Free Lady Yesterday by Loren D. Estleman Page A

mad.”
    “I used that phone to call you.”
    I let go of him and used the handkerchief on the receiver and buttons. He said, “They’ll wonder how come it’s clean.”
    “Not long. Nobody’s gone down for prints since the Lindbergh kidnapping.”
    He went out. I gave him a minute to get down the hall, then went back to Mr. Charm and rummaged inside his coat until I found his slim gray notebook, which I pocketed without opening. Before I left him I picked up a tiny glittering something from the carpet next to his body. It was in shadow from every angle unless you squatted to examine the knife, and I didn’t think Lester had done that. In that position it was hard to miss. You don’t see that many gold unicorn pins with diamonds for horns. I had seen only one.

10
    F OR THE SECOND TIME I made a call from the telephone at the service station on Tireman. The snow had stopped at five inches and I was standing up to my ankles in someone else’s footprints. Just as someone answered, a big party in an arctic cap climbed into a pickup parked by the pumps and turned over the engine with the grinding squeal of a broken starter. I turned my back on the noise and asked for Iris. The pin felt heavy in my pocket.
    “Can you receive visitors?” I asked when she came on.
    “It’s not the House of Corrections,” she said. “Did you find my father?”
    “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The pickup still hadn’t started when I pegged the receiver. It sounded like a pig passing a pineapple.
    Prostitution rehabilitation centers were out of my experience. I don’t know what I expected this one to be like. An old hotel, maybe, or a converted warehouse with a living room setup and a lot of former working girls sitting around in clean cotton shifts with their hair up, reading Bibles. What I found was a middle-size frame house on St. Antoine with cheery yellow siding and flower boxes heaped with snow under the front windows. The bell brought a small short-haired woman in her late thirties, with bright eyes and quick movements that reminded me of a hamster.
    “Iris’ friend, yes. I’m Mary M.” She stuck out a hand and I took it. It was like shaking hands with a small steam wrench.
    I stamped snow off my shoes and stepped inside. “What’s the M for, Magdalen?”
    “Micheljansky. Iris said you were direct. I’ll get her.”
    She pointed me toward an open door off a hallway papered in flowers and hung with photographs of sunsets and took off down it with backless slippers slapping her bare heels. She had on a dragon-red quilted housecoat with white piping and a long blue lacy nightgown under it. The time was almost midnight.
    It was clearly a waiting room, only more personal than most. It had an expensive bordered rug and upholstered armchairs and a television set and a glass-topped end table holding up a lamp and some magazines. A blonde in a pink cashmere sweater and white jeans sat curled up in one of the chairs, holding an open book in her lap. Her hair was very light, almost white, and waved back gently from a sweet round face without make-up. She might have been twenty.
    I took the chair on the other side of the end table. “I’ll guess. Anna Karenina .”
    “Close. Valley of the Dolls .” She smiled without looking up from the book.
    “That’s a lot of reading this late.”
    “I’m not used to sleeping at night.”
    That was it for conversation. It was forced on my part anyway. After that I sat there waiting and listening to her turn pages. I wanted a cigarette, but there were no ashtrays, which nowadays is supposed to mean something.
    “You wouldn’t say on the phone if you’d found him.”
    I looked up. She was wearing a black-and-white-checked blouse tucked into black parachute pants and white half-heel boots that zipped up the sides. Her hair was the way she’d worn it to my office that afternoon. I stood. She saw the blonde and said, “Sara, can we have the room?”
    Sara got up and tucked the book