Rainy City by Earl Emerson Page A

basement. It had been nearly ripped off its hinges. Jagged splinters of bare wood hung from the frame and reminded me of the hideous reality of yesterday’s events. When the case was finished I would replace them both.
    Kathy had woken up sprawled across me, had stretched hard like a cat, grinned and said, “You’re a sweetheart.”
    “Oh, pooh. I thought I was macho. At least
    quasimacho.”
    “Didn’t he used to ring bells?”
    “You called me Sam Spade the other day.”
    “That was before I found out you were a puppy-dog.”
    She got off to her first class in a 1930s formal gown covered with a long fur coat she’d picked up cheap at an auction. At ten, she had an appointment with one of her law professors who owed her a favor. They were going to request an immediate injunction to return Angel to her father. I wondered if Kathy was planning to change clothes before she went downtown.
    In the cold light of day, the .45 looked ridiculous, resembling something archaic from a long-forgotten war, an artifact some dumbfounded farmer had plowed up and turned in to the government. Ejecting the clip, I forced out the round in the chamber and returned the whole business behind the sliding, secret panel of’ my closet.
    I had some phone calls to make, but I didn’t want to make them from my home phone. I had spotted a suspicious coffee-colored van parked across the street. Perhaps I was getting paranoid, but I strapped on a knapsack and wheeled my ten-speed out through the spongy grass in the backyard to the alley. It didn’t join my front driveway, so some yokel tailing me wouldn’t be expecting it.
    At the alley, I stopped, cleaned out my cycling cleats using a key, then rolled away. Portions of the sky were blue, although the roads were still damp and oily. If my luck held, I wouldn’t get wet.
    After tooling through the neighborhood streets until I was certain nobody was trailing along behind, I pedaled a mile through the thick of the University District to a three-story white house on Fifteenth.
    Smithers had mustered in with me fourteen years ago. He had always been at the bottom of the police academy class while I was at the top, but somehow we had forged a bond of friendship. A year earlier, he had divorced a woman who weighed one hundred pounds more than he did, and now he was bouncing around in a barn of a house all by himself. Doreen had taken night classes in Spanish, and the Spanish professor had taken night classes in Doreen. It seemed like every couple I knew was splitting up.
    Chubby-cheeked, fat, jolly and perfectly contented that way, Smithers was impossible to envision in a police uniform unless you had seen it. He wore his Sam Browne belt wrenched around so that the service pistol was almost in back, as if some prankster had attached it when he wasn’t looking. He worked from eight at night till four in the morning, so he was usually around when I needed him.
    “Don’t tell me,” said Smithers, raising a pudgy pink hand as he swung the door open. “You need me to call in some numbers.”
    Wheeling my Miyata into his entranceway, I unlaced, then heeled off my cleated cycling shoes. “Sorry I only get over here on business. But let’s be thankful for that, otherwise we might never see each other.”
    Smithers chuckled and closed the front door. He had been tottering around in slippers and a bathrobe, balancing a mug of coffee. It was a curious house, all hardwood floors, no rugs and little furniture. Doreen had pirated it all when she absconded with the professor.
    “Coffee?”
    “No thanks.” I was peering out his front window at the street, one last looksee, wondering if I had been followed. Maybe I was getting paranoid.
    “You look grim. Somebody tailing you?”
    “Last night a guy busted into my place. You remember Kathy?”
    “The, gal who wears the funny clothes?”
    “That’s her. Somebody busted into my place and Kathy interrupted him. He tied her to the shower rod. She’s okay,