"Which I had every intention of getting," she crossed the room and jabbed a finger at the television control panel, "until I came home to find you in my living room. And you haven't answered my question."
"What question?" He smiled charmingly, but eight years on the force with him, the last four intimately involved... Now that's a tidy label for a complicated situation, she mused ...had made her pretty much immune to classical good looks used to effect.
"I'm too tired for this shit, Celluci. Cut to the chase."
"All right, I came by to see what you remembered about Howard Balland."
She shrugged. "Small-time hood, always looking for the big score but would probably miss said big score if it bit him on the butt. I thought he left town."
Celluci spread his hands. "He's back, in a manner of speaking. A couple of kids found his body earlier tonight behind a bookstore down on Queen Street West."
"And you've come to me to see if I remember anything that'll help you nail his killer?"
"You've got it."
"Mike, I was in fraud for only three short months before I transferred to homicide and that was a good chunk of time ago."
"So you don't remember anything?"
"I didn't say that... "
"Ah." The single syllable held a disproportionate weight of sarcasm. "You're tired and you'd rather screw around with your little undead friend than help get the bastard who slit the throat of a harmless old con man. I understand."
Vicki blinked. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about. You've been off playing Vlad the Impaler with Henry Fucking Fitzroy!"
Her brows drew down into a deep vee, the expression making it necessary for her to jab her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose. "I don't believe this. You're jealous!"
They were chest to chest and would've been nose to nose accept for the difference in their heights. Although Vicki was tall at five ten, Celluci was taller still at six four.
"JEALOUS!"
Over the years Vicki had learned enough Italian to get the gist of what followed. The fight had barely begun to heat up when a soft voice slid through a pause in the screaming.
"Excuse me?"
Expressions ludicrously frozen in mid-snarl, they turned to face the wizened concern of Mr. Chin. He clutched a burgundy brocade bathrobe closed with one frail hand and had the other raised as though to snare their attention. When he saw he had it, he smiled into the silence.
"Thank you," he told them. "Now, shall we see if we can maintain this situation?" At their puzzled frowns, he sighed. "Let me make it a little simpler for you. It's 4:22 a.m. Shut up." He waited for a moment, nodded, and left the apartment, gently pulling the door closed behind him.
Vicki felt her ears grow hot. She jerked around as a cross between a sneeze and a small explosion sounded from Celluci's direction. "What are you laughing at?"
He shook his head, arms waving as he searched for the words.
"Never mind." She reached up and pushed the curl of dark brown hair back off his face, her own mouth twisting up in a rueful grin. "I guess it was pretty funny at that. Although I'm going to spend the rest of the day with this vaguely unfinished feeling."
Celluci nodded, the thick curl dropping back down into his eyes. "Like not remembering if you've eaten the last bite of doughnut."
"Or drunk the last swallow of coffee."
They shared a smile and Vicki collapsed into the black leather recliner that dominated the small living room. "Okay, what do you need to know about the late Mr. Balland?"
Vicki moved away from the warm cliff of Celluci's back and wondered why she couldn't sleep. Maybe she should have told him to go home, but it'd seemed a little pointless making him drive all the way out to his house in Downsview when he was expected back downtown at headquarters in barely six hours. Or less. Maybe. She couldn't see the clock unless she sat up, turned on the light, and found her glasses, but it had to be nearly dawn.
Dawn.
In the center of the city, eighteen short blocks away from her apartment in Chinatown, Henry Fitzroy lay in his sealed room and waited for the day; waited for the rising sun to switch off his life; trusted that the setting sun would switch it on again.