Spiral

smart enough not to feel she has to show just how tough.”
    ”And a genuine beauty, a woman who grows more attractive the more one speaks with her. If I were not married already, she would be a good choice.”
    I looked back at Justo before being aware of how my face must have looked to him.
    ”Oh, John. Forgive me, please. I — ”
    ”No forgiveness is necessary among friends.”
    The grave nod. ”Perhaps not, but an apology is still appropriate, and I extend it.”
    My turn to nod, and then we went through the doors that could remind you of an airport terminal and into the heat of the nearly midday sun.

SIX

    After Pepe dropped me back at my hotel, I stopped by the front desk to see if there were any messages for me. The clerk seemed a little nervous, but dutifully checked his computer before saying yes, a ”Mr. Tranh” had called a while before.
    I thought I should return it from my room, so I went up there. Once inside, I touched the beach photo atop the bureau again on my way to the bed. Using the mattress as a seat, I dialed, and Tranh’s voice answered midway through the second ring.
    ”John Cuddy, returning your call.”
    ”You are at your hotel?”
    He sounded miffed. ”Yes.”
    ”Before trying you there, I dialed your cell phone, but without success.”
    I stared at bottom drawer of the bureau, where I’d left the portable. ”I didn’t have it with me.”
    ”Mr. Cuddy, do you even have it turned on?”
    Now a sardonic tone to Tranh’s voice. I waited a moment before saying, ”No.”
    He took an equal amount of time, then said, ”I dialed your cellular as a test, to be sure the Colonel could reach you if necessary. As he cannot always be available himself for a return call from your hotel room, could you please keep the cell phone fully charged and with you—power on —at all times?”
    ”I’ll do my best.”
    ”Thank you again. I see no need to trouble the Colonel with the reason for my reminder to you.”
    Favor supposedly owed. ”I appreciate that.”
    ”Good-bye, Mr. Cuddy.”
    I started to say the same before realizing that Duy Tranh had already hung up on me.
    Rising from the bed, I went over to my bureau and retrieved the cell phone from its drawer. When I pushed the button marked PWR, the tiny window lit up with a pale green background, telling me the phone’s own dialing number. A bar graph on the right-hand side showed the battery as fully charged.
    I slipped the unit into my inside jacket pocket and went to the door. When I pulled it open, something like a battering ram hit me square in the chest.
    Backpedaling, I registered Detective Kyle Cascadden’s following through with an open right hand to my breastplate. Granted I wasn’t expecting it, he’d still managed to drive almost two hundred pounds of me to the edge of the bed eight feet into the room.
    I stayed on my feet as the back of my knees hit the mattress. Cascadden had slammed the door with his left hand and kept coming, bringing his right up to my throat and grabbing hold. Not choking me, just getting my attention and keeping it.
    ”All right, Beantown, now here’s the program. I got the room clerk by the short hairs, account of he’s got an old drug conviction I know about but the hotel don’t. So he called me soon’s he knew you were back up here. I got that kind of stuff on enough people, I can find you wherever you go in my town. We clear on that?”
    I gave what I thought Cascadden would take to be a weak nod.
    ”Rest of the program. I don’t much like you coming into my squad room, showing me up with your high-handed Yankee power-trip. You were working for some dogshit defendant, I’d have to give you a mite of leeway, account of the courts won’t let me tell witnesses not to talk with the accused’s investigators.’ But you’re just butting your nose in where it don’t belong, and I don’t like that either. Fact is, I don’t much like anything about you. So, I catch you even just a bitty-bit dirty—like maybe you carrying unlicensed?—and Beantown, I’m gonna be on you like flies over horseshit. We clear on that, too?”
    Another weak nod from me.
    Cascadden started to squeeze harder on my throat. ”And I don’t mean formal, neither. I mean I come out and see you personal, like now, only maybe you gonna walk away with worse than some ache in your Adam’s apple.” A grin. Or, maybe you don’t walk away at all.”
    Sagging a bit in my shoulders, I flopped my left hand up toward