High Profile

At the reception desk, Jesse said, “Lorrie Weeks?”

The woman at the desk said, “Who may I say is calling?”

Rosa held up her badge.

“Detective Sanchez,” Rosa said firmly, “New York City police.”

The reception woman made the call and then took them up to Lorrie Weeks’s apartment. In the elevator, Suit put his hand inside his shoulder bag and turned on the tape recorder. Lorrie’s place was one of only two on the floor. She looked 2 4 3

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worried when she opened the door. But people often do, Jesse thought, when the cops come calling.

“Oh,” she said when she saw Jesse. “It’s you. What is it?”

“We need to talk,” Jesse said. “You remember Officer Simpson. This is Detective Sanchez. Since we’re in New York, she’ll be the law in the room.”

Lorrie stepped away from the door. The reception lady looked like she wanted to know more, realized no one was going to tell her more, and walked discreetly away back to the elevator. Jesse went into a vast living room with huge picture windows.

“What is it?” Lorrie said. “Is it anything bad?”

“No,” Jesse said. “We just have some new information, and we wanted to see if you could help us interpret it.”

“I’ll be glad to try,” she said.

“Good,” Jesse said.

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55

Rosa Sanchez stood in front of the big window wall and looked at the view. Suit sat in a green-and-gold brocade chair with his notebook, and Jesse sat at one end of a big green leather couch with Lorrie at the other. She was wearing a short summer dress, white with big red flowers on it, and when she crossed her legs she showed a lot of thigh.

Good thigh.

“Your maiden name was Lorrie Pilarcik,” Jesse said.

“How did you know that?” Lorrie said.

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“Advanced investigative techniques,” Jesse said. “And you married Walton Weeks on August twenty-sixth, 1990. In Baltimore.”

Lorrie nodded. Her eyes were open very wide, her lips slightly parted and glossy. She touched her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.

“At the Harbor Court Hotel,” Jesse said.

Lorrie nodded again.

“Yes,” she said. “It was quite lovely.”

Jesse smiled at her and nodded back.

“I’ll bet it was,” Jesse said. “Was it your first marriage?”

Lorrie blinked, her mouth still slightly open, the tip of her tongue moving back and forth on her lower lip.

“I beg your pardon?” Lorrie said.

“Was it your first marriage?” Jesse said.

Again silence and the nervous movement of her tongue. Jesse waited. Detective Sanchez continued to gaze out at the river view. Suit was quietly writing in his notebook.

“Second,” Lorrie said.

“How long before?”

“Before?”

“How long before you married Walton Weeks did you divorce your first husband?”

“Oh God, I don’t remember, a long time.”

“You were granted a divorce,” Jesse said, “in Las Vegas on August fifteenth, 1990, after six weeks of residency.”

“Why are you doing this?” Lorrie said. “Why are you asking me these things and trying to trick me?”

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H I G H P R O F I L E

“Trying to give you a chance to be honest,” Jesse said.

“What was your first husband’s name?”

Lorrie stood suddenly and stood in front of Jesse with her hands on her hips and leaned slightly toward him.

“Conrad Lutz,” she said. “Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I was married to Conrad Lutz.”

Rosa Sanchez turned from the view and folded her arms and looked at Lorrie. Suit continued to make notes.

“Which is how you met Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.

“So?”

“Tell me about that?” Jesse said.

“There’s nothing to tell. Conrad and I were at the end of our relationship, and Walton and I were just beginning.”

“Did they overlap?”

“It happens,” Lorrie said.

“How did Conrad feel about it.”

Lorrie said, “He knew we were done.”

“So it wasn’t Weeks that broke up the marriage?”

“No.”

“What did?”

“Why do you care?” Lorrie said.

Jesse smiled.

“Advanced investigative technique,” he said. “Just covering all the bases.”

Lorrie nodded.

“So what broke up your first marriage?” Jesse said.

“Boredom, I suppose . . . and . . .” Lorrie stopped.

“And?”

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“Well, I don’t know how to say it without sounding terrible.”

“We won’t judge you,” Jesse said.

“I . . . I don’t come from circumstances as elegant as you might think,” Lorrie said. “When I was a young woman, it was exciting to marry a policeman.”

“At any age,” Jesse said.

Across the room, Rosa Sanchez smiled.

“But then he went to work for Walton,” Lorrie said. “And I started to move in a different world. And meet different people. And . . . it wasn’t so exciting anymore to be married to a policeman.”

“Or a bodyguard.”

“Or a bodyguard,” Lorrie said.

“And Lutz didn’t mind?” Jesse said.

“Well, I suppose, of course, he must have minded,” Lor rie said.

“And do you think he minded when you married Weeks?”

“Well, I guess,” Lorrie said. “I suppose so.”

“But he stayed on as Weeks’s bodyguard.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It was a good job,” Lorrie said.

Jesse nodded.

“Do you think he might have minded enough to kill Weeks and hang him in a public park?” he said.

“Oh my God,” Lorrie said.

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