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“What made you think that?”
She then told him about seeing Steffi and Rory Smilow in the hospital emergency room the night Pettijohn was murdered. “I had gone to see Bev. Actually I was there to bum money off her. Anyway, Stuff-me-Steffi and Unsmiling Smilow came busting in like storm troopers. For all the good it did them. This little pipsqueak of a doctor stood up to them. They got nowhere with him. Did my heart good.” She paused to chuckle, then turned somber again and looked across at Hammond. “You still sleeping with her?”
He couldn’t conceal his surprise, but he didn’t ask how she knew about his secret affair with Steffi. Her knowing evinced that she was very good at what she did. “No.”
She studied him a moment as though to convince herself that he was telling her the truth. “Good. Because I’d hate to speak badly of the woman you’re boinking.”
“You don’t like Steffi?”
“The same way I don’t like poisonous snakes.”
“She’s not as bad as that.”
“No, she’s worse. She’s a viper. She’s had her eye on you since she first came to Charleston. Not only to get inside your pants, either. She wants to wear them.”
“If you mean that we’re vying for the same job again, I’m well aware of that.”
“But have you thought of this? Steffi might have been using your dick as a lever to hoist her right into the solicitor’s office.”
“Are you suggesting that she slept with me only to advance her career? Gee, thanks, Loretta. You’re doing my ego a world of good.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was afraid that possibility might have escaped you. Men rarely think of their dicks as anything except a magic wand with which to cast spells over grateful women. That’s why a stiff prick is so goddamn exploitable.”
Alex Ladd sprang immediately to Hammond’s mind. If Loretta knew about how gullible he had been last Saturday night, she could really lambast him.
She was saying, “Steffi Mundell would screw a rottweiler if she thought it would get her where she wants to be.”
“Cut her some slack. True, she’s ambitious. But she’s had to claw and scrape for every achievement. She had a domineering father who gauged everyone’s value on a testosterone meter. Steffi was expected to cook and clean and wait on the menfolk, first her brothers and father, then her husband. Devout Greek Orthodox family. Not only was she not devout, she was—is—a nonbeliever. She had no help or encouragement through university or law school. And when she graduated at the top of her class, her father said something like, ‘Now maybe you’ll stop this foolishness and get married.’ ”
“Please, my heart’s bleeding,” Loretta said sarcastically.
“Look, I know she can be annoying as hell. But she has good qualities that outweigh the bad. I’m a big boy. I know what Steffi’s about.”
“Yeah, well…,” she muttered, unconvinced, “then there’s Smilow.” She reached for her glass of whiskey, but Hammond reached across the table and gently removed it from her hands. “Can’t I even finish that one?” she wheedled. “It’s a waste of good whiskey.”
“Starting now, you’re on the wagon. Two hundred dollars a day and sobriety. Those are the terms of this agreement.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Solicitor Cross.”
“I’ll also cover your expenses, and you’ll receive a hefty bonus when the job is finished.”
“I wasn’t referring to the pay. That’s generous. More than I deserve.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “It’s the no-drinking clause that’s causing me to balk.”
“That’s the rule, Loretta. If you take a single drink and I find out about it, the deal is off.”
“Okay, I got it,” she said irritably. “I’ll just have to gut it out, that’s all. I need the money to pay Bev back. Otherwise I’d tell you to stuff your ‘terms’ where the sun don’t shine.”
He smiled, knowing that her gruff act was just that. She was thrilled to be working again. “What were you about to say about Smilow?”
“That son of a bitch,” she sneered. “He’s the reason I was fired. He gave me an impossible assignment. Dick Tracy couldn’t have done it in the amount of time Smilow specified. When I couldn’t produce, he blamed my drinking, not his own impossible deadline.
“He went to the chief and said that demoting me from criminal investigation wasn’t good enough. He wanted me out, period. Called me a disgrace, a blight on the entire department, a liability. He actually threatened to quit if they didn’t fire me. After being issued an ultimatum like that, who do you think the powers that be were going to choose? A woman cop with a slight drinking problem or an ace homicide detective?”
It could be argued that everything Smilow had alleged was true, and that Loretta’s drinking problem was more than “slight,” and that Smilow had merely forced his superiors to do what they had needed to do but were hesitant to do, fearing a sex discrimination suit or something equally cumbersome.
As unfortunate as it had been to Loretta, Smilow’s ultimatum might have prevented a catastrophe. For months leading up to her dismissal, she had been perpetually drunk. She should not have been working as an armed policewoman, investigating assaults and crimes against persons, a dangerous beat under the best of circumstances.
But Hammond understood her need to vent. “Smilow isn’t very tolerant of human weaknesses.”
