Swan Dive

of which I couldn’t identify without reading the fine print.
    On either side of the cosmetics, two photos in stand-up Plexiglas functioned almost like bookends. One was a staged pose of a young, dark couple dressed in the style of the early sixties. They stood behind two little girls sitting on a piano bench, party dresses, white socks, shiny black shoes with straps, and ankles crossed. The younger Sandra and Theresa, Sandra’s smile shy, Theresa’s bold. The other photo was a yearbook shot of Sandra, smile still shy, features unformed like the first sense I’d had of her outside the house in Epton. No yearbook photo of Theresa.
    I opened each drawer in turn. The police would already have searched pretty thoroughly, so I just poked and peered a little. Mostly different kinds of strappie and tube tops with short shorts. Lingerie ranging from the erotic to the ridiculous. Some regular clothes too, though. Sweaters, polo shirts, Reebok sports shorts.
    Behind me I heard, ”Ooh, foxy lady, keep that light on! Hey man, you wanna catch some of this?”
    I guessed he’d swung away from the airport. ”No thanks.”
    ”You missing academy award shit here, man. Ow, yes, yes.”
    I came into the living room area. Sectional furniture, nice rug, three-tiered coffee table of brass and glass. ”Teri decorate herself?”
    ”She pick—oh, mama, I didn’t know it could bend that way!—she like picked it out, but the landlord, he pay the freight.”
    ”You know him?”
    ”No, just some dentist, pillar of his com-mun-i-ty somewhere in the suburbs. He rented the place to her himself. I think maybe she let him stick something in her mouth beside the little round mirror, you know it?”
    I opened the sliding door to a wall-length closet. Lots of flash and sparkle, but also a tweed suit, a nun’s habit, and a nurse’s uniform. ”Pretty varied wardrobe.”
    ”Some of the johns, man, they like the ladies to dress up, fantasyland.”
    I thought about her coming home, hanging up an outfit after spending the day and most of the night with Niño’s clients and her free-lances. I shook my head and walked into the bathroom. Typical modern job, clean and impersonal. ”You have any idea where she kept her paperwork?”
    ”Paperwork?”
    ”Yeah. Bills, checkbooks, that kind of thing.”
    ”The Angel, man, she was cash-and-carry. Fucken cops got all the papers she have, and probably stuffed in their wallets.”
    I came back into the living room area. ”She must have had light bills, phone bills...”
    Niño ignored me and began futzing with the lens again. I walked over to a sectional corner piece and sat down.
    Niño said, ”You just about done here?”
    When I didn’t answer him, he looked up. ”Man?”
    ”I was just thinking.”
    ”About what?”
    ”Ten, this apartment. Seems kind of an empty place to call home, and even this she paid for in kind.” Niño’s face contorted for just a moment, then resolved. ” ‘In kind.’ You mean by hooking, right?”
    ”That’s what I meant.”
    ”Look, let me tell you one thing, okay? The Angel, she never hook in here, not even for the dentist. She do him, she do him out in the ‘burbs, his last appointment for the day. She keep this place outta the fucken life, man. This the best place she ever live, but it still like her tunnel.”
    ”Her tunnel?”
    ”Yeah. Like in the Nam . The fucken dinks, man, they knew those tunnels were safe. We could chase ‘em around all we wanted on top, ‘cause we own the air. But they get too pressed, they just drop down a hole and they knew we couldn’t get ‘em.”
    He shook his fist at the picture window. ”You think living space cost a lot down here, with the harbor and the marketplace and all? Shit, nothing cost more than those tunnels, man. They sweat and they dig and they got little bugs eating them and they die to make them tunnels and make ‘em safe, and space was a pre-mi-um item. Most of the fuckers didn’t have a change of fucken clothes, man, but they bring what they had into the tunnel.”
    Niño gulped and talked faster. ”Times you go into a tunnel, and you don’t hear nothing but you own heart beating, you know it’s a cold fucken hole, but you can’t take the chance. So you go slow, and maybe you find where they sleep and their shit. Their personal shit, I mean. And it’s like maybe one book in dink writing, and a piece of junk jewelry, and a picture. A photo like of their family, all blur ‘cause the camera