I walked home as it got darker, the rain slowly soaking through my coat and dripping down the back of my neck. It was getting to be a quiet night. I was the only person in sight, and cars passed infrequently in either direction. I watched their headlights stab at the dark like the hands of blind man groping at the air. The sight put me in a funny mood, made me think of how few people in this life really know where they’re going. I used to. Turned out I was only dreaming.

And I wondered if Walter Lance had been a dreamer, too. Good cop turns bad was an old story in this town, but most of them were never that good to begin with. Walter’s record showed otherwise. He’d been keen. He’d put in the hours, and made good numbers, and climbed the ladder like the bottom rung was on fire. Maybe all someone had to do was flash a fistful of green under his nose to wake the devil in him, but I got the feeling that wasn’t quite it. Something happened to the man. Something pushed him out of the light and made it impossible for him to see a way back. I couldn’t say what it was. Hell, I couldn’t say that Carruthers wasn’t right about the whole thing. I just had a feeling. It’d take annoying a few more people for it to become anything more than that.

The lobby of my building was cold, and dark, and moist, like a cave where things with sharp teeth and short tempers slept off the winter. It was empty, too, and I sloshed by the front desk unnoticed and called for the elevator. I was tired, and wet, and wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a cold drink. My apartment was on the sixth floor in an out-of-the-way corner where the foot traffic was minimal. So I was surprised to see someone sauntering up the hall as I rounded the corner, and even more so when I realized who it was.

She’d changed out of what I guess you’d call her business attire and unto something a bit more elaborate. It was black, I remember, and satin, with square shoulders and a neckline that went down, and down, and down until it nearly met the round silver buckle of her white leather belt. The skirt had a drape to it, and a slit up the front that showed off those wonderful calves of hers. It was a hell of a landscape, and I assumed at the time she’d come from someplace where human beings are expected to look like that. I didn’t think it was for my sake, I mean.

She must have seen me coming from the end of the hall, been waiting for me to show. She made like she was irritated – lips in a pout, hands on her hips – and spoke with a trace of schoolmarm disapproval.

“I was beginning to worry,” said Deirdre. “It’s awfully late to be out on a school night.”

I looked her up and down, not trying to hide my approval. We were standing across from each other now, maybe three feet from my door. She eyeballed me right back. On her it was flattering.

“Good evening, Mrs. Lance,” I said to her, like someone would to their employer.

She kept on looking, poised, hands still fixed to her hips. A flicker of a smile crept across her lips, now painted a much darker shade of red, and one eyebrow rose a little higher than the other. Then her expression cooled.

“Forgive me,” she said, “If things aren’t done this way, but I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d check in.”

I gave a slow nod in response. That didn’t seem like enough, so I followed it with an expansive shrug. “It’s your dime,” I said, and shouldered past her. Her heels clicked on the hardwood as she followed.

When I unlocked the door she brushed past me in a cloud of Chanel. I’m not so sure that one wasn’t for my sake. I appreciated it, at any rate. I keep a leather wingchair opposite the bed near the window, and she settled herself there like she owned the place. I followed, shrugged off my coat, and took a seat on the steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. Already she had me feeling like a guest in my own home. She was good.

From the chair she sat staring at me, the same thoughtful expression as before playing across her lips and her eyes. I pretended not to notice, scratched the stubble under my chin, and fished in my pockets for a cigarette. When I finally got hold of the pack and went for a fresh one, her eyes lit up. For I second I sat there frozen, looking from her to the Luckies and back again. Then I shrugged, leaned across, and offered her one. She took it without a word, waited for a light, and then settled back to watch me some more.

Her chin was propped in the palm of her left hand and her elbow was against the armrest. Her eyes stared through a haze of smoke. Her legs were crossed, with the slit in her skirt showing off a toned calf as white as alabaster. She kept on smiling.

“What news?” she said.

I shifted in my seat, feeling just slightly uneasy, and tried to look thoughtful. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. Or maybe I did, and that was the problem. She looked like a cat that was used to getting its way. I felt like I was being toyed with.

“The officers at your husband’s precinct were very helpful,” I said. “The Medical Examiner was, too.”

One of her eyebrows jumped just a little. My pulse beat faster.

“Oh,” she said, playing at being surprised. “I wasn’t sure they would appreciate your kind of attention.”

I shifted again, gave another shrug. “I have a way with people,” I said. “And now that I’ve got the lay of the land, I can start to structure an investigation.”

“Hmmm,” she purred, “But are they that? The facts, I mean?” She made to take another drag on her Lucky, looked at the tip for a second, and then slowly started to glance around for someplace to put her ash. I watched her half-hearted search for a few seconds before passing her an empty coffee cup I’d left on the floor by the bed. She took it – again, without a word – and set in on the arm of her chair.

“Do you think the police have reason to lie about what happened to your husband?” I said.

Her smile became a smirk – the same shape but with a sharper edge – and she tapped her cigarette against the rim of the cup. “Hasn’t it been your experience,” she said, “That they don’t usually need a reason?”

I scratched the back of my neck and leaned away from her, taking the weight of my palms off my knees. It was hard to sit still, the way she was staring right at me. I tried to wave it off, tell myself I’d had too much coffee and it was making me edgy. It was a lie.

“They don’t,” I said. “Not usually. But at this point it isn’t really important whether they lied to me or not. I needed a point of reference, and they gave me one. If it turns out your husband’s coworkers were telling the truth, it says to me something about what he was mixed up in. And if it turns out they lied, it tells me something, too.”

“Late husband,” the lady said, sounding slightly stiff. The feline self-amusement had drained out of her, replaced by patrician propriety.

“Come again?” I said. I’m not sure why. I knew what she meant.

“Walter,” she said. Then she took a long drag, held it for a beat, and exhaled very slowly. “He’s my late husband.” There were no tears in her voice, no tenderness, nothing bottled up that she was barely holding back. Walter was dead. It was a cold, hard fact, and he was apparently keen that I remember it.

I raised an eyebrow myself and nodded a few times. “I should hope so,” I said, trying to match her deadpan. “Otherwise, burying him was a big mistake.”

She didn’t react at first. She just sat there, poised, one leg crossed over the other and arms arranged like a queen posing for a portrait. But then, slowly, the smirk I’d seen before started to creep across her face.

“You don’t like me very much, do you, Mr. Parker?” she said.

The question caught me off guard, mostly because I knew I couldn’t answer it. Being around her made me uncomfortable, I was starting to realize, but I couldn’t put my finger on why that was. Something about her put me on edge. There was more going on behind those eyes than she let on, and either I wanted to know what it was very badly or I already did and wanted to get the hell away.

“Hard to say,” I said, and that was true enough. “I hardly know you,”

She held her expression, tilted her head a little, and shot me a sidelong glance. “But you wouldn’t pay me a compliment,” she said.

“On the contrary,” I said. “You have very nice legs.”

The lady smiled again and adjusted her skirt to show off a bit more thigh. “You think so?” she said.

I put out my cigarette in a saucer that was next to me on the trunk and stuck a fresh one in the corner of my mouth. “I do,” I said, and lit the thing.

She was still smiling. It was a big, goofy grin that made her look like a schoolgirl. “Care to confirm?” she said. She was leaning forward. I caught another whiff of Chanel.

At that point I guess I should have heard the alarm bells ringing and made for the hills. I’d known fast women and I’d known dangerous women, and suffered at the hands of both. She was the worst of one and the other, and a redhead to boot. But she was something else, too, I think. The way she looked at me, the way she smiled, it felt like she knew me. It was a terrifying idea, God knows, but not one I could just turn away from. In the end, though, it was her being a client that did it. I had taken her money and I owed her a result. That meant I couldn’t run, but it also meant I had to keep things on the level.

I shook my head. “The widow angle doesn’t work for me,” I said. “It’d feel too much like I was wearing another man’s suit.”

Most women would have stormed out after a line like that. This one just shrugged. “Oh?” she said, and took a long, luxurious drag on her cigarette. “Works for me, I find.”

I blinked, and felt the muscles in the side of my face start to twitch. She was getting to me, still. So I did something unexpected. For the second time in the same conversation – which has got to be some kind of personal record – I told her the truth.

“I can’t figure you out,” I said.

‘Who asked you to?” she said. She was trying to act like she was annoyed, but it was clear my sudden interest amused her.

“You did,” I said, “The minute you walked into my office.” It had been a long day and I was starting to feel a little punchy. “You like the attention, and men like giving it to you. At some point you turned it into a game.”

The lady sat up and straightened her shoulders. “I can’t help the way people look at me,” she said.

“Sure you can’t” I said.

Her eyes narrowed and her brows came together. For the first time since we’d met she looked like she was something other than indifferent or amused. “Do you talk to all of your clients this way?” she said.

Now I smiled, big and showy. “Just the ones that makes house calls,” I said.

And then she was indifferent again. She could turn it on and off, this one. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said.

I slumped back against the foot of the bed and took a long, slow drag. “How lucky for the both of us,” I said.

Her favorite little smirk reappeared. It was getting to be my favourite too, which I guess should have worried me.

“I made a few calls,” she said. “You’re not the hardest man to find.”

“I never had to be,” I said. “And anyway, if you’ve got such knowledgeable friends, what do you need me for?” I didn’t know it – I was just trying to be funny – but it was the most intelligent question I’d asked all day.

The lady took a last drag on her Lucky, dropped the stub in the cup at her elbow, and breathed out the smoke in a long, slow stream.

“They’re useful,” she said, “I’ll admit. But also far too likely to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

“Ah,” I said. “Sure. But who’s going to notice a washed up nobody like me, huh?”

Mrs. Lance shifted slightly in her chair. I think maybe she was weighing how to answer. It wasn’t necessary, of course. Nobody knew better than me what I’d been reduced to. My feelings didn’t need sparing.

“You do,” she said eventually, “Have something of a reputation.”

I leaned forward. Her eyes widened slightly as I did. “What kind of reputation?” I said.

She stared me down, God love her. I think she’d caught on that my pride wasn’t worth the trouble. “For persistence,” she said. “And for being a pain in the ass.”

I nodded to myself for a while, made like I was really thinking on what she’s said. Then I looked back up at her. “Don’t think I didn’t earn it,” I said.

Her eyes were still on me, like two liquid pools in the dark hollow of the chair. Even when I couldn’t see them – when I turned away or closed my eyes – I could feel them.

“Which part?” she said.

“The part that costs fifty dollars a day,” I said.

Her expression softened a little. She let her head drop to one side and her mouth creased into a slight frown. “You make it sound as though you don’t much care for your work,” she said.

I shrugged. “I care for it as much as it cares for me,” I said.

The lady’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not much of an answer,” she said.

“It wasn’t much of a question,” I said. Probably that sounded more defensive than I meant it. She was getting a little more familiar than I was ready for, is all. I still wasn’t even sure if I liked her.

Of course she wasn’t sore. She hardly ever was. Instead, the start of a laugh hummed in her throat and she smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “You say such funny things, sometimes,” she said.

“I just read the lines on the page,” I said. I hoped she’d think that was funny, too, and then we could get off talking about the things I spent most of my waking hours trying to ignore.

No dice.

“I think,” the lady said, “That you think that this job is beneath you. But I also think you’ve got nothing else in your life.” She shook her head a little when she spoke, like she was sorry for me.

“That,” I said, “Is an awful lot of thinking all at once. Maybe you should keep the fifty dollars and I’ll wear the dress.”

She didn’t laugh that time. I don’t even think she was listening. She’d started this train of thought, and she was damn well going to finish it.

“Walter,” she said, “Was the same way. After the War he had trouble finding work someplace that valued his skills. The Department made him feel useful, you see? Lord knows, of course, it never made him happy. I think that’s what he needed me for.”

She paused just then and looked in my direction. Her expression made it seem like she had only just noticed I was there. “You don’t mind me bringing up my husband, do you, Mr. Parker?”

I swallowed, cleared my throat. “Your late husband, do you mean?” I said.

The lady smiled – not happy, exactly, but satisfied with something. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

And that was that. Whatever it was that had just happened between us was over. I’d being lying if I said I wasn’t relieved. Like I said, the way she looked at me, it gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t ready to face it just yet.

The lady rose from her seat. She was standing between me and the only lamp in the room, and it made her skin appear especially pale. With her hand on her hip and her shoulders pulled back, she looked like she was carved out of marble.

“Do you mind if I call on you again sometime soon?” she said. “To check on your progress, you see.”

I shrugged and ground out my cigarette. I didn’t know how much time that gave me to get my head on straight, but telling her all about it wouldn’t have made things any better.

“Like I told you before,” I said, “It’s your dime.”

She stiffened a little, and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

She turned to leave, like that was her cue. I followed her. Once in the dim hallway outside my door, she turned and hit me with a searching sort of look. I started right back. My stomach was doing cartwheels, but she didn’t need to know that. I could tell she wanted something from me. She was afraid to ask for it. I was afraid, too.

And then she reached out and kissed me. It was hard – forceful, even. I could feel her nails digging into the back of my neck as her soft lips ground into mind like she was trying to rub me out of existence.

And then it just ended, like our conversation a few minutes earlier. She pulled away, smiled, turned on her heel, set off down the hall. I watched her go for what seemed like a long, long time. My stomach wasn’t bothering me anymore, but it felt like there was steam coming out of my ears.

I closed the door after she rounded the corner.

Next Chapter: Déjà Vu