Chapter 14

The next day, after lunch, I took Cecelia to my private place. She'd been there before, but only two or three times in all the years we've been married. It's an apartment over a garage on Pennsylvania, in a quiet neighborhood, an apartment that a former client lets me use out of gratitude. The last time I'd used it on a major case had been the last one on which Cecelia had assisted me, the hunt for Letty's then-husband, who'd disappeared. When I'd found him I'd found out he was a cast iron tin-plated jerk, and when I went back to arrange a meeting with Letty I'd taken Cecelia to keep me from pounding his face into a pulp. She'd done it, too – though I hadn't been grateful at the time.

I parked the Blazer, and led Cecelia around to the back where there's a locked metal box on a post – a length of telephone pole stuck in the ground. Jim – the guy who owns the place – had set it up for me to keep keys in, so that if all I needed was to swap vehicles I wouldn't need to go upstairs.

We didn't. I used the key in my pocket to unlock the box, and pulled out the keys to the Mazda. "It's an automatic," I said, "but you remember how to drive one of those, I guess."

She smiled at me. "I believe I do, though I haven't done so since I bought my car." She tossed the keys in her hand. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans faded nearly to white, a pair of Lahtkwa-style moccasins that my brother Memphis had made for her, and one of my old cowboy shirts which she'd appropriated a year or two ago. Her hair was in its ponytail at the base of her skull, her eyes were bright and tilted like a cat's, and in the early afternoon light her milk chocolate skin looked as smooth and soft as a baby's. And I knew that if I touched her cheek her skin would in fact be just that soft, though the smile lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth are easier to see than they were when she was 30.

"You got the list?" I said.

"Yes." And she patted her shirt pocket. "It occurs to me that we could have divided it geographically, instead of alphabetically."

"Yeah, but I want us to be crisscrossing here and there. A lot of the time we'll no doubt be a long way from each other – but this way, there may be times when we're just a few blocks apart. I want it that way."

"Certainly we can afford the gas, even with prices as they are," she said.

"Yeah, but keep track of your mileage. It goes on the bill."

"You're going to soak Mr. Sloan, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Whether I'll keep the bucks I don't know – I'm thinking about giving it away to the church an' to whatever trustable anti-porn ministries I might be able to locate. But he's gonna pay through the nose – not for bringing the case to us, but for being such a sleaze that he only brought it to us 'cause the girl's so young."

"A laudable sentiment," she said. "I shall call you periodically, and I ask that you do likewise."

"My thoughts exactly," I said, and put my arms around her. Hers came around me, and we held each other tightly for a moment before pulling back just enough for a kiss. "After all these years, C, I still love you."

"And I still love you – more than ever. Now go, before I become lacrimatory."

I did, not bothering to ask what the fancy word meant. It was close enough to "lachrymose" that I figured it out from the context, and I knew that the Spanish word lágrima means "tear" – there's a street in Albuquerque named Lagrima de Oro, "gold tear." But more than that, I was in danger of getting weepy myself. So I went.

I found myself a little more relaxed doing the visits by myself. I'm not ignorant – I spent some wild years, before I became a Christian, and I know porn from old experience, though having that experience doesn't please me. It's one of the few things in my life I wish I could undo. But Cecelia's had a better life than I have, a more moral one, and what I can ignore when I'm by myself embarrasses me, I'd found during the past week or so, when Cecelia's with me. If she kept on working with me that would no doubt change – it would have to, for private investigators don't get to hang around much with deacons and preachers and such.

I'd scratched three of the names on the list when I decided to call Cecelia. I dialed her on my cell phone, but got voice mail, an unusual occurrence. No doubt she was busy, either talking to someone or driving, and would call me back when she got free. Just in case that would be within the next couple of minutes, I leaned against the back of the Blazer, wondering whether the people who worked in the warehouse across the street, and the small printing plant down the road, and the UPS man and the mail carrier and everyone else who passed by, knew what went on in the building I was parked in front of. Star Productions, which was the only sign on the building, and a small one at that, wasn't terribly informative. And there had only been one guy inside – the lights were off, the cameras inactive, the two beds empty. I knew, because I hadn't taken his word for it – I'd searched the building.