Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online

obvious
    equipment?”
    “I'll confess ignorance. I wouldn't know what it's supposed to
    look like.”
    "Right. And you're the expert.
    “Sex crimes, not games.”
    “I love it when you play the dumb blond. Those are the rare
    times I feel most connected to you,” Mike said.
    “There's plenty of room to hold stuff-big hooks and lots of wire
    hangers. But that would be just a guess 'cause there are normal
    things that would fit right in.”
    Mike scratched his head. “Maybe Janet's wrong. Or nuts.”
    “Or Amber didn't work out of her home. Or she retired.” The
    beads made a clicking noise as I brushed through the curtain to
    look in the refrigerator. Vargas Candera leaned against the
    doorjamb.
    “No, señora,” he said laughing. “She not retired.
    Amber, she's a very busy lady.”
    Mike leaned his back against the wall and crossed his arms.
    “Doing what?”
    “No se. Plenty of men, they come and they go,” Vargas
    said, playing his fingers in the air like they were climbing up and
    down the stairs. “I'm not supposed to know nothing, right? I jus'
    work here.”
    “Must have been noisy,” Mike said.
    The skim milk was ten days past its sale date and the butter
    gave off a sour smell.
    “Ms. Amber, she paid me to extra-soundproof the apartment when
    she move in,” Vargas said, stroking his moustache. “She tell me she
    likes to play her music loud. Paid me good to double Sheetrock.
    Put in 'coustic tile.”
    “Was noise a problem in the building?”
    Vargas rubbed his grease-stained thumb and forefinger together,
    suggesting that he had been well compensated for his ignorance. “I
    never heard no music after that.”
    “When's the last time you saw Amber?” Mike asked.
    “Not for a week. Maybe more.”
    Vargas started to walk into the foyer. “Stay right there,” Mike
    said. “Don't put your hands on anything. I need to get some guys
    here to dust for prints. When's the last time you were in this
    apartment?”
    “Me? She don't ask me in much,” Vargas said, one side of his
    mouth pulling up in a smile. “I can't afford it.”
    "Enough to know if anything is missing? If it looks the way
    Ms.
    Bristol always kept it?"
    “Not my job.” He held his hands up, palms outward, the strong,
    thick fingers in front of his face. “I don't go in there since I
    fix her toilet last summer.”
    “Do you know any of her friends? Any of the people who came to
    see her regularly?”
    I thought of the doormen in my high-rent high-rise building,
    only twenty blocks away. The sharpest ones held dozens of
    secrets-infidelities and betrayals by neighbors-thirty floors'
    worth of them. “I not a busybody, lady.”
    “You live in the basement here?” Mike asked.
    “Si. I got my television, my girlfriend, and my
    six-pack. I do my work and I keep to myself.”
    “Anybody else have a key to her apartment?”
    “How would I know? If a key work, nobody bother me.” Mike's
    frustration was growing. “Dylan. There's a bar around the corner
    called Dylan's. You ever seen that guy visiting here-the guy who
    owns the joint?”
    “I got no idea who you mean. Dylan what?”
    “Men pay you to forget they were here, Vargas? Is that how it
    goes?”
    “They don't have to do nothing, Detective. Ms. Amber takes care
    of me very good not to hear nothing, not to see anybody,” Vargas
    said, cracking the knuckles of his left hand in his powerful right
    fist. "That girl and trouble, they was always together.

SIX
    Isat on a bar stool at Primola, sipping my sparkling water like
    it was aged Scotch. Mike was next to me, stirring the ice cubes in
    the vodka with his finger. Every table in the chic East Side
    restaurant was full of people escaping the August heat with a good
    meal. “Is the air-conditioning blowing on you, Alessandra?”
    Giuliano asked. “I'll have a table for you in five minutes.”
    “We're fine right here.”
    The owner had been my friend for many years. He was used to
    seeing me with Mike or