The Color-Blind Detective
 

©2004, Bill Capron, 73,000 words

Chapter 1 - Mid-June - Sunday, 2:00 am

Death stalks some people, like that bad date that won’t go away, or that husband who thinks his rights supercede any court order. Jesse Black, she’d been through both of those. She’d lived that kind of life. She told her last husband, Ronald Dyson, that he should have insurance on her, big time, because social security wasn’t in her future. But she got that wrong, sort of, what with Ronald dead now two weeks, from an overdose. She said she didn’t know he was using, but women aren’t men, oblivious, that is, so she lied. That was okay. I mean, no one wants to admit they’re married to a junkie. Then again, there is only so much bad one human being can take in one lifetime, and maybe Jesse thought she’d had her fill. So, I cut her some slack.

That night she performed her act on auto pilot, but she was good at it, so no one noticed. Not even me, and I make a living noticing things, but only when I have some idea that I should be looking, if you know what I mean. Still I wasn’t alone, no one else in the packed club heard the sadness dragging down the edges of her voice. But she was a jazz singer, and maybe the sadness just made the lyrics seem more profound. Now Jesse, she never saw it that way. She didn’t believe it was life’s experiences that made her a great singer, it was her voice, and that old devil time was killing her pipes. She was only half right.

Jesse watched the audience clap, as if they were all having fun together. It was a long time since she’d had fun, but she was a consummate actress on one of life’s tiny stages, so who was to know? When she finished her last set, she skipped her usual one cocktail and small talk and disappeared like a shadow into the night. Nobody saw her go, and like all those other things in life that aren’t there, nobody missed her. Well, not nobody, I saw her leave, but I didn’t think twice about it. That’s not normal for me, but I had my own concerns. That wasn’t normal either. It might be that she smiled my way, wondering why, on that night, I wasn’t there to help her.

Maybe it was a whisper in the wind, but not the wind, or a dark bat swooping after moths, or just the rare warm day in June giving up its extra breath, a sighing soft susurrus. It spooked her a little, like when she was a child. The dark hadn’t scared her much since then. She was a vampire, sleeping all day, rising at five, fixing supper, reading a book, ministering to a still tempting body, then making the long walk to the jazz club. Everyone on her usual path knew her, if only from the reviews in the local papers. But they didn’t go to jazz clubs, so she was just the pretty girl with the unhappy eyes. She’d cast them a sad smile in the fading twilight, and they’d all smile back, wondering who or what had spoiled her day. It didn’t used to be that way, but when a happy smile is gone long enough, people tend to forget it was ever there. So, if you asked them, they’d say she was always sad. I sometimes think they were right.

From the bar, it was a mile walk through the quiet upscale streets of northwest Portland. She’d have set her normal pace, about twenty minutes door to door. Of course there were no smiles, sad or otherwise at that time of night. Maybe a cat crossed her path and a shiver ran up her spine. Maybe she turned quickly, scanned the street, houses, bushes, but there was no one there. It was a nice area, what was there to be afraid of? Maybe she turned again. Was there someone behind her, or in front of her? Of course not, you ninny, she’d tell herself. Maybe she looked harder into the dark, but she had no special powers to probe the dark. Anyway, she was alone. But maybe she didn’t feel alone. In my mind’s eye I can see her picking up her pace so that all she heard was the soft clip clop of her own leather soles. Then the drizzle started, and what sound there was was absorbed by with the thickening air. I think maybe she was as alone as she’d ever been in her life.

It makes me hurt to think that maybe she ran the last hundred yards to the front door, and leaned into it as she unlocked it, rushing inside, catching her breath. She stopped, of course, too shocked to close the door even. The place had been torn up, paintings ripped down, holes knocked in the walls, stuffing pulled out of the furniture. Was she angry? Was she scared?

She would feel the presence before she turned her head. She’d start to recoil as the small blackjack came into her vision. She couldn’t know it then, but that was about as good as it was going to get, because it was all downhill from there.

That’s how I saw it. I wasn’t there, but I connected the dots from when she left the jazz club, to seeing her dead body, to what the police told me. The damp coat on the floor, the bruise on her right temple, other times when I’d walked her home from the bar, they all went into my little scene setting. I knew her well enough to know there were demons lurking. I’m a typical guy, so I never asked, but I think she knew I understood, about demons, that is. About other people’s demons. I should have known more about hers.

We were two people very aware of the night, noir people. That made us different from the masses, but not special. Jesse thought it was our Achilles heel, a dark cloud sucking out the essence of life. I don’t feel that way, in fact, just the opposite. She was noir in the soul, I was just noir in the eyes. Where it sapped her, it invigorated me. Her curse, my blessing.

We were never lovers, never even thought about it, just friends. She was not the kind of woman I could love, even though she was a woman I liked a lot. We weren’t close friends, as women know their friends, but really good friends, as men know their friends. Then too, my circle of friends isn’t all that large, so it was more important to me than it was to her. That said, I would have walked her home that night, but I had a date ...

 

 

Chapter 2 - Previous night, Saturday, 10:00 pm

Johnny’s One Note is a noir kind of place, raised above the level of dark and dingy only by the voices that echo from its walls. In another era, it’s where you would expect to find the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. It’s so special they only clean it once a week, and no one notices. Then there’s the smoke, current and past, but it’s what we put up with for the music. Anyway, it’s a wonder what great pipes will cover. But even then it needs the dark, because bright light makes it ugly, like that woman whose name you don’t know that turns up in your bed. So they never turn on the lights when anyone’s in the place.

The pretty singer stopped at our table, singing ‘You Came a Long Way From St. Louis’ low into the mike. She crooned, "you’ve got them dropping by the wayside, a feeling I ain’t gonna know," and the backup band, seeing her waggle her hand, went into a riff. She leaned in between us and spoke in tune with the music, "What do we have here? CB’s got a date, and my what a pretty girl she is."

The crowd clapped at my embarrassment. Most of them knew me by sight if not by name. Jesse leaned into Marsha, and in a conspiratorial aside to everyone, "CB’s never brought a girl in here before. I’m jealous. You’re a lucky girl."

Marsha’s smile was enigmatic as she leaned towards the mike and said, "Yes, I am."

The singer stood, then frowned. She’d read something in that ‘yes’, a whistle no man can hear. Her soft lilt still followed the music as she pointed a finger at me, but kept her eyes on Marsha. "CB, he’s a friend of mine, so you take good care of him."

I felt the heat in my face.

Jesse swayed with the music. She smiled, sadder than usual, then mouthed an afterthought, "I ever show up dead, I know CB here’s going to bring them to justice. That’s the kind of guy he is." The crowd was silent, they didn’t know what to make of it. But they didn’t know what I did for a living. When she winked at me, there was a smattering of tentative applause.

She did all this with the combo repeating the same riff, as if it was all part of the routine, which it was. Moving back to the stage, "For you first nighters out there, my name is Jesse Black," another riff, "and I’m a white girl who can really sing the blues." An agreeing crescendo rose up to meet her. That was why they were there.

Marsha leaned on my arm. "That must make you a regular?"

I shrugged. "Every other week. Jesse lives four blocks from me. We’ve known each other a long time, since I got to Portland. She’s lived the kind of life they make movies about. Sad movies. She’s had her problems."

Marsha swung her chair around the table so she could see my eyes. Hers were transparent, smudged gray clouds. "Everybody has problems, CB. Don’t you?"

Normally I’m not too melodramatic. I tried not to sound like Bogart in Casablanca, "My problems seem so small these days. My biggest problem is waiting."

"For what?"

Don’t go there, I told myself, right before I went there. "For justice."

She didn’t believe it. "You don’t get enough?"

An image of Rhonda flashed across my mind. "I’m still owed a big one."

She read my face and let it lie. It’s a woman thing.

When the set ended, another pretty woman put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Detective Maureen McMartin. I introduced her to Marsha who knew her from the newspapers.

"So, what are you doing here, detective?" I asked.

Maureen put a ‘who wants to know’ tone in her voice, "What, cops can’t appreciate jazz?"

I shrugged, waited. She wasn’t the jazz type. Except for Jesse, neither was I.

"I’m supposed to meet up with Doyle. You haven’t seen him?"

Doyle is not the type of guy I’d miss, not at six-five, two-sixty, stiff, thick gray hair I’m told is Irish red, same as McMartin’s. Knowing them both, it’s hard to believe they share anything. "No."

She looked around again, just in case she’d missed him. "Well if he shows up, tell him I had to go home to a warm bed and a daughter who’s starting to wonder who I am."

I nodded. "Sure thing, detective." I don’t call her Maureen. She doesn’t like to get that familiar with the competition, such as I am.

Marsha was about the same age as McMartin, thirty-five, but tall, thin, nice chest. She told me her hair is auburn, which is supposed to be some sort of shade of red. To me it’s just dark and thick, but it’s still nice. She put a hand over mine. "Awful lot of pretty women in your life." But none of them had a thing on her. She wasn’t a vain person, but I thought she knew that anyway.

I answered a little too harshly, "They’re in their lives. I’m in mine."

Her prescient response was immediate, "Not their fault, I’m sure."

I felt the heat on my skin again. "No way to tell." I never know what anyone else is thinking, don’t even try to figure it out any longer.

When the set ended, we talked a little bit about the pain and suffering of the last weeks, about how much her sister Mary’s husband, Jeff, had meant to her. It wasn’t until his death that she was able to admit to the residual jealousy she’d felt for fifteen years, ever since she’d put the two of them together, to keep him in the family. There was always that niggling thought, ‘What if he’d been mine?’ She thought she’d gotten over it, but she was wrong.

I was listening harder than I should have needed to, because I knew there was a reason. I was her confessor, and she was looking for absolution.

Marsha talked about her ex-husband, Andrew, about how, when his company folded, so did he, into alcohol. She admitted she never gave him the support he needed, maybe because her unrequited love for Jeff had pretty much skewed everything in their lives. She said Jeff’s death made things so much clearer to her. Death doesn’t do that for me. Then she got to the point. Andrew had stopped at the house that morning, said he’d gotten his life together, that he wanted to come home, try again.

Sure, I didn’t know where this was going. "And you said?"

One of those little smiles that mean everything, and nothing. "Yes. I said yes."

I thought she made the right decision, but it hurt me to say it. "That’s because you’re a good person, Marsha, just like your sister Mary. It’s in the genes."

She nodded. She believed it. It was true. I’d met Mary’s daughter. Goodness hadn’t skipped any generations either. It made me wish I’d known their parents. Maybe they were good going back a thousand years. I’d never thought about it before, but maybe good was as resilient as evil. Most of my work argues against it though.

I wondered what would have happened if our date had been the previous night instead. I expected the end result would be the same, but my pain would have been more. Still, I was looking forward to Marsha Aldus, to being together for a while. I liked her a lot. I don’t meet a lot of people I like a lot, that way. After the last set, we finished our drinks, slowly, holding the moment. We had some meaningless chatter, the important stuff was done, swept away with my inchoate desires. Marsha was easy to talk to, and though meaningless chatter comes hard to me, I enjoyed it. I was already missing her before she was gone. At the front door, I called her a cab. I gave the driver a twenty, then matched his face to the picture in the plastic holder. I was obvious about it, and he saw it for the warning it was. I kissed her cheek and said goodbye. I stood a long time, watching where she’d been, looking too hard at the hole in my life.

I walked the sixteen blocks home to my three story in the Northwest. I went in by the office entrance and parked at my desk with my feet up. I took in the black and white and gray. It’s different from real life, everything in my office is really colorless. But it doesn’t look real, too staged, as if it was a movie set. That’s my world, colorless. It’s something I think about all the time. It’s my color-blindness that sort of makes me who I am, sets me apart, makes me as different as Jesse’s voice makes her different. I never regret my color challenged retinas, but sometimes I think being color-blind, it drains me. It’s got something to do with lowered expectations absent the clashing swings of color.

Still, life has treated me exceptionally well, but it’s been a while since I was in love, the high school kind. I hadn’t really noticed it for a long time, but right then it was this big shadow I couldn’t quite get out of my vision, like Jesse’s sad cloud. Maybe it’s a permanent part of my life now. I hope not.

I’m surrounded by single women, some who want me for reasons I can’t explain, but from the first moment I met Marsha, it was as if they didn’t exist. I know it wasn’t just that I liked her, it was impending love, and I was ready, had been for a long time. Then, before I even knew her, she was gone.

Gone girls. Yes, all the girls I’d loved before, at least since about thirty when I became a real adult, are gone, or dead, uncalculated misfortune or some such crap. I don’t subscribe to omens and fate and the like, but sometimes I see a dark future for myself, without women, neglecting even the love component of it. It doesn’t scare me, but it draws me down at the edges. Still, I don’t go out of my way to look for love, never feel forlorn, never get antsy. I have friends who can’t stand to be even a day without a woman they can call their own. They’re half people looking to be wholes. I’m not a half. Maybe it’s because I’ll always have my job.

I was a born searcher. I’m color-blind, so I’ve always had to search for what others saw so easily. "It’s the red tape on that tree." Or, "See the robin." I had to search for the shapes, separate them out from the other grays. Nothing stands out, so motion, shape, sound have always been more important to me. It was as if life was trying to hide things from me, but I’d find them, eventually, usually. Back when I had the hobby of puzzler, that is, making up crossword puzzles, it wasn’t enough to do it straight; I’d hide unheralded puzzles within puzzles, like a word ladder in a crossword, to see who’d notice. It was my way of testing the world, you know, like those numbers buried in the dots they used to ferret out the color-blind. So searching came naturally to me ...

Now I’m a private investigator, and searching is my life, a perfect combination of form and function. And life doesn’t get more interesting than this. I haven’t been bored in six years. No, bored is the wrong word, I mean, stakeouts are really boring but they’re just part of the patois of my existence. Peeling back the flaps and looking into other people’s lives, now that’s a hoot. It’s a searcher’s dream, and these lives are never what I expect, they’re all different in ways I can’t anticipate. So I go into it, searching, without anticipation, just wondering at how little I know about anyone else.

Still, I was hoping to know Marsha Aldus ...

 

 

Chapter 3 - Sunday, 5:00 am

I was dreaming about Rhonda as my brain played out how life might have been if only she had lived. We had lots of plans for our youthful retirement, but none of them included her being dead, and me being a private investigator. The job is my memorial to her. I’d give it all up to have her back, but that’s not going to happen. So one day I’ll avenge her. Anyway, I’ve got the feeling that time is on my side - and the bastard doesn’t know I’m looking for him - and he can’t know death isn’t enough justice for me. Dreams. Yes, Rhonda was reduced to dreams. I don’t believe in dreams. I don’t believe in Heaven. I don’t believe in Hell. But I do believe in vengeance in the only lifetime I have, now.

It’s probably a blessing that I don’t generally remember my dreams, but this one was interrupted. I awoke to a pounding at the office door, one flight down. My neck was killing me. I’d fallen asleep in my recliner. I twisted my head right and left as I made my way to the window. It didn’t help any. I looked down. Dennis Doyle was standing back from the office door, trying to look through the translucent glass.

I opened the window. "What do you want, Doyle?"

He craned his neck. "Hey, Juliet, need to talk."

I buzzed him in. He looked as if he’d been dragged out of bed, but he always looks that way. I’ve never seen him with a close shave, a clean suit, a tight knot in his tie. For all I knew, it was the way he was every day. It’s got to make him look even more imposing to the bad guys.

He was in a sour mood. "What’s wrong, your bell don’t work?"

I’d turned it off. I don’t get night visitors I’m not expecting. And if I do, let them pound on the door. So I ignored the question. "You look like hell."

"You don’t look so hot yourself, shamus."

I looked in the mirror. He was right.

The smell of cigarettes filled the room, so I changed topics. "You still not smoking?"

"Yeah, six days now." He didn’t sound happy.

I’d been there, but it was so long ago, I’d almost forgotten. "So, it’s about time to get your clothes cleaned."

"Yeah, that’s what Moira says."

Doyle’s two worlds don’t overlap, so I’ll probably never know his wife beyond her name. That’s not so unusual for cops, the separate lives. Still, it’s one of those things I regret, but only a little. "And?"

"Give it another week."

I lifted the lapel, sniffed. No body odor.

He got defensive. "Hey, got ten suits."

"You could have fooled me."

He smiled a set of thick flat teeth my way. "All the same."

I’d already figured that out, so the confirmation made me laugh. I went into my closet and changed to a clean shirt, then washed my face. When I came back, the detective was standing in the same place with the same posture and the same look on his face. He has a way of doing things that make me feel as if we’re in a play and he forgot his part while I was out of the room, or the guy with the cue cards had to use the bathroom. I don’t like him less for it, but it’s still strange.

Doyle shivered. "Place gives me the creeps, shamus. Why not add some color?"

I checked the little number on the inside of my sleeve. It was the same as the one on my pants. I tucked it in. "To what end?"

"To make me happy."

I scratched my chin. "Gee, that never occurred to me."

"The house in Washington, done the same way?"

"No." It surfaced another painful memory. Rhonda had redecorated the house before she died. She wasn’t color-blind. I left it that way, an invisible memorial to something I could never share.

"Maybe visit up there next time." The detective uses about half the normal allotment of pronouns, so I’m always filling in the blanks.

We’d had that conversation before. I wasn’t holding my breath. "I’m going to put on some coffee."

He shook his head. "No time, shamus, got to go."

Obviously he meant we, not just he. "Where?"

I’m pretty good at reading the guy. His eyes were focused on me, and he was looking for clues. "Jesse Black’s." A long pause. "She’s dead." Whatever it was he saw, it relaxed him, and a tenseness visibly left his body.

I felt my knees buckle. I had to catch myself. I wiped my eyes at the memory of her. "I saw her tonight."

"Know."

I shook the cobwebs from my head, let my mind catch up. "McMartin?"

"Yeah."

I tried being the detective, "You were supposed to meet her there. Something about Jesse?"

He shrugged. It was no big deal. "No, were going to compare notes with Dickson, on another case. Like the place. Got tied up, so tried to call, but the cell phone battery was dead." I didn’t even try to figure out whose battery.

I waited for the rest of it. I learn more with my mouth shut. "McMartin said Black said if she ever showed up dead, you’d find justice."

It brought back a clearer picture of Jesse. "She was just kidding around, detective."

He shook his head. "A little too much coincidence in my book, shamus. ESP, think?"

I have a degree in math. Life is full of coincidences, real and imagined. With an explanation that transcended math, "Yes, well she’s a woman." It probably does, at that.

Doyle understood. "Speaking of women, McMartin said you were with a woman, a real looker."

I got defensive, for no good reason at all, "It’s got nothing to do with her, detective."

His eyes took in the room. "Okay by me. Here?"

I shook my head.

Real nosy, "Take her home?"

"No, she took a cab."

He must have read something in my voice, maybe saw something new about me. "What, didn’t like her?"

"She got a better offer." I didn’t need to say more, but I did anyway, "Her husband decided he wanted back in."

With all the understanding of a married man, "Not worth fighting for, eh?"

I couldn’t keep the edge off my voice, "Got nothing to do with it, detective."

He looked surprised at my unexpected anger. "Take your word for it, shamus," a pause, "for now." He reached for the doorknob. "Let’s go. McMartin should still be there."

We drove the four blocks in his tar stained, nicotine infested Jeep Cherokee. It was white, but he’d never washed it. It’s not that he’s proud of that fact, or even that he told me about it, it’s just that he’s that type of guy, not real domestic, if you know what I mean. I told him it was time for a new car. He nodded without really listening. His cop brain was somewhere else. I might as well have been alone.

We stopped at the open door. I looked at the thin spray of black blood dotting the wall along the right entrance way. There was a smudge of blood where her head first hit the floor. I sniffed the air. I’d recently read in a science magazine about a study that says color affects the sense of smell, or is it the other way around? I’ve got no sense of color, but the smell of blood affects how I see the black.

I said, "They tossed the place before she got here."

Doyle’s eyes stopped on the blood splatter that had stained a light spot where a picture had hung. "Yeah. Figure hit her after she opened the door. Something hard. Maybe a billy club."

I scanned the living room off to my right. I’d shopped with her a couple times, and helped her bring pieces of furniture or art home. Jesse had a lot of good things. They weren’t good anymore. Killing her was just the final outrage.

I had to drag the words out. "Where’s the body?"

He motioned with his head. "Back room."

He led me to the bedroom. I’d never been there before. It was a girl’s room, walls painted white, light woodwork, makeup and jewelry, very un-noir. It was more the room of a high school girl than a jaded jazz singer. The poster bed wasn’t designed for torture, but the killer had improvised. The bedspread was discarded against the wall. I wanted to cover her with it. I controlled my stomach.

The pretty face wasn’t pretty any more. A strip of duct tape hung from the corner of her mouth. Thin black lines ran down each cheek. A dark bruise around a split in the skin on her temple marked the first blow. She was lashed up to the four bedposts, feet towards the head board. Cigarette burns marked her naked abdomen, and her breasts. He’d cut her in a lot of places, before he cut her throat. It wasn’t cut all the way through. Maybe it was an accident. I felt Jesse’s pain, and it scrunched me up on the inside. I didn’t know him, or maybe her, but I hated him, her, them.

Doyle said, "Lot of justice wanting done here, eh, shamus?"

I nodded. Nothing to add to that.

He asked a uniformed cop, "Where’s McMartin?"

"She went to that jazz club where the girl worked. The owner’s meeting her there."

To me, "Want to walk around?"

I nodded.

"Don’t touch anything."

"Just tell Bobbins I got your okay."

Doyle talked to the big black cop who headed up the evidence crew. Jake Bobbins handed him a package. Doyle came back to me. "He said you have to put on these paper boots, robe and hairnet. He said maybe you’re a suspect."

I warned, "My prints are around here."

"Recent?"

I shrugged. "Three weeks. From before Ronald’s overdose."

He asked the obligatory question, "You two getting it on?"

I shook my head. "No, never have. Just friends."

He wasn’t even skeptical. "Okay." It’s one of the things I like about him.

They cut the cords and removed her body. They didn’t need tape to mark her position. The black blood against the light gray was more than adequate, and the gray of bodily fluids, that final ignomy of death, gave it all a direction, and a smell. I turned my eyes away, up. The blood had sprayed all the way to the ceiling when he cut her throat. It marked open drawers, strewn clothes, scattered papers, a silent witness to the place being searched before she got home.

And the killer didn’t get what he wanted. How did I know? No one, I mean no one, could have withstood the beating, the burns, the cuts. So she didn’t have what he, she, they wanted. About half-way through the torture, he had to know this. It had to be fun to him, her, them. And the search was, despite being sloppy, apparently thorough, so whatever it was, it wasn’t there.

I pulled a chair from the dining room table. It was a spectator’s seat on the fifty yard line. I watched the cops doing what cops do, searching, discussing, identifying, tagging, planning a line of attack, but never a thought about the victim. Personalizing death makes it too tough. Anyway, they see so many that, after the first few, there’s no room left for the kind of caring your average human being has. That’s not to blame them, it would happen to anyone, but when you’re watching it, you have to wonder. I often think the criminals are more affected by what they’ve done than the cops. It’s just the way it is, usually. But not this time, not this killer.

So I watch cops real close, as if there’s something to learn, but that’s not the true sense of it. I marvel that they are able to function at all. I love cops, especially Doyle and McMartin, the good ones, but really, all of them, if they’re clean. They do what we can’t do, wouldn’t do, don’t have the stomach for doing. Every day they wade in and try to clean the manure from society’s Augean Stables. And for that, we too often vilify them, prosecute them for mistakes made under pressures most people can’t even imagine, or treat them as the next of kin to the lowest scum of the earth, when they’re only too human. They live in the gray world between good and evil, but they’re evaluated in black and white. It’s too stark a contrast to be real, never mind accurate.

Yes, I love cops, but I don’t think so much of copdom, the bureaucracy meant to protect them, and us. When I interface with cops, I’m okay. When I interface with copdom, I’m in trouble, all the time. Cops actually do believe in justice, but the system believes in the law, sort of. One might think copdom exists to translate the law to justice. Not a chance. You think the courts screw it up, it’s nothing compared to what the civil and official brass do to convolute the process. But a lot of that is a reaction to the hoops they’ve got to jump through to protect and serve. And then no one ever says thanks.

I left by the front door. The bright klieg lights cut through the dim sunlight. There were television cameras and reporters of various ilks and genders milling about. They’d arrived while I was inside. I’ve seen most of them up close at some time or another, but I go out of my way not to introduce myself. I don’t want to be remembered.

I heard someone say, "Who’s that?" Another voice said, "I don’t know. You want me to grab him?" Then, "No, that’s Doyle coming out." They all converged behind me.

As I cut through to the sidewalk, I heard a voice, "Hey, I know you."

She took my elbow and directed me further away from the crowd, as if, and until proven otherwise, I was a valuable possession. I took in the reporter from the local rag. I couldn’t recall where I knew her from. She said her name was Candy Candelosi. She was about thirty-five, pretty in a predatory way, what with the sharp aggressive nose and a line of black roots on her bleached gray hair, but the transparent light eyes took the edge off. The dyed hair didn’t go so well with the dark features, but I’m no maven on female appearances, especially as modified for a color enabled world. The body, sheathed in a pinstriped dark suit was attractive. I felt her inertia when I stopped. A trailing aura of cigarette odor engulfed me, and I pulled back.

"You’re ..." I could see her brain work as she searched for the name.

I thought about lying, but I didn’t want to chance it. Nothing interests reporters like lies. "Green. CB Green."

"CB Green?" The question formed on her face as she connected up events she hadn’t thought about before. "The private investigator?"

I remembered where I knew her from. I started walking again.

She moved in front of me, walking backwards, probing offensively with her eyes. "What’s going on here?"

Yes, I knew her. She’d done a story on the sale of my business seven years ago. She might know I wasn’t destitute. I don’t particularly want that known, especially by the cops, or copdom. I surprised myself when I asked, "I thought you worked the business beat?"

She waved her hand. "Got moved to crime four years ago."

"Good for you." I tried to walk by her.

She pushed on my shoulder. "Hey, slow down, okay?"

I don’t particularly care for reporters. They’re right in between crooks and lawyers in my book, but with less defined morals. "I don’t know anything, Ms. Candelosi."

She was looking for some purchase. "It’s Candy, and I was a friend of Jesse’s. She spoke about you. Like, wow, I didn’t know you were the same guy."

I wasn’t even confused. She’d connected then-me with now-me. Despite my misgivings, she went from meddlesome reporter to someone worth questioning. I nodded towards the coffee shop a block and a half east, and this time I took her elbow. It was surprisingly crowded, what with the neighbors talking among themselves. Soon the television crews would be in doing the ‘man in the street’ routine, after the cops left the scene. I didn’t want to be there then.

Candy ordered a mocha, and so did I. We took a seat in the corner, next to the cappuccino machine. There was so much noise, we might as well have been alone.

I leaned towards her. "What brought you here?" I asked.

It was the royal you of you reporters, but she took it personally. "Like I heard it on the scanner. Like my shift starts at four. I recognized the address, you know." She pulled out a steno-type notebook.

I thought about how her voice didn’t measure up to the rest of the package. It was high pitched, California valley girl, matching the words. But the dark roots were so dissonant to the image conveyed by the voice. I worked to discount it. "Maybe you can tell me about Jesse?"

She bargained, "Like I’m not a free information service, Green."

I made it easy for her. "I’ll return the favor."

She smiled, a gotcha.

"When I know something."

She didn’t like that. She frowned.

I held out a hand. "Call it an investment, Ms. ... Candy."

She shook it, and gave me a tentative nod. "Sure, CB." My name didn’t sound right on her lips.

I started the questioning, "How long did you know her?"

"About a year. We met through her scumbag husband, Ronald."

"Are you a friend of Ronald’s?"

She shook her head. "No, he asked me for a date while Jesse was singing. I told her. Like it didn’t bother her any. Like it was fine with her." She switched to the wrong tense, "Like, they’re a strange couple."

I made fun of her. "Like he’s dead. And now Jesse."

She made a face at me. I don’t think she appreciated being made fun of, but she changed her speech pattern. "Yeah, I read that. I was on vacation at the time. I’m guessing he made Darwin proud and did the gene pool a favor."

"No disagreement there." I returned to her previous point. "So, his cheating wasn’t news to her?"

She had a high school girl laugh that matched the valley speak. "Not news, now there’s an understatement. She said even an asshole’s got to have a little sex. Like she wouldn’t touch the guy with a ten foot pole."

I don’t much care for women who swear, so I’ve toned down her earthier response. I asked, "When did you see her last?"

She finished her coffee with a gulp. "This weekend. At her house. I know, you want to know if she was afraid of anything?"

I nodded. It was okay if she wanted to ask the questions for me.

She shook her head and hunched her shoulders. "Well, no, she wasn’t afraid of a thing. We talked about a trip I’m planning to San Francisco. She said she had a gig there later in the year."

I went back to Jesse’s sex life. Although not from any direct experience, I didn’t see Jesse going celibate. She wasn’t that type of girl. "No boyfriends, since she wasn’t getting it on with Ronald?"

A vigorous nod. "Yeah, she said she was seeing someone, but she didn’t say who. I even asked her, but she wasn’t saying, if you know what I mean." She gave me an unattractive wink.

Without a who, she became a lot less valuable to me. Anyway, I had things to do, so I thanked her. She said she’d keep me up on what the police were doing. I didn’t need it, I’ve got my own sources, good ears and an inquiring mind. But she seemed anxious to help, so I didn’t tell her that.

As I paid the bill, Candy asked, "What ever happened with your girlfriend, what was her name?"

I controlled my voice. "Rhonda."

She tossed me a throwaway question, "Yeah, how’s she doing?"

Matter of fact, "She’s dead. Shot outside a jewelry store during a holdup."

"I’m sorry."

I didn’t detect any sorrow though. Just another one inoculated against too much violence. You can’t deal with crime and keep perspective, unless of course, you’re the victim. Recalling Rhonda’s death a second time brought a shiver. I walked it off.

After ten blocks I turned my thoughts to how I was going to make Jesse’s words come true. I headed back towards my place, zigzagging is a crooked diagonal. I got a feeling I’d been there before, then saw I was in front of Lola May Carter’s house. She was part of the last weeks of pain and suffering, with Mary and Marsha and others now too numerous to list. That one man wove himself through the combatants and killed so blatantly, blazing a path of destruction through an entire family without even knowing it, without intention, but no less pain. Lola May was at the start of it, but not the cause of it. She was, to go back to an old term, the mobster’s moll. His death was the very beginning of it, but again, not the cause of it. Maybe there was no cause, only effect. I gave Lola May my fee from the mobster’s wife. It was a lot of money. There was a certain justice in that.

Lola May is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen not in a painting. She’s tall, thin, good breasts, not big but real, nice curves, straightened hair. She is black as black can get, and that only makes her more beautiful. I don’t lust after her though, because she’s got too much mileage on her thirty years, but it hadn’t made her mean.

Four days after I gave her the money, she showed up at my office. "I need some advice," she said.

So I offered her a chair. She did a double-take like everyone else does when she first saw the color scheme. She gave me a look as she recorded this new evidence about me. I poured coffee and asked, "About?" I already knew about her love life, and nobody needs advice on that from me, especially Lola May.

"I’m going to use that money. Maybe change my life."

"It’s not that much."

"It is all at one time."

"And?"

So she told me about the coffee shop three blocks from me. She’d made an offer that morning. We talked about it. I asked if she had enough. She said it wasn’t a problem. We talked about her life. She sprinkled in a lot of questions of her own, as if she was doing a thesis on me. She never mentioned the lack of color. We parted unintended friends. They’re the best kind.

The light was on inside, and I could see her through the curtains. I knocked. She gave me her cheek to kiss. It was a first time familiarity. She led me to the kitchen. She had two big wood block tables. One was set up like an office and was strewn with papers.

"I’m working up a marketing plan."

"You got the place?"

"Yes. The owner was using his friends to pump up the sales for the last few months, rebating them for their business. I knew it, but it was still a good buy, so I split the difference. I take possession in a week. Got to do my ‘do diligence’ first."

I congratulated her, then asked, "You know a Jesse Black?"

"I know who she is. Jack and I went to see her a couple of times."

"He was into jazz?"

She shook her head. "Not particularly. Someone told him about Jesse. He’d have had the hots for her, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet."

"She was married."

"No big deal in Jack’s world. Anyway, a black man with a drug habit isn’t competition to him."

"That’s it?"

She shrugged pretty shoulders. "All I know."

I started to stand as she said, "So, out doing more good works, Lone Ranger?"

I shook my head. "Not that anyone would know."

"You’re not that big a secret, CB. There’s guys at police headquarters know about you."

"You been checking up on me?"

"I’m trying to qualify my friends these days." She answered the look on my face. "You’re qualified."

"Thanks."

Out of the blue, "You should have a girlfriend."

"Easier said than done."

"That’s because you’re not trying."

My turn to shrug.

She shocked me, "Denise says you’re really special."

I knew they’d gone to school together. It was probably me that brought them together again, though that might be giving myself more credit than I deserved. "How’s that?"

"She says you see things nobody else sees. She says you’re not normal. For a man."

That was more than I wanted to know, about her knowing, that is. I tried to end the conversation, "She’s getting pretty talkative these days."

Lola May continued, "You’re easy to talk about." I felt the heat on my face. "And you blush the prettiest gray." Her eyes followed me as I stood to go. "I don’t want you getting away before I can get even with you. So don’t be a stranger, okay, CB."

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