Temple,” she said after he ordered two of the desserts.

“What's your theory?”

“That he didn't wanna tell you guys about me because …”

“Because what?”

“Don't laugh.”

“Okay.”

“Because he's in cahoots with those two truckers. Maybe he planned the job.”

Fin laughed.

“So much for promises,” Bobbie said.

“I'm sorry, Bobbie,” he said, “but I don't think somebody with a business as big as his would risk it for some
shoes
.”

“Two thousand pairs. They're worth a lotta money.”

“I know, but …”

“Okay, you're the old pro,” she said. “You tell me.”

“I can't,” he said. “There're pieces here that just don't make sense, no matter how I figure it.”

“The truckers stole the shoes, that much we know.”

“That much we
think
we know.”

“Same thing.”

“Not exactly.”

“Anyway,” she said, “they stole the shoes and drove them to T.J. That's what we think now, right?”

“That's what I think I think,” Fin said.

When the desserts came, she wolfed hers, forgetting about truckers and shoes. When she was finished there was a creamy little globule of custard clinging to her upper lip. It was so cute and she was so
young
that he didn't hesitate to reach across the table with his napkin and dab it off.

“Oops,” she said. “I'm such a doofus when I eat stuff like … What's this called again?”

“Crème brûlé. My third ex-wife was a fad-food type. Used to drag me to a Vietnamese deli. In America they're called pet shops. I think I ate Rin Tin Tin a couple of times.”

“What's Rin Tin Tin?”

“He was Lassie's role model.”

Then she said, “You have such perfect table manners. Me, I eat like a sailor.”

“You can thank my sisters for making me eat with the fork in my left hand, tines down. They trained me with a wooden spoon that was really a billy club. I was always having to sing or dance or recite poems for the entertainment of females. My childhood was a combination of
Great Expectations
and the Jackson Five.”

“You gonna eat your dessert?” Bobbie asked.

“No, you can have it.”

This time her smile had all the wattage of Las Vegas. Then she said, “You been married
three
times, huh?”

“So far,” he said. “Maybe the last one cured me. She needed a metal tag on her ear just so I could follow her migration habits.”

Three ex-wives didn't seem to faze her. “Okay, so back to the case,” she said, spooning out every last drop from his little dessert bowl. “They take the shoes to T.J. and sell them. Then they dump their load a waste down there.”

“You got a problem already,” Fin said.

“What's that?”

“They'd get very little money in T.J. for those shoes. Do you think Mister Jules Temple would risk his livelihood, his freedom, for such small profit?”

“You tell
me
then! How'd it go?”

Her eyes were bouncing boozily now, her pretty blue eyes. She wore no eyeliner, no mascara, and now her lipstick was gone. Fin thought she didn't need it, not with her robust good looks. He also thought she shouldn't drink any more unless he drove her home. “Do you live on the base?” he asked.

“No, I got an apartment in Coronado. Kinda expensive, but I like the privacy.”

“But your own car's on the base, right?”

“No, I rode my bike to work today. I usually do when the weather's this good.”

“Okay then, we can have an after-dinner brandy. I'll drop you at your apartment.”

She smiled and said, “Yeah, my bike's okay where it is till tomorrow.”

He'd forgotten how they smiled at that age. The old songs his sisters loved were right: This kid
beamed
.

“I wish I could solve your crime as easy as that,” Fin said.

“If I had your experience I bet I could do it.”

“Maybe I can come up with an answer by tomorrow,” he said. “I'd like to impress you.”