“Thanks,” I said, pumping his hand.
“You got a right,” he said, whirled n his heel, and headed straight out the door. As he left, a new face
appeared in the doorway.
I knew who it was without asking.
10
STICK
The new guy was ignored by the rest of the bunch, who were too busy talking about the tapes to
notice him He came straight toward me.
He was what some women would call a primal beauty. Indian features, high cheekbones, long, narrow
face, hard jaw, brown eyes, thick, shining black hair that turned over his forehead and ears. Six feet
tall and lean, he was my height and ten pounds trimmer. His seersucker suit looked like he balled it up
and put it under his pillow at night; his tie had a permanent knot in it and was hanging two inches
below an open collar. The points of his shirt collar curled up toward the ceiling, and I doubt that his
loafers had ever seen a shoeshine rag. Obviously, dressing wasn?t a real big thing with him.
He looked bagged out, and not just from a bad night. The circles under his eyes were permanent and
his dimples were turning into crevices. He had the deep, growling voice that comes from too many
drinks or too many cigarettes or too many late nights or all three. He was wearing a battered old
brown felt hat, and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
Twenty-nine going on forty. One look, you knew he drove the women crazy.
Not jaded yet?
“I?m Parver,” he said. “Everybody calls me Stick.”
We moved away from the rest of the bunch, back toward the coffeepot.
“You a pool shooter?” I asked, to get the conversation off the ground.
“Not really, why?”
“The moniker.”
“It?s short for Redstick. Everybody thinks I look like a damn Indian,” he said with disgust. “Truth is,
I?m Jewish and I?m from Boston.”
“I?m Jake Kilmer,” I said. “That?s all I ever was.”
We shook hands.
“This about the Tagliani chill?” he asked. He said it casually, as though murder in Dunetown were as
common as sand fleas on the beach.
I nodded.
“It looks like two gunners,” I said. “They killed a couple of guard dogs, got by a couple of armed
