Free When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) by Warren Murphy

molecules, still vibrating from the sound, brushed across his skin. He could hear the young man’s pulse, even from halfway across the room. He knew what it was like now to be an Indian yoga. He hoped nothing would happen to change it. Silence. It was wonderful.
    The young man talked, and that ruined everything. He had a nasal whiny gulp that mixed adenoids and a terminal case of Southern accent.
    “So. You came for the room, you came? A hundred a month. You’re kind of old.”
    “Are you Philip LaPeter?”
    “Yeah. A hundred a month, I said.”
    “I’m not interested in your freaking room,” Trace said.
    “Then why you here? The sign, the door, keep out, it said.”
    What kind of language was he speaking? Trace wondered.
    “I couldn’t read the sign. The sound waves distorted my vision,” Trace said.
    “All right, I don’t need funny from you, I don’t even know who you are, doing here, what you want?”
    Perhaps the way to deal with him was to respond to the last clause of the sentence, Trace thought. “I want to talk about Tony Armitage,” he said. He watched the young man carefully; there was just a touch of apprehension about his eyes as he said, “He’s dead, he got killed. That’s why I’m renting his room, a hundred a month. You here from the father?”
    “No. The insurance company.”
    “Oh,” LaPeter said. “We go outside, I make some joe, you want to talk.”
    Trace had not heard coffee called joe since he was in the army and sergeants called it that when they were trying to impress recruits into believing that they had been in the army since the Spanish-American War.
    LaPeter led the way to the kitchen, a large room in the back of the house. Trace thought that LaPeter and Armitage probably had gotten a good deal when the female roommate moved in because the kitchen was sparklingly clean, as was the living room and all the rest of the apartment he had seen, save LaPeter’s sound studio and bedroom.
    “Where’s the girl?” Trace asked.
    “What girl, you say, the girl?”
    “Hold on. Is there another language we can speak?” Trace said. “We don’t seem to be doing so well in this one. Latin? Spanish? I talk a little Yiddish.”
    “Only English I talk.”
    “Well, then, talk some,” Trace said. “The girl, Jennie something.”
    “She’s been away for a while, away.”
    It wasn’t quite a Southern drawl, Trace realized. It sounded more like hillbilly talk, taught to LaPeter by a Chinese grammarian.
    “Do you know where she went?” Trace asked.
    “Oh, she didn’t go anywhere. She’s staying off with somebody is where she went. She’s around.”
    “But she’s not here, is that it?”
    “Right. Like you said, right, she’s not here. Joe’s ready.”
    He poured water over instant coffee, gave Trace one black without asking if he wanted cream and sugar, then sat down across from him at the kitchen table.
    “So what is it that you want, can I do for you?”
    “I’m looking into Tony’s murder for the insurance company.”
    “You got a card with your name on it, like a card?”
    “Right here.” Trace took a business card from his wallet. “My name’s the thing in the middle there with the capitals. Devlin Tracy. I’m not the Garrison Fidelity Insurance Company. That’s who I work for.”
    LaPeter looked at the card for what seemed to be a long time, then turned it over and looked at its blank back. He nodded as if it contained everything he had expected to find there.
    He handed the card back. “Tell me what I can do for you. I’ll do it.”
    “Was Tony Armitage a good friend of yours?”
    “Sure. A good friend.”
    “How long did you know him?”
    “We lived together here almost two years, since sophomore year, we got close.”
    “Pals,” Trace said. “Drinking together, going out to eat, like that?”
    LaPeter nodded.
    “Doing women together, drugs, hanging out?”
    “Yeah, like that. We were friends.”
    “What about the girl who lives here?