Invasion of Privacy

condos.
    There was a keypad mounted on the wall outside the front door, another glass-paneled, inner door visible before the foyer. A typed list under a clear plastic cover next to the pad gave directions and two-digit telephone numbers for the occupants, listed in alphabetical order. I assumed the order was a security measure, scrambling unit number and owner name so a browsing burglar couldn’t figure out which apartment had nobody home at any given time.
    I pressed the DIAL TONE button, then Evorova’s number. I heard a telephone ringing through the speaker in the pad, and then a pickup and Evorova’s voice saying, “Yes?”
    “John Cuddy.”
    “Good. I can buzz you through the first door, but someone must come down to let you in the second.”
    I got out the first syllable of “Someone?” before the dial tone told me that Evorova had cut the connection. I pressed the HANG UP button, and the tone stopped as a bumblebee noise came from the outer door’s jamb. I opened it, went inside, and waited. Through the glass panel, the foyer had burgundy carpeting leading up a broad staircase and a small, tasteful chandelier suspended three feet from a fake mantelpiece with a mirror over it.
    About a minute later a fortyish woman in high heels walked deliberately down the foyer’s stairs, carefully holding the railing. She was dressed elegantly in the sort of eveningwear you don’t usually see on a weekday, workaday night. The green gown appeared to be buff velvet, a broach at the throat and spaghetti straps crossing both shoulders. If the gown was the first thing you noticed, the upswept auburn hair was the second, and I bet myself that her eyes would be somewhere around the green of her gown.
    As the woman opened the inner door for me, I won the bet.
    Extending her hand, she said, “Mr. Cuddy, Claude Loiselle.”
    I shook politely. “Not exactly what I expected.”
    A lopsided grin that made me think of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly. “What did you expect, something from the Women Seeking Women section of the personals? ‘White professional bull dyke seeks femme for roller derby, beer blasts, and possible relationship’?”
    Loiselle slurred some of the words, and I realized she’d had a few pops of something. “Ms. Evorova just said you were a banker, like her. And I was referring to your gown.”
    “Oh.” Loiselle looked down at herself, then back up to me. “We’re going to the opera, Verdi’s Rigoletto. Even bankers dress up when they do that.” Teetering a little on the heels, she turned and beckoned me with a single, crooked index finger. “Hope you don’t mind the stairs. The elevator’s no bigger than a dumbwaiter and gives me claustrophobia.”
    “The stairs are fine.”
    Loiselle had to hitch up her gown a little at the hips to negotiate the first few steps. “Claustrophobic Claude. Kind of ‘sings,’ don’t you think?”
    “I give it an eighty-five. Good melody, but tough to dance to.”
    Her laugh was almost a gargling sound. “Too bad Olga didn’t meet you instead of the Horse’s Ass.”
    As we reached the first landing, I didn’t see any open doors, so I said, “Andrew Dees?”
    “The same. I mentioned ‘relationship’ before? His idea of a deep and lasting relationship is about six inches ‘deep’ and ‘lasting’ twenty minutes.”
    We started the next flight. “You know him well, then?”
    “Met him twice. The second time wasn’t necessary, if you take my point.”
    “Bad first impression?”
    “No first impression.”
    “I don’t get you.”
    “The man’s not really there... what do I call you,
    anyway?”
    “John is fine with me if Claude is fine with you.”
    “Dear God, a private investigator who speaks in parallel structure? I can’t find a fucking assistant who even knows what parallel structure is.”
    “It’s just the generation. Reading and writing isn’t what they were focused on.”
    “Now, that’s a dangling participle, right?”
    “Preposition, I think.”
    Second landing. “Right, right. Preposition.”
    We kept climbing. “Back to Mr. Dees. You were saying...?”
    “Saying what?”
    “Something about his not really being there.”
    “Oh. An -drew doesn’t talk about himself. I mean, have you ever met a man who didn’t drone on about how he starred at quarterback in high school, or what a screwing he took from his bitch of an ex-wife, or some- thing?”
    “And Dees doesn’t.”
    “Not a word. You get the impression