A Spill of Blood

This is Act II, and I guess essays on structure would say it's "rising action." Harry would say, "It's when things get more complicated and not a helluva lot clearer."

If you're uncertain of where things left off, Gia Alessandra had just shown up at Morgan Investigations claiming Emerald and Kimi were dead, and she thought she was next. Harry went to talk to her while Jess rolled her eyes.

Also, I loved the pulp covers that invariably graced hard-boiled fiction during its heyday and think it's a vital part of the genre. So, I had a little fun with a paintbrush. I'm no Fratini or McGinnis, but it's

here

.

—C

CHAPTER 2

I didn't have a thing for brunettes.

I had an aversion to blondes, and redheads are one in fifty in this city. But I guess that boiled down to something pretty close to a thing for brunettes. Now I sat and contemplated one that would have filled high school nights with feverish dreams. Twenty years older and I couldn't promise any different reaction now.

Her name, though ... Gia Alessandra ... that was wrong. It spoke of azure waters on the Amalfi Coast, lounging alongside olive skin and a pair of dark eyes inherited from some Rom grandmother. Luiza might have carried that off—Latina morphing into

sirena italiana

.

But this one? The hair like blue-black silk ... yeah, that would pass. And the curves that the boho Free People dress couldn't disguise did too. But eyes the light gray of wood ash and skin dusted with freckles across the high cheekbones, so pale that every emotion brought a pink bloom ... no, those were northern DNA.

"What's your real name?"

She recoiled. "It's Gia."

"I don't believe you."

"Hey! I'm hiring you, not—"

I cut off the protest. "You haven't hired me yet, and it's looking unlikely."

A note of panic entered her voice. "Why?"

"Well, Ms. Alessandra, for one thing, I have a client already."

"But—"

"For another, that story you're feeding me about 'somebody told me' ... I don't work with clients who hold out on me."

Yeah, what about Regan? a little voice inside asked.

That's different. You can't afford his alternative.

I stifled the internal debate and waited. She was silent which was confirmation enough. I pushed.

"From my point of view, you might be the person I'm looking for, and you're here to see how close I've gotten. Maybe you killed Emerald."

"She was my friend!"

The upset looked genuine. The right move if it had been a line was righteous indignation or wide-eyed sincerity. It wouldn't have been a blanching that sucked the rosy irritation from her cheeks and spelled fear. And so far, all I had for a week's work was a face that moonlighted as a punching bag, and the guilt that comes with maybe getting a woman killed.

What was I chasing? Money? Blackmail evidence? Because sure as hell, it wasn't two grand worth of bonds. Two pieces of lead in the heart of a redhead proved that. I needed a toehold.

"So, let's start over. We can begin with your name if you want me to trust you. I'll settle for just a first unless you want me to be all polite and call you miz-something."

I watched her wrestle.

"It's Sydney."

"Fair enough, Sydney." I leaned back. "Back to the beginning. You said Kimi might be dead, but you also said you thought she was on a trip. You neglected to explain."

"I got worried about Kimi, so I went to her place to check. One of the neighbors told me that a woman had been murdered there. So—"

The sinkhole in my gut told me where this was going. "Kimi was the friend Emerald had a key for?"

She nodded.

Christ on an fucking cracker! "Go ahead."

"So, I went to the police station to see ... you know ... what happened. The neighbor said nobody knew who the woman was because she didn't have any ID on her. But I knew Emerald was going there ..." She trailed off.

"Did you tell them who she was?"

"Not really. I didn't want to get involved." Her look held no apology. "You know what I do, Mr. Morgan."

It wasn't a question.

"Of course you do. So, you know that extra attention from the police isn't a good thing. I said I'd heard someone had been killed and my friend was away ... I had to have some reason why I went to them ... but I didn't know the dead woman beyond seeing her at a party there once. I did say I thought her name was Cara or something like that. It was." She looked down, obviously upset. "Cara Gowin. From Albany. They'll have to figure that out for themselves."

I couldn't fault her for holding out on them. I hadn't given Gibson what I knew either.

"And Kimi?"

"She told me she was going with a guy for a few days who wanted a girlfriend along on a trip. But we always text each other when we get back from a date ... just to say we're home safe, you know? She hasn't. She didn't say how long it was for, but her phone kept going to voicemail every day. So finally, I went over."

I added that to the list of half-truths.

"And you came to me because why?"

"The police asked if I knew you. I said no, but I did, you know, from Emerald. She told me those other girls thought you were being straight. So, when I realized I needed to go to someone ..." She shrugged. "I wasn't going to the cops, and you were already involved. So here I am."

I was mildly surprised that Sasha had anything good to say about me. On second thought, it was probably Luiza who had done the talking.

"That brings us to why you think you're next," I said.

"There's someone following me."

The story came out in fits and starts. It started with an uneasy feeling, something not right. Confirmation came when a date Saturday night asked if she had a husband or boyfriend.

"He was super paranoid. Men their first time out from the wife usually are. So, he kept looking around out of the corner of his eye. He said the man in the hotel lobby had been in the restaurant. I told him not to be silly. But then I saw him today ... the guy from the lobby, not the date. I didn't go back to my apartment. I came here."

"So, your stalker might be outside now?"

She shook her head.

"No. There's this restaurant in Midtown where the ladies' has a back door into another lobby. We use it sometimes when we need to ditch someone."

"If you all know about it, someone who's used to following people might also. They might have assumed they'd been made and gone to the other lobby on a hunch."

A blind man could have seen the apprehension flood back.

The part of me that noticed the rise and fall of agitated breathing, that part whined and wheedled. It tried to convince me that, professional skirt or not, I was a fool to let this woman walk out the door. But the image of a lifeless sprawl in an empty apartment was loud. The memory of a wild red mane spread in a pool across the duvet melted away and became center-parted dark hair, and Emerald's overripe curves melted to Jess's slender frame.

Gia was a professional deceiver. Sydney needed to find her way clear of that or she would go ... face, legs, ass, tits, and all ... because I couldn't risk a private agenda that might get people I cared about dead. I gave her the chance to make it less private.

"Now tell me the rest of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Start with Kimi didn't check in after her date, but you waited almost a week to go to her place. Then there's you don't want attention from the police, but you walked right in and associated yourself with her death. And you're scared, but you haven't run." I left it at that; she could see the rest on my face.

Talk or get out and face whoever's following you on your own.

The words came as slow and fumbling as a three-day drunk.

"I-I thought Kimi had run. She's been unhappy working for Eroticos. I'm okay with it because there are advantages to an agency. There's protection and a better flow of clients. There are concierges they have an understanding with who'll look the other way. I think maybe some cops too. Maybe most of all, I don't have to piss clients off by saying no to some things because the booker will steer them to a girl with different limits. It works for me for now. When I get to a point where my client list is big enough and them taking half isn't worth it, I'll go independent.

"Kimi, though. She was unhappy for a while. But ... but she dated a lot, and when I'd tell her to say no and take a weekend off, she'd tell me she couldn't. Yet she never seemed to have as much money as the rest of us. I think she must have owed a lot of money, maybe to them."

She hunched a little. "I don't know if she was legal. I tried to, you know, ask in a roundabout way whether she owed the snakeheads for smuggling her here, but she denied it. She said her family back home was huge and needed money. But I could tell she was getting to the point where it was just, like, 'Fuck this!'"

Her speech had changed a little as she explained. I had a feeling this was more Sydney and less Gia.

"Why?"

"Her complaints got stronger. She said the booker had given her a client who demanded stuff she didn't want to do. The guy got nasty when she refused. She said they did it again like a month later and shut her down when she complained. And then there was that party you know about."

"What happened there?"

"Mitchell scared all of us." She met my eyes. "You understand."

I nodded.

"Well, Regan made her go with him. When she came back, we could tell she was upset. When she texted me after, I could tell she was going to run out on whatever she owed. She said Mitchell had been a pig and that she wanted a couple more weeks for some cash, then she was going."

The fact that Mitchell was a pig came as no surprise.

"And why don't you think she's made good on her plans?"

She gave a little more. "Emerald wasn't the only one with a key. I went in. Kimi's suitcases are all there. And if she were going to run, she'd have taken this. She had it hidden behind a grate." She opened the large purse she was carrying.

There was a lot of kale in that bag.

"She's dead. I know it in my gut. Just like Emerald. And I think I'm next."

"Because you're being followed."

"That's not enough?" Her tone was hot. It said, Are you a moron? "People don't just get followed for no reason."

"No, they don't. But there's more, and I want you to tell me what it is. I'll buy your story about why you didn't go check on Kimi right away. But not that you went to the police just 'to see ... you know ... what happened' to Emerald. You said it yourself: extra attention from the police isn't a good thing."

Our eyes locked. Hers said, I don't trust you. Mine said, Right back at you, sister, and I already have a client.

She caved.

"Emerald told me she knew something ... or more like, she didn't realize she did, but since you ..." She waved her hand to indicate my existence.

"Something I said to Sasha and Luiza cast a new light on it." She nodded. "So, what was it?"

Sydney shook her head. "She wouldn't say, except that there was a picture. Then she said it might be worth money." She peered at me. "She was going to see if you'd pay her for it."

I took a poll between the three of us: me, myself, and I. Nope, unanimous. Nobody surprised.

"She told me about the man coming to her building. I thought she was being paranoid at first. But then I thought about it, and I started to get a bad feeling. The men at that party, like, they were okay on the surface. Well, 'cept Mitchell."

She looked away. It wasn't evasion this time. It was thoughtfulness. "But they weren't guys you fuck with. You could tell. The more I thought about that, the more nervous I got."

I believed her, if only because she was totally oblivious to the irony of saying they weren't guys she'd fuck with.

"I thought she'd call me Friday to tell me how it went with you. When she didn't, I went over Saturday, and you know what happened."

"And you went to the police because why?" Did she think the police would hand over a picture because she waltzed in and said, "Hey, she was my friend"?

"Because I was hoping to see the picture."

I guess my poker face was asleep on the job. I'd have to cut its salary.

"No! Not because it might be worth money." She gave an exasperated snort. "All of a sudden, Kimi's silence seemed like something else. Emerald said she was giving a heads-up to the three of us ... Kimi, me, Nikki ... that something went down at the party and shit might be flying. Emerald's dead. Kimi disappears, probably dead. I wanted some clue who before they got to me."

Talking about it was upsetting her. Good. Maybe the half-truths would stop.

"So, why aren't you on a plane somewhere else?"

"Where am I going to go? I've got no family. Move to some other city? My regulars are here. It takes a while to build up a client list even if I found a good agency, and I have bills. Work in some house in Nevada? No."

"Good reason. Now let's have the real one."

She tried to tough it out. I'd been toughed by pros, though, and patience was easy to come by when watching her. I let her stew, not looking directly at her because it makes people dig in their heels. But I played the peripheral vision game and enjoyed the hell out of it. Just about the time I decided I'd done enough sightseeing, she answered.

"Because I need to think about my future." I returned my attention to her face, but now she was the one turned away. "What I do isn't bad sometimes. If some hotshot young commodities broker wants to take me out because he's too busy to be bothered with the headaches a girlfriend brings ... hey, I like good food and champagne and the Hamptons. And I like decent sex as much as the next girl.

"But if it's some fat old guy who's going to make me work like hell to get him anywhere, not so much. The thing is, this"—she gestured down at her body—"has a shelf life. I know girls twice my age, but I don't want to be one of them. There'd be fewer and fewer of the first type of guy and more and more of the second. Not too many men want a date that's older than they are. They usually want eighteen and only settle for twenty-five." With that cynical assessment, she finally turned to face me. "Shocked?"

I burst into laughter. It was genuine. "I stopped being shocked a long time ago. If some asshole grabs a kid up out of a bus station and puts her to work, I've got a problem with that." A dark flash of memory flitted by. I told it to keep moving. "But if a grown woman chooses it, that's her decision, and she doesn't need any of my judgment."

Somehow, that little speech earned me some candor.

"I have to plan for Sydney's life after Gia. I don't know what it is that's floating around. If it's blackmail stuff, I don't want anything to do with it. I don't have the guts for it, and I told you those guys seemed like the type you don't mess around with. But maybe it's not that. Maybe it was something that could be part of a nest egg.

"Emerald and me, we both knew that those guys wouldn't get worked up over something cheap. They'd low-key that and teach somebody a lesson whenever they figured out who. This felt bigger. She was going to hit you up for twenty thousand for what she knew and see if you bit. I figured if I saw the picture and could tell you what was in it, maybe I wouldn't need the actual image."

Now that we were in the general vicinity of the truth, I decided to fill in the rest. "Plus, if you happened to come across the missing stuff yourself, maybe it'd be worth even more?"

She didn't confirm or deny. "Now I just want to stay alive, and Luiza told Emerald what you said at the end about how trying to run might look." Then in almost a whisper, "Mitchell scares me."

• • •

I took her job and her money. Not Kimi's money. Sydney said she was holding that "in case." She handed me two racks, still with the bank's bands on them, as retainer.

I ignored the smirk on Jess's face as I escorted Sydney to the door and stood watching until the elevator came. As soon as the doors closed, I interrupted the start of whatever "told you so" comment was headed my way.

"Now that she's been here, you keep that locked"—I gestured at the door—"every single second I'm not here with you. I'm going out now."

The smirk disappeared. "Where?"

"To see if I can spot anyone following her. Be back in a bit, but don't open that door. It's possible we have two dead now."

I wanted to stay and deal with those eyes that suddenly remembered to be afraid, but I needed to be in place before Sydney's Uber arrived. I grabbed a few things and dashed for the service door at the rear of the office. It was only two floors down the back stairs, and I took them on the fly, wincing as each leapt step jarred up through my body. I ducked out the maintenance entrance and positioned myself where I could see.

It had started to rain. One of those gray New York drizzles that eventually turns the streets oily but the air cleaner. I ignored the press of people and the din of traffic to concentrate on the length of the street.

I almost missed it. I was watching for a car or motorcycle to pull out from the curb and follow the Hyundai Sonata that Sydney had just climbed into. A BMW swung out a few seconds later. It ended up at the corner in her lane, separated by a bicycle messenger and a few pedestrians who didn't know or didn't care what a crosswalk was. I took a picture, making sure the plate was in the frame. The little Sony a6500 had a good lens, and twenty-four megapixels enlarged quite nicely.

But when the light turned green, her ride took the turn uptown while the BMW went straight through the intersection.

Guess her trick in the ladies' room worked.

I was back inside when it hit me. The messenger had turned uptown also. New York City doesn't allow right on red, but when was the last time you saw one of those two-wheeled assholes pay attention to even basic traffic laws, even when it wasn't wet out there? Yeah, probably about the time the city fixed that final pothole.

I dialed the newest entry in my contacts list. One dead body weighing on my conscience was enough.

"Sydney, you didn't shake the guy following you. Tell your driver to take the next left, then turn down Ninth." I heard the little chirrup of dismay and then her repeating my instructions. "Tell him Kaifu Sushi. That's on the eastbound block before mine. Get out there and go in."

"Then what?" I could hear the note of panic.

"The restrooms are in the back. Don't ask to use them; they'll tell you, 'Just for customers.' Walk back the little twisty hallway. Past them the corridor ends in a door. It says it's alarmed, but it's broken. It'll put you in a courtyard area. I'll meet you there. Stay on the phone."

I shoved earbuds in so that my hands were free. Then I hotfooted it through the maze of corridors that got me to the back of my building and shot across the tiny patch of open ground that existed so that owners could claim "outside view" for the back offices. I entered the building behind mine through a door that was never locked because that would interfere with smoke breaks. Jess and I used it as a shortcut for getting lunch.

I couldn't stand around for no reason. I pretended to deliberate over the menu to kill a few minutes.

"Two hamachi," I said to the woman taking my order. "A spicy crunch, two tiger rolls." Jess liked those. "And ... one sec." I pointed to my earbuds. "Sydney, what kind of sushi do you like?"

"What!"

"What kind of—"

"I don't like sushi. I usually get chicken or dumplings."

"A teriyaki chicken and a gyoza," I finished. I loitered until I saw the Sonata pull up. "Men's room. Be right back," I said to the woman, just in case things were ready in the next few.