Before the old man could answer, she was already pushing past him, holding his hand and pulling him with her. Speare followed, carried in on the tidal wave of speech that continued to flow from her as they went. “I just, we were in the neighborhood, and I wanted you to meet my friend Speare. Well, I wanted him to meet you, and since we were around—can I make you some coffee?”
The second Speare’s name left her lips, the old man’s head snapped in his direction. Beady eyes—some of that was probably from having just been rudely jerked from slumber by that hideous chain saw–like door buzzer—swept Speare from his feet to the top of his head before settling on his eyes. Oh, yeah, Nielsen Pollard had heard of him.
Nielsen didn’t say anything, though. He turned back to Ardeth. “Coffee would be nice, it’s so goddamned early. Who’s this friend of yours?”
They were in the kitchen—or rather, near the kitchen, in the open-plan interior of Nielsen’s spacious condo. Brocaded silk covered some of the walls, and the floors were white tile that even Speare could see were marble, and very expensive. Like everything else in that building, the interior smelled like money, and lots of it. Speare had spent enough time listening to Cookie Doretti drone on about window treatments and decorators’ estimates to know that, even if he hadn’t had a few very wealthy clients whose places had the same smell, the same feel.
It was also clearly a single man’s home. The kitchen looked almost unused, and beside the leather armchair in front of the television was a folding tray that held the remains of a take-out Chinese dinner. Three or four different newspapers, each open to the racing form, lay on the floor, along with a copy of Playboy and a stack of magazines about antiques. The smell of cigar smoke sat thick in the air.
“That’s Speare,” Ardeth said, moving around the kitchen in a way that showed she’d done it before. “Speare, that’s Nielsen, the smartest dealer I know.”
Nielsen’s look wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but it didn’t qualify as “friendly,” either. Instead of sitting on one of the smooth metal stools clustered near the bar, he crossed the floor to the balcony doors and passed through them, jerking his head at Speare to indicate he should follow. Looking for some fresh air, or wanting to get out of Ardeth’s hearing?
Or trying to somehow intimidate or impress Speare with the view, which admittedly was pretty nice. Nothing Speare hadn’t seen before, but nice.
Nielsen didn’t stand around to admire it, though. He plunked himself down into a metal patio chair, dug in the pocket of his robe, and pulled out a cigar stub, which he stuck in his mouth like he needed it in order to think. “Speare,” he said. “The PI. Doretti’s man. Vera’s son.”
He’d let that “Doretti’s man” thing go for the sake of friendliness, but it irked him. He leaned against the balcony railing. “You know my mother?”
“I know of her. Everybody knows of her, at least everybody who matters. I saw her onstage once, at the Sands. Must have been ’76, ’77, thereabouts. Before you were born?”
He nodded.
“She was something then, she was. Always wanted to save enough money for a night with her, but I never got around to it. Shame. Hell of a woman.”
His grin told Speare he was being baited, as if he hadn’t already known.
And as if he cared. He’d stopped getting pissed off when men implied his mother was a prostitute at least fifteen years before. In part because he’d discovered it had occasionally been true, and in the other part because hey, what difference did it make? “I’ll tell her you said so. She’ll enjoy hearing that.”
She would, too, and she’d probably want to know just how rich Nielsen seemed and how she might arrange to run into him.
Nielsen’s eyes narrowed slightly. Trying to figure out if Speare was genuinely unconcerned or if it was an act, probably. Whatever he decided, he clearly wasn’t ready to give up. “And your father? How’s he?”
Great. Here it came. “Never knew my father.”
“That’s not how I hear it.”
Was Pollard being an asshole because he didn’t want Speare around Ardeth—now entering the balcony with a cup of coffee in her hand—or because he didn’t want a PI around himself? Doretti had never mentioned the man’s name, which didn’t mean there couldn’t be bad blood there, but still. He decided to find out—and hopefully move the conversation along as well. Nielsen was too much of a pro to look surprised, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give something away. “I never got to meet Ardeth’s father, either. I hear he was a great man.”
Nielsen’s lips pressed together. “A better one never walked this earth, I’ll tell you. Such a loss. Such a great loss.”
Ardeth handed Nielsen the cup and took a step back. “I was telling Speare how you helped me afterward. How I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Her voice cracked a little on the last word; whether it was genuine or not Speare didn’t know—he assumed it was, since she didn’t suspect Nielsen of anything—but he didn’t care, either. What he did know, and care about, was that he was supposed to be Ardeth’s male-protector-slash-boyfriend as far as Nielsen was concerned. And boyfriends and protectors didn’t stand there and watch their girlfriends or protectees cry without doing something about it. He took the two steps to her side and wrapped her in his arms.
She was so small. So warm. She smelled amazing, just like she had the night before, and after a second her fingers curled into his T-shirt, holding him, too, while she buried her head in his chest. Could she feel the way his heart was pounding? Her body fit against his so well, like it was made to do exactly that. If they didn’t have those layers of clothing between them…shit, he needed to stop his mind from wandering into that territory, unless he wanted her to feel something other than his heart. It was hard enough keeping that from happening already. So to speak.
A glance at Nielsen—surely the best anti-aphrodisiac available at that moment—showed him the whole thing seemed to be going over fairly well. At least, Nielsen didn’t look skeptical. A little bored, maybe. Bored with the fact that a woman he was supposed to love like a daughter was upset, and bored that she was upset about the death of her father, supposedly a close friend of his. Dick.
All the more reason to do whatever it took to get information from him. When Nielsen looked up, Speare was ready; a glance down at the top of Ardeth’s head and then a slight roll of his eyes, a fond, amused twist of the mouth. Women.
Nielsen returned the eye roll and smirk, and added a half shrug. It’s just the way they are; we have to indulge them. Not much, but a start.
A start he wanted to capitalize on. He turned his face down and moved his arms, ready to end the embrace and start talking, when Ardeth looked up. Something in her eyes, something vulnerable and warm, something he couldn’t have explained in words but which seemed so clear just the same, made him lower his head. His left hand, moving without his conscious approval, slid up her arm to the side of her face. It all seemed so natural, like it was the only sensible thing to do, especially when her grip on him tightened and he felt her chest catch.
It wasn’t the right thing to do. It sure as hell wasn’t sensible. He knew that. Everything inside him knew that. Too bad it didn’t seem to matter, not when her lips were parted and only a few inches from his, not when her eyelids fluttered and lowered and her head tipped back. The warm breeze lifted strands of her hair and made them dance around her face, graceful little flames undulating like the ones he’d seen in the beast’s visions of hell…but so much more terrifying. The visions he was having now—of her lips parting beneath his, of her hands sliding across his bare skin, or her body warm and alive against his—didn’t illustrate some dim future eternity of torture but a different, more immediate damnation. A damnation he was about to leap into headfirst.
Nielsen cleared his throat. Loudly. Loud enough to break the spell; everything snapped back to normal, as if somehow that sound had grown arms and yanked Speare back from the edge of a precipice he really
didn’t want to fall over.
Except, of course, that he did. Not just because the beast was giving a furious howl in his head, either. The beast could do a lot of things to and with his body, but it couldn’t produce that kind of reaction. And it couldn’t produce any emotions except negative ones.
If Ardeth was feeling the same kind of confusion, she didn’t show it. She turned to Nielsen, a dazzling smile spreading across her face, still leaning against Speare so her left arm stayed around his waist and his right hung over her shoulders. “Anyway. I was telling him how you’re like a second father to me, and he wanted to meet you.”
“Surprised he has time,” Nielsen said. His expression, though friendlier, told Speare he wasn’t one of the guys yet. “What with investigating Theodore Bryant’s murder and all. Finding anything interesting?”
Speare shrugged. “Depends what you call interesting.”
“I think dismemberment is interesting.”
“Oh? I think finding out who killed him is more interesting, personally. The gruesome details are kind of dull.”
Nielsen struck a match on the tabletop. The flame flared once, twice, as he touched it to the tip of his cigar, taking his time. Letting Speare know how unintimidated he was, how he was in charge. Surrounding himself with smoke like a devil on a throne.
Too bad Speare had an actual devil riding shotgun in his body, which meant he didn’t give a damn how tough and powerful and detached Nielsen made himself look. Real demons beat old bastards with egos every time.
“Think you’ll find him?” Nielsen asked finally. Clouds of smoke almost obscured his face before the shifting breeze sucked them away. “Theodore’s killer.”
News of Frank Mercer’s death must not have spread, then. Or maybe no one had told Nielsen about it yet, since he’d just woken up.
Well, Speare would just handle that prize assignment himself. “Not just Theodore. Not anymore.”
“Eh?”
“Not just Theodore anymore. There was another victim last night. Frank Mercer. You know the guy?” Like he needed to ask. Proof that Nielsen had known Mercer was all over the former’s face; Speare thought for a second that the cigar was going to fall right out of his mouth.
“Mercer? Frank Mercer?”
Shit, the old man actually looked sick. Guilt twisted Speare’s gut. It hadn’t occurred to him that Nielsen would take Frank’s death so hard. If it had he wouldn’t have been so cavalier about the news. He generally didn’t enjoy making grown men turn white, although the beast sure wasn’t complaining.
Ardeth rested her palm on Speare’s stomach for a second, a hand signal telling him to stay put, before slipping away from him to embrace Nielsen.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a low, soothing murmur, gentle and soft. “I didn’t know you were so close to him.”
Was that anger on Nielsen’s face? Surprise? The expression disappeared so fast Speare couldn’t be sure. Something made him suspect, though, that whatever emotion it reflected wasn’t there because Nielsen had been “close” to Mercer at all. Something other than sorrow had made the blood drain from his face. Fear, perhaps?
“I knew him for a long time,” Nielsen said finally, which wasn’t exactly “We were close,” or “I loved him like a brother,” or anything else. It wasn’t even the “good man–great loss” line that seemed to get pulled out for all but the most abusive scumbags—and even they still got it, more often than they deserved.
Which made it even more likely that Nielsen’s shock had some other cause. “You two worked together?”
Nielsen’s thick brows drew together. “Not for years.”
“Nielsen works on bigger jobs these days,” Ardeth said. Her arms were still around Nielsen, her head resting on his shoulder.
It was an opportunity. “Ardeth, come on, leave the man alone. He doesn’t need to be coddled like a girl.”
Nielsen smirked again and patted Ardeth’s hand as he pulled away from her. It would be more fun than Speare could imagine to walk over there and punch that smirk right off his face, but he couldn’t. He had to get this shithead on his side, or at least willing to believe him when he gave his excuse for asking about Mickey Coyle.
Just why he was so annoyed at Nielsen’s patronizing treatment of Ardeth was something he didn’t want to analyze, just like he didn’t want to analyze the way he could still feel her head pressed against his chest and her arms around his waist. Maybe he was just pissed because he had to emulate that patronizing treatment, and it made him feel like an ass. “But you still know all the players in town.”
“I still am a player in this town,” Nielsen said.
Speare dipped his head in a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Everybody knows that. It’s—”
“Speare said he’d help me,” Ardeth said, twisting her hands together in a way that was completely unlike her. “I think I found a—a discrepancy in Daddy’s records. He’s helping me figure it out.”
Impatience flashed over Nielsen’s face. “There’s nothing wrong with your dad’s—”
“I just wanted—”
“She said she showed them to you guys,” Speare said, nodding at Nielsen. Best not to let them get into it. “But I think she doesn’t quite understand some of it. I said I’d have a look for her. You know.” Another nod, this one full of aren’t-women-silly meaning.
“I just want to know,” Ardeth said, “if the records are right. Is that such a big deal?”
It was the perfect opening, delivered in the perfect way. He frowned at her. “Tell you what, honey. Why don’t you let us talk about this, okay? You go on and watch some TV or something, read a magazine. I’ll sort this out for you.”
Her response was perfect, too; if he hadn’t wanted to kiss her before, he did now. Her teeth closed over her bottom lip, her shoulders slumped a little, but her eyes were full of reluctant hope for rescue. “But I—”
“Go on, now. You let me worry about this. Didn’t I say I’d take care of it?”
“Yeah, you go,” Nielsen said. “I’ll talk to your Mr. Speare for you.”
It didn’t necessarily mean they’d get the truth from him, but they were over the first major hurdle, at least, and Speare could push his way over the second after she left the balcony.
Ardeth managed to look both disappointed and relieved at the same time. “You’ll call me if you need something from me?”
“Sure, Ardi, sure.” Nielsen stood up. “Of course we will. Come on, Speare, let’s go into my study.”
The study was located in the back of the apartment, down a long hall darkened with velvet curtains in a dusky blue shade. Something about it bothered Speare. At first he thought maybe it was because Ardeth wasn’t coming—as they’d planned, she’d left them as soon as they got inside. But he realized as his footsteps began to echo oddly in his ears and his heart started to beat faster that it had nothing to do with her.
That was proven when the beast started to whine and twist itself around in his head. Its horrible skin made the most sickening dry rustling noises when it did that—when it was getting hungry, or when it was bothered by something—and it increased with every step they took toward the tall white door at the end of the hall.
Nothing Speare could do but try to shut it up and keep going, though. What was he supposed to do, tell Nielsen he was sorry, but they’d have to do this another time because the demon inside his head felt funny about the room where they were headed? Yeah, not the best idea.
“So I think Ardeth is just confused,” Speare said. Did his voice sound odd? Thick, or something? It felt harder to get the words out than it should have. “She said she’s not very good at asking questions, and she doesn’t want your feelings to be hurt, so she asked if I’d talk to you.”
“That’s fine.” They reached the door; Nielsen paused with his fingers on the handle, one of those long silver ones that looked like question marks facing a backplate. His eyes, sharp and aware beneath papery lids, regarded Speare with a mixtur
e of confidentiality and threat. “I don’t want her hurt. I promised Mickey, God rest him, that I’d look out for her.”
“I don’t want her hurt, either.” The second he said it he realized how true it was. “I just want to help.”
“You’re not going to find the missing item.”
Well, wasn’t that interesting. Nielsen wasn’t even pretending not to know what discrepancy Ardeth might have found or they were looking for. “I’m pretty good at finding things,” Speare said.
“Not this.” Nielsen sighed. “But if you’re fool enough—or want in her pants bad enough, is my guess—to want to try, I won’t stop you.”
Jesus, the old man didn’t hold back, did he? As if it had anything to do with Ardeth’s pants. And as if he really wanted—well, no. He couldn’t lie to himself and say he didn’t really want to, not anymore. God, did he want to.
That wasn’t the point, though. He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could formulate the words, Nielsen pushed the door open.
Whatever Speare was going to say disappeared from his head, thrown out by the thick, heavy wave of darkness that hit him in the face. Whatever he was going to say was lost beneath the beast’s earthshaking, head-pounding roar, a sound so loud and deep and strong that it made his knees weak. Fuck, what—what was that? What the fuck was in that room?
Whatever it was, he did not want to get closer to it. He didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want to touch it, he didn’t want to stand within ten feet of it, because the beast was thrashing around like a shark caught on a fishing line and he was scared, honestly scared, that it was going to burst through. It was too powerful, stronger than it should have been.
But Nielsen was already at the enormous, ornate gilded desk set off from the opposite wall, facing the door, his eyebrows high with expectation. “Well, come on.”
The first step over the threshold was like stepping into an arctic lake, a lake murky and teeming with serpents. It was so hard to take that step. His legs didn’t feel connected to his body. His eyes didn’t want to focus. Shit, this was bad.