Inspector Harriet Luncardy screwed a long thin cigarette into a long thin holder with rather more force than was absolutely necessary. Everything about her was long and thin. She was nearly as tall as me and about half my mass, but she made up for it with an intimidating attitude that also somehow aspired to ladylike elegance. She wore a tight narrow skirt with matching jacket in understated - and probably hugely expensive - grey. She was painfully honest and a stickler for the procedures - an all-round pain in the ass - but I could think of a lot worse Homicide cops that could have been assigned to this one.

I was sitting in my own office chair with a burly uniformed copper at my shoulder. I had been here two hours already and the ashtray was getting worryingly full. The inspector stood and watched the coroner's team bag the body and lug it away on a trolley. The nervous little creature in a white coat who had been fussing around for ages, taking samples from the bottle and glass, swabbing the desk and dusting all the obvious surfaces, finally finished and packed everything away in his bag. Left in the room there were a couple of uniformed types standing around looking bored, me and the inspector.

Luncardy lit her own smoke with an elegant silver lighter then dropped it into her elegant little purse. She drew smoke from her holder and blew it out with a calculated nonchalance and a flagrant disregard for the rules of forensic evidence. She had been ignoring me for the last twenty minutes, in a transparent attempt to intimidate me. I didn't think it was working. Earlier, I had tried my masculine charm on her. That hadn't worked either.

The inspector finally deigned to notice me.

"You sure know how to pick your clients," she said, with a trace of ironic weariness, "OK, let's go through it again."

I had already been through the entire story once, leaving nothing out but my own suspicions and the part about Clathy tailing me, badly. I didn't see why her life had to be made any harder than it was.

"I've told everything already," I said, "When are you going to let me out of here?"

"Hah," she retorted, "Don't think that I like hanging around in this dump."

She swung around to face me, bending forward to look me in the face.

"You admit it was your whiskey bottle?"

"Yeah."

There was no point in denying it. It was the one that had been in the desk drawer, and no doubt my fingerprints were all over it.

"And you say you didn't spike it?"

"No," I said wearily, "Whiskey's expensive enough without wasting it."

"Hah," Luncardy said again, without amusement, "And you hadn't agreed to meet Vale here this evening."

"Certainly not."

"Hmm. Well, your story checks out," she said, sounding vaguely disappointed, "You were at the Starfield Club at the time of death. You seem to have a way with cocktail waitresses. Vale might have come here to kill himself, what with the blackmail angle and all, and there's no sign that anyone else has been here."

Privately, I doubted it. No doubt Hosh knew quiet men, killers who knew how to walk softly and wear gloves. No doubt if I had taken that drink at the Starfield Club, then I'd have woken up here, in an incriminating position, with the police all over me. Or maybe I wouldn't have woken up at all. I must have touched a nerve with Hosh. What was in those accounts that worried him so much?

Or maybe it wasn't Hosh at all. Maybe it was the blackmailer, unless Hosh himself was trying some wacky double-bluff on himself. Someone close to Hosh, in his organisation, someone who knew his way around the Starfield Club, someone who wanted to get rid of Hosh, to bring him down.

"Okay, you're off the hook, for now," Luncardy went on, looking at me coolly, "Come downtown tomorrow, make a statement. And don't try going anywhere, if you value your PI licence."

She flicked a card onto the desk. I looked at it, then back at her.

"Yes, ma'am," I said quickly. There was no point in aggravating the law any more than necessary.

"Now get out. And don't even think of asking when you can have your office back," she added as I opened my mouth again, "It'll take as long as it takes. Understand?"

I nodded, picked up my hat and the card from the desk. Thrown out of my own office, even though the rent had been paid. On the way home, I stopped at a liquor store, one that I had never been to before, and bought a fifth of rye. I sure needed a drink, but I wasn't going to trust any bottle that had been opened, not for a long while.

At home, I stood for a long time in the shower, trying to wash away the scent of death and homicide cops. Then I sat around in my dressing-gown for a long time, trying to make sense of it all. There were just too many possibilities, and no way of telling them apart. Finally I went to bed full of whisky and frustration and dreamed about cocktail waitresses with lilac eyes and plunging cleavages plying me with drinks, the un-drunk glasses piled high on a table, while I ducked and weaved to avoid an invisible tail, all under the baleful dead eyes of Hosh and Vale.

Part 10

Part 12