“Did you get anything to eat, sir?”
“My stomach’s in a knot,” he says.
That makes two of us.
Mooney and Pazzano tag-team the interviewing sessions, me in one room and Leo in another. Pazzano drops in to start things off.
“How long you been working for Leo Alexander?”
“Eight years.”
He’s shorter than I am, broad in the shoulders, heavy-browed. He shuffles around the room restlessly. I get the feeling he wants to show me he can take care of himself. “How’d he come to hire you?” he asks.
“I was available.”
“As his full-time bodyguard?”
“Supposed to be for a week or so.
“Then you took a couple of bullets for him.”
“Not on purpose.”
“That’s pretty loyal for a guy on a short-term contract,” he says. “I guess he felt he owed you something, giving you a job, place to live, good salary.”
Mooney comes in and they play it together for a while. Mooney sits across from me, hands folded on the table. Pazzano stays on point.
“Pretty much locked himself up there for eight years, right?”
“You could say that.”
“Like he was afraid whoever took the shots might come back to do it right.”
“You’d have to ask Leo,” I say. “He’s a private man. He never told me what he was thinking.”
“Or who to watch out for?”
“Nope.”
“Or why someone might hate him that much?”
“Nope.”
“Makes your job a lot harder, doesn’t it?”
“These days my job is hotel security.”
Mooney finally speaks up. “Except last night,” he says. “Last night you were back to being a bodyguard.”
The two of them pay Leo a visit and I sit by myself for a while, writing up a statement. I don’t much like being in a police station; you’re never there because you want to be; you’re either suspected of something, or a witness to something, or waiting for the cops to be finished with someone you know. Any minute I’m expecting them to start asking about the ruined plaque, or the switched drivers. I haven’t written those details down and I won’t bring them up until they do. Withholding information of this kind probably isn’t covered by any recognized confidentiality privilege and at some point no doubt I’ll pay for it, but right now my concern is strictly for my boss. I haven’t told him about the plaque either.
Mooney comes back to resume our conversation.
“Castle in the sky, right?” Mooney says. “Any ideas how the guy got in?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Detective.”
“I figure he must’ve had an elevator key. Don’t you?”
“Could be.”
“Unless she let him in herself.”
“That’s another possibility.”
“Which means she would have known him.”
“Or her.”
“Yeah, right, or her, or them.”
They trade off. Mooney goes back to Leo, Pazzano steps into the room. He looks like he’s run out of questions. He waggles his head a couple of times as if to loosen his thick neck.
“We’ve got some fighters on the force,” he says. “Boxing club.”
“You part of that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“What do you fight at,” I ask sociably. “One-ninety-five?”
“Ninety-nine,” he says. “You?”
“Fighting weight was two fifteen,” I say. “I’m up about five, give or take.”
He’s looking me up and down, wondering. He’s about ten years younger, belongs to a boxing club, works out regularly. Only natural for him to speculate.
“You should maybe come down sometime, put the gloves on, give us a free lesson.” He rolls his shoulders. “Weed says you used to be pretty good.”
“Quit before I lost too many brain cells,” I say.
“You ever meet this Vivienne Griese before?”
“Saunders. She said she was going back to her maiden name. And no, I’d never met her before.” I’ve just remembered something. “Her husband was around last night. Outside the hotel. Drunk. Angry.”
“Hey now. Pissed-off husbands go to the top of the list,” Pazzano says. “’Course, in your boss’s case that would make for a long list.”
“I wouldn’t know, Detective.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Word is your boss had lots of lady friends. Three wives, at least. Who knows how many mistresses, or unsatisfied wives, or hotel maids for that matter.” He pretends to smile. “I hear you were pretty friendly with the deceased yourself. She was giving you Spanish lessons.”
“Mostly correcting my pronunciation.”
“Teach you any new words?”
“Sure.”
“Such as?”
“Let’s see, Puede usted donde el aeropuerto?”
“What’s that?”
“Can you tell me where the airport is?”
He likes that. “Were you two planning a trip?” He glides back in my direction. “You ever see her outside the hotel?”
“You mean socially?”
And now he’s in my face. “I mean any way at all, in the kitchen, down in your room. Private lessons so to speak.” He smiles a nasty smile. I repress the urge to wipe it off his face. “Anything going on between you and Miss Chimi Changa?”
My turn to smile. “Once fought a guy from East L.A.,” I say. “Now he was a trash talker. He’d say just about anything to make you lose your temper, nasty remarks about your girlfriends, always mentioned the size of his penis. I never understood that.”
He nods his head. “You should really come down sometime. Put on the gloves, just for a ‘friendly.’”
“I never thought of it as recreation, Detective. It was my job.”
The door opens. Mooney pokes his head in. “You signed that statement?”
“Barring any spelling mistakes, it’s as accurate as I can make it,” I say. I avoid adding that it’s somewhat incomplete.
“Got that motorcycle business in there?”
“Makes for one short paragraph,” I say. “You find out the name of the guy who fell?”
Mooney declines to answer. Typical cop. “We’ll be talking to your boss for a while longer,” he says. “You can wait out there.”
When I stand up, Pazzano braces me for a moment. I can see that he’s considering things.
“Nice to see you two getting along so well,” says Mooney.
I