Plugged - Eoin Colfer [17]
Brandi objects loudly until the door closes behind her boss, then she sparks a cigarette and says, ‘Thank heaven. That boy was about to feel the sting of my boot on his behind.’
I am surprised. Behind is a delicate word to be coming out of Brandi’s mouth.
So for two hours we sit around in the bar, waiting for a crime lab crew that has to come all the way from Hamilton in their paper suits. Then another ninety minutes while they scrutinise the area for trace. Good luck to them. That back lot has seen more pot deals and blow jobs than the Amsterdam red-light district. I bet they get semen samples going back to the nineteen fifties.
I keep an eye on the scene through the high window. All I can see of Connie is her foot, but it’s enough to make me want to cry for every sadness I’ve ever known. I don’t break down, though. Tears from a big man are as good as an admission of guilt to a zealous cop.
A couple of the CSIs are not as processional as they might be, pulling down their masks to smoke cigarettes and bobbing along to whatever’s on their headphones. Maybe that’s how they deal, or maybe they genuinely do not give shit one.
And all the time, while the trail is growing cold, the staff is sitting jittery around the casino’s poker table; that is until Brandi hits upon the notion of getting hammered on the boss’s dime. Victor’s locked up, Connie’s shot dead. So, screw it, we all need a drink.
After a while the only ones sober are me and Jason, and he’s been chewing steroids like they’re Juicy Fruit.
‘This is fucked up, man,’ he says for the hundredth time.
Some of the hostesses echo the sentiment back to him, but the number dwindles each time he says it.
I know how Jason feels; there are no words for this kind of situation. Nothing covers it. The numbness is leaving me now, and I miss it. In its place there’s a ball of nausea in my gut.
Have they told little Alfredo and Eva? Who’s going to take them in?
I feel myself getting Irish maudlin again, asking the big questions. Where has my life gone? What have I got? I remember my brother Conor and the look he always had on his face. The look you see on dogs in the pound, the ones they find in burlap with chains coiled at the bottom.
Fresh wounds are like doors into the past. Who said that? Hope to Christ it wasn’t Zeb. I don’t want to be therapising myself with any of his skewed wisdom.
Thanks a bunch. I said plenty of wise shit. Who told you not to fuck with the Jews? Who told you that?
By the time we run out of silver tequila, the cops are ready for interviews. They set up in Vic’s office and summon us one by one. I go second, after Brandi, who comes out snapping her fingers, like she’s won some kind of victory.
There are two local detectives in the room, both African-American females, which is not as much of a long shot as it used to be. They’ve squeezed themselves behind Vic’s desk and swept some of his porn memorabilia into a drawer. The junior detective is the lady who gave Vic grief over his trainers. I want to take a liking to this girl, but she’s got her arms folded across her chest and is wearing a pretty clear I don’t make friends face. I duck from habit under the steel construction beam that spans the ceiling, even though it’s a couple of inches above head height, and sit opposite the detectives.
I point at a Pirelli calendar on the wall. ‘You might want to take that down too.’
I am not being a smartarse here; it is important to me that this investigation goes well. The first forty-eight hours, as they say.
The younger detective rips the calendar out of the wall, taking a chunk of Sheetrock with it.
‘Satisfied, Mister McEvoy?’ she asks, giving me the bad-cop eyeball. We are off on the wrong foot; she has me down as non-cooperative.
‘That was a genuine suggestion,’ I protest, calmly and sincerely. ‘Connie was my friend and I want her killer caught.’
The cops are not won over by my Irish brogue; if anything, a foreigner seems to make them more