Killer Heat

FIVE

Amber Bristol's studio apartment was on the third floor of a walkup building on East Ninety-first Street, near the corner of Lexington. The superintendent, Vargas Candera, had admitted us with a spare key that he said she had given him, reluctantly, after a kitchen blaze in one of the other units had forced the fire department to break down a door. He waited for us in the hallway.

Janet sat downstairs in a patrol car with two officers while Mike and I put on plastic gloves for a first look around.

"I'd say Amber was either a meticulous housekeeper or somebody else made a clean sweep around here," Mike said, adjusting the dimmer to its brightest position.

The kitchenette was to the left of the entrance door and the bathroom to its right. A curtain of black wooden beads separated the foyer from the king-size canopy bed just beyond. Mike held the swinging beads aside and I followed him in.

"Early American brothel. I guess you can take the girl out of Idaho, but you can't take the ho out of Ida."

The trim on the bedstead was a simple calico pattern that matched the cushions on the two armchairs. A hooked rug in the same pastel shades covered most of the floor. The walls were decorated with paintings of horses and mountains in cheap wooden frames meant to look rustic and folksy.

"No sheets?" I asked.

The quilt-a modern reproduction of a classic wedding ring pattern-was folded neatly in the center of the bed, which had been stripped even of its mattress pad.

"Maybe she was abducted on her way to the Laundromat. That's a route you've probably never taken, Coop."

"It's not only that it's been sanitized, Mike. This room is completely sterile. There's nothing personal on any surface."

"Remember, it was Amber's office. I'd hardly expect her to have photos of Ma and Pa on display. No pictures from the prom, no old boyfriends."

"I was counting on a computerized version of a little black book."

"You're a little late." Mike moved one of the bedside tables. The lamp and window air conditioner were plugged into a surge bar on the floor. So was a six-foot-long cable connector that fed the empty cradle of a PDA.

I looked around for a telephone and answering machine. There was a space on the small table, between the lamp and a decorative candle, and the line that fed the jack also snaked along the rug, attached to nothing.

"Somebody's taken stuff out of here. Anything that could connect Amber to her business," Mike said.

He was opening drawers. First, next to the bed, where I could see that she kept her supply of condoms, and then her dresser. Underwear, sweaters, and three drawers of negligees below that.

I pulled open the closet door. Slacks hung with skirts in a variety of lengths, everything black except for the blue jeans. Shoes were lined neatly on the floor-flats in front, backless pumps with high heels behind them, and six pairs of leather boots. There were a bunch of empty hangers and lots of large hooks affixed to the back of the door.

"Nothing unusual?" Mike asked. "No sex toys? No other obvious equipment?"

"I'll confess ignorance. I wouldn't know what it's supposed to look like."

"Right. And you're the expert.

"Sex crimes, not games."

"I love it when you play the dumb blond. Those are the rare times I feel most connected to you," Mike said.

"There's plenty of room to hold stuff-big hooks and lots of wire hangers. But that would be just a guess 'cause there are normal things that would fit right in."

Mike scratched his head. "Maybe Janet's wrong. Or nuts."

"Or Amber didn't work out of her home. Or she retired." The beads made a clicking noise as I brushed through the curtain to look in the refrigerator. Vargas Candera leaned against the doorjamb.

"No, señora," he said laughing. "She not retired. Amber, she's a very busy lady."

Mike leaned his back against the wall and crossed his arms. "Doing what?"

"No se. Plenty of men, they come and they go," Vargas said, playing his fingers in the air like they were climbing up and down the stairs. "I'm not supposed to know nothing, right? I jus' work here."

"Must have been noisy," Mike said.

The skim milk was ten days past its sale date and the butter gave off a sour smell.

"Ms. Amber, she paid me to extra-soundproof the apartment when she move in," Vargas said, stroking his moustache. "She tell me she likes to play her music loud. Paid me good to double Sheetrock. Put in 'coustic tile."

"Was noise a problem in the building?"

Vargas rubbed his grease-stained thumb and forefinger together, suggesting that he had been well compensated for his ignorance. "I never heard no music after that."

"When's the last time you saw Amber?" Mike asked.

"Not for a week. Maybe more."

Vargas started to walk into the foyer. "Stay right there," Mike said. "Don't put your hands on anything. I need to get some guys here to dust for prints. When's the last time you were in this apartment?"

"Me? She don't ask me in much," Vargas said, one side of his mouth pulling up in a smile. "I can't afford it."

"Enough to know if anything is missing? If it looks the way Ms.

Bristol always kept it?"

"Not my job." He held his hands up, palms outward, the strong, thick fingers in front of his face. "I don't go in there since I fix her toilet last summer."

"Do you know any of her friends? Any of the people who came to see her regularly?"

I thought of the doormen in my high-rent high-rise building, only twenty blocks away. The sharpest ones held dozens of secrets-infidelities and betrayals by neighbors-thirty floors' worth of them. "I not a busybody, lady."

"You live in the basement here?" Mike asked.

"Si. I got my television, my girlfriend, and my six-pack. I do my work and I keep to myself."

"Anybody else have a key to her apartment?"

"How would I know? If a key work, nobody bother me." Mike's frustration was growing. "Dylan. There's a bar around the corner called Dylan's. You ever seen that guy visiting here-the guy who owns the joint?"

"I got no idea who you mean. Dylan what?"

"Men pay you to forget they were here, Vargas? Is that how it goes?"

"They don't have to do nothing, Detective. Ms. Amber takes care of me very good not to hear nothing, not to see anybody," Vargas said, cracking the knuckles of his left hand in his powerful right fist. "That girl and trouble, they was always together.