Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [38]
“Come on,” he finally said.
He strolled around to the side of the house as if he belonged there. I followed, keeping my mouth shut. Sure enough, there was a sort of outcropping off the house, with a single door set into it. And there was a bell. Clancy pushed it. We could hear its two-tone chimes from where we stood. Clancy moved so that he was taking up all the optic room the peephole offered. A metallic voice asked, “Who is there?” and I spotted the tiny speaker set into the door frame.
“Police,” Clancy said.
“What is wrong?” the voice asked. A woman’s voice, strongly accented. Sounded nervous. But maybe it was a tinny speaker.
“Nothing at all, ma’am. We’re conducting an investigation and we thought you might perhaps be of assistance.”
“Who are you investigating?”
“Could you please open the door, ma’am?” Clancy said, a trace of impatience in his voice.
I could sense decisions being made inside. Suddenly, the door opened. The woman was short, with dark hair cropped just past her nape. She was wearing a denim skirt and a man’s white button-down shirt. Looked around late thirties, maybe younger.
“You are the police?” she asked, hovering between obsequiousness and challenge.
Clancy didn’t flash his badge like most of them did. He took it out slowly, flicked the leather case open, held it out to her, palm up. “You can write down the number,” he said gently. “Close the door, call the station, ask if I am actually a police officer. My name is Clancy. This is Rogers.”
I didn’t react to the instant name-change he’d conferred, just waited to see what would happen.
Clancy smiled. The woman’s mouth twisted as if she couldn’t make up her mind. “Please come in,” she finally said.
We entered a kitchen big enough to be a New York studio apartment. “Do you want coffee?” she asked, gesturing toward a breakfast nook built into a bay window.
“That would be lovely,” Clancy replied. “It’s cold out there.”
“That is not cold,” the woman said, taking a ceramic pot from a fancy coffeemaker and pouring two mugs, apparently accepting that Clancy would be doing all the talking. “Where I come from, this would be springtime.”
“Would that be Russia, then?” Clancy asked her, a brogue creeping into his voice.
“Siberia,” the woman said, with the kind of pride you see in earthquake survivors.
“Ah. Well, here, when the wind comes off the lake, the temperature gets all the way down to—”
“It is not temperature that makes cold.”
“You’re right,” Clancy said, gesturing with his coffee cup to make a salute, dropping the argument.
The woman made a sound of satisfaction. “You said you are investigating …?”
“I did, indeed. But you are not the …”
“Owner? No. I live here. To work, I live here. My name is Marja.”
“And the people who own the house?”
“They are traveling. In Europe.”
“How long have they been away?”
“Oh, maybe couple of months. I don’t keep track.”
“They travel a lot, then?”
“Oh yes. Always they travel.”
“Hmmm … How long have you worked for them?”
“I work for them since I come to America. It will be six years on February third.”
“It must be hard on their work, to travel so much. A doctor has patients.…”
“No. Not anymore. They are retired. No more work.”
“There’s no such thing, is there? No more work,” Clancy asked softly, closing the space around himself and the woman, moving me out to the margins. It was seamlessly beautiful technique, like the six-inch punch you never see.
“No,” she said, sadness somewhere in her voice. “For some people there is always work.”
“It must be difficult for you,” he said, moving me even farther away from the two of them. “So much responsibility.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, even if they don’t work anymore, they still have to have money. To pay bills. The electric, the phone. The cars. Food. Credit cards. Even to pay you, yes?”
“Sure, they need money. But they have money. And I take care of all the bills,” she said, a different sort of pride in her voice.
“I see,” he said, impressed. “Well, what we really need to do is talk to the people who