Read Online The Hours of the Virgin by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online

Albert Winder with the General Service division of the Detroit Police Department, checking for wants and warrants on the license number of a yellow Toyota, current year model, and needed the lessee’s address and home telephone. While she was running it down I pointed my chin at Vyper-with-a- y . “Did you see the piece about Colombian papers in the new High Times ?”
    â€œI use toilet paper.” She sat up and folded her arms on the desk. “You’re like a private pig, right?”
    â€œRight. I only wallow when I’m paid.”
    â€œHow much they pay you?”
    â€œIf you’re looking for a job, the hiring here is restricted to my own species.”
    A green lip curled. “Just ’cause I don’t look like Betty and Veronica don’t mean I’m crud.”
    â€œIt does in this world.” The receiver clicked in my ear. “Hello?”
    â€œSergeant?” A different woman this time. “We’re not at liberty to give out the names and addresses of clients without written authorization. Could you fax us your request on department stationery?”
    â€œWhat gave me away?”
    Her tone grew thorns. “If I told you that, next time you might get away with it.” The connection broke.
    I cradled the receiver. The queen of chains and leather was starting to look good. “What are you selling?”
    â€œA woman.”
    â€œNo thanks. I just had one and it didn’t agree with me.”
    â€œA woman in a fur coat.”
    â€œBlue eyes?”
    â€œOne was. I don’t know what color you call the other one but it wasn’t blue.”
    That was a step in the right direction, but I’d mentioned the mismatched eyes the night before. “Brooklyn accent?”
    â€œMore like Mississippi, only not quite. I used to live with a dude from Mississippi and he talked like that, only different. Someplace south, Atlanta maybe. Is Atlanta a state?”
    The aspirins were beginning to kick in. I found the triangle earring in my pocket and dangled it over the desk. She squinted, cracking her eye shadow.
    â€œYeah. She was wearing them.”
    I put it away. There was still some liquor in the glass. I sipped at it, but it wasn’t what I wanted and I dumped it out in the wastebasket. “I thought she didn’t exist.”
    â€œThat’s what I said in front of that pig. I don’t like pigs.”
    â€œI’m a pig.”
    â€œYou don’t bust people.”
    â€œDrugs?”
    She showed her teeth. I guessed she thought she was smiling. “No thanks. I just had some.”
    Her arms were still folded on her side of the desk. I grasped a wrist at random and pulled the arm straight. The same Michelangelo who was responsible for the bird of prey had rendered the Yellow Brick Road in intricate detail inside her forearm. The Emerald City glimmered in the crease of her elbow. I couldn’t see any marks that weren’t artistic. I gave it back to her.
    â€œI’m clean since I’m sixteen.” She rubbed the wrist. “They didn’t bust me for that. They said I put my baby in the snow.”
    â€œDid you?”
    â€œI wrapped it in a towel first. You want the woman or not?”
    â€œDepends on the price.”
    â€œThousand. Cash.”
    I laughed in her face.
    â€œTake it or leave it.”
    I reached for the telephone. She thought I was going back to work.
    â€œYou called it, pig.” She got up and went to the door.
    I lifted the receiver and dialed. “Thirteen hundred? C.I.D., please. Inspector Alderdyce.”
    She spun around. Her chain jingled. “Asshole!”
    â€œOink.”
    â€œBig bluff. I ain’t done nothing to get busted for.”
    â€œThere’s an extortion attempt involved and a person missing, possibly kidnap or murder. The cops have a name for it. They call it withholding evidence.”
    She came back and sat down.