“Who sent you?”

“See, here’s the thing, Vic. You think you knew her, but you didn’t know the first thing about her. You think you understood her, but you understood nothing. She was like a fancy gold watch, she was, simple and slim on the outside, but inside was wheels within wheels within wheels. And you never had the frigginest.”

“And you did?”

“Me and her, we understood each other. Me and her, we got along like long-lost pals. We had things in common. She talked to me.”

“About what?”

“You know. About her affairs and such.”

I didn’t say anything, I just stared. He smiled and leaned so close I was glad he had stopped eating his garlic raw, leaned so close his whisper was like a roar.

“I know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Your little no-no.”

“My no-no?”

“Oh, I know,” he said. “Yes I does. I know.”

I stood abruptly, as if the secret itself propelled me off my stool. I stood, but I didn’t say anything and I didn’t leave. I stood and listened.

“She told me so herself,” said Skink. “I assure you, Vic, I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help. It’s safe with me, your little secret. I got no wish to spread it around like butter on a stack of flap-jacks. But don’t be like those lawyers in the showroom with their lawyerish ways. Take the deal. It wasn’t no picnic getting Jefferson to go for the plea. Don’t think we can keep it on the table forever. Forget about Juan Gonzalez. Take the deal, put everything right, so no one ends up knowing nothing and we all go home happy.”

He nodded at me, pushed himself off his stool, and headed for the door. He had a strange, waddling walk, like he’d just jumped off his horse after riding for a fortnight. Then he stopped, turned, and waddled back.

“You was in the house alone after she was doffed, wasn’t you?”

I said nothing.

“An item is missing, a small item. No bigger than a key, if you catch the drift. It wasn’t logged in by the police detectives, and it seems no longer to be in the house.”

“How would you know?” I blurted out, my gaze dropping down from his eyes to his hands, which were now hidden in his pockets.

He ignored my question. “You didn’t happen to pilfer the item whilst inside the house, did you? You didn’t happen to palm it for your own invidious purposes?”

I couldn’t answer, too frightened and stunned to even try to deny it. I stood there shaking, mute, my eyes watering involuntarily as they hadn’t done in years. I couldn’t answer, but it wasn’t the type of question that demanded an answer. I got the sense that Phil Skink didn’t need many answers from anyone, especially from me.

“G’day, Vic,” he said with a click and a wink.

I watched him push open the door, head out to the street, and then I wheeled around in terror.

15

HE KNEW. That bastard, Skink, he knew. I could have brazened it out with denial after denial, but that wouldn’t have altered a thing. The truth was in his ugly puss. He knew. How was it possible? How? Why? Because Hailey… because Hailey had told him, so he said. They had had an understanding, so he said. They had things in common. Hailey Prouix and Phil Skink. What the hell could they have had in common? But Skink knew, no doubt about it, and there was no telling the kind of hurt he could put on me with what he knew.

I stared into my plate, filthy now with the yellow of smeared yolk and the paprika of the potatoes. The greasy slop in my stomach turned and I gagged with a sudden nausea. There is always a faint tinge of nausea after a heavy diner meal, as if the high heat of the griddle renders cheap grease into a mild emetic, but this was something different, something far richer and justly deserved.

What the hell was I doing? I had slept with my friend’s fiancée, I had taken evidence from the scene of her murder, and now I was defending her killer to the worst of my abilities. In the heat of everything, when it played out only in my consciousness, it had all seemed so logical, even so inevitable. But now, when my perfidy played out also in the consciousness of the world’s sleaziest private eye, the end result was humiliation. How had I looked to him? I could see it in his eyes. I had put myself into a position to be ethically condescended to by the likes of Phil Frigging Skink. I was a fool, I was in far over my head, I was making mistake after mistake.

I closed my eyes and let the nausea slide through me and waited for it to fade. But it didn’t fade. It grew and twisted inside my stomach, reached out its arms and stretched. Unsteadily, I made my way past the empty stools and into the lavatory, turned on the light, locked the door behind me. It was filthy and small, the floor was wet, the trash bin jammed with paper towels even this early in the morning, and it smelled like, well, like a toilet. I leaned on the sink, looked in the mirror at my face, oily and green. I was getting sicker by the second. My breaths were coming now in panicky gulps. I had to figure out what to do. I had to figure out my options. Had to. Had to. Now.

Give it up, let my plan of vengeance fade, back away from the trial and disclose the affair and hope it all turned out right? Yes, yes, I could do that, yes. Except that it wouldn’t go away and nothing would turn out right. Skink might disappear, true, but Guy’s new defense attorney would blame me for the murder, Guy would strut out of jail, and I, stripped of my membership in the bar and humiliated in the press, would be the new chief suspect of Detectives Stone and Breger.

Ignore the bastard and continue on as I was continuing on? Yes, yes. Maybe that was it, maybe I should just brazen it through. I bent over the sink, splashed water on my overheated face, felt the hard living thing in my stomach bubble and belch, rise into my chest and then fall again. Skink had said the secret was safe with him, that he only wanted to help. But he wanted something from me, and he was not the kind to give up on what he wanted. There would be more visits, more threats. It would never end, never, end, until the bastard broke me in two.

“Oh, God,” I said as I banged on the wall.

Of course, of course, there was another route. Give him what he wanted, take the plea. Skink wanted it, Beth wanted it, even Guy was inclined. That was it, the easiest way out and the most obvious. Good, yes, but… A plea would hardly avenge Hailey, and even with a plea, Phil Frigging Skink would still hold his sword of knowledge over my head. How much would I have to pay him in the future to keep his mouth shut? What would it be like to have another partner?

Derringer, Carl and Skink.

What kind of name was Skink anyway?

No, it was all bad, there were no options. I was lost, I was sunk, there was no solution to that bastard Skink, nothing to be done except throw up. I lurched over to the scummy little toilet and in one quick spasm gave up my morning’s feed.

I stared at my red-rimmed orbs in the mirror. My face looked like a tawdry country music song. I dampened a paper towel and wiped my face and then pressed it onto my overheated forehead and let the cool seep through my skin. I rinsed out my mouth, one spit, two, wiped my teeth roughly with the paper towel. I felt better, yes, I felt much better, and my emotions settled. Slowly I began to calm, and as I did, I sifted through the detritus of my panic, searching for one thing, anything, on which to grab hold. And what I came up with had the face of a battered hardball.

Skink.

What was his game? I knew enough about guys like Skink to know the Jumblemeister wasn’t after honor or love or sense of self in a world beset with meaninglessness – he was thinking of one thing only: money. And he seemed to have a route to it all his own. Wasn’t it funny that in a case I had thought turned only on passion and rage there seemed to be an underlying theme of money? The cash in the envelope. The cash in Guy’s suitcase. The funds mysteriously absent from the brokerage account about which Guy and Hailey had fought. The strange untapped relationship between Leila’s vindictive grab for Hailey’s money and the name Juan Gonzalez. I had still no doubt as to who had pulled the trigger, but Guy’s motivation might not be as simple as I had imagined. Maybe my personal involvement had twisted my thinking on the why, maybe it wasn’t that he loved her too much, maybe it was that something he loved too much was missing. I remembered the look on his face when he learned that the brokerage account was empty. Money money money. How could ever I be surprised to learn that money ran through a story of murder like the sewers run through Paris?