27. The Easton-Ellis Perspective

Let's run that all again fro the other side

Friday around ten

She was drinking booze. That’s the first thing Moses noticed about Detective Chief Inspector Samantha Waingard. A copper who drinks booze. When Alden leaned onto the bar and offered up his charming smile and said to her, “Can I get you a drink, officer?” he placed it somewhere between the deferential respect of the law you could still find in isolated pockets on council estates around here in a certain generation – not necessarily Alden’s generation, mind – which is why he also couldn’t help but sound a tad wink wink nudge nudge sarcastic, that officer coming across as a catty jibe. But she said yeah sure and he poured her the pint of lager she asked for, and there they are now, Waingard and Moses and Vardaman, up right at the back end of the pub, where the carpet was at its thickest, in a booth, their backs squeaking on the brown leather of the high backed bench pews, Moses trying to take his eyes off her lager. Will she take a drink? It sparkles before her.

“I didn’t think police drink on duty?” Moses finally says.

Waingard looks down at the pint, the froth alive like a forest canopy. Her smile is fixed, but something about it seems sincere, like she’s happy, for god’s sake, and the fixedness of it is not just a social tool.

“It’s a Friday night, boys,” she says. But she still doesn’t put her hand to the glass. Even when Moses and Vardaman take theirs and raise theirs to her, she winks at them and her hands stay put in her lap, her legs crossed, and Vardaman notices her Cuban heels, adding three or four inches to her diminutive height.

“And don’t you guys travel in duos?” Vardaman says.

“You boys ever talked to the police before?” Waingard says.

“Plenty of times,” says Vardaman.

“Ever been interviewed? Under caution?”

“Are we under caution?” says Vardaman.

“I’m having a drink because… I don’t know…” awkward silence. She’s staring at the pint, as if Moses and Wool are not sitting directly opposite her. “Nostalgia,” she says finally.

Neither of the boys knows what that means or how they’re supposed to respond.

Waingard looks across at them, that smile again emerging on her face. “I’ve been told you two were the last people to spend any meaningful time with a friend of yours. Aaron. He’s a bouncer up at The Loft, is that right?”

“Yeah,” says Moses. “We heard about that just now. Shocking bit of news, that.”

“Shocking,” says Vardaman.

“What happened to him?” Moses says.

Waingard’s eyes seem to grow light and wide. “He died,” she says.

“Yes, but are there any more details?” Moses says.

“There are always more details,” Waingard says. “Can you tell me about the night you spent with him?”

“There’s not much to tell,” Moses says.

“We need to know what’s at stake here,” Vardaman says.

“Liberty,” Waingard says quickly. “It’s almost always liberty when I’m in the room.”

“Are we suspects in his death?” Vardaman says.

“I mean, at this stage everyone is a suspect,” Waingard says. “It could literally be anyone.” She’s nodding as if she’s having this conversation with herself. “You purchased drugs off him?” she says turning back to them.

The boys glance at each other.

“The night we spent,” Moses says, “was a going away party. He was going down for a stretch.”

“But he didn’t,” says Vardaman.

“But we didn’t know that at the time,” says Moses. “We were sure he was going to. He was convinced. It was a last hurrah. Or at least a hurrah for this particular occasion.”

“Why didn’t he go down?” Waingard says.

“Wouldn’t you know that?” says Moses.

“But did he tell you?”

“We didn’t see him after the trial collapsed,” says Vardaman.

“If it collapsed,” says Moses. “If collapse isn’t too grand a word for what happened.”

Waingard seems to latch on to this.

“Grand?” she says back to Moses.

“Aaron was small time,” Moses says. “He wasn’t Tony Soprano.”

“You’re comparing his size to what?” says Waingard.

“Everyone knew Aaron around here,” Moses says. “Ask anyone. He was a bully and thug, but he was nothing too scary.”

“Are you offering a character reference, Moses?” Waingard says softly.

Is she flirting with him? She’s not unattractive, Moses thinks. She has that smile and it’s full of character, lights her eyes up when is emerges on that wide mouth beneath that serious brow but above high shoulders. She’s ten years older than him, a little tired looking, but Moses is wondering what waking up next to her would be like? A good lazy morning talking about top ten albums and what it’s like being present at an autopsy or something like that.

“Difficult to say what we talked about on a night like that,” Vardaman says. “All very profound at the time, and important, but for the ether at the end of the day.”

“The beauty of nights like that is that they are enclosed in their own energy,” says Moses.

Vardaman shoots him a look. “Mate, you sound like a fucking hippy.”

“Anything you can think of that may have been portentous?” Waingard says.

“Everything was portentous,” Vardaman says. “He was going to prison.”

Waingard half-smiles, acknowledges Vardaman’s point.

“Perhaps you could just tell me some of the things you talked about, and I can come to my own conclusions,” Waingard says. She says it so pliantly it would be churlish to keep evading her questions.

Moses says, “Pink Floyd. There was that.”

“Anything about anything other than your top ten bands?”

Who was being churlish now? But Moses doesn’t seem to notice. He’s remembering something. “No,” he says. “It’s important because it’s the reason we went back to his flat.”

“To listen to Pink Floyd?”

“No, to listen to Crass,” says Vardaman. “But Mo is right, it was because of Pink Floyd.”