else? Anything?”
She shrugged, wiped tears away with her fingertips, said, “Do the Austins have a butler? Maybe the butler did it.”
Then she cried, and Lucas patted her on the shoulder and asked if she’d be all right, and she said, “Yeah, I’d just like to sit here awhile,” and Lucas left.
She hadn’t had anything to do with the murder, he thought. In Lucas’s experience, women who killed their boyfriends suffered either from too much intensity or too much innocence; Mobry didn’t have either quality.
Like Austin, she was overwhelmed with sadness; all the sadness was getting him down.
5
Back out into the skyways, getting-out-of-the-office time, crowds jostling through to the parking ramps, a few of the younger women showing some pre-spring skin, the teen guys flashing tattoos over health-club muscles, their elders often with the competitive, fixed, dead-eyed, and querulous stare of people who were not getting far enough, fast enough, making enough, hustling all the time, working all the time, no time for an evening’s paseo , no time even for half-fast food. Scuttling people.
By the time Lucas got back to his car, the streets were snarled with evening rush-hour traffic, muttering along in a stink of exhaust and wet asphalt. He edged out into it, went around the block and down a few, to Washington Avenue, took the left, crawled a few more blocks, took the right turn across the Mississippi.
Lucas thought: Goths, mysterious fairies, dead bartenders ripped through their abdominal aortas—much better than a dead woman with a beer-bottle-cracked skull and a boyfriend who claimed he’d been out driving around; or paperwork; or political chores.
So he was whistling as he crossed the Hennepin Avenue bridge. He cheerfully chopped the nose off a Sprinter van, took the finger from the woman who was driving it, beat a red light by minus-fifteen feet, and dumped the car in a supermarket parking lot, leaving the BCA card on the dash.
The A1 was a block away, a brick building painted white, the paint gone dingy and gray, with a miniature theater-style marquee hanging over the door. The marquee said Surf & Turf, $9.99 and Happy Hour, 5-, which was either supposed to be cute, or the second number had fallen off.
Lucas ambled down the sidewalk, looking in the restaurant windows, checking the people on the street corners. The A1, when he came to it, looked respectably seedy; not a place where you’d go to start a fight, but not a place you’d propose to your girlfriend, either.
Inside, the purple carpet felt damp and spongy under his shoes. An anonymous jazz-piano tune was scratching its way out of overhead speakers, and a dim yellow light drizzled from red-shaded lamps running down the wall on his left, over a row of booths. Four of the booths were occupied by couples, and one by a single guy trying to read a newspaper. Two more men sat at the bar, with beers, an empty stool between them.
The bartender, a slope-shouldered, balding man with a rust-colored beard, was stacking wet glasses. Lucas leaned across the bar and asked, “Is Tom Harris in?”
The bartender yanked a couple of paper towels off a roll and wiped his hands. “Nope. He should be in later tonight. Eight, nine, like that.” He cocked his head. “You a cop?”
Lucas nodded. “I’m trying to get a line on a Goth woman. She supposedly was seen with Dick Ford the night he was killed.”
“You think she did it?”
“I’d just like to find her,” Lucas said. “Got any ideas?”
The bartender shook his head. “I wasn’t here that night. Thank God. Might’ve been me.”
“Anybody say anything about her . . . ?”
“Yeah, you know. Bar talk. There’s some confusion, about whether she was somebody we know, or somebody we’ve never seen.”
Lucas said, “Run that by me again.”
“There were three or four Goth women here that night,” the bartender said, leaning forward, forearms on the bar. “That’s not unusual. You guys
She shrugged, wiped tears away with her fingertips, said, “Do the Austins have a butler? Maybe the butler did it.”
Then she cried, and Lucas patted her on the shoulder and asked if she’d be all right, and she said, “Yeah, I’d just like to sit here awhile,” and Lucas left.
She hadn’t had anything to do with the murder, he thought. In Lucas’s experience, women who killed their boyfriends suffered either from too much intensity or too much innocence; Mobry didn’t have either quality.
Like Austin, she was overwhelmed with sadness; all the sadness was getting him down.
5
Back out into the skyways, getting-out-of-the-office time, crowds jostling through to the parking ramps, a few of the younger women showing some pre-spring skin, the teen guys flashing tattoos over health-club muscles, their elders often with the competitive, fixed, dead-eyed, and querulous stare of people who were not getting far enough, fast enough, making enough, hustling all the time, working all the time, no time for an evening’s paseo , no time even for half-fast food. Scuttling people.
By the time Lucas got back to his car, the streets were snarled with evening rush-hour traffic, muttering along in a stink of exhaust and wet asphalt. He edged out into it, went around the block and down a few, to Washington Avenue, took the left, crawled a few more blocks, took the right turn across the Mississippi.
Lucas thought: Goths, mysterious fairies, dead bartenders ripped through their abdominal aortas—much better than a dead woman with a beer-bottle-cracked skull and a boyfriend who claimed he’d been out driving around; or paperwork; or political chores.
So he was whistling as he crossed the Hennepin Avenue bridge. He cheerfully chopped the nose off a Sprinter van, took the finger from the woman who was driving it, beat a red light by minus-fifteen feet, and dumped the car in a supermarket parking lot, leaving the BCA card on the dash.
The A1 was a block away, a brick building painted white, the paint gone dingy and gray, with a miniature theater-style marquee hanging over the door. The marquee said Surf & Turf, $9.99 and Happy Hour, 5-, which was either supposed to be cute, or the second number had fallen off.
Lucas ambled down the sidewalk, looking in the restaurant windows, checking the people on the street corners. The A1, when he came to it, looked respectably seedy; not a place where you’d go to start a fight, but not a place you’d propose to your girlfriend, either.
Inside, the purple carpet felt damp and spongy under his shoes. An anonymous jazz-piano tune was scratching its way out of overhead speakers, and a dim yellow light drizzled from red-shaded lamps running down the wall on his left, over a row of booths. Four of the booths were occupied by couples, and one by a single guy trying to read a newspaper. Two more men sat at the bar, with beers, an empty stool between them.
The bartender, a slope-shouldered, balding man with a rust-colored beard, was stacking wet glasses. Lucas leaned across the bar and asked, “Is Tom Harris in?”
The bartender yanked a couple of paper towels off a roll and wiped his hands. “Nope. He should be in later tonight. Eight, nine, like that.” He cocked his head. “You a cop?”
Lucas nodded. “I’m trying to get a line on a Goth woman. She supposedly was seen with Dick Ford the night he was killed.”
“You think she did it?”
“I’d just like to find her,” Lucas said. “Got any ideas?”
The bartender shook his head. “I wasn’t here that night. Thank God. Might’ve been me.”
“Anybody say anything about her . . . ?”
“Yeah, you know. Bar talk. There’s some confusion, about whether she was somebody we know, or somebody we’ve never seen.”
Lucas said, “Run that by me again.”
“There were three or four Goth women here that night,” the bartender said, leaning forward, forearms on the bar. “That’s not unusual. You guys
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