Act of God by Jeremiah Healy Page A

around in the chair.
    She said, “I don’t know.”
    I went back to the bills, this time the bundle for the telephone. Over the months, more calls to Meade, including some, in fact the majority, to a different number in the same town.
    “Does Darbra know anybody else in Meade?”
    “Besides Old Rog?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know. But he was in business out there, real estate, I think, so maybe she was calling him both places. She’s so dar-ing.”
    There were no calls to any New Jersey number going back to the earliest statement in the current bundle. There was one from the middle of March to a Salem exchange, where William Proft said his aunt Darlene had her store. The other calls would take a while to sort out, probably by my calling them, if it came to that.
    “Traci, I’m going to take these phone bills and the one from the bedroom as well.”
    “Help your-self.”
    Finishing with the other drawers, I sat at the desk a minute. There was something bothering my pants cuff.
    I looked down to see the cat, looking back at me with a curious expression on his face. “I don’t know either.”
    Wickmire said, “What?”
    “Skip it. You think I can find Teagle in his apartment?”
    She glanced out the window. “He doesn’t have a practice studio, and it’s a little early for the club scene, you know?”
    “He’s a full-time musician?”
    “No. He’s a part-time musician and a full-time nothing else.”
    “Unemployed?”
    “More like unemployable. But wait till you meet him, form your own impres-sion?”
    I wasn’t sorry to be saying good-bye to Trac-i.

Seven
    A ROUND THE CORNER FROM Unit 11 with just the single brass “1” was a narrow staircase going down steeply. My knee started to give again on the fourth step, and I felt another twinge in my left shoulder as I reflexively grabbed the bannister to steady myself.
    In the basement, there was only one door that wasn’t marked BOILER-ROOM or STORAGE, and it didn’t have any brass number or letter. The noise coming from behind it was reassuring, though.
    Electric guitar, doing chords in no particular order that I recognized.
    I knocked on the door. With no break in the guitar-playing, a smoky male voice said, “Go away.”
    I knocked harder. The voice said, “It’s the middle of the fucking afternoon. I can play now unless there’s a fire.”
    “Fire” came out sounding like “far.” I knocked harder still, and the playing stopped.
    The voice said, “I told you to fuck off!”
    With the flat of my hand, I started banging on the door like Khrushchev with his shoe at the U.N. No more playing, but a bolt got thrown on the other side, and the door flew open.
    The young guy from the photo on Darbra’s bureau stood in front of me. Six-two plus, we were eye-to-eye. He was naked to the waist, his torso and arms tanned and husky but not muscular, torn shorts with gawky but tanned legs underneath, as though upper and lower bodies had come from different people and been sewn together, then baked to an even brown.
    Into my face, he yelled, “I told—who the fuck are you?”
    I gave him a flash of my ID holder. “My name’s Cuddy. Darbra Proft’s brother reported her missing, and I’m here to talk with you about it.”
    Teagle tried to follow the ID as I refolded its holder. There’s no badge in it, state law says there can’t be, but I already had his attention.
    The eyes were wary as he looked back at me. “I don’t need no hassling from the cops.”
    “Best way not to get hassled is to cooperate, Teagle.”
    “I don’t got time. I’m like working here.”
    “Here” sounded like “her.”
    “I heard your work. We can talk now, or I can pull you off a gig somewhere when it suits me. Your choice.”
    Teagle mulled that. The expression in the photo was a pose, as most photo expressions are. In real life, he had a hard time maintaining anything but an air of confused stupidity. I thought about Cross calling Abraham Rivkind’s murder