Kiss Her Goodbye

Chapter 9

BY TEN THE NEXT morning—after an early swim in the Commodore pool, another Bing's workout, and a deli breakfast—I settled in for a day of the kind of detective work that doesn't make it onto the TV shows.

I had to delve into those ancient filing cabinets in that ancient corner building where two old men had shared an office but kept their secrets to themselves. Pete Cummings, on his job in Philly, had left me a tidy desktop and a comfortable swivel chair and an icebox full of Miller. He was my idea of a good host.

But I was glad I'd got limbered up with a swim and a workout, because you have to have good knees to go through every drawer of two five-drawer files. And with an information pack rat like Doolan, those drawers contained plenty of chaff to go through trying to find a few kernels of wheat.

I paid special attention to any clippings that dated within the last year. Doolan put together a fat file of the press he and Alex had got for cleaning up the neighborhood, but I couldn't find anything that wasn't laudatory fluff— RETIRED POLICE OFFICER LEADS NEIGHBORHOOD REFORM. Nothing with specifics about the criminal element he'd helped run out. No other names at all except some of the merchants I'd met when I canvassed the neighborhood.

So I went back and started at the beginning of the newspaper stuff—right around Doolan's retirement twenty years ago. It was a lot of loose, yellowed clippings—two full file drawers—and started with puff pieces about the brave officer stepping down, and included clips on any hood, thief, or rapist that Doolan had put away who'd got out and made the papers again.

At first I thought I'd struck pay dirt, but virtually every series of clippings wound up with the bad guy returned to the slammer. Had Doolan's fine hand worked behind the scenes on any of these arrests? Did that mean a family member of some sorry incarcerated son of a bitch might have settled a grudge with the old warhorse?

But that didn't cut it. Doolan hadn't been chopped down on the street in a drive-by shooting—it was a staged suicide in his own damn apartment. That required a kind of sophistication and access unlikely to be found in the loved ones of some recently re-jugged recidivist.

I made a list of the names anyway, on a yellow pad. It was the kind of thing I could hand over to Pat if everything else was a dead end.

One file drawer seemed to be nothing but crimes from all over the world that had, for whatever reason, piqued Doolan's interest. These went back many years, well before his retirement, some brittle with age, a number from true detective magazines. At times he would underline in pen some nice piece of detective work, sometimes deductive, other times forensic.

I would walk a stack of file folders to Cummings's desk and sit and flip through the contents, and occasionally I'd get distracted by the interesting stories he'd clipped, everything from Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden to Kid Twist taking that flying leap out a six-story window at a Coney Island hotel (there'd only been six cops to keep track of him). So it sucker punched me when I found myself holding a crumbling clipping from an old Saga mag headed THE MARK OF BASIL.

There, in details echoing what diamond merchant David Gross had told me, was the tale of the tsar's favorite stonecutter, with blurry photos and hand-drawn re-creations, winding up with the questions, "Whatever happened to the great Basil? And what became of his precious stones? Has a glittering trail of death continued on through the years?"

My hands were trembling. It might have been a coincidence. After all, it wasn't like Doolan worked the Lizzie Borden case. These clippings seemed random, just material that got his juices going enough to honor them with a place in an already fat file folder of nothing special.

But for the first time I had a connection between Bill Doolan and the pebble I'd absentmindedly plucked from a pile of bloody sawdust used to soak up the life that had spilled too soon from young Ginnie Mathes.

It was almost one P.M., so I had a beer and unwrapped the ham and cheese on rye my host had bequeathed me. The "Mark of Basil" clipping stared at me from the desk as I ate and drank, and dared me to make something out of it.

Beyond its existence, I couldn't. It remained nothing but a glimmer of a place where three murders connected—Doolan's staged suicide, the fatal mugging of Ginnie Mathes, and the hit-and-run of Dulcie Thorpe—and it provided nothing more than the hope that maybe my efforts were worth the trouble.

Nothing else presented itself in the folders of clippings, though I lost an hour plowing through a full drawer of mob material, with plenty on the Bonettis and a full file on the Tretriano family, right up to recent stories on Anthony and Club 52. Nothing underlined in these.

I moved on to the drawers of photos. I skipped the folder on myself and went right to the folder stuffed with shots of beautiful women, sometimes with Doolan posing with them, often indifferently composed, indicating he'd elicited help from some bystander to snap these visual keepsakes. The final dozen or so were from Club 52, including the sexy onstage shots of Chrome that I'd seen before.

This time I noticed another blonde, up by the stage, but her back was to the camera—tall, shapely, her sleek ash blonde hair curling under just before it hit her shoulders. Wearing tight jeans and a white blouse, she was in all of the performance shots. Never more than a sliver of her face was revealed, yet something about the way she stood jogged my mind....

Laying the photos out like panels of a comic book, I got the overall picture—the blonde was running point for Doolan! Obviously she would carve herself a place out near the stage, and when Doolan was ready to snap his camera, she would move to one side, taking the patron or two next to her along for the ride, giving him a path for a clear shot.

In addition, there were three photos of Doolan posing with Chrome, the singer's arm around him in one, another where she was kissing him on the cheek, and a final one where they were hugging, the old boy looking happy as hell. Couldn't blame him.

But the other blonde, the ash blonde, her presence was felt in those three pics as well. They were the work of somebody who knew her way around a camera—better than just a recruited bystander, superior to Doolan's own amateur-night photography.

Who was she? Was this the younger woman who had smudged her makeup dancing with Doolan that Cummings had told me about? Who Doolan had bought a gift for? Trying to make Chrome into Doolan's girlfriend was a stretch. Maybe the ash blonde was the real woman in his life. Who was she?

One of the photos was still in my hand when the office door opened, as if in answer to that question. And it was an attractive woman, all right, but not a very good candidate for Doolan's late-in-life lover—since this was his granddaughter.

"Mike," Anna Marina said, and forced a smile. "I'm glad you're here. Pat said you might be."

She was probably thirty-five and had a nice shape on her, well served by an orange paisley silk blouse and a short rust-color skirt with matching pumps. Good colors for a redhead like her, with her pug nose lightly dusted by freckles and her big dark blue wide-set eyes; even her lipstick was an orange-tinged red on thin but nicely formed lips. Her hair was in a shag that had been out of style for a while, but I didn't mind. I'd been out of style longer than that.

"Hi, kid," I said. "Come in and stay a while."

She shut the door carefully, as if afraid she might break the glass, and crossed the creaky floor to the client's chair. This was Cummings's office but I was feeling like a private detective again. And something about her manner told me this was business.

"Pat said you're looking into my grandfather's death." Anna had a nice voice, breathy, high-pitched but not squeaky. She sat on the edge of the chair, knees together. No purse.

"Yeah," I said. "I have my suspicions."

"Frankly ... so have I."

"Really?"

"Not about his suicide. I think he took his life. I mean, who wouldn't, facing that kind of death sentence?"

I frowned at her. "I can share my thoughts, Anna, if you want to know why I—"

"You've been in and out of his apartment, right? Looking into things, I mean."

I shifted in Pete's chair. What was this about?

"Yeah, Anna, I have. Why?"

"Did you notice something missing?"

"No."

"From the walls, I mean."

"No. Everything looked like it was where it belonged. Always did in your grandfather's apartment."

She nodded, then shrugged. "It's true that other things had been hung in their place."

"What things? In whose place?"

She sat forward, wide-eyed, and an urgency that had been bubbling under her surface made itself known. "The two paintings. By George Wilson? The famous abstract painter?"

"Never heard of the guy. Are these the two paintings Pat told me about? The valuable paintings that were left to you in your grandfather's will?"

She nodded. "Mike, they're worth a lot of money. Twenty-five thousand as a pair. They are just a bunch of colors and shapes, but the artist died recently and the value has skyrocketed."

I nodded. "And these paintings should have been in Doolan's apartment?"

"Yes. But they're gone. And I'd like you to find them—no questions asked."

"I could look for them, I guess. But there was no sign of a break-in."

She winced. "Mike ... are you going to make this hard? We are willing to give you a ... a twenty percent finder's fee. No questions asked."

"What's this 'no questions asked' stuff?"

She rose. She smoothed her skirt out. Tugged at her blouse as she thrust out her breasts, which were nice full high handfuls that went well with her narrow waist. Her face was pretty enough but with an odd blankness that hid calculation, or anyway tried to.

Then she was sitting on the edge of my desk, bracing herself with the heels of her hands pushed against the edge, which gave her a breasts-forward posture. Her crossed legs were bare, her knees white. Nice calves on her. She was a natural redhead, and I always get a kick out of that, when it comes time to compare the drapes and the carpet.

Anna Doolan, now Marina, had always been able to work guys into a lather without trying, which was how she'd won her high-school-football-hero husband. Who had gone on to further glory as an hourly worker at an upstate dog food factory

"You never liked me," she said, chin up a little. "But you always liked to look at me."

"I never disliked you. I just saw through you."

"We could have a weekend together, Mike. Just you and me. Harry goes to Vegas with some friends of his in June. We could go someplace else. Any place you like."

She started to unbutton her blouse. I was going to stop her, but what the hell—no charge for looking. The blouse hung open and then she helped it a little, letting her twins out for some air.

She didn't have a bra on. She didn't need one. Her breasts were creamy white and dusted with freckles, just like her face. Her areolae were barely darker than the smooth flesh around them and the nipples just a little darker than that, pert eraser tips that could rub a man's face until he'd forgotten any mistakes he ever made, or might ever make....

"Twenty-five percent," she said, and I got it.

"Get the hell off my desk, Anna," I growled, "and button up. I didn't steal your damn paintings."

She frowned, and slid down off the desk with her shoes hitting the floor like two little gunshots. The blouse hung open and the view was fine, but all I could think was How could this little tramp be related to Doolan?

"I'll go to a lawyer," she said. "I'll get a real private eye. We'll prove—"

"I didn't take the paintings, kiddo. Maybe whoever killed your grandfather did. If your grandfather was murdered, aren't you interested in finding out who—"

The door opened and a big guy stormed in.

Whether it was on cue or not, I don't know. I found it a little hard to believe that Harry Marina was smart enough to cook up such a scheme, although Anna was. Anyway, he'd either been waiting just outside the door through all this for the right moment, or had been parked down on the street and came up to see what was taking so long.

Anna stepped away from the desk, bumped against the little refrigerator. Finally she got around to starting to button up.

"Hammer made a play, Harry," she said nervously. "Do you believe this guy? He said he'd give me the paintings back if I—" She shivered at the thought of my hands on her pale flesh. Not too convincingly.

Harry was six two in a black T-shirt and blue jeans and work boots, two hundred plus pounds, little of which was brains. The shirt may have been part of Anna's plan, as it showed off his muscles. But Harry had some gut going, too, so I wasn't that impressed. I could have taken the .45 out from under my arm and really got his attention, but that would have been overkill.

He came over like a halfback finding his way through the line and kicked the client chair out of the way.

"You goddamn sleazeball, Hammer," he said. "I oughta break your fucking neck."

"I don't have the paintings," I said.

He reached across the desk and yanked me over it and clippings and photos went everywhere, and he tossed me. I landed hard on the old wooden floor, right where the bullet had gone in. He stomped over and leaned down over me—he had booze on his breath but was not drunk—and his teeth were bared and his eyes were stupid as he grabbed me by the lapels.

"You come across with those paintings," he said, "or I'll—"

I threw a forearm into his chest with enough power to send him backward. He didn't lose his balance, but he did have to work to maintain it, which gave me enough time to get to my feet, and as he was straightening, I threw a hard right hand into his breadbasket and he bowed to me, polite bastard that he was, and I brought locked hands down on the back of his neck and sent him to the floor with a whump. I was about to kick him in the head when I felt her hands on my arm, gentle not gripping, and her big blue eyes were pleading up at me.

"No, Mike. Don't. Don't hurt him. Can't you just please give us the paintings?"

This distraction allowed Harry to tackle me, and I went back past a yelping Anna, who jumped out of the way, and I hit the floor again, not hard but he'd let go of me and got to his feet and was diving at me now, and there wasn't room between the desk and the fridge for me to get clear, so I stopped him with a foot that caught him in the balls and his eyes popped and his face turned white as he dropped, his dead weight coming right at me.

I did manage to scramble out of the way just before he whammed and get back behind the desk against the window. Anna had retreated over by the couch opposite the file cabinets, a clawed hand to her mouth. Her hubby was curled in a fetal ball, hands buried between his legs, his pain so great he couldn't express it other than to show me a bright red face with a vein-popping forehead and bulbous eyes.

I grabbed him by an arm and dragged him to his feet. He walked like a monkey as I guided him to the door. I opened it, shoved him out on the landing, hoping he wouldn't fall down the two flights of stairs. Half hoping, anyway.

When I turned, Anna was right there, looking ashamed, with that wide-eyed expression I'd seen from her when she was a kid and Doolan caught her stealing money from her grandma's purse.

"Thirty percent?" she asked.

I took her by the arm and flung her out, too, slammed the door on them, and locked them out using the key already in there. The sound of them picking themselves and each other up, and their footsteps going down the stairs, was a pleasure to hear.

I picked up the place.

I had another beer.

Maybe she was adopted.

Irritated that the thought of those freckled breasts persisted in my mind's eye, I ignored the pain in my side from hitting the floor and got back to work. Soon I was digging into the most boring but potentially illuminating of the file drawers—the paid bills, bank statements, and so on. Again I worked backward, starting with the most recent.

And a little over two months before Doolan's death, there it was: the receipt from the Soho Abstract Art Gallery for payment of fifteen thousand dollars for two paintings by George Wilson.

"If you are thinking, sir," the prissy male voice at the gallery told me over the phone, "that we underpaid your friend, I can assure you that we gave a reasonable price."

"I understand you have to make a buck. I was told they were worth around $25,000 for the pair."

"That's the approximate retail value, yes, but Mr. Doolan was in a hurry. He said he needed to raise the money quickly and was willing to accept a strictly wholesale offer if cash was available."

"Cash?"

"Yes. That was, of course, a red flag to me, but he did have the provenance. Do you know he bought those paintings thirty years ago for a pittance? Several hundred dollars each! I would say he made out quite well on the deal."

"Not that well."

"Oh?"

"He was murdered."

I thanked the guy for his help and pressed on sorting through receipts, wondering what the hell Doolan had needed the money for. Fifteen grand was a lot of dough for an old coot to spend in the last months of his life, even if he was hanging out at Club 52.

A possible answer came quickly—here was another receipt, from a travel agency, for $956.75. One round-trip ticket to Bogotá, Colombia, with the return date open, for a Georgina Wilson. Cute alias considering how the money was raised. The receipt was in the Wilson name as well, so she must have made the booking herself.

I called the travel agency, and the woman on the phone, who was the manager and very efficient, remembered the ticketing.

"Yes, Ms. Wilson is an attractive blonde in her mid- to late thirties, I would say. I remember her well because she wore her sunglasses throughout the interview, and her hair was quite lovely."

"Platinum?"

"I would say more ... ash blonde. She had her passport with her, which really isn't necessary for ticketing, but she had me look it over to make sure everything was in order."

Probably to see if it passed muster, since it was the passport for the nonexistent Georgina Wilson.

So for some reason, two months before he was murdered, Doolan had sent his blonde friend—girlfriend—to Bogotá. If the fifteen grand had been raised for this occasion, the plane fare only put a small dent in it, a top-notch phony passport maybe another grand. So he was funding what might be a long stay, judging by the open-ended return ticket. A vacation for her? Without him? That made no sense.

But what did make sense? Colombia was among the biggest exporters of cocaine in the world. Was that it? Was this Doolan's last case?

And on the desk, the Saga clipping with the headline THE MARK OF BASIL taunted me.

By late afternoon, I was punchy from research—at least the visit from the Marinas had provided a little exercise—and I was about to give my blurry eyes a rest and close up the office when the phone rang.

It was Pat.

"Remember Joseph Fidello?" he said.

"I never met the guy. But isn't he Ginnie Mathes's former boyfriend?"

"He's a former everything now. I'm heading over to take a look at his body."

"Fidello's dead?"

"Well, his throat was cut ear to ear."

"That'll do it."

***

The shabby brownstone rooming house on West Forty-sixth was one of many in the neighborhood, and Joseph Fidello's one-room flop was typical of its kind—peeling wallpaper, a battered dresser with a two-burner hot plate, a standing lamp, some odds and ends of furniture, and a daybed that folded out with a wafer-thin mattress.

The latter had Joseph Fidello on it, and the mattress had soaked up a lot of his blood. He was on his back, a slender but muscular guy about thirty, maybe five nine, with an anchor tattoo on his left biceps. He was in an athletic T-shirt and boxers, his arms and face tanned and the rest of him pale as a blister. Not much body hair. He looked like a kid.

His eyes were open in frozen terror and his mouth was peeled back in a silent scream. His gaping throat made a second screaming orifice, the blood congealed and almost black. He'd been dead a while. Rigor had set in. His bowels had given way, so it smelled rank in the little room.

We had beat the lab boys here—nobody around but the uniforms who'd caught the squeal, and they were out in the hall. What seemed to be the murder weapon had been tossed on the mattress near the corpse's right hand.

"Gee look, Pat—it's another suicide. He cut his own throat."

"Very funny. Check out the knife without touching it."

"And here I was going to play mumblety-peg." I leaned in. It was a stiletto with a black enamel handle with J.F. inlaid in pearl. "Pretty fancy blade for a guy in a fleabag like this."

Pat was looking at a billfold taken from a pair of pants on a chair nearby. "He's a seaman—Seafarers International Union card. But I knew that already."

"You checked up on him like I suggested?"

Pat gave me an irritated glance. "I'd have thought of it without your help. Fidello didn't keep a regular residence—probably just rented between jobs. Worked passenger ships in the engineering department."

"You're going to want to get a list of what ships he's been on and where he's been."

"What would I do without you?"

"You called me." I glanced around. "This room's been searched."

The closet door was open, and clothes had spilled from hangers onto the floor—nicer clothes than somebody in this kind of room might normally own. On the other side of the room, the dresser drawers were askew, and a scarred-up nightstand's drawer was halfway out.

"Searched like his late ex-girlfriend's apartment was," Pat said thoughtfully. "For what?"

A pouch of diamonds?

"Sailors bring in all kinds of valuable contraband," I said with a shrug. "Narcotics, maybe."

"Maybe," Pat said. He scratched his chin, his hat way back on his head. "Something small, anyway. Something Ginnie could have been carrying in her purse the night she died. A fat roll of bills? Stolen gems, possibly?"

I just shrugged.

We were at the foot of the bed in the cramped little room. He pointed at the corpse, who seemed to be studying the ceiling. "Suppose Fidello got in over his head smuggling gems into the country and got his ex-girl involved. Innocently involved perhaps. As a go-between, a delivery girl—and got her, and then himself, killed. What do you think?"

"Reasonable theory," I said with another shrug. Pat was a smart guy. Damn near made me feel guilty, not telling him about the pebble.

From out in the hall came a female voice: "I'm Assistant D.A. Marshall. Is Captain Chambers in there?"

The uniforms made way for her, and she came in and found somewhere to stand. I'll give her credit—she didn't register the stench. Not even a nostril twitch. She was in a black pinstriped pants suit with a gray silk blouse and all that dark hair was up. She looked like a schoolteacher you were really afraid of and also wanted to jump.

"Captain Chambers," she said with a nod. "Can you fill me in?"

"Ms. Marshall," he said. "It's early days. Forensics hasn't even shown yet. Meet Joseph Fidello. He was Ginnie Mathes's boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend. The Mathes girl was the victim at—"

"The crime scene three nights ago," she cut in. "I know. I heard the name Fidello on the scanner and made the connection. I'm keeping up with your reports, Captain."

She hadn't acknowledged me yet, which took balls of a sort, because I was standing there grinning at her, fists on my hips like Superman. I stayed that way, listening as Pat filled her in on what little we knew about this crime scene—the knife handle looked to be free of prints, probably wiped—and when the lab boys showed, we moved into the corridor.

Pat was at the doorway filling Forensics in while I took Angela by the elbow and walked her a few paces down for some privacy. Somebody was cooking pork and beans.

"We have to stop meeting like this," I said.

"Hello, Mike."

"Another itty-bitty kill, and great big beautiful you shows up at it. What gives, Angela?"

She cocked her head and her smile had a devilish cast. "What are you doing for dinner tonight, Mike?"

"Are you asking me for a date again?"

"We can make it separate checks."

Even so, I had the feeling that with this doll I'd pay, all right.

"P.J. Moriarty's at eight," I said. "I'll book the reservations."

"See you there, Mike."

She returned to the latest crime scene and I got out of there before Pat Chambers guessed anything else right.

Lonnie Dean and I sat in the same old-time bar in a different booth. Ernie, who'd introduced us, wasn't around. The young reporter on the organized crime beat may have had the mustache and long hair of a hippie, and the ridiculous pointed collar of a circus clown, but he was a pro, all right.

The kid lighted up a cigarette and sucked some smoke down, held it like it was grass, then let it go, adding to the fog in the crowded gin mill. It was just after six and the bar was three deep, and the voices and laughter of reporters topping each other made a harsh music punctuated by the clinks of glass.

The young waitress smiled at me—she knew me now, especially since I'd left her a five-spot last time—and delivered an icy draft Miller without my asking. She might get another fiver.

"There's no talk of gems being used for money-laundering purposes," Lonnie said with an apologetic shrug. "I have good contacts on that front—the freelance fences, the pawnshops who work the angles, nobody indicates anything along those lines."

"New York's a big town. You can't have contacts with everybody."

"No, but these are the major players, Mike. If we are talking mob, and we are talking the kind of valuable stones it would take, then I would say nothing's shaking."

"Be a good laundering operation."

"Sure it would. Something as small as stones, and uncut ones would be virtually untraceable, no photos in insurance company files to cause trouble.... Cash for stones, then stones for cash. Put a jewelry store or two in the mix, and the green's clean again."

I sipped the cold brew. "Also be a good way to make a big payoff. A million in cash makes a big bundle to move around. You could set a lot in motion with a simple handoff."

Lonnie nodded. He was having a beer, too. A bottle. Heineken. Kids. "Look, Mike, it's not all bad news, or I wouldn't have called you for a meet."

"Okay."

He sucked a little more smoke. His eyes were bright. I was his hero and he was about to please me. "I did a little digging on the Club 52 front. I called the guy I replaced at the News —you remember Tommy Bellinger?"

"Sure. I know Tommy well. He's out in Arizona, right?"

"Yeah. It's good for the lungs." This he emphasized with another pull on the cigarette. A good thing young people live forever. "But he's got a phone, and I called him. Turns out this Chrome used to be the main squeeze of somebody you know. Or, somebody you knew."

"Such as?"

"The late and conspicuously not great Sal Bonetti."

...blood smeared across the Bonetti kid's mouth, tight in a mad grin ... Bonettis head came apart in crimson chunks...

"I didn't know Sal ever had a main squeeze," I said. "Word was he would diddle anything with two legs, including little boys and billy goats."

"That's four legs, Mike. Yeah, they say he was a twisted mother, but Tommy says Sal discovered Chrome on a South American trip—she's a star down there, you know—and booked her into a showroom at a Vegas casino that old Alberto still has a piece of. Apparently Howard Hughes doesn't own every damn craps table in Nevada. Anyway, Sal panted after her like a horny puppy dog and she liked the attention. That was the word on the Strip, anyway."

"So Little Tony probably saw her perform there. Maybe stole her away from Sal."

He shook his shaggy head. "No. He didn't get interested till after you rid the world of Sal. Who, one would think, would find plenty of billy goats and little boys to diddle in whatever circle of hell you dropped him in."

"Let's hope the little boys and billy goats are doing the diddling, Lonnie. So what's the deal with this Chrome broad and these bent lasagne boys? Is she their beard or what?"

He waved that off with the hand holding the cigarette. "Naw, she's just another show biz type who cozies up to whoever has the money to make her famous. She's gone as far as she can in Latin America—like anybody in her game, Chrome knows she's not a real star till she makes it in the real America."

"You think Tony really digs her?"

"Who knows? I heard those young bartenders of his march in and out of his penthouse like a parade of little tin soldiers. My guess, and it's just a guess, is Chrome and Anthony are strictly business partners. But, hell, maybe he does love her, considering the money he's spending on the broad."

"What do you mean?"

"Man, he's laying out hundreds of thousands launching this tour of his new locations, nationwide. They have their own Lear jet, and are taking her full band and all of their gear."

"Their own damn plane?"

"Yeah, like Hefner or Sinatra. Lavish layout, lounge with a bar, plus she can fly home and see her folks and do gigs down south of the border that she already had booked. Maybe Tony is crazy about her. She is one big, beautiful animal."

"So I hear," I said.

"Anyway, this wild-ass seventies lifestyle—guys like Sal and Anthony, they swing in ways that even an old prowler like you could never imagine. No offense meant. You been at Club 52, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well you saw the scene. Men and women, women and women, men and men, two men and one woman, it's a Rubik's Cube of fleshly delights. To guys like Anthony, gender labels are just labels. Lot of that going around these days, Mike." The reporter flashed me a mocking smile. "Hey, man, aren't you into androgyny?"

"I don't dig science fiction," I said.

I let him wonder about that and slipped out of the booth, leaving a sawbuck behind to cover the damage and the tip. I needed to get to the hotel to clean up a little.

After all, like the old song said, I had a date with an angel. Even if she was an assistant district attorney.