Mickey had been shrewd in listing an address on Sepulveda. According to the Thomas Guide, there are endless variations. Sepulveda Boulevard seems to spring forth in the north end of the San Fernando Valley. The street then traces a line south, often hugging the San Diego Freeway, all the way to Long Beach. The North and South Sepulveda designations seem to jump back and forth, claiming ever-shifting sections of the street as it winds from township to township. There are East and West Sepulveda Boulevards, a Sepulveda Lane, Sepulveda Place, Sepulveda Street, Sepulveda Eastway, East Sepulveda Fire Road, Sepulveda Westway. By juggling the numbers, Mickey could just about ensure that no one was ever going to pinpoint his exact location. As it happened, I'd collected three variations of the same four digits: 805, 085, and 580.
I placed the addresses in numerical order, beginning with 085, moving on to 580, and then to 805. I reasoned that even if finances had forced him to sell his car, he still had to get around. He might use a bike or public transportation traveling to and from his place of employment, unless, of course, he'd also lost his job.
He probably did his shopping close to home, frequenting the local restaurants when he felt too lazy to prepare a meal, which (if the past was any indication) was most of the time. The detectives had mentioned the shooting had occurred in a commercial district with lots of bars close by. Already in my mind, a mental picture was forming. Mickey'd never owned a house, so I was looking for a rental, and nothing lavish, if I knew him.
I cruised the endless blocks of Sepulveda I'd selected. While this wasn't L.A. at its worst, the route was hardly scenic. There were billboards everywhere. Countless telephone poles intersected the skyline, dense strands of wire stretching in all directions. I passed gas stations, a print and copy shop, three animal hospitals, a 7-Eleven, a discount tire establishment. I watched the numbers climb, from a car wash to a sign company, from a construction site to a quick lube to an auto body shop. In this area, if you weren't in the market for lumber or fast food, you could always buy discount leather or stock up at the Party Smarty for your entertaining needs.
It wasn't until I reached the 800 block in Culver City that I sensed this was Mickey's turf. The H-shaped three-story apartment building at 805 had a rough plaster exterior, painted drab gray, with sagging galleries and aluminum sliding glass doors that looked like they'd be difficult to open. Stains, shaped like stalactites, streaked the stucco along the roofline. Weeds grew up through cracks in the concrete. A dry gully ran along the south side, choked with boulders and refuse. The wire fence marking the property line now leaned against the side of the apartment complex in a tangle of dead shrubs.
I drove past, scanning the nearest intersection, where I saw an electronics shop, a photo lab, a paint store, a mini-mart, a pool hall, a twenty-four-hour coffee shop, two bars, and a Chinese restaurant, Mickey's favorite. I spotted a driveway, and at the first break in traffic I did a turn-around, coming up on the right side of the street in front of 805. I found a parking place two doors away, turned off the engine, and sat in my car, checking out the ambience, if the concept isn't too grand. The building itself was similar to one Mickey occupied when the two of us first met. I'd been appalled then, as I was now, by his indifference to his environment. The sign out front specified studios and 1 amp; bedroom apartments NOW RENTING, as if this were late-breaking news.
The landscaping consisted of a cluster of banana palms with dark green battered leaves that looked like they'd been slashed by a machete. Traffic in the area was heavy, and I found myself watching the cars passing in both directions, wondering if Detective Aldo was going to drive by and catch me at the scene. The very thought made me squirm. It wasn't as though he'd forbidden me to make an appearance, but he wouldn't be happy if he figured it out.
I started the car and pulled away from the curb. I drove down half a block and turned right at the first corner and then right again, into the alley that ran behind the row of buildings and dead-ended at the gully. Someone had compressed the buckling wire fence so that one could cross the boundary and ease down into the ditch. I pulled in beside the garbage bins and made another U-turn, so that I now faced the alley entrance. I took a minute to grab my fanny pack from the backseat and transfer my key picks, a penlight, my mini-tool kit, and a pair of rubber gloves. I clipped the fanny pack around my waist, locked the car, and got out.
I padded down the walkway between Mickey's building and the apartment complex next door. At night this area would be dark, since the exterior light fixtures were either dangling or missing altogether. A line of gray-painted water meters was planted along the side, real shin-bangers. By straining only slightlywhich is to say, jumping up and down like a Zulu-I was able to peek in the windows through the wroughtiron burglar bars. Most of what I saw were bedrooms barely large enough for a king-sized bed. The occupants seemed to use the windowsills to display an assortment of homely items: cracker boxes, framed snapshots, mayonnaise jars filled to capacity with foilwrapped condoms. In one unit, someone was nurturing a handsome marijuana plant.
Mickey's apartment building didn't have a lobby, but an alcove in the front stairwell housed a series of metal mailboxes with names neatly embossed on short lengths of red, blue, and yellow plastic. Even Mickey couldn't buck post office regulations. By counting boxes, I knew there were twenty apartments distributed on three floors, but I had no way to guess how many flats were the one, and two-bedroom units and how many were studios. His was unit, H. The manager was on the ground floor in 1, A to my immediate right.
The name on the mailbox read HATFIELD, B amp; C. I decided to postpone contact until after I'd reconnoitered Mickey's place.
I went up the front stairs to the second floor, following the progression of front doors and picture windows that graced each flat. There were no burglar bars up here. Mickey's was the corner unit at the rear of the building on the right-hand side. There was a neat yellow X of crime-scene tape across his door. An official caution had been affixed advising of the countless hideous repercussions if crime-scene sanctity was breached. The gallery continued around the corner and ran along the back of the building, so that Mickey's rear windows overlooked the alleyway below and the gully to the right. A second set of stairs had been tacked on back here, probably to bring the building into compliance with fire department codes. Mickey probably considered this a mixed blessing. While the privacy offered a potential intruder unimpeded access to his windows, it also gave Mickey an easy means of egress. When I peered over the railing, I could see my VW below like a faithful steed, so close I could have leapt down and galloped off at a moment's notice.
All Mickey's sliding glass windows were secured. Knowing him, he'd tucked heavy wooden dowels into the inside track so the windows would only slide back a scant six inches. The lock on his front door, however, seemed to be identical to those on the neighboring apartments. The manager must have discouraged swapping out the standard model for something more effective. I studied my surroundings. The alley was deserted and I saw no signs of any other tenant. I slipped on my rubber gloves and went to work with my pick. A friend in Houston had recently sent me a keen toy: a battery-operated pick that, once mastered, worked with gratifying efficiency. It had taken me awhile to get the hang of it, but I'd practiced on Henry's door until I had the technique down pat.
The door yielded to my efforts in less than fifteen seconds, the pick making no more noise than an electric toothbrush. I tucked the pick back in my fanny pack, loosened one end of the yellow tape, and stepped over the doorsill, turning only long enough to resecure the tape through the gap before I closed the door behind me. I checked my watch, allowing myself thirty minutes for the search. I figured if a neighbor had observed me breaking in, it would take the L.A. cops at least that long to respond to the call.
The interior was dim. Mickey's curtains were drawn, and sunlight was further blocked by the six-story building across the alley. Mickey still smoked. Stale fumes hung in the air, having permeated the carpet, the drapes, and all the heavy upholstered furniture. I checked the cigarette butts that had been left in the ashtrays, along with an array of wooden kitchen matches. All were the same Camel filters he'd been smoking for years, and none bore the telltale red rim suggesting female companionship. An Elmore Leonard paperback had been left on the arm of the sofa, open at the midpoint. Mickey had introduced me to Elmore Leonard and Len Deighton. In turn, I'd told him about Dick Francis, though I'd never known if he read the British author with the same pleasure I did. The walls were done in a temporary-looking pine paneling that was nearly sticky with the residue of cigarette tars. The living room and dining room formed an L. The furniture was clumsy-big overstuffed pieces of the sort you'd buy at a flea market or pick off the sidewalk, like an alley fairy, on collection day. There was a shredder against one wall, but the bin had been emptied. In Mickey's view of the world, no scrap of paper, no receipt, and no piece of correspondence should go into the trash without being scissored into tiny pieces. He probably dumped the bin at frequent intervals, using more than one trash can, so that a thief breaking in wouldn't have the means to reassemble vital documents. No doubt about it, the man was nuts.
I moved into the dining area, past four mismatched chairs and a plain wooden table that was littered with mail. I paused, picking through the stack that was piled at one end. I was careful not to sort the envelopes, though my natural inclination was to separate the bills from the junk. I spotted a number of bank statements, but there were no personal letters, no catalogs, and no credit card bills. I had little interest in his utility bills. What did I care how much electricity he used? I longed for a phone bill, but there were none to be found. The cops had lifted those. I picked up the handful of bank statements and slipped them down the front of my jeans into my underpants, where they formed a crackling paper girdle. I'd look at them later when I was home again. None of the other bills seemed useful so I left them where they were. Best to keep the federal mail-tampering convictions to a minimum.
Off the dining area, I entered a galley-style kitchen so small I could reach the far wall in two steps. Stove, apartment-sized refrigerator, sink, microwave oven. The only kitchen window was small and looked out onto the alley. On the counter, he kept a round glass fishbowl into which he tossed his extra packets of matches at the end of the night, a road map of his journey from bar to bar. The upper cabinets revealed a modest collection of Melamine plates and coffee mugs, plus the basic staples: dry cereal, powdered milk, sugar, a few condiments, paper napkins, and two sealed bottles of Early Times bourbon. The cupboards below were packed back to front with canned goods: soups, beans, Spam, tuna packed in oil, tamales, SpaghettiO's, applesauce, evaporated milk. In the storage space under the kitchen sink, I found an empty bourbon bottle in the trash. Tucked in among the pipes, I counted ten five-gallon containers of bottled water. This was Mickey's survival stock in case a war broke out or L.A. was invaded by extraterrestrials. The refrigerator was filled with things that smelled bad. Mickey had tossed in half-eaten items without the proper wrapping, which resulted in dark chunks of hardening Cheddar cheese, a greening potato covered with wartlike sprouts, and half an air-dried tomato drawing in on itself.
I retraced my steps. To the left of the living room was the door to the bedroom, with a closet and undersized bath beyond. The chest of drawers was filled with the usual jockey shorts and T-shirts, socks, handkerchiefs. The bed-table drawer contained some interesting items: a woman's diaphragm and a small spray bottle of cologne with a partial price label on the bottom. The cologne had apparently been purchased from a Robinson's Department Store, since I could still make out a portion of the identifying tag. I removed the top and took a whiff. Heavy on the Lily of the valley that I remembered from the early days of our romance. Mickey's mother must have worn something similar. I remembered how he'd lay his lips in the hollow of my throat when I was wearing it myself. I put the cologne bottle down. There was a tissue paper packet about the size of a stick of gum. I unfolded the paper and picked up a thin gold chain threaded through the clasp of a small gold heart locket with an ever-so-tiny rose enameled in the center. Not to sound cynical, but Mickey'd given me one just like this about a week into our affair. Some men do that, find a gimmick or shtick that works once, the gift of a single red rose-and recycle the same gesture with every woman who comes along.
In a cleaning bag, he'd hung two dark blue uniforms with patches on the sleeves. I slid a hand up under the bag and checked one of the light blue patches. Pacific Coast Security was stitched in gold around the rim. Also hanging in the closet were a couple of sport coats, six dress shirts, four pairs of blue jeans, two pairs of chinos, a pair of dark pants, and a black leather jacket I knew very well indeed. This was the jacket Mickey wore the first time we went out, the jacket he was wearing when he kissed me the first time. I was still living with Aunt Gin, so there was no way we could go inside to misbehave. Mickey backed me up against the trailer door, the leather in his jacket making a characteristic creaking sound. The kiss went on so long we both sank down along the frame. I was Eva Marie Saint with Marlon Brando. On the Waterfront which is still one of the best screen kisses in recorded history. Not like love scenes nowadays where you watch the guy stick his tongue down the girl's throat, trying to activate her gag reflex. Mickey and I might've made love right there on the doorstep except we'd have been visible to everybody in the trailer park, which we knew was bad form, making us vulnerable to arrest.
I shook my head and closed the closet door while a sexual shiver ran down my frame. I tried the door next to it, which seemed to be an exit onto the rear gallery. The lock here was new. There was no key in the deadbolt, but it probably wasn't far. Mickey wouldn't make it easy for someone breaking into the apartment, but he'd want the key handy in case of fire or earthquake. I pivoted, letting my gaze move across the area, remembering his tricks. I knelt and felt my way along the edge of the carpeting. When I reached the corner, I gave the loosened carpet a tug. I lifted that section and plucked the key from its hiding place. I unlocked the back door and left it temporarily ajar.
I went back to the bedroom door and stood there, looking out at the living room. The cops had doubtless cruised through here once, sealing the apartment afterward, pending a more thorough investigation. I tried to see the place as they had, and then I looked at it again from personal experience. With Mickey, the question wasn't so much what was visible as what wasn't. This was a man who lived in a constant state of readiness and, as far as I could tell, his fears had only accelerated in the past fourteen years. In the absence of global conflict, he lived in anticipation of civil insurrection: unruly hordes who would overrun the building, breaking into every unit, clamoring for food, water, and other valuables like toilet paper. So where were his weapons? How did he intend to defend himself?
I tried the kitchen first, tapping along the baseboards for the sound of hollow spaces. I'd seen him install other "safes", compartments with false fronts where you could tuck cash, guns, and ammunition. I started with the kitchen sink. I took out all the gallon water containers, exposing the "floor" and rear wall of stained plywood. I shone the penlight from top to bottom, side to side. I could see four screw heads, one set in each corner, darkened to match the panel. I unbuckled my fanny pack, opened my mini-tool kit, took out a battery-operated drill, and set about removing screws. A person could develop carpal tunnel syndrome doing this the old-fashioned way. Once the screws were out, the partition yielded to gentle pressure, exposing a space that was six to eight deep. Four handguns were mounted in a rack on the rear wall, along with boxes of ammunition. I replaced the panel with care and continued my search. I considered this a fact-finding mission. Like the LAPD detectives, my prime purpose was determining just why Mickey'd been shot. I didn't want to remove anything of his unless I had to. Better to leave the items undisturbed where possible.
At the end of thirty minutes, I'd uncovered three small recesses hollowed out behind the switch plates in the living room. Each contained a packet of identification papers: birth certificate, driver's license, social security card, credit cards, and currency. Emmett Vanover. Delbert Amburgey. Clyde Byler. None were names I recognized, and I assumed he'd invented them or borrowed them from deceased persons whose vitals he'd gleaned from public records. In every bogus document, Mickey's photo had been inserted. I left everything where it was and moved on. I'd also discovered that the back of the couch could be removed to reveal a space large enough to hide in. The paneling, while cheap, turned out to be securely fastened to the walls, but I did find tight rolls of crisp twenty-dollar bills tucked into either end of the big metal curtain rods in the living and dining rooms. A quick count suggested close to twelve hundred dollars.
In the bathroom, I removed a length of PVC, two inches in diameter, that had been set into the wall adjacent to the water lines. The pipe contained a handful of gold coins. Again, I left the stash where it was and carefully realigned the pipe in its original site. The only place I bombed out was one of his favorites, that being down the bathtub drain. He liked to drill a hole in the rubber stopper and run a chain up through the plug. He'd attach the relevant item to the chain, which he then left dangling down the drain with all the slimy hair and soap scum. This was usually where he kept his safe deposit key. I took a minute to lean over the rim of the tub. The rubber stopper was attached by a chain to the overflow outlet, but when I flashed the light into the drain itself, there was nothing hanging down the hole. Well, shoot. I consoled myself with the tact that I'd otherwise done well. Mickey probably had other secret repositories, maybe new ones I hadn't 1even thought about-but this was the best I could do in the time allotted. For now, it was time to clear the premises.
I let myself out the back door, using Mickey's key to lock the door behind me. I slipped the key in my pocket, stripped off my rubber gloves, and zipped them into my pack. I went downstairs and knocked at the manager's front door. I'd assumed that B amp; C Hatfield were a married couple, but the occupants turned out to be sisters. The woman who opened the door had to be in her eighties. "Yes?"
She was heavy through the middle, with a generously weighted bosom. She wore a sleeveless cotton sundress with most of the color washed away. The fabric reminded me of old quilts, a flour-sacking floral print in tones of pale blue and pink. Her breasts were pillowy, powdered with talcum, like two domes of bread dough proofing in a bowl. Her upper arms were soft, and I could see her stockings were rolled down below her knees. She wore slippers with a half-moon cut out of one to accommodate a bunion.
I said, "Mrs. Hatfield?"
"I'm Cordia," she said cautiously. "May I help you? "
"I hope so. I'd like to talk to you about Mickey Magruder, the tenant in Two-H."
She fixed me with a pair of watery blue eyes. "He was shot last week."
"I'm aware of that. I just came from the hospital, where I was visiting him."
"Are you the police detective?"
"I'm an old friend."
She stared at me, her blue eyes penetrating.
"Well, actually, I'm his ex-wife," I amended, in response to her gaze.
"I saw you park in the alley while I was sweeping out the laundry room."
I said, "Ah."
"Was everything in order?"
"Where?"
"Two-H. Mr. Magruder's place. You were up there quite a while. Thirty-two minutes by my watch."
"Fine. No problem. Of course, I didn't go in."
"No?"
"There was crime scene tape across the door," I said.
"Place was posted, too. Big police warning about the penalties."I saw that."
She waited. I would have continued, but my mind was blank. My thought process had shorted out, catching me in the space between truth and lies. I felt like an actor who'd forgotten her lines. I couldn't for the life of me think what to say next.
"Are you interested in renting?" she prompted.
"Renting?"Apartment Two-H. I assume that's why you went up.
"Oh. Oh, sure. Good plan. I like the area."
"You do. Well, perhaps we could let you know if the unit becomes available. Would you care to come in and complete an application? You seem discombobulated. Perhaps a drink of water?"
"I'd appreciate that."
I entered the apartment, stepping directly into the kitchen. I felt like I'd slipped into another world. Chicken was stewing on the back of the stove. A second woman, roughly the same age, sat at a round oak table with a deck of cards. To my right, I could see a formal dining room: mahogany table and chairs, with a matching hutch stacked with dishes. Clearly, the floor plan was entirely different from Mickey's. The temperature on the thermostat must have been set at eighty, and the TV on the kitchen counter was blaring stock market quotes at top volume. Neither Cordia nor her sister seemed to be watching the screen. "I'll get you the application," she said. "This is my sister, Belmira."
"On second thought, why don't I take the application home with me? I can fill it out and send it back. It'll be simpler that way."
"Suit yourself. Have a seat."
I pulled out a chair and sat down across from Belmira, who was shuffling a tarot deck. Cordia went to the kitchen sink and let the faucet water run cold before she filled a glass. She handed me the water and then crossed to a kitchen drawer, where she extracted an application. She returned to her seat, handed me the paper, and picked up a length of multicolored knitting, six inches wide and at least fifteen inches long.
I took my time with the water. I made a study of the application, trying to compose myself. What was wrong with me? My career as a liar was being seriously undermined. Meanwhile, neither sister questioned my lingering presence.
Cordia said, "Belmira claims she's a witch, though you couldn't prove it by me." She peered toward the dining room. "Dorothy's around here someplace. Where'd she go, Bel? I haven't seen her for an hour."
"She's in the bathroom," Bel said, and turned to me. "I didn't catch your name, dear."
"Oh, sorry. I'm Kinsey. Nice meeting you."
"Nice to meet you, too." Her hair was sparse, a flyaway white with lots of pink scalp showing through. Under her dark print housedress, her shoulders were narrow and bony, her wrists as flat and thin as the handles on two soup ladles. "How're you today?" she asked shyly, as she pulled the tarot deck together. Four of her teeth were gold.
"I'm fine. What about yourself?" "I'm real good." She plucked a card from the deck and held it up, showing me the face. "The Page of Swords. That's you."
Cordia said, "Bel."
"Well, it's true. This is the second time I pulled it. I shuffled the deck and drew this as soon as she stepped in, and then I drew it again."
"Well, draw something else. She's not interested."
I said, "Tell me about your names. Those are new to me."
Bel said, "Mother made ours up. There were six of us girls and she named us in alphabetical order: Amelia, Belmira, Cordia, Dorothy, Edith, and Faye. Cordi and I are the last two left."
"What about Dorothy?"
"She'll be along soon. She loves company."
Cordia said, "Bel will start telling your fortune any minute now. I'm warning you, once she gets on it, it's hard to get her off. just ignore her. That's what I do. You don't have to worry about hurting her feelings."
"Yes, she does," Bel said feebly.
"Are you good at telling fortunes?"
Cordia cut in. "Not especially, but even a blind hog comes across an acorn now and then." She had taken up her knitting, which she held to the light, her head tilted slightly as the needles tucked in and out. The narrow piece of knitting trailed halfway down her front. "I'm making a knee wrap, in case you're wondering."
My Aunt Gin taught me to knit when I was six years old, probably to distract me in the early evening hours. She claimed it was a skill that fostered patience and eye-hand coordination. Now, as I watched, I could see that Cordia had dropped a few stitches about six rows back. The loops, like tiny sailors washed overboard, were receding in the wake of the knitting as each new row was added. I was about to mention it when a large white cat appeared in the doorway. She had a flat Persian face. She stopped when she saw me and stared in apparent wonderment. I'd seen a cat like that once before: long-haired, pure white, one green eye and one blue.
Bel smiled at the sight of her. "Here she is."
"That's Dorothy," Cordia said. "We call her Dort for short. Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I've never sorted that one through."
"We hadn't either till this kitty came along. Dorothy always swore she'd be in touch with us from the Other Side. Told us for years, she'd find a way to come back.
Then, lo and behold, the neighbor's cat had a litter the very day she passed on. This was the only female, and she looks just like Dort. The white hair, the one blue eye, the one green. Same personality, same behavior. Sociable, pushy, independent."
Bel chimed in. "The cat even passes wind the way Dorothy did. Silent but deadly. Sometimes we have to get up and leave the room."
I pointed to the knitting. "It looks like you dropped some stitches." I leaned forward and touched a finger to the errant loops. "If you have a crochet hook, I can coax them up the line for you."
"Would you? I'd like that. Your eyes are bound to be better than mine." Cordia bent over and reached into her knitting bag. "Let's see what I've got here. Will this do?" She offered me a J hook.
"That's perfect." While I began the slow task of working the dropped stitches up through the rows, the cat picked her way across the floor and jumped up in my lap. I jerked the knitting up and said, "Whoa!" Dorothy must have weighed twenty pounds. She turned her backside to me and stuck her tail in the air like a pump handle, exhibiting her little spigot while she marched in place.
"She never does that. I don't know what's got into her. She must like you," Belmira said, turning up cards as she spoke.
"I'm thrilled."
"Well, would you look at this? The Ten of Wands, reversed." Bel was laying out a reading. She placed the Ten of Wands with the other cards on the table in some mysterious configuration. The card she'd assigned me, the Page of Swords, had now been covered by the Moon.
I freed one hand and cranked Dorothy's tail down, securing it with my right arm as I pointed to the cards. "What's that one mean?" I thought the Moon might be good, but the sisters exchanged a look that made me think otherwise.
Cordia said, "I told you she'd do this."
"The Moon stands for hidden enemies, dear. Danger, darkness, and terror. Not too good."
"No kidding."
She pointed to a card. "The Ten of Wands, reversed, represents obstacles, difficulties, and intrigues. And this one, the Hanged Man, represents the best you can hope for. "
"She doesn't want to hear that, Bel."
"I do. I can handle it."
"This card crowns you."
"What's that? I'm afraid to ask," I said.
"Oh, the Hanged Man is good. He represents wisdom, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy. This is what you want, but it isn't yours at present."
"She's trying to help with my knitting. You might at least leave her be until she finishes."
"I can do both," I said. Though, truthfully, Dorothy's presence was making the task difficult. The cat had rotated in my lap and now seemed intent on smelling my breath. She extended her nose daintily. I paused and breathed through my mouth for her. "What's that card?" I asked, while she butted my chin with her head.
"The Knight of Swords, which is placed at your feet. This is your own, what you have to work with. Skill, bravery, capacity, enmity, wrath, war, destruction."
"The wrath part sounds good."
"Not overall," Bel corrected. "Overall, you're screwed. You see this one? This card stands for pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation."
"Well, dang."
"Exactly. I'd say you're up poop creek without a roll of TP." Belmira turned up another card.
Dorothy climbed up on my chest, purring. She put her face in mine and we stared at each other. I glanced back at the tarot deck. Even I, believing none of this, could see the trouble I was in. Aside from the Hanged Man, there was a fellow burdened with heavy sticks, yet another fellow face down on the ground with ten swords protruding from his back. The card for judgment didn't seem to bode well either, and then there was the Nine of Wands, which showed a crankylooking man clinging to a staff, eight staves in a line behind him. That card was followed by a heart pierced with three swords, rain and clouds above.
By then, I'd succeeded in rescuing the lost stitches, and I reached around Dorothy to return the knitting to Cordia. I thought it was time to get down to business, so I asked Cordia what she could tell me about Mickey.
"I can't say I know all that much about him. He was extremely private. He worked as a bank guard until he lost his job in February. I used to see him going out in his uniform. He looked handsome, I must say.
"What happened?"
"About what?"
"How'd he lose his job?"
"He drank. You must have known that if you were married to him. Nine in the morning, he reeked of alcohol. I don't think he drank at that hour. This was left from the night before, fumes pouring through his skin. He never staggered, and I never once heard him slur his words. He wasn't loud or mean. He was always a gentleman, but he was losing ground."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I knew he drank, but it's hard to believe he reached a point where drinking interfered with his work. He was a cop in the old days when I was married to him."
"Is that right," she said.
"Was there anything else you could tell me about him? "
"He was quiet, no parties. Paid his rent on time until the last few months. No visitors except for the nasty fellow with all the chains."
I turned my attention from Dorothy. "Chains?"
"One of those motorcycle types: studs and black leather. He had a cowboy mentality, swaggered when he walked. Made so much noise it sounded like he was wearing spurs."
"What was that about?"
"I have no idea. Dort didn't like him. He was very rude. He knocked her sideways with his foot when she tried to smell his boot."
Bel said, "Oh, dear. This card represents the King of Cups, reversed again. That's not good."
I looked over with interest. "The King of Cops?"
"I didn't say cops, dear. I said Cups. The King of Cups stands for a dishonest, double-dealing man: roguery, vice, scandal, you name it."
Belatedly, I felt a flutter of uneasiness. "Speaking of which, what made you think I was a cop when I came to t he door?"
Cordia looked up. "Because an officer called this morning and said a detective would be stopping by at two this afternoon. We thought it must be you since you were up there so long."
I felt my heart give a little hiccup, and I checked my watch. Nearly two o'clock now. "Gee, I better hit the road and let the two of you get back to work," I said. "Urn, I wonder if you could do me a little favor.."
Bel turned up the next card and said, "Don't worry about it, dear. We won't mention you were here."
"I'd appreciate that."
"I'll take you out the other door," Cordia said. "So you can reach the alley without being seen. The detectives park in the front, at least, they did before."
"Why don't I leave you a number? That way you can get in touch with me if anything comes up," I said. I jotted down my number on the back of my business card. In return, Cordia wrote their number on the edge of the rental application. Neither questioned my request. With a tarot like mine, they must have assumed I was going to need all the help I could get.