Free Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) by Al Sarrantonio

she wanted to hear. Already she was beginning to realize how messy she looked; and Paine knew that after he left she would straighten her face and comb her hair. Pretty soon she'd be back out in the big bad world, and it would be time to be hired by some other middle-aged bozo who wanted a secretary who wouldn't mind looking up at him with round brown eyes, and show just enough leg to promise that leg led to thigh. And if her hair wasn't really red but mouse-brown, so what, it looked just fine in night light and that's all she needed. By the time the jailor arrived she was almost smiling.
    Paine ate at the diner on Broadway and 250th Street, then he had more coffee and read the paper and waited for it to get very dark. When it got very dark he paid his check and left.
    He parked three blocks from Bravura Enterprises and scouted carefully for the blue Chrysler or red Toyota. Neither was there. The door to the building was locked but it was an easy lock.
    Once inside, he went past Mary Wagner's desk and down the hail to Paterna's office. He closed the door behind him. The blinds were already drawn so he turned on the desk light.
    The file drawer in the desk had a lock on it, but that broke with only a penknife. Paterna's furniture wasn't so magical after all. Paine pushed back the blue hanging file folders and saw nothing. He rammed the folders back farther, and there, pushed to the back edge of the file, was a brown folder.
    As he slid it forward and pulled it out, it slipped from his fingers and fell onto the rug, flipping open to show an empty interior.
    "Shit," Paine said.
    He picked the folder up and slid his fingernail along the edges. There was no split where something had been hidden. He tore the folder down the middle, telling himself that doing so was not frustration but a final check for a hiding place.
    The folder turned into a ripped folder.
    Paine threw the pieces into the trash can next to the desk. He started to push the file drawer closed, then stopped. He pushed the hanging folders back again, straining his fingers to the back of the drawer, sliding them from side to side. At first there was just smooth cool metal. Then his fingers found a slip of paper and he pulled it out.
    One side was empty; on the other was scrawled the name Izzy, the number 33,000 and a Los Angeles phone number.
    Paine put the slip of paper in his pocket and left the office. He turned out the light behind him.

THIRTEEN
     
    O utside Paine's door someone moved in the shadows. He turned, ready, but it was Rebecca Meyer. "You didn't answer your phone," she said.
    "I wasn't home," Paine said. He opened the door for her and she went in. As she passed, something stirred in him, deep down. It was something primal, animal, but it wasn't only sexual. It both frightened and elated him.
    She took off her coat. Her hair was more feminine today, brushed back from a center part. She looked older. She was wearing makeup. Her tennis togs were gone, replaced by slacks and a loose cotton blouse that didn't hide the fact that she was not wearing a bra. Paine thought of Ginny, the sweater she had worn, the one that had shown off her breasts.
    He decided he had a thing about breasts.
    "Do you have anything to drink?" she asked, sitting in one of the armchairs that had held Ginny's bags the day before.
    "Ginger ale," he said, turning to get her one from the kitchen before she could say that's not what she meant.
    When he turned from the refrigerator with the can, she was standing in front of him. She moved closer. Her face was flushed, through her makeup, as if she had played hard tennis and enjoyed it. Her eyes were filled with intelligence that had been sublimated by something more basic, a human drive that was the basis of life itself.
    She took the can from him and he didn't see where she put it.
    He didn't need her help this time. There was no laughter between them, no wordplay; there was something frighteningly elemental and unavoidable that removed