Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [112]
He handed me a cup of milk and a bag of chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts.
I said, “Wow.”
“What are you doing?”
“Snooping into your parents’ lives. Did you know your dad read Playboy?”
Mike took the magazine looking somewhat confused.
“Am I shattering your illusions?”
He broke into a grin. “God bless the old man.”
“Look who took the pictures,” I said excitedly, pointing to the photo credit. “Hugh Akron.”
“Our Hugh Akron?”
“Got to be. Do you think he’d want to have this?”
“What? This magazine?”
“For his personal collection.”
“Sure, if he wants to buy it, the slimy tea bag. He ripped me off for Lakers tickets. The scalpers were selling them for less.”
“How does a creep like Hugh Akron get girls to take off their clothes?”
Mike was lost in the magazine.
“Where does he find them?” I went on. “These cute twenty-year-old girls? You know, he still does this stuff? Cheesecake, on the Internet. Did he ever show you?”
Mike abstractedly shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
I dipped a chocolate chip cookie in the cup and sucked out the milk. “My grandfather read Playboy. Those were the days when they put centerfolds up at the police station.”
Mike lowered the magazine and kind of nodded, as if he had been only half listening. He was wearing plaid cotton flannel pants; mine were the same navy blue skivvies from Quantico I’d had on for days. I pulled the sweater close around my chest. As he stood there unmoving, I became uncomfortably aware of both our sex parts loose inside our pajama bottoms.
“Would you mind listening to something?”
“Sure.”
He fished a microcassette from his pocket and flickered it in the air.
“From the answering machine. The one in the hallway,” he insisted. “Right when you come in the door.”
I nodded, wondering why the location of the answering machine was important at two in the morning.
He sat down on the opposite side of the couch and fitted the cassette into a small tape recorder.
“Wacko bitch. Why didn’t you take a two-by-four and do a Sam Shepard, do something to yourself big-time? If you had the guts, you’d shoot yourself with a service revolver and claim you wrestled the gun away. You could strangle yourself and leave marks. If you had the guts. Do you have the guts?”
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know.”
The tape chattered along on fast-forward.
“I saw you in the courtroom. I thought you looked at me kind of hot. I’m up for anything, sweetheart, and I know you can show me the way. Do you think I have ulterior motives? I don’t have ulterior motives. Ask me if I do. I’d love to hear your sexy voice …”
Eventually it clicked off.
“How many are there?”
“Seven.”
“Seven?”
“Now they’re coming two times a day.”
“Did you put a trap on the phone?”
“I will, but they won’t call again.”
“Why not?”
“They know that’s exactly what I’m going to do. These are cops, Ana. This is intimidation.”
It was late, my brain running slow. “Andrew’s homies, you think?”
He shrugged. “Got to be someone who knows where you are and how to get an unlisted number.”
“Screw them.”
“Right, except that Ian”—referring to his middle boy, aged ten—“took that message off the machine.”
Chocolate burst inside my mouth, the last taste of bittersweet.
“I am so sorry, Mike.”
“I have to ask you to leave.”
The world stopped then. I tried to nestle deeper into the arm of the couch.
Mike said, “I’m sorry. This is just too close to home.”
I nodded, stunned. My only thought was, I will go to jail.
“Is it Rochelle?”
He admitted, “She’s upset.”
“I hope I haven’t—”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing to do with that.”
He stayed on his side of the sofa. We looked away with embarrassment at what had been left behind a long time ago, when we were partners chasing bandits.
“You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty as it is.”
His eyes filmed and so did mine. He was a decent man, trying to do the decent thing. “We’ll figure out another place for you to go,” he promised.
“Depends if Devon can renegotiate release terms and conditions.”
We were silent. There had been a moment, when his marriage went bad, I