Chapter 23

Quinn’s not done with me yet. I sit on my desk for some stability.

“I feel your pain, Tim. You must have known her pretty well.” Is he trying to empathize with me?

“Not really. But I was on the CrawDaddy shoot back then, the first time I was with Paul. She was great. Hung out. Everybody loved her. Funny. Smart. Bawdy—in a good way. Hell, she ad-libbed half her lines in the commercial. It’s not right. Just…not…right.”

“So, Tim,” he looks me in the eye, “that’s two murder victims with connections to the Marterelli agency. Any thoughts?”

“Okay. It occurs to me that there’s something that could be helpful. Look, we’re a downtown, independent New York ad agency. Nearly two hundred employees. Highly creative. Break a lot of rules.

“So it shouldn’t surprise you that a lot of these guys smoke some marijuana every once in a while. Some of them a lot.”

He’s nodding his head. “No surprise there.”

“For all I know they’re into other stuff as well…”

Another nod. And insistent eye contact. Not exactly comforting.

“I’m not saying I was one of them. But what I hear is most people got their stuff from Ramon. I think Ramon might have been the office dealer, the guy they went to for their weed. And who knows what else? Everybody loved Ramon. Maybe that’s why.”

More nodding. He’s not saying so, but I can tell he’s still not surprised. These guys know more than they’re letting on.

“That’s fairly serious stuff, Tim. Why didn’t you share this with us earlier?”

He’s got me. “I should have, I guess. I really didn’t know for sure until just yesterday, and it didn’t make any sense to me at first.”

Is he buying it?

“Look, Tim. None of these things ever make any sense. Until they do…”

Yeah, but not before one more person in my quickly collapsing world gets murdered.

“Listen, Tim, I really appreciate your input. Rest assured, you’ve been a big help. I know we can count on you.”

“Absolutely, Pete, anytime.”

“Now I’ve got some things to follow up on.” We shake hands and he’s off again.

Chapter 24

I sit down and open my laptop so I can send out an agency-wide e-mail to see if we can raise some money for Ramon’s family.

“Lenny?” He’s back. This time with Chris. Chris has got his blues hat on, which pushes his now unleashed locks close against his face, and he looks like he’s twisted as tight as Lenny. Unusual for him.

“Chris, you okay?”

“Well, Tim, not exactly. Not really. You sure are talking to the dicks a lot. You and this Quinn guy have really buddied up. What’s that all about?”

“Yeah, dude,” pipes in Lenny. “What’s going down with that?”

“Guys, what’s the deal? Don’t you trust me?”

“Well,” Chris says. “You know, we’re all in this together, right? You know pretty much everything that goes on here. It’s no wonder these detectives keep talking to you.”