wants to bear the truth anyway. Shit, pal, I say fuck the obstacles, go for it. Could be your last
chance.”
He lit a cigarette and went back to his newspaper, and then threw in, “Just put her old man in the joint,
that?ll solve all your problems.”
“That?s a shit thing to say.”
He dropped the paper on the floor and looked up at me. I?m just being honest. The perfect solution for
you is to have Raines turn out to be the brains behind the killing and Nance the actual shooter. That
way you nail „em both in one whack. You get even and you get the girl. It?s the perfect ending.”
“Incredible,” I said. “Those are great opinions.”
“You just figured out the price,” he told me.
“Yeah, business as usual,” I said, and there was a lot of acid in my tone.
“If it?s business like last night,” Stick said. “Count me in every time.” It was obvious that he had said
all he had to say about my personal problems.
“Thanks for sparing me your tales of conquest,” I said.
“Speaking of business, I got a little for you. Let?s get to the number one problem, okay? 1 don?t like
to brag, anyway. I was up and at the Warehouse by eight. We got good news, we got bad news, and
we got some in-between news.”
“Gimme the good news first,” I said.
“The good news is that Kite?s finally got Nance in view. The bad news is that he didn?t make contact
until about three a.m. Otherwise he might have been a witness to your little party over there on the
waterfront.”
“It?d be nice to know what he?s been doing for the past two days,” I said.
“Kite?s working on it. Also Charlie One Ear has some information on who owns what in town and
Cowboy Lewis is hot on Cohen?s trail this morning. So what got your day off to such a lousy start,
besides the fact that your head?s not screwed on right?”
“First of all, I hurt a very nice lady,” I said.
“What?d you do, turn her down?”
“Worse, I asked her to break the law.”
“Oh, is that all? Murder, bank robbery, what?”
“The bank?s computer code and Cohen?s bank account numbers,” I said.
He didn?t bat an eye. I might have said I asked her to get me a glass of water, for all he seemed to
care.
“Did she do it?”
