The Alibi

“Excuse me, Loretta. As I said earlier, it’s been a rough day, and I’m exhausted.”

He tried to smile, but knew he failed. The gloomy interior of the bar was suffocating him. The smoke seemed thicker. The odor of despair more pervasive. His head was throbbing and his gut was churning. Loretta’s eyes were as sharp as boning knives. Afraid they would see too much, he avoided looking straight into them.

“I’ll get your fee to you tomorrow.”

“I turned over every stone I could, Hammond.”

“You did a terrific job.”

“But you were hoping for more.”

Actually he had been hoping for nothing, but certainly less than what he had got. “No, no. With this, I’ll be able to move the case forward.”

Pathetically eager to please him, Loretta gripped his hand tighter. “I could try digging even deeper.”

“Give me time to assimilate this first. I’m sure it’ll be sufficient. If not, I’ll be in touch.”

Without fresh air, he was going to die. He worked his hand out of Loretta’s damp grip, told her to stay sober, thanked her again for a job well done, and tossed a hasty goodbye over his shoulder.

Outside the Shady Rest, the air was neither fresh nor bracing. It was stagnant and thick and seemed to take on the properties of cotton as he sucked it into his lungs.

Even hours after sundown the sidewalk was emanating heat that burned his feet through the soles of his shoes. His skin was clammy. Like when he was a kid, sick. After a fever broke, his mother would remove his damp pajamas and change his bed sheets, assuring him that the sweat was a good sign. It meant he was getting better. But it didn’t feel better. He preferred the dryness of fever to the cloying moisture on his skin.

The sidewalk was congested with people milling from doorway to doorway but having no real place to go. They were looking for something interesting to do, which might include, but wasn’t limited to, getting drunk in one of the taverns, stealing something they needed, destroying or defacing property just for the hell of it, or satisfying a vendetta with bloodshed.

Ordinarily Hammond would have been attuned to the potential danger the neighborhood posed to one who obviously didn’t belong there. Both blacks and whites sneered at him with palpable prejudice and cultivated hatred. He was definitely a “have” in an area of “have nots,” and resentment ran high. At any other time, he would have been looking over one shoulder as he made his way back to his car, half expecting to find it stripped when he reached it. Tonight, preoccupation made him careless and indifferent to the hostile glances cast at him.

Loretta’s report on Alex had plunged him into a moral morass. The incriminating information was stultifying. The emotional impact of it severe. The whole of it was so devastating, he couldn’t separate individual aspects of it.

When Smilow learned her history—and it was only a matter of time before one of his detectives uncovered it—he would have wet dreams. Steffi would break out a bottle of champagne. But for him and Alex, professionally and personally, the discovery would be disastrous.

Disclosure was like a lead weight hanging by an unraveling filament just above his head. When would it drop? Tonight? Tomorrow? The next day? How long could he stand the suspense? How long could he wrestle with his own conscience? Even if the time of death eliminated her as the actual murderer, she must have been involved to some extent.

These thoughts were so dreary, so absorbing, they were almost immobilizing. He had lost all sense of where he was. He was thinking about disbarment, not dismemberment. When he reached the alley where he had left his car, he used the keyless door lock and opened the driver’s door without even glancing around to see if it was safe.

Startled by sudden movement behind him, he reacted quickly. He came around in a blur of motion, his arm raised, ready to protect and defend himself.

He came close to striking Alex before arresting the momentum of his arm.

“What the hell!” Reflexively he scanned the immediate area, only now becoming aware of the dark, menacing surroundings. “What the hell are you doing in this neighborhood?”

“I followed her here.”

“Who?”

Green eyes snapped angrily. “Who do you think, Hammond? The woman you hired to follow me.”

“Shit!”

“My sentiment exactly,” she said heatedly. “I thought it was strange that the same tourist came down my street twice in one day taking pictures of my house. First this morning, then again shortly after Smilow’s raiders left. On my way home from that humiliating interrogation this afternoon, I stopped at the supermarket. She was there, too, trying to look interested in watermelons. It finally dawned on me that I was under surveillance.”

“Not surveillance.”

“True. That would imply professionalism. While this is classless, gutless, ordinary spying.”

“Alex—”

“So I dodged her, doubled back, turned the tables, and started following her. I thought Detective Smilow must be behind it. Imagine my surprise when you showed up to meet her here.”