Author’s Note: Interrogating the Detective is an excerpt from the noir detective novel, Night People (85k words) takes place in 1979 when the battles for women’s rights, gay rights and civil rights had been joined but not won. As the first female detective in the Portland Police Department, Hailey Matheson was losing on the first issue, restricted to cold cases by Lt. Jim Hardy, and would be looking for work if her orientation was revealed. Her first live case is the investigation of a waitress poisoned at a punk show at The Open Door that leads Hailey to the dark side of the era: runaway teens, call girls, drugs, and free love. It also leads to Yvonne, Hardy’s prime suspect, who Hailey fell in love with long ago. Soon, it becomes clear to both Matheson and Hardy that the key to the case is Paul, the idealistic young cook who loves Yvonne without reservation.
***
One hot evening after work, too restless to go home, I took refuge in Portland’s oh-so-urban Metro café. Cigarette smoke never bothered me, but the guy with the cheroot drove me into a corner. Nothing there was very good: the food, the coffee, the pastries, but I had just started drinking café mochas, and The Metro catered to a fascinating though somewhat ragged selection of Portlanders. I had been thinking about Yvonne and about dead Raina Hennessey, and felt restless to make something happen. I had just settled into my drink and people watching when two soft hands covered my eyes, giving me chills all the way down to my sensible navy blue flats. “Guess who,” she drawled.
I covered her hands with mine and said. “Yvonne,” I said, “what are you doing?” as if we were friends.
“Can’t fool the detective,” she said, pulling away her hands. The dress she wore was punitively expensive – from my sketch, Joanna Reedy confirmed it to be a Halston, 1975 – a single length of gauzy black fabric which hung to her ankles with an opening for the neck, accented by slashes of red, yellow, and green. With the light behind her, you could see through it to the leotard and tights underneath. Her long black hair was wrapped in a red, yellow and black silk scarf. The huge rock on a ring still hung from a chain around her neck. She pulled out a chair and sat, heavily pregnant. She said, “You look beside yourself.”
“It’s that obvious
She nodded. “I wanted to thank you for helping Paul.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re lying,” she said, without anger. “Edward heard; Paul is certain; his attorney guessed – the way you shushed me with your eyes.”
They were seeing each other again, talking. “An officer could find trouble doing something like that,” I said.
She studied me with her own damn eyes. “That’s why I wanted to thank you. You like him, don’t you?”
“Paul? Not my type.”
Yvonne’s smile changed her face, all severity and ferocity fleeing, leaving behind delight, tenderness, sympathy, an echo of my barefoot guitar player in the park, all those years ago. The transformation was startling. As we talked, the planes of her face refracted an array of emotions and personas at the slightest tilt of the head or set of the mouth; the scar on her cheek appeared and disappeared as she turned to scan The Metro. You could see her anyway you wanted: a lover, a killer, the personification of a hope, a confidante, a desire. But heavens she was beautiful. That sculpted face; it was almost too much.
“Well, he likes you.” She touched my hand. “Poor Hailey. You don’t know who or what you are. Have you ever given yourself a chance to find out?”
“Once,” I said in a voice barely audible.
Again, she studied me. “I know the question you didn’t ask. I wanted to thank you for that, too.” Her black eyes held mine. “You know a lot about me, don’t you? Well, maybe we’re even. I know about you, too.” So, my secret wasn’t secret. I could tell the truth I had never told anyone. She waited, quiet and still. I wondered if Paul had learned to do that from her. Finally, she reached across the table, put her long, beautiful fingers on mine, the energy coming through her hand full of tender emotion.
“I don’t get what you’re trying to do here,” I said.
“It’s no great mystery. That day in the park, the way you looked at me. You’ve been good to Paul and me. We’re grateful for what you did, but we admire you for what you are doing, your job, breaking through, the first female detective in the department. Paul looked you up, all the articles about you. So, why are you here? Why did you almost have Paul? You look at me with eyes that want so much, so you’re not here to question me. And I know you’ve had me tailed and must know I always come here after my massage.” I could feel my face burn. She picked it up instantly. “It was you following me, in a trench coat and that hat. Oh, Hailey.” She seemed delighted and a little embarrassed for me.
“I’m working Hennessey alone,” I said to defend myself, “on my own time.”
“So, why are you here?” Again she studied my face and I blushed. “Is it possible you don’t even know?”
“It’s possible,” I said, glumly.
She laughed. Of all the laughter over all the years, I will never forget it, kind, sympathetic, filled with delight. “Poor thing. Look, I have to go; I cook dinner most nights; Edward has come to expect it.” She struggled to her feet. “It is surprising where we end up, isn’t it? Do you ever let yourself be surprised? After the baby comes, I’ll be home alone all day. Edward won’t let me work. You should drop by. Call it an interrogation, ask about The Open Door.” Her smile was warm. I couldn’t say yes, couldn’t say no.
The smile disappeared. “You think I did it, killed Raina. Well, I didn’t. I would never have put Paul in that position. He’s like my boy, my beautiful boy.” She had come around the table and was standing next to me, thigh lightly against my arm, and with one finger traced a line on my face exactly where the scar was on her own. “Besides, I already have too many regrets.”
She looked smaller, diminished from her wildness of the park, from the grim determination of her first interrogation and the bravado of our interview with attorneys present. I tried to express that I liked her, wanted her, that it could never be. “When you’re a mom,” I said, “you should try to stay out of trouble.”
“What fun is that?” she laughed. “Paul and I will always be grateful.” Her expression sobered with some resolve. “You should see him again. That’s allowed, isn’t it? He was never a suspect; he’s a man.” I began to object. “You’d make a pretty couple. He’s the perfect height. And really, you two are like a pair of bookends that are different but perfectly matched.” I remembered fitting nicely under his arm. “He would be good for you. He likes to go real slow, talk a little, love a little. He’s a sweet-talker, my boy. You’d like that.” Her eyes filled with mischief. “I taught him everything about pleasing a woman. He would know how to be with you.”
“I’m not attracted to men,” I said.
I couldn’t tell if her smile held tenderness for Paul and I or hid a scheme to protect herself. “I know that, beautiful, but you like Paul, so you should try, just to see. Anyway, come see the baby.” She pointed toward my cup. “I make way better coffee than that and I use good chocolate.”
As I spoke, I realized she was bending to kiss me. “Yvonne, who did you call in Aruba?”
She straightened, looked me in the eye. “Wrong number.”
“Twice?”
“Just to make sure.” She moved closer. I fell into her dark eyes, felt her breath on my cheek. My lips parted with wanting, my eyes closed with hoping. I knew who she was, who she had been, and I was afraid her kiss would be rough, course, lustful. Her lips brushed mine so lightly that I shivered. I sensed that it was a kiss that meant much to her, that she too had been afraid. Her second kiss was bolder, said that she had wanted me as long and severely as I’d wanted her. It was tender, hoping for love – a thing I would not, with a fierce discipline, let myself have. Her third kiss promised belonging, a freedom from limit, kinship. Her next kiss whispered of lust and sweet satisfaction. Her fingers played against my neck. Everything melted away, the café, the city, my life. Nothing in the world existed but the two of us, wholly connected. I had wanted that feeling all my life.
She broke off. “So, you’ll come?” Her eyes captured mine. For so long had I wanted to gaze into them, to see if the feeling there mirrored my own – and it did! My life with all its rules, and lines like bars fell back around us. If only I had paused before I spoke, taken a single breath, gathered my thoughts. “I can’t and you know why.”
I saw the wounding in her eyes. With all her strength, I never had imagined I could. She turned and walked through the indifference of the crowded café into the night.
Sometimes, on a Thursday evening, I go to the Metro Café about five o’clock and drink shitty coffee with cheap chocolate and watch the shabby people. She never came back.
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
A. Molise is a Collaborative. They met briefly at the Centrum Writers Conference in Port Townsend in 1982. They met there again in 2015 when the Collaborative was formed. They have published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction as individuals, but Interrogating the Detective, an excerpt from the novel Night People, is the first publication of the joint venture.
