Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [12]
“Oh, I’m glad you called. I wouldn’t have missed your outfit tonight for the world. But the desk sergeant here must lead a sheltered life.” Lopez’s gaze dropped to my cleavage again. “You look way too healthy to be a crack whore.” After a moment, he met my eyes again and smiled as he added, “But much too obvious to be an escort, of course.”
“Perhaps we could discuss my character’s position in the hierarchy of the oldest profession after you get me out of here?”
“Ah. Which brings us to the point.” There was a little regret in his expression as he said, “If you want me to get you out of this, then your story had better be damn good.”
“Why?” My gaze flickered anxiously to the door. The night-shift cops of the Two- Five were somewhere on the other side of it. “Are they going to be difficult?”
“No, I’m going to be difficult, Esther,” he said irritably. “You got picked up while playing in traffic in Harlem in the middle of the night, dressed like a hooker and acting like a lunatic. And it’s going to take a really good explanation to convince me that arraignment, remand, and a psych evaluation aren’t the best things for you.”
“What?” I gripped the bars. “No!”
My cell mate grumbled in her sleep and rolled over.
“Shh,” I said to Lopez.
“I’m not the one raising my voice,” he pointed out.
“Lopez, you’ve got to get me out of here,” I said desperately. “And you’ve got to get them to delete any record of my arrest! I don’t want it on my record. I don’t want a record at all.”
“Start talking,” he said implacably.
“First things first,” I said. “Please get them to send a squad car to look for this guy I found tonight. He’s severely injured.”
“They sent a car, Esther. There’s no sign of the man you described.”
“What?” I frowned. “That’s not possible! Darius was hurt too badly to get up and walk away. The cops must have looked in the wrong place.”
“No, they looked in the right place.”
“How do you know?”
“The two cops who went over there to check it out, in response to your story, turned on their cherry top—”
“Their what?”
“Uh, the red light on the roof.”
“Oh.”
“And that attracted the attention of a resident who came downstairs to ask if they were looking for the drunk hooker who’d been ringing his doorbell and shouting up at him a little after midnight.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” I said wearily.
“So that sounds like the right place?”
“Yes. But Darius must have crawled into a doorway or something. He couldn’t have gone far. The cops just didn’t look hard enough.”
“They were thorough, Esther,” Lopez said patiently.
“They didn’t even believe me!”
“No, they didn’t,” he agreed. “But it’s a slow night, and you claimed you saw a man who’d been, er, attacked and maimed, which is serious stuff. So, just in case you’re not quite as insane as you seem, they decided to be thorough.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “You didn’t waltz right in here as soon as you arrived. You talked to the cops out there first, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
Shit. While waiting for Lopez to get here, I had planned what to tell him: a version of the night’s events that was close to the truth, but a tad more plausible.
He lifted one brow. “A man with a sword? A severed hand? Gargoyles?”
Too late now.
“That’s what I saw,” I said defensively.
“Sadly, I don’t find it hard to believe that’s what you think you saw,” Lopez said. “Which is why I’m not so sure that getting you out of here is such a good idea.”
I tried to control my frustration and focus on the most important thing. “Fine, let’s forget about that for a minute. But, please, you’ve got to get them to find Darius.”
“Esther, he’s not there,” Lopez said firmly.
“Then check the local hospitals. Maybe—”
“He’s not at a hospital, either.”
“How do you know?”
“We’ll talk about that in a minute. For now—”
“But—”
“For now,” he said, “I want you to tell me what happened. As clearly and rationally as you can.”
“All right.” I took a breath and tried to calm down. “That’s fair.”
“Glad you think so.”
I started