There were several messages on the answering machine in Skip’s kitchen. The last was from Warren Brobauer, thanking Skip for his work and sacrifice on the family’s behalf, hoping he was recovering from his ordeal, and notifying him that, insofar as the authorities finally seemed to have the situation in hand, his professional services were no longer required.
The apartment, meanwhile, was a wreck. Yellow tape, fingerprint powder, overturned furniture, chalk marks, evidence flags. Maybe the maid could come in a few days early next week, Skip started to tell himself, then remembered suddenly that she was dead-that was her blood in the hallway. And she wasn’t just a maid, anyway-she was Anna. Anna of the warm brown eyes and the thousand-watt smile and the valiant broken English; Anna who’d washed his underpants and scrubbed his toilet for five years; Anna who’d been gunned down and stuffed into a closet like a sack of old clothes. So to hell with Warren and his money and his good wishes, thought Skip-Epstein Investigative Services was in this one for the duration, client or no client.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” he told Pender. “Feel free to help yourself to the good Scotch. It’ll go to waste otherwise.”
“You don’t drink?”
“I can’t,” Skip called over his shoulder as he limped down the hallway. “It’s all the acetaminophen in the Norco I take. My doctor says if I have one drink, even a beer, my poor liver will go belly-up like a dead salmon.”
After washing down two of the aforementioned Norco with a slug of tap water, Skip changed into a clean pair of chinos and a freshly laundered (by Anna!) blue oxford-cloth shirt, and retrieved the kidney holster containing his 9mm Beretta Parabellum from the shoe box on the top shelf of his closet before returning to the kitchen.
“You have a license for that thing?” Pender wanted to know.
“Sure do,” said Skip, clipping the holster to the back of his belt.
“Any good with it?”
“Pretty good. How about you?”
“As far as the Bureau’s concerned, I’m range-qualified,” said Pender. “But you remember those two shots I fired to scare away the buzzards yesterday?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I missed the sky. Twice.”