“You talked to Shitzidoodle’s girls? By yourself?”

She nodded to the courtroom doors. “You were busy.”

“Was Matthews there?”

She leaned the wall and crossed her arms. “He crawled from under his rock. I asked if he was going to intrude, and if so, it would be best to hold off on repainting his vehicle. He returned to his pub, looking out the window and pulling rude faces.”

“How many girls did you interview?” I said, hoping she’d managed two or three.

“Eleven.”

“Eleven?”

“One led to another. Most knew Kylie hardly at all, just another working girl. None of the girls knew Teresa, I showed a photo.”

“Anything from the interviews?”

“Kylie was quite the close-mouthed girl, but one of her companions shared a flat with her for a few weeks. They used to get high together. The roommate, Candi Fyne – I do believe it’s fake, don’t you? – recalled the pair talking about how they’d fancied going into acting when younger. Miss Fyne laughed about how the only acting she’d done was in a low-level porn film, fornicating for drugs, she called it.”

“She really said fornicating?”

“No. Anyway, Kylie had told Miss Fyne that she’d spent five months acting and had even gotten paid for it.”

“Porn as well?”

“Miss Fyne didn’t think so. But that was the extent of the conversation, since they shot up subsequently.”

“We’ll have to look into the various perform—”

She was flipping pages again. “Performance unions, yes. I spoke with Actors’ Equity, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Theatrical and Recording Artists. All had no records of Kylie ever being a member, and that’s from a national database. But those tend to be professional organizations; there are many amateur venues and others that simply disregard union membership.”

It was a helluva day’s work, the work of two. Or three. But Belafonte had more to come.

“From there …” she said, gesturing me to her vehicle, “I proceeded to Kylie’s apartment, a rather sordid little place. I did find this …” She opened the car door and came up with a large square of rough cloth, gray, two meters by a meter. I rubbed a thumb over its nubby surface.

“What is it?”

“No idea. The size of a scarf, but too coarse to be comfortable. What made it unusual is where I discovered it … in a plastic bag inside a paper bag, the paper bag jammed in the back of a closet with a board over it. It was like Kylie needed to keep it, but at the same time didn’t want to keep it, so she did rather a bit of both.”

I studied Belafonte. She had to have been in constant motion, and the eyes showed it, darkened beneath. The usually perfect hair was limp, strands hanging loose. I even spotted nascent wrinkles behind the knees of the flat-pressed slacks. While I’d spent a day in a courtroom, she’d made strides that would have been a good day’s work for the both of us, an amazing day’s work.

“I’m bushed and you look the same,” I said. “Let’s get a night’s sleep and start afresh in the morning.” She nodded agreement and started away.

“Hey!” I called after her, shooting a thumbs-up. “Helluva job, Belafonte.”

She stared. “What happened to ‘Officer’?”

“Consider my newfound familiarity a promotion,” I said, turning toward the street.

“So my next advancement is when you call me ‘fonte’?” she called back.

It took me a second to realize it was meant to be humorous. I turned to see what she looked like when joking, but she was walking away.

I made a mental note to turn faster next time.

24

Nautilus was in his hotel room sipping a bottle of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and watching Jeopardy. A contestant called for the category “Ships”. The answer was revealed: Freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975.

“Edmund Fitzgerald,” Nautilus whispered, glancing at the bottle of brew; weird coincidence, Carson was gonna like hearing about it.

“The Edmund Fitzgerald,” the contestant said, adding four hundred bucks to her pile. A knock echoed in the room. Nautilus switched off the television and opened the door to find Richard Owsley framed against the hushed and carpeted hall.

“May I come in?”

Nautilus waved entry, glancing at the porter and figuring he should have tucked it back in the fridge. It was the first time Nautilus had seen his employer suitless, now in pressed green chinos and a polo shirt, argyle socks, tasseled cordovan loafers.

“Can I get you a refreshment, Pastor?”

A frowning glance at the porter. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

Nautilus sat as Owsley paced the room, stopping at the window and looking toward the cross.

“How can I help you?” Nautilus said.

“I’m afraid I invited you here under something of a, uh, mischaracterization, Mr Nautilus.”

“Interesting. In what way?”

“I preach a doctrine that some call materialistic and selfish. That’s far too … reductionary, simplistic. I postulate that believing in Jesus Christ the Redeemer results in rewards in the here and now. The faithful don’t have to wait for Heavenly remunera-shun, the payback for righteousness.” He paused and raised one eyebrow. “Do my words make sense to you?”

Nautilus was on the verge of saying “No, Mista Owzley. Ise jus’ a simple country boy, I is,” but changed it to, “I think so.”

Owsley jammed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “It’s a different way of interpreting the gospel than the quotidian, the everyday. People need hope.”

“Sure,” Nautilus said, wondering how much the guy spent on Word-a-Day calendars.

“But it’s wholly in the vision of Christ,” Owsley said. “He came to bring hope to the downtrodden, the neglected. There are people that don’t comprehend, find it beyond their ken. People become frightened by what they don’t understand, and anger is a stepchild of fright. Simply put, some people are angry with me, resentful.” Owsley bowed his head, as if unable to comprehend such thinking. After a suitable pause he lifted his eyes to Nautilus and changed track. “How many years were you with the Mobile police force, Mr Nautilus? Did you say twenty?”

“Almost thirty.”

“May I ask, did you ever have protection duties, like when a celebrity came to town, an important personage?”

“Now and then.”

“Because there were people who resented the celebrities, their success, their popularity … maybe even wished them bodily harm?”

Nautilus laced his fingers behind his neck, wondering where this new road would end up. “That was the general concept.”

“An hour ago I received a phone call. A man called me an apostate, Mr Nautilus. Do you know what that means? It’s a person who has lost his way, turned from the truth.”

Nautilus had known the definition of apostate since he was as tall as a parking meter. But he simply nodded.

“The caller told me I should repent and ask God for forgiveness. And if I didn’t …” Owsley paused, as if replaying the call in his head.

“Go on.”

“That I’d be sent to Hell in flames and smoke.”

“Anonymity means people can say anything,” Nautilus said. “They vent, they put down the phone, they finish eating their Spaghetti-O’s.”

“I’ve had people differ with me on a theological level, Mr Nautilus. This was different. It was venomous, frightening. The man sounded insane.”

He is frightened, Nautilus thought. Under the façade of being scared, Richard Owsley actually was scared.

“And what you want from me is …?”

“I want you to be my driver, as agreed. But I also want you to be my bodyguard. To keep an eye out for those who might do me harm.”

“I’d pretty much do that anyway,” Nautilus said. “It’s visceral.”

“Vizral?”

“Vis-cer-al. As in felt in the viscera, the internal organs. Simply put, I operate on a gut feeling. My guts, my intuition, often spot trouble before it begins.” He paused to enjoy the moment. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”