Page 41 of Spade

“That before or after the club dropped your dead-ass body in the desert?”

“I’ll make it quick.”

She stepped aside, giving me just enough room to enter without brushing against her. She closed the door behind me.

Inside, the apartment was surgical in its emptiness. Bare counter, half-empty bottle of whiskey, and a single glass, the old-fashioned kind, squat and thick as a fist. A bed through an open doorway, mattress on a slatted frame, black sheets with the corners sharp. There was a lamp on the floor because there were no tables, and its light made the laminate kitchen tile look jaundiced and tired.

Spade leaned against the sink with her arms folded, the tattoos in full display on her forearms: the snake wrapping up the left, the two hands holding a stylized heart on the right. She didn’t speak.

I stayed by the closed door, jacket still on, dripping half-dried water onto the entryway rug. For about thirty seconds, we said nothing, and those thirty seconds were the whole conversation.

“You always case your own place before you let people in?” I finally asked.

“Sometimes. Depends on who’s knocking. What do you want, Shaw?”

I took off my jacket and hung it over the nearest chair back. The holster was still empty, but I left the shoulder rig on, a piece of costume that fit too well to be completely comfortable.

“I didn’t think you’d answer,” I said.

She gave a one-sided shrug. “I get a lot of unannounced visits. Not all of them are as persistent as you.”

I tried a smile, but it didn’t land. “You called me. Or you called the department and asked for me. That’s a step.”

“Yeah.” Spade looked away, running her tongue along the inside of her scar. “I thought I owed you that.”

The silence after that was different—soaked through with the day’s residue, all the pieces we hadn’t named but both knew were on the table. I walked further in, palms out, letting her see my hands. She didn’t react.

“Whiskey?” I asked.

She lifted her chin at the bottle. “Help yourself. I stopped tasting it about three pours ago.”

I poured two fingers into the glass and drank half. It burned the same way every bar pour in this city did, which meant it was neither cheap nor memorable. Spade watched the liquid level as I set the glass down.

“You really here for a statement, Detective?” she asked.

I could have lied. I could have asked her again about Lake Mead and the access road, about what the Royal Harlots knew that the department didn’t. I could have played the role. But the suit was stained, my hands were shaking, and I was running out of ways to pretend I wasn’t here for her.

“I’m not here to arrest you,” I said, watching her reaction. “I meant what I said the night I had my gun pointed at you.”

She didn’t blink. “I know.”

“I don’t know what I am here for,” I said. “I don’t have a line for this in the manual.”

Spade unfolded her arms, crossed the space between us in a way that looked unhurried but was already over before I could decide how to react. She took the glass from my hand and set it on the counter, then reached up and traced her thumb along my jaw, just enough pressure to register.

“You’re here because you get a boner thinking about what I’ve done,” she said and smiled.

“And how do you know that?”

She leaned in, close enough that I could see the different layers in the tattoo ink, the old and the retouched. “Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

Spade smiled, small and flat. “You came all this way for a confession, but you don’t want to call it that.”

I felt the exhaustion collapse in my knees, the adrenaline of the day bleeding out. I almost sat, but there were no chairs except the one my jacket was on, and something told me sitting would be the wrong move.

“We both know what happened out there,” I said, quieter.