Backfire

27

Hyde Street, Russian Hill

Sunday

After four long knocks, Eve opened her door to Harry Christoff.

“I had this feeling it was you, but I was sort of hoping I was wrong.”

“Why? You wanted maybe the postman? It’s Sunday, no delivery on Sunday.”

A laugh spurted out of her. “No, I’m not really up to acting all social and civilized. I’m sorry I missed the meeting this morning; you’ll tell me everything?”

“I will, but you have to invite me in first. I figured you’d be in pretty bad shape, so I came bearing gifts.” He held out a bakery bag and a covered go-cup that sent the aroma of dark roast coffee wafting to her nose.

Eve took the bag first, looked upward, and said “Thank you,” then, “You’re amazing, Harry, and you even brought coffee. No, you’re more than amazing, you’re a prince, Agent Christoff. Are there any glazed?”

He looked down at her scrubbed face, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders over a faded red robe, her bare feet. “You look like the homecoming queen on a reality show. I’m glad you slept in this morning. How’s your back?”

She forced herself to stand up straight. “I’ll be good to go after three donuts and this wonderful coffee. Come in, let’s go to the kitchen. Are there maybe more than one glazed?”

“There are three, but I was hoping for one myself,” he said, as he followed her into her kitchen. He still couldn’t get over how streamlined and cool it looked, with pale green granite counters shot with black, and hanging copper pots over a small center island. He said, “My kitchen’s right out of the forties.”

“As long as everything’s clean and works, who cares what decade it comes from? It’s all about the food and the person making it, right? You want milk in your coffee? You don’t want a glazed donut, do you? You somehow knew it was my favorite?”

“Nah, give me a chocolate with sprinkles. I’m a real man.”

“How many donuts?”

“Six.”

She set everything out on the small kitchen table, and they started in on the donuts and coffee, neither saying much of anything until only one donut, not glazed, was left on the paper plate between them. Eve wiped the sticky glaze off her mouth and her fingers, laughed, and leaned forward to flick a red sprinkle off his chin. She sat back and sighed, contented. “Thank you. Before you came, I’d just gotten out of the shower and wondered what I was going to make for breakfast. Nothing appealed, then you showed up.”

She toasted him with her coffee cup.

He asked, “How’d you sleep last night?”

“In the arms of the angels, with the help of two aspirin and a sleeping-pill chaser. I’m trying to stay away from the codeine.” She stretched, froze, then began, very slowly, to stretch again.

Harry stood up. “Let me see how bad the bruising is today.”

She stared up at him. “You mean you want me to drop my bathrobe?”

“Well, yeah, but don’t feel like you have to put on a show for me, even though I did let you eat all three of the glazed donuts. No, just show me your back. You know, if you can’t think of me as your doctor, you can pretend you’re an artist’s model draped with a towel. Come on, Barbieri, I’m not going to jump you. You’re safe. I’m not desperate enough, and, fact is, you’re too pathetic-looking right now.”

She stood up, turned her back to him, and let her robe drop to her waist. Harry pushed her hair out of the way, even though he didn’t need to, and studied the shades of her green, black, and yellow back. “You got a modern art painter living with you?”

She tried to look back over her shoulder. “That bad?”

He lightly touched his fingertips to one bruise. She didn’t flinch. “Do you have some muscle cream?”

She pulled her robe back up. “Yeah, I do, for all the good it did me. I can’t reach the bad areas.”

“Get it. I’ll do it for you.”

She gave him a look, then left him in the kitchen to finish his coffee and stare out at her small back garden with its six-foot stone walls and single cypress tree. Everything looked dormant now, but he imagined there’d be lots of color in the summer.

He ate the last donut since it was chocolate.

She came back into the kitchen in a minute, handed him a white tube. It was brand-new.

“It’s supposed to be good stuff, not only for muscle soreness but for bruising as well. I bought it yesterday before I realized I couldn’t reach anything.”

She again dropped the robe to her waist. She grinned over her shoulder. “Am I really that pitiful?”

“Not quite; you combed your hair.”

“Well, I looked in the mirror and nearly fainted. I had to do something.”

Harry covered his fingers with the cream, stared at her long stretch of back, closed his eyes for a moment to get a grip on himself, and touched his fingers to her skin. I’m a solid, consummate professional, doing my job. He wished she did look pathetic, but the fact was, she didn’t, not at all. He reminded himself he was looking at a deputy marshal’s back splotched blue and green, but, unfortunately, that didn’t help.

“Am I rubbing too hard?”

She said over her shoulder, “No, it feels grand.”

“Would you like to lie on your stomach? Speaking as one solid professional to another?”

She laughed, then groaned. “Not a good idea, even speaking as a professional. You’ve got really good hands, Harry.”

Really good professional hands. He started whistling as he continued rubbing the cream on her back in steady smooth strokes, deepening when he realized he wasn’t hurting her, and if his hands went a bit lower than the bruises, surely there were sore muscles at her waist, and the massage couldn’t but help.

“You can’t see the bruises now,” he said. “You’re all white since I’ve used half the tube on you.”

“Feels like it, nice and hot.”

He didn’t want to stop, but he did. He stepped back. Slowly, she shrugged back into her robe. She turned. “Thank you. Look at me, I think I can straighten without groaning.”

He went to the sink to wash his hands. He could feel the heat deep and knew it must feel good on her back.

“Tell me more about your meeting this morning with Cheney, Savich, and Sherlock.”

So he told her, answering her questions until she had no more. His cell phone chimed.

“Yeah?”

“Cheney here, Harry. They found Mickey O’Rourke. Two kids in Nicasio saw a man bury him. Thank God they had the sense to keep quiet so he never saw them. The Marin County sheriff, Bud Hibbert, had a photo of Mickey on his desk, recognized him, and called me. I called Savich and Sherlock. They’ve finished interviewing Boozer Gordon. I don’t want to call Barbieri; she’s probably still flat on her stomach, high on codeine.”

“Actually,” Harry said, “I’m with her now, and she’s doing okay. She’s got to get dressed, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Good. Ask Eve to requisition a Chevy Suburban out of the marshals’ pool, that way the five of us can ride up together.”

Harry punched off his cell. He looked up to see Eve standing in the doorway to the kitchen, unmoving, her face set.

“You heard what Cheney said?”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to believe Mickey could be dead, it hurt too much, so I tried not to think about it.” She swallowed. “But I knew he had to be. Harry, he’s dead, just-dead. That monster murdered him.”

Harry said, “Yes, the monster murdered him. But we’ve got two kids who saw him. We’ve got witnesses, Eve. Cheney wants us to go up there. We’ll catch him; you know we will.”

She turned to go into her bedroom, saying over her shoulder, “I can’t stand this, Harry, just can’t stand it.”

Harry thought of Mrs. O’Rourke, thought of Mickey O’Rourke’s teenage daughters, thought of the uncertainty they’d been living with for the past four days, the soul-eating fear, and now they had to face the death of a husband, a father.

When Eve came out, she was dressed in her black and red, her hair in a ponytail, no makeup on her face. Her eyes were puffy from crying.

He walked to her and lightly rubbed his fingertip over her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Eve. Believe me, I know how you feel.”