“We need names, ma’am. If you’d be so kind.” She raised a penciled eyebrow. “You’ll not mention my name in your travels?”

“It would be intolerably poor manners.”

She smiled and nodded, found a pen, wrote for a minute and passed us the names, a half-dozen. We walked the hallway to the door. I paused at the closed door along the side, pulled it open. Inside, on the floor, crouched a naked man in his forties, one hand in his lap. I know a two-hundred-dollar haircut when I see one, and I was seeing one.

“Hello,” I said. “You’re under arrest.”

The man looked up, breathless with fear and excitement.

“This is part of the act, right?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t Mistress Layla something?”

He moaned the word incredible. I closed the door and we walked outside to the car. In the next two hours we visited three local names on Mistress Layla’s list. All claimed alibis, which we’d check, and gave us fingerprint samples to clear through forensics.

It was getting late in the day. Harry sighed and pointed the car back downtown. We went a few blocks and he brightened at the thought of something.

“Hey, Carson. We go by the hospital on the way back. How’s about we stop in and see the kid, then grab a beer. She’ll cheer us up.”

The beer sounded decent, but I’d had my fill of hospitals. I figured I’d end up sitting on a plastic couch for twenty minutes while Harry pulled faces and made goofy noises at the kid, which, being in a plastic box behind a glass window, it never even heard.

I said, “Drop me off at my truck.”

“You don’t want to check the kid, Carson? How about grabbing a beer? You’ve been looking a bit stressed out lately, so maybe some downtime would –”

“I’m not stressed, Harry. I’m simply overworked. I want to go home.”

“It’ll kind of take me out of my way to drop you at your truck then circle around to –”

I held up my hands in defeat. Harry pointed the grille toward the hospital. We found Doc Norlin at the nurse’s station conferring with an orderly. When she saw us, she brightened. Or maybe it was Harry that sparked the smile.

“I’ve got good news,” Norlin said, her hand sliding behind my partner’s elbow as she walked him to the unit, me following, not shooting glances at Norlin’s trim backside. When we turned the corner toward the viewing window, I stopped.

“Carson? You OK?”

“I’m fine. I’ll wait here.”

Harry began waving his arms at the kid. He tapped the glass, cooed like a pigeon. I looked away, embarrassed for my partner and waiting until his initial burst of emotionalism had subsided to making kissy faces.

Norlin smiled at Harry. “Returning a nearly drowned baby to health is like a marathon,” she said. “Sometimes the runner never finishes. Little Jane pulled it off like a hundred-yard sprint. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Harry studied the kid, mumbled something, and spun away, pacing down the hall like on a personal mission. Reaching the end of the hall, he looked out the window for a few beats, still mumbling, then spun on his heel and started back. Doc Norlin’s eyes were fixed on Harry, seemingly fascinated by my outsized partner. He returned, crossed his arms, leaned against the wall.

“How about Noelle, Doc?” he said.

“Pardon me, Detective Nautilus?”

“As a name for the kid,” Harry said. “Noelle.”

“You mean like in Christmas?” the doc asked, a quizzical smile on her face.

“Like in Noah,” Harry said. “But with an elle because she’s a girl.”

“Moses would be better,” I suggested, “given the small boat on the water.”

Harry dismissed the notion. “You ever try and convert Moses into a feminine name, Carson? Moselle’s a German wine, Mosina sounds like crap, ditto for Mozette…”

Norlin said, “You worked all that out in under a minute, Detective Nautilus?”

“How about it, Doc?” Harry said. “Think it’s a keeper?”

Norlin smiled twin rows of luminous Swedish teeth at my partner. “I’ll talk to the administrator, but I doubt it’ll be a problem. If it is, I’ll take you along to help convince her.”

My partner grinned like a love-struck adolescent. He turned to the glass. “Noelle, Noelle,” he crooned.

Norlin studied Harry with curious eyes. “You seem quite concerned about the little lady, Detective.”

“I came in on a boat myself, figuratively speaking,” Harry said.

Chapter 11

Doc Norlin said we could hold the kid if we put on robes and masks. Harry looked like he’d just won the Super Lotto, and I retreated to the cafeteria until he’d had his fill. We were three steps outside the hospital when Harry’s phone rang. He studied the number, grumbled and dialed.

“‘S’up, Shanelle?” he said, listening for a moment before dropping the cell back in his pocket and giving me a look that was a silent groan. “Shanelle says she remembers something weird.”

I grinned. “Like, maybe the first twenty or so years of her life?”

We were at Shanelle’s preferred intersection in minutes. She thundered to the corner like a knock-kneed Clydesdale in heat, holding her wig tight as the clogs banged pavement.

“I remembered some weirdness, Harry, right after you left. I had to tell you.”

“Lay it on me, Shanelle.”

“It was maybe two months ago. My feets was killing me and I took a break in that little park over on Walter Street. This guy was on a bench like he was reading. But his eyes was watching everything, especially people walking by. I could see he was after something that wasn’t in his book.”

“Companionship,” I said. “At least briefly.”

“The man got up and wandered over and asked could he talk to me. Then it got strange. Not the bad kind, the question kind.”

“Question kind?” Harry asked.

“Questions like he was trying to get to know me. Weird shit about my family. What race was my mom and dad, did they come from another country? I said I hardly knew either of them, and what the fuck did it matter? He asked could he put something in my mouth.” Shanelle pursed her lips in an exaggerated kiss pucker. “I said before anything gets between these lips, hon, it pays fifty bucks.”

Harry said, “And?”

“We went to his car down the street. I stretched out on the seat and let him spend his cash.”

“He, uh, put his penis in your mouth?”

“He jabbed a Q-Tip around my tongue a couple times, pulled it out.”

Harry shot me puzzled. Turned back to Shanelle.

“What happened after that?”

“He asked did I work around there. I said, ‘Sure, come back anytime, Doc, and we’ll –’”

“Doc?” Harry said. “He was a doctor?”

“He said his name but I forgot. Martin? Matthews? Murphy? I remember his last name had a M in front. I told Dr M. to come around anytime and ask for Shanelle. He said he might, depending on how things turned out, but never did. A shame. I’da loved to see him every day, Harry.”

“Why’s that, Shanelle?”

“Fifty bucks for sucking a Q-Tip?” She gave my partner’s shoulder a poke. “Harry, you don’t even have to gargle afterwards.”

Harry sighed and pointed the car back toward the station. “What do you think that was about, Carson? The doc or whatever with Shanelle and the Q-Tip?”

“Probably some social-services type doing a health survey,” I said. “Port cities are the crossroads for a lot of things, germs included.”

“So you don’t think it’s anything?”

“I just hope the Q-Tip got burned after it was analyzed,” I said, slumping in the seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Beer?”

I was worn through. “I ain’t into it. I’m going home.”

Harry dropped me at my truck. I headed home, pulling into my drive as my neighbor Lucinda Best walked past, something otherworldly on a leash beside her. Miz Best is seventy years old and a volunteer at the county animal shelter. She often brought canines home to gauge their temperaments.