Unzipped (13 page)

“You McMullen?” I wasn’t sure why my name seemed to amuse Mr. Angler, but his expression suggested that it did.

“Yes. I am.” My hand was beginning to feel self-conscious.

He nodded and his ebony eyes roved down my midline.

I withdrew the hand. “I appreciate your willingness to meet me.”

He gave me a lazy-eyed smile. It was the kind of expression one might see on the face of a cat. But there would invariably be feathers involved. “Was wonderin’ ’bout you,” he said. He had high cheekbones and arms that bulged like pythons beneath the short sleeves of his tomato red T. He nodded with a thin snort, and his gaze rested on my breasts for an elongated moment.

There’s a saying about not letting them see you sweat. I had never thought of it in a literal sense before. Always good to broaden one’s horizons, I thought, and wished to hell I had changed out of my office suit. Once again, I was hardly dressed provocatively, and yet I felt strangely exposed in the thin ivory rayon and Gucci sandals. But full-body armor might have been incongruous with the Hole’s decor—early pigsty. I had only given his bar of choice a cursory glance upon arrival, but I was feeling paler by the minute and beginning to suspect the clientele hadn’t originated on some drafty, northern isle, like that from which mine tended to descend.

Angler leisurely met my gaze. If I encountered him on a football field I’d run like hell. If I met him in a dark alley I’d be lucky not to soil myself.

He lifted one hand, motioning me toward the bowels of the establishment. I steadied my knees, slipped past him, and slid into a vinyl booth. He eased into the other side, his movements strangely graceful as he draped an arm across the back of his seat. “So you was Bomber’s shrink.” Something about the way he stretched his arm out across the cracked vinyl reminded me of Bomstad—before he had me racing around my desk like a broken-down greyhound. My bladder felt weak.

A half dozen pair of dark eyes were watching me. All male, all steady. I kept mine on Angler. As if I had a choice. I’d seen snake charmers with less magnetism. “His psychologist. Yes,” I said.

He nodded, still staring. I tried a smile. He didn’t reciprocate.

“Figures.”

“Really?” I tried to sound intrigued but casual. I may have managed coherent. “How so?”

His gaze dropped again. “You got tits.”

For a moment I was certain I had heard him wrong. In fact, I turned my head slightly to hear better. “I beg your—”

“Fucker couldn’t keep his dick in his jock long enough for sprints.”

I tried to think of some sort of response. A question, an answer, maybe a hand gesture. Nothing came to mind. I just stared, and before any earth shattering witticisms sprang into my head, a server appeared.

“Mr. Angler,” he said. I creaked my neck to the side. He was in his early twenties and had a million-watt smile. Even in my current state I could tell he beat the hell out of me in the adorable department. Had I not been sitting across the table from Conan the black barbarian I would have felt like an overgrown troll. “Good to see you again.”

Angler gave the waiter a curt nod. “Bring us a pitcher of draft, will ya, Jeff?”

“Right up,” said Cutie, and turned away.

The feminist in me cleared her throat before I could throttle her. Damn feminists! You can never trust them to keep their mouths shut. “I’ll have an iced tea.” Another couple pair of eyes turned toward me. Cutie raised his brows in unison with the corner of his lips. “With a twist of lemon,” I added. Because hell, if you’re determined to get your throat cut, why not do so with panache?

The waiter raised his gaze to Angler’s for just a moment, then turned away with a grin. Angler was staring at me.

“So . . .” It was as good a way to start as any, I thought, and tried to pretend this was just another business meeting. But the word “tits” had eroded the genial atmosphere. “How long did you know Mr. Bomstad?”

“How long you fuckin’ him?”

My mind bumped to a screeching halt, then scurried along like a rat in a maze. Should I cut and run, act offended, pretend I hadn’t heard him? After a brief internal debate, I settled on a professional tone—no nonsense, but patient. “As you probably know, Mr. Bomstad died in my office.”

His lips rose again, showing unreasonably white teeth and a questionable sense of humor. It gave me the chills. “So I got you to thank, maybe,” he said, and slipping his arm from the booth, propped both elbows on the table as he leaned toward me. “But that don’t answer my question.”

I blinked, my mind stalling. “I take it you weren’t overly fond of Mr. Bomstad?”

His eyes narrowed, his smile eased back. “Figure that out on your own, did you, Shorty?” His gaze shifted to my breasts again, lingered. “Must be why he hired you.” He pointed to his own cranium. “Sharp as a blade.” He watched me in silence for a moment. “Where’d you go to school? One of them fuckin’ ivy places?”

The professional image is hard to maintain when you’re sweating like a stallion. “I don’t believe my education has any correlation—”

He laughed, then leaned close and mimicked me. “‘I don’t believe my education—’ Shit, yeah. You’re the one he’d choose all right. ’Cuz he could sure as hell put on a show, could the Bomb. You musta thought you got yourself one of your own.”

Panic was beginning to bubble closer to the surface, and it was getting harder to breathe. “If I could just ask you a few questions—”

“Dinners at the country club.” He put his index finger and thumb together as if gripping crystal stemware. His forearms were as big as my neck. The air felt close and cloying. “Weekends on Daddy’s yacht.”

If I were in a session I’d say his mood was deteriorating rapidly. As it was, I was wondering what the hell I had been thinking coming here. I
would
like dinner at the country club. And a weekend on someone’s yacht sounded fabulous! I forced myself to breathe. In and out, just as if I expected to continue living. “There have been some discrepancies surrounding the circumstances of Bomstad’s death.”

“Sipping champagne out of your damned—”

“Shut the hell up!” I snapped. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Angler or me or one of the dozen patrons who stared at us from nearby, but I was too damned mad to care. “I didn’t work my ass off just to listen to some overpaid jock yak about something he knows nothing about.”

His eyebrows were somewhere in his hairline. “Shit, girl,” he said, and grinned again, but it was different now. A little less cannibalistic. He leaned back, stretched both arms along the booth, and seemed to relax a bit. “You got yourself a pair of balls on you.”

I cleared my throat, feeling stupid. My professors had been very clear about the necessity of keeping cool in high-stress situations. Dr. David would probably have known Bomstad’s shoe size by now and have Angler scheduled for anger therapy two times a week—Mondays and Wednesdays without fail. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit . . . overanxious since Mr. Bomstad’s death.”

“Overanxious.” He snorted as if mildly amused. “Yeah, I ’spect a dead guy in your office can do that.” He eyed me for moment, his gaze narrowing. “You have a thing for him?”

His expression was sober now. An honest question. I decided on an honest answer. Just to see how it went. “He’d been a client for several months. Came in for therapy every Thursday night.” I drew a careful breath and steadied my nerves. “The last time, he tried to rape me.”

Something shone in the recesses of Angler’s bottomless eyes. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I changed my mind about that dark alley scenario. If he ever accosted me, I’d just slit my wrists and get it over with. He could kill you with a glance anyway.

“Tried?” he said.

I exhaled carefully, keeping my hands steady. “I screamed, kneed him in the crotch . . .” I planned to go on, but it was harder than I expected. There seemed to be a lack of oxygen in the room.

Silence descended. I fiddled with my napkin, despite postgraduate education. Go figure.

“What you want to know?” he asked finally.

I glanced up. There was a change in his tone. But damned if I could figure out what it was. Still, my grandfather, a wizened little farmer from North Dakota, had admonished me more than once to make hay while the sun shines. “How well did you know him?” I asked.

Angler tilted his head a little, narrowing his eyes. “Know he fucked my old lady.”

The words “holy crap” zipped through my mind. I wasn’t sure if they reached my lips. “Did you . . . I mean . . .”

He watched me, eyes half closed. “Did I see them together? Yeah. At his place. She was humpin’ him like a bitch in heat.”

My eyeballs were popping out of my head. I felt like the other occupants could see through my skin. Role reversal sucks.

“I’m sorry.” It was the best I could do.

“I was sorry I couldn’t put a cap in his ass,” he said, but his voice hitched a little. He glanced away. I looked at my lap.

“But I got me a kid. Just turned four. Don’t need me no more time in the pen.”

“You’ve spent time in prison?”

“Eleven months in the ant farm. Fucker wasn’t worth going back there for.” His jaw flexed. I wondered if he had gotten any psychiatric help, but doubted if he’d appreciate my asking.

“Were you friends?”

He snorted. “What do I look like? A fuckin’ whack job?”

“Why were you at his house?”

The jaw flexed again. “He said he needed a ride. I was goin’ right by and he’d picked me up a couple times.”

I didn’t mention that it sounded like they were friends. “So . . .” My mind was spinning like a whirlpool. Bomstad was a piece of work. “He knew you were coming.”

“Fucker set the time up himself.”

“Any idea why?”

“You’re the minimizer.”

I gave him a glance. Then, “Ahh,” I said, “the shrink.”

Our drinks arrived. Beer and an ice tea. Getting drunk was sounding better. Unfortunately, it was not sounding smarter.

“Anything else I can get for you?” The waiter smiled at Angler, then at me, which meant he had to be gay. My luck didn’t run that way.

Angler rumbled something I couldn’t quite understand. I expressed my thanks. We nursed our drinks, careful not to look at each other for a minute.

“Did you know?” he asked finally. The question seemed like a complete thought. Luckily, he went on. “’Bout him. Did he tell you the real shit?”

I felt like an idiot. After all, I had been Bomstad’s therapist—there to analyze and assist. But when your client ends up deep-sixed in your office, you tend to wonder if you failed somewhere. Still, I parried. “Sometimes patients are so damaged they find it impossible to share the truth—even with their therapists. There’s no way to ascertain why, exactly, but they seem unable to admit the true—”

“What the fuck you talkin’ about, woman?”

I looked at him, feeling tired and wondering the same thing. “He didn’t give me the real shit,” I said. “Just a load of crap.”

He nodded, drank half a mug of beer, and nodded again. “You fuck ’im?”

I opened my mouth. He shook his head. “I gave you the real deal. You do me the same.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

“You want to?”

I opened my mouth again. He raised a brow as if he knew I was about to hedge. For a gladiator, he had excellent insight.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I did, kind of.”

He smiled. “You’re all right,” he said, downed enough beer to sink a battleship, and poured himself another. “For a white bitch.”

T
en minutes later, it was that ringing endorsement that kept me feeling warm and fuzzy as I made my way out of the bar. Angler hadn’t offered to walk me out, but he hadn’t ground me into sausage, either. So I figured I’d won. I glanced back at him and saw that our server had returned to the table. They were laughing together, and for one paranoid moment I wondered if the joke was at my expense, but it didn’t look like that, really. In fact, it almost looked like . . . flirting. Angler glanced up. His eyes were lazy, as if he’d known I’d be watching him. I dropped my gaze and scurried outside. Five or six young men were clustered by the door, opinionated, loud, and intoxicated. As far as I could tell, none of them shared my anemic color, but there was no shortage of intriguing coiffures. They eyed me with interest as I made my way between them. Smoke hung thick as jambalaya in the heavy darkness. California’s air quality might be toxic in large doses, but we weren’t about to allow nicotine to contaminate our bars, and even the young rebels weren’t brave enough to buck that system. But neither were they about to give up smoking. It was a filthy habit. Disgusting, I thought, and tried to remember the slides I’d seen in high school showing smokers’ lungs. But lungs looked pretty disgusting under any conditions, and the message had been rather lost on a teenager dying to look cool.

I breathed appreciatively of the blue haze and sidled between the addicts. They barely moved aside enough for me to squeeze through. In fact, one lanky fellow’s shoulder brushed my left breast. Maybe it was my own desensitizing profession that made me doubt it was an accident. Maybe I was naturally jaded, but either way I decided to forego all that lovely smoke and hustle toward my car.

I burst past the bubble of humanity and turned the corner. My chic but professional heels clicked against the walkway. The light dimmed somewhat as I marched into the parking lot, but I had left my newly repaired Saturn as close as possible. Still, I pulled my keys immediately out of my purse, an instinct honed from late nights at the Hog. My purse strap crossed my chest and hugged my bag snugly against my right hip.

I exhaled, relaxing a little. All right, the expedition hadn’t exactly been an afternoon poolside, but it had been informative. According to Angler, there was no shortage of people who hated Bomstad. In fact, if I were looking for a murder suspect, it sounded like I could start at the top of the Lions roster and work my way down. Which made me wonder if Rivera was doing just that, or if he had all his guns trained at me. Which—

“Kinda far from home, ain’t ya, honey pot?”

The words rasped against my ear. I spun around. Or rather, I tried to spin, but there was already an arm across my throat, dragging me backward. I screamed, but the sound was muffled by a hand. Fear strangled me as much as the attacker. I tried to think. To yell. My throat hurt with the effort. I tried to stab him with my heels. But he was carting me backward, making it all but impossible to stay on my feet, to keep up, to breathe. I clawed at his sleeve, trying to fight free, but my efforts had no effect.