“What a shame.”
He took a long pull on his beer, smacked his lips, and sighed.
“I missed all that,” he said. “They were little girls when I went to Nam and they were grown up and
spoken for when I got back. What a fuckin? ripoff.”
The girl in the TR-3 leaned her head way back and shook her long black hair across her face, and then
she leaned forward and flipped it back and smoothed it out with her hands. The shirt came perilously
close to falling completely open.
“She?s doing that on purpose,” Stick said, watching every move. He looked back over at me. “Fifteen,
huh?”
“At the most.”
“Shit. What a fuckin? ripoff.”
The driver of the TR-3 cranked up and pulled around in a tight little arc so they drove past us.
“Love your hat,” the girl in the white cotton shorts purred as they went by. Stick whipped the hat off
and scaled it like a Frisbee in the wake of the TR-3. It hit the parking lot and skipped to a stop as the
sports car vanished around the building. Stick retrieved his hat and got back behind the wheel.
“All bluff,” he muttered, and then added, “I may have to take the night off.”
“I wouldn?t mind taking the rest of my life off,” I said. “I been on this case too long. Almost six years.
I?m sick and tired of the Taglianis. They?re enough to give anybody the blues.”
“Relax. The way things are going there won?t be any of them left to be sick and tired of,” he said
almost jauntily, staring at another young girl in a bikini bathing suit who was sitting on the back of a
convertible, her face turned up toward the sun. Her long, slender legs were stretched out in front of
her and her breasts bubbled over the skimpy top. The driver, skinny kid in surfing trunks and a cutoff
T-shirt, stared dumbly at her in the rearview mirror.
“Look at that kid in the front seat,” Stick said. “He doesn?t know what the hell to do about all that.”
“It?ll come to him,” 1 said.
“They?re all over the place,” Stick cried lasciviously. “You know what this is? It?s a plague of young
flesh, Do you get the feeling this is a plague of young flesh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “God?s throwing the big final at us. He?s testing our mettle.”
“Mettle, shmettle,” Stick said. “If that little sweetie in the back of the convertible takes a deep breath,
her top?ll fly off and kill that kid up front.” After a moment he added, “What a way to go.
He finished his beer and put the empty bottle on the floor between his legs. “That?s all it is then?
You?re tired of the Tagliani case?”
I wondered whether he was fishing and what he was fishing for. Then I thought, who cares, so he?s
