my mother described how my dreams had seemed so vivid and my recollections of them so detailed that it made her uneasy. She said she would walk to the Italian Market in South Philly or to church and half expect to come around the corner and see the shear cliffs or talking dogs or some falling child that I had foretold from a dream the previous night. There were times now that I fell back into that vividness when dreaming or daydreaming of past experiences. As a cop who saw too many ugly scenes I often considered it a curse. Still, they were dreams. I had never had them portend the future before.
I dressed and went out to the kitchen where I found the coffeemaker loaded with fresh grounds and ready to flip on, and a note from Billy:
“I have gone to check on Diane and will he in my office later. I will call O’Kelly and contact you. I checked on Rodrigo and he is fine. Can you stop in to see him?”
Even though we’d stayed up well into the morning hours, Billy was an early riser. He would have consumed the Wall Street Journal and that horrid fruit and vitamin concoction of his and then been out the door dressed in Brooks Brothers before seven.
I looked at my watch. It was almost noon. When the coffee was brewed I took a cup out onto the patio. There was a nor’easter starting to kick in. The water was gray-green and moving like an enormous blanket being shaken from four corners at the same time, waves of varying sizes swallowing each other and an uneven chop strewn with foam. The sky was overcast and tightened down and the wind was blowing hard enough to snap the single American flag that the faux British manager had raised at dawn. Before my first cup was empty I could feel a film of warm, clammy moisture on my skin. I went back inside and my first call was to O’Shea. He gave the same report he had when I called him at three in the morning, before I passed out: Marci was in her apartment. No sign of Morrison.
“How you doin’?” I asked.
“You ever trying sleeping in a Camaro?” he said
I didn’t answer.
“Hey, I’m a security guard, Freeman,” he said. “I can handle security.”
My next call was to Richards’s office number. Her answering machine was on and I left a message telling her I had more information about Morrison and one of the bartenders who we had recently met who might know more than was offered. I hoped at least the bartender reference would cause her to call back.
I finished the coffee and left, pulling Billy’s apartment door closed and checking the automatic locking mechanism before taking the elevator down. Outside in the front lot I instinctively scanned the cars, looking for one backed into a spot with signs of a cameraman. Now I wished I had confronted the guy the first time.
I took A1A south and traffic was light. It wasn’t a beach day and the tourists and regulars would stay inside or inland somewhere out of the wet wind. The grayness gave the dunes and seaside mansions a look like old antique oil paintings, the colors dimmed and the landscape lonely. I was pulling into the Flamingo Villas when my cell phone rang.
“Yeah.”
“It’s Sherry, Max.”
“Hey. You got my message?”
“No. I haven’t been into the office yet. What did you need?”
If she was calling me unsolicited, I immediately wondered why. To offer me something? To ask for help? If I let her go first, it would put me in a better position to state my own case. I hesitated, then realized I was playing the info-for-info game and shook my head like I could just toss off a million years of human social behavior like a bead of sweat.
“I uh, wanted to get with you and tell you about a conversation I had with the bartender,” I said. “Marci, at Kim’s. The younger one who is fairly new.”
“OK. Has this got anything to do with patrolman Morrison?” she said.
“Yeah, it does. How’d you know?”
“Well,” she said, and now it was her turn to hesitate, and maybe for the same reason I had.
“I understand that you two had a bit of a face-to-face yesterday,” she said. “I know that’s your method of operation, Max. And I’m interested in what that finely tuned perceptive gut of yours told you when you looked him in