“Thanks.” He didn’t hang up. Djuna Brown was having something massaged into her hair. “Ah, this thing. For Djuna. The hair place …”
“It’s okay. She needed it.”
* * *
He sat in a wood and leather armchair, gazing out onto the street of boutiques, dozing his way through pristine copies of hip magazines from the cosmopolitan cosmos. He wondered if people actually lived that way or if it was just magazine life. There was an article on lofts in Paris, vast spaces populated by narrow men and women in black clothing who seemed to do nothing all day except sit by vast windows and contemplate the meaning of art. To Ray Tate, whose original life inclination had been towards paints and pots and brushes, Paris was a resurrected dream from childhood. He was thinking if things went into the toilet with the job he could grab a reduced pension and jump onto a plane. How hard could it be?
He was calculating the cost of living in the daydream of Paris and examining his pleasure that Djuna Brown had outed herself as a hetero when a young woman came over and told him his friend would be quite a while.
“She’s getting the full treatment,” the woman said. “You know, while you wait, we could clean you up a little bit. A little less … sixties?”
* * *
Afterwards he drove the Intrepid because she thought her nails might still be tacky. The car smelled of perfumed hair products and emollients. Ray Tate tried not to stare over at her. The bleached hair was gone, replaced by a helmet of spiky-looking jet black. Exhaustion was painted from her face. She’d been plucked and buffed. She’d somehow lost the mean pierce of her green eyes and they seemed wider and longer, more sly and Asian than he recalled. Her nails were still very short, but they were shiny and the traces of the chewing butchery gone. She looked cool and fun, as though some real person locked away inside her had been freed and given air.
She caught him looking. “Nice, eh, Ray? You don’t clean up too bad, either.”
His hair was still longish but neatly trimmed and swept back from his face. The beard was gone. She saw he had a strong jaw line and actual hollows under his cheekbones. The paint stains had been removed from his fingertips and fingernails. She kept glancing over to make sure it was him and not some Paris hipster.
He kept his eyes on the road. “Anyway. Anyway, two things: our F-250 from last month at Phil Harvey’s condo comes back to a guy named Frank Chase, up north. He’s a biker type, runs the badlands, doper. The usual. Agatha Burns, your pal, though, she’s pretty interesting. She’s a missing person. Took off from her family last year, hasn’t been seen since. Gloria’s getting pictures of both of them.”
He slipped the car into a reserved parking spot at the Chem Squad offices. He went to get out but saw she was smiling.
“Djun’? What?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, I don’t have anyone hidden away. No hubby. No boy toy.”
He made a wide smile.
“We’re gonna do something, aren’t we, Ray?”
“I think. I don’t know, but I think maybe, yeah. We be maybe gonna.”
“You ever make it with a black chick, Ray?”
“No,” he said, “but I never shot one, either.”
* * *
Gloria had the photos ready at the reception desk. She smiled at them but didn’t comment on their new personae. Ray Tate noticed she wore a subtle silver crucifix.
Djuna Brown looked at the missing persons photo and said the Agatha Burns in the flyer was her Agatha Burns. The mug of Frankie Chase was, Ray Tate was pretty sure, the same blond guy who drove the black F-250 into Phil Harvey’s parking lot. Gloria said an inspector from the Homicide Squad was in with the skipper and a dep from the Swamp.
When they made their way to their desks the skipper called out and waved them into his office.
“The fuck’s going on, here, Ray? You had Gloria put through some missing person?”
“Yep. Agatha Burns. You remember her, skip. She left the note on the fridge at the stash house, up in the projects. The girl Djuna was working back into Captain Cook.”
The skipper skipped his eyes around. “Her. Ah …” He’d let the mystery of the girl go by the board. “Refresh me.”
Djuna Brown said to the dep, “We were going to work her, but you guys at headquarters took the case back, gave it to the Federales. Before we could do dick we had to shut ’er down, send everything down to those smart guys.” She shrugged. “Skipper had us all over her, but … phhhitt, the Feds bigfooted us before we could do anything.”
The skipper looked relieved. He stared at her.
The dep said, “But you sent it over, right? In the investigative files? They fucked it up, right? They had it and they fucked it.”
“Oh, yeah, everything went. Including the report about the burned female body the Staties found up north in Indian country about the same time. I guess they didn’t think it was important.” She smiled and shrugged. “Feds, what’re you gonna do?”
The dep stood up. “Okay, it’s back to us now. This Burns’s old man is out of state politics now, but he’s still a big shooter with the Democrats. What’s her status, far as you know?”
Ray Tate shrugged “Well, like Djuna said, we think she’s dead. That that might’ve been her in the lab truck fire up north. She was in with some cookers, this Captain Cook guy and a guy named Phil Harvey. Maybe they knew Djuna was scoping her out, buddying her up. We got a wit saw her leaving her pad with Phil Harvey about a month ago. We go in and there’s a note on the fridge that if she disappears, ask Phil.”
“You got that and you don’t call us?” The dep shook his head. “What the fuck are you doing here, Gord? You got a half a fucking homicide and you, what? Hit the bars? A month old crime scene, that’ll be just fucking pristine right about now.”
Ray Tate patted the air in front of his chest. “Whoa. We got a team in, we did a forensic just in case. Like Djuna said, before we could move you told us to fuck off, so we fucked off.”
The dep took it but didn’t like it. He turned his guns on Tate. “And how’s it going for you, Ray? You still in counselling, Ray? Getting the twitch taken out of your finger? I hear your wife kicked you out. Gee, I hope things are okay otherwise, buddy.”
Tate gave him an even stare. “Well, I’m working on it, dep.” He turned to the hammer from Homicide. “This might be your lucky day, Sam.”
The hammer was bored. “How’s that?”
“You might solve a homicide, right about now, before the body hits the floor.”
The skipper said, “Ray …”
“Cool-ee-oh,” Djuna Brown said gaily. “I’m wet. City guys are so butch.”
* * *
The dep kicked everyone out of the office and went at the skipper. The Homicide guy stood talking with Ray Tate and Djuna Brown. Through the glass it looked like the dep was fist fighting bumblebees. His mouth ratcheted. He pointed out the window towards the lake, he pointed up to heaven, he jammed his thumb down.
“Nice shot there, Ray, pardon the expression. Your partner here’s got some fucking mouth.” But the Homicide guy was smiling. “Where’s the forensics on the apartment the chick went missing from? Who’s