White Night

Chapter Eight

I had only a few seconds to think. If security had called in a cop, they were thinking I might be trouble. If I came off as something suspicious, they'd probably take a look around as a matter of course. If that happened, and they found what was in my brother's war room, I'd be buying us both more kinds of trouble than I could count.

I needed a lie. A really good, really believable lie. I shut the door to Thomas's war room and bedroom and stared around the immaculate, stylish, tracklit living room, trying to think of one. I stared at Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, looking for inspiration. Nothing. The Pirate King, with his white shirt manfully open to his waist, didn't give me any ideas either.

And then it hit me. Thomas had already established the lie. He'd used it before, no less—and it was just his style of camouflage, too. All I had to do was play up to it.

"I can't believe I'm about to do this," I told Mouse.

Then I set my coat and staff aside, took a deep breath, flounced to the door, opened it, and demanded, "He sent you, didn't he? Don't try to lie to me!"

A patrol cop—God, she looked young—regarded me with a polite, bored expression. "Um, sir?"

"Thomas!" I snarled, pronouncing it the same way as the woman on the answering machine. "He's not man enough to have come to meet me himself, is he? He sent his bully boys to do it for him!"

The cop let out a long-suffering breath. "Sir, please, let's stay calm here." She turned to the building's security guy, a nervous-looking, balding man in his forties. "Now, according to building security, you aren't a known resident, but you've entered with a key. It's standard procedure for them to ask a few questions."

"Questions?" I said. It was hard not to lisp. So hard. But that might have been too much. I settled for saying everything in my Murphy impersonation voice. "Why don't you start with why he hasn't called me? Hmm? After giving me his spare key? Ask him why he hasn't come to visit the baby!" I pointed an accusatory finger at Mouse. "Ask him what excuse he has this time!"

The cop looked as if she had a headache. She blinked at me once, lifted a hand to her mouth, coughed, and stepped aside, gesturing to the security guy

He blinked a few times. "Sir," the security man said. "Um, it's just that Mr. Raith hasn't actually listed with building security any one he's given access to his apartment."

"He'd better not have!" I said. "I have given him years, years, and I will not be cast aside like last season's shoes!" I shook my head and told the young cop, in an aside voice, "Never date a beautiful man. It isn't worth what you have to put up with."

"Sir," the security man said. "I'm sorry to, um, intrude. But part of what our residents pay for is security. May I see your key, please?"

"I can't believe that he never even…" I trailed off into a mutter, got the key out of my coat pocket, and showed it to him.

The security guy took it, squinted at it, and checked a number on its back against a list on his clipboard. "This is one of the resident's original keys," he confirmed.

"That's right. Thomas gave it to me," I said.

"I see," the security man said. "Um. Would you mind if I saw some photo ID, sir? I'll put a copy in our file, so this won't, um… happen again."

I was going to kill my brother later. "Of course not, sir," I assured him, trying to appear mollified and reluctantly willing to be gracious. I got out my wallet and handed him my driver's license. The cop glanced at it as it went by.

"I'll be right back," he told me, and hustled toward the elevator.

"Sorry about this," the cop told me. "They get paid to be a little paranoid."

"Not your fault, Officer," I told her.

She regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. "So, you and the owner are, uh…"

"We're something." I sighed. "You can never get the pretty ones to come out and say exactly, can you?"

"Not generally, no," she said. Her tone of voice stayed steady, her expression mild, but I knew a poker face when I saw one. "Do you mind if I ask what you're doing here?"

I had to be careful. The young cop wasn't dumb. She thought she smelled a rat.

I gestured forlornly at the dog. "We were living together in a tiny little place. We got a dog and didn't know he was going to get so big. Thomas was feeling crowded, so he moved into his own place, and…" I shrugged and tried to look like Murphy did when talking about her exes. "We were supposed to switch off every month, but he always had some excuse. He didn't want the dog slobbering around his little neat-freak world." I gestured at the apartment.

The cop looked around and nodded politely. "Nice place." But she hadn't been convinced. Not completely. I saw her putting a few thoughts together, formulating more questions.

Mouse pulled it out of the fire for me. He padded over to the door, looked up at the cop.

"Good lord, he's huge," the cop said. She leaned slightly away from him.

"Oh, he's a big softie, isn't he," I crooned to him, and ruffled his ears.

Mouse gave her a big doggy grin, sat, and offered her one of his paws.

She laughed and shook. She let Mouse sniff the back of her hand, and then scratched his ears herself.

"You know dogs," I said.

"I'm in training for one of the K-9 units," she confirmed.

"He likes you," I said. "That's unusual. He's usually a great big chicken."

She smiled. "Oh, I think dogs can tell when someone likes them. They're smarter about that kind of thing than people give them credit for."

"God knows, that seems to be smarter than I can ever manage." I sighed. "What kind of dogs do they use at the K-9 units?"

"Oh, it varies a great deal," she said, and started in on talking about candidates for police dogs. I kept her going with a couple of questions and a lot of interested nodding, and Mouse demonstrated his ability to sit and lie down and roll over. By the time the security guy and his apologetic expression got back, Mouse was sprawled on his back, paws waving languidly in the air, while the cop scratched his tummy and told me a pretty good dog story about her own childhood and an encounter with a prowler.

"Sir," he said, handing my key and license back and trying not to look like he was carefully not touching me. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but as you are not a resident here, it is standard procedure for visitors to check in with the security personnel at the entrance when entering or leaving the building."

"This is just typical of him," I said. "Forgetting something like this. I probably should have called ahead and made sure he'd told you."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I hate to inconvenience you. But until we do have that written authorization from Mr. Raith that he wishes you to have full access, I need to ask you to leave. I know it's just paperwork, but I'm afraid there's no way around it."

I sighed. "Typical. Just typical. And I understand you're just doing your job, sir. Let me go to the bathroom and I'll be right down."

"Perfectly all right," he told me. "Officer."

The cop stood up from Mouse and gave me a lingering look. Then she nodded, and the pair of them headed back down the hall.

I let Mouse back in, then closed the door most of the way and Listened, narrowing the focus of my attention until nothing existed but sound and silence.

"Are you sure?" the cop asked the security guy.

"Oh, absolutely," he said. "Toe-moss," he said, emphasizing the pronunciation, "is as queer as a three-dollar bill."

"He have any other men here?"

"Once or twice," the man said. "This tall one is new, but he does have one of the original keys."

"He could have stolen it," the cop said.

"An NBA-sized gay burglar who works with a dog?" the security guy replied. "We'll make sure he's not stealing the fridge when he comes out. If Raith is missing anything, we'll point him right at this guy. We've got him on video, eyewitnesses putting him in the apartment, a copy of his driver's license, for crying out loud."

"If they're in a relationship," the cop said, "how come this Raith guy never cleared his boyfriend?"

"You know how queers are, the way they sleep around," the security guy said. "He was just covering his ass."

"So to speak," the cop said.

Security guy missed the irony in her tone, and let out a smug chuckle. "Like I said. We'll watch him."

"Do that," the cop said. "I don't like it, but if you're sure."

"I don't want a jilted queen making a big scene. No one wants that."

"Heavens, no," the cop said, her tone flat.

I eased the door shut and said to Mouse, "Thank God for bigotry."

Mouse tilted his head at me.

"Bigots see something they expect and then they stop thinking about what is in front of them," I told him. "It's probably how they got to be bigots in the first place."

Mouse looked unenlightened and undisturbed by it.

"We've only got a couple of minutes if I want them to stay complacent," I said quietly. I looked around the apartment for a minute, "No note," I said. "Not necessary now."

I went back to the war room, turned on the light, and stared at the huge corkboard wall with its maps, notes, pictures, and diagrams. There was no time to make sense of it.

I closed my eyes for a moment, lowered certain mental defenses I'd held in place for a considerable while, and cast a thought into the vaults of my mind: Take a memo.

Then I stepped up to the wall and scanned my eyes over it, not really stopping to take in any information. I caught glimpses of each photo and piece of paper. It took me maybe a minute. Then I turned the lights back out, gathered my things, and left.

I breezed out of the elevators, stopping at the security guy's desk. He nodded at me and waved me out, and Mouse and I departed the building, secure in our heterosexuality.

Then I went back to my car and headed home to seek counsel from a fallen angel.