LITMIR.BIZ

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surprised to see him. We’d arranged the meet.

      “First car and likely your current car, which, pardon my français, is a rolling piece of garbage.”

      “It’s only got ninety-six thousand on it. What’re you talking about?”

      I hooked the helmet onto a handlebar, slipped my towel out of the frame bag, and grabbed my water bottle from the bike’s down tube, and drank deep. Ben’s bench marked mile twenty-eight on my round-trip trek to tip-top shape and improved mental focus, a trek that hit every high point along Chicago’s lakefront, from this spot south all the way north to Lincoln Park Zoo and back. Normally, I didn’t stop until I hit the bagel shop around the corner from my apartment a mile or so west, but today Ben came before my whole wheat with raspberry cream cheese.

      “Eight thirty on a Sunday morning, most people are still in bed.” He had draped his blazer across the back of the bench and had loosened his collar and tie. Cop clothes. He’d just clocked out of a midnight to eight.

      “Yeah, but look what ‘most people’ are missing,” I said. “It’s a beautiful morning.”

      And it was. It was a week before Labor Day, the unofficial end of a mild summer, and Lake Michigan shimmered like blue-green glass, slow moving compared to the traffic building behind us on Lake Shore Drive. On the bike and pedestrian paths, the truly committed were on the move, driven by whatever internal spark goosed them along. Ben took a sip of coffee out of a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. I plopped down on the bench beside him, slipped off my riding gloves, and stretched my legs out.

      “You’re sweating,” he said.

      I slid him a look, amused, then toweled off a bit. “That’s what happens when you raise your heart rate. When’s the last time you did that, by the way?”

      “Vegas. Her name was Sherrie. Damned good memories. How many miles you up to at a pop, you don’t mind my asking?”

      “Today? Fifteen up, fifteen back. From here, another mile to my shower nozzle. It really wakes you up.”

      Ben stared at me without enthusiasm. “I can see that. I might get into something like that one of these days.”

      The man was built like a Bears linebacker, wide, solid, and lead of foot. I doubted his monster feet would even fit on a pair of bike pedals.

      “Not a bad idea. One you’ve had for the whole time I’ve known you, yet you haven’t made it onto a single bike seat yet.”

      “I’m thinking a Harley-Davidson might make it a little easier on the cartilage,” Ben said.

      I gulped more water, swallowed, the bottle almost empty. “No doubt. Wouldn’t do a thing for your heart rate, though.”

      He shot me a mischievous grin. “Would if I rode it right.”

      I needed to refill my bottle. There was a water fountain across the path, but I didn’t feel like making a go for it yet. I was tired. I stared at the fountain instead, willing it to come to me.

      Ben stretched his arms over his head, yawned. “Sorry I had to kick your new boyfriend to the curb, but things got awkward. No hard feelings?”

      Boyfriend? I chuckled. “Funny, the way he told it, he kicked you, and if I’m not mistaken, I told both of you things were going to get stupid.”

      He was referring to Detective Eli Weber, his latest ex-partner, my new . . . friend. I had met him a couple months ago while investigating the murder of Father Ray Heaton, my surrogate father. He had been a kind man, a patient man, especially with me. Pop. That’s what I’d called him. I was still grieving his loss, missing him.

      Ben and Eli had tried partnering, but it had lasted only a few weeks. The closer Eli and I got, the weirder it got for all three of us. It wasn’t as if Ben and I had designs on each other. He was a pal, like a brother almost, but what woman wanted her brother working with the guy she was sleeping with? Not a single one.

      “It’s not like he was giving me a blow-by-blow,” Ben said. “But still . . . whatever. Let’s talk about something else.”

      The fountain was playing stubborn. It still refused to budge. I sneered at it. “So, what’s up? Why are we sitting here on a bench on a Sunday morning, when I’ve got a bagel waiting for me?”

      He tapped his newspaper against his thigh, eyed the trees. “I asked you here because I have a job for a talented ex-cop turned PI such as yourself. Interested in taking on a little something?”

      “Depends on what it is.”

      He glanced at me, shook his head. “Must be nice. Captain of your own ship, mistress of your own fate. No more having to take whatever croaks or pukes in front of you. You’re just out there, footloose and fancy free.”

      I kicked off my shoes, wiggled my toes around in my sweaty socks. “Yeah, life’s sweet. Stop stroking me.”

      “Patience is a virtue,” Ben said.

      “So is chastity,” I said, “but in for a penny, in for a pound.”

      Ben breathed in deep, let the breath out slow, a smile on his face. “Weber’s one lucky bastard, I tell ya.” He tilted his face toward heaven, eyes closed, as if working on a tan. “Vonda Allen.”

      I groaned. Vonda Allen was a fusspot prima donna, the publisher of her own glitzy magazine, called Strive, which leaned heavily toward glitterati puff pieces. Ben worked security for her on his off-hours to pay for some white-guy fishing boat he was mooning over, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about the woman’s prissy ways.

      I waited for more, but apparently, he wasn’t in any hurry. He knew the slow approach got under my skin. We’d partnered together for years. He knew I didn’t do long and drawn out, which was why he was smiling, messing with me.

      “The great Vonda Allen, the woman with her finger on the pulse of urbane and upwardly mobile black folk, the movers and shakers, the stride makers.” I was reciting Allen’s well-worn hustle, often repeated whenever she showed up anywhere to get her picture taken. I’d skimmed her magazine only once or twice before deciding I wasn’t quite urbane enough for what she was laying down. Ben wasn’t urbane enough, either, or in any way black, but the money was good, and a side gig was a side gig. I broke first, but only because I had a full-day nap planned. “So?”

      “Allen thinks some numnuts has a thing for her. The idiot’s been sending her notes filled with not-so-sweet nothings, and now she thinks he might want to cancel her subscription permanently, if you get what I’m saying.” Ben reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to me. “Flowers, too, and there’ve been some nuisance calls.”

      When I unfolded the paper, the words Dear Bitch, scrawled in red, leapt out at me. The rest of the page was filled with vile expletives, thrown in to hammer home the writer’s obvious disquiet.

      I refolded the paper and handed it back. It was a copy, not the original. “He’s imaginative.”

      Ben shrugged. “He overuses the word fuck, you ask me. A true sign of a limited vocabulary.”

      “And Ms. Allen’s upset by the crudeness?”

      “I figure she’s been called bitch a few times. Never, I guess, by mail.”

      “Just the one?”

      “The only one they’d share. Kaye Chandler, her assistant, gatekeeper, whatever you want to call her, made a copy and slipped it to me. Allen ordered her to shred the rest in a show of utter defiance—her words, not mine. Chandler thought I might be able to do something. Convince Allen to take things seriously, if nothing else.”

      “Define ‘the rest.’ ”

      “More than one, less than a dozen. That’s as close as I could get. All sent over the past couple months. Allen doesn’t want to talk about it, and Chandler doesn’t talk about what Allen doesn’t want to talk

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