He stood up and threw his napkin n the table. “It?s time somebody put a turd in the Dunetown punch
bowl,” he said. “Glad you?re here—I can?t think of a better person to do it. Finish your breakfast and
get to work. See you in about a week.”
And with that he left.
I didn?t have to leave the restaurant to get to work. Babs Thomas walked in as Cisco walked out. I
decided it was time to find out whose shoes were under whose bed in Doomstown.
18
CHEAP TALK, RICH PEOPLE
The Thomas woman was tallish, honey blond, coiffured and manicured, dressed in printed silk, with a
single strand of black pearls draped around a neck that looked like it had been made for them. Her
sunglasses were rimmed in twenty-four-karat gold. An elegant lady, as chic as a pink poodle in a
diamond collar.
I scratched out a note on my menu: “A gangster from Toronto would love to buy you breakfast,” and
sent it to her table by waiter. She read it, said something to the waiter, who pointed across the room at
me; she lowered her glasses an inch or two, and peered over them. I gave her my fifty-dollar, Torontogangster smile. The waiter returned.
“Ms. Thomas said she?d be delighted if you?d join her,” he said. I gave him a fin, dug through my
wallet and found a card that identified me as a reporter for a fictional West Coast newspaper, and
went to her table.
She looked me up and down. I was wearing unpressed corduroy jeans, a blue Oxford shirt, open at the
collar, and an old, scarred Windbreaker. Definitely not the latest mobster look.
“If you?re a gangster from Toronto, I?m Lady Di,” she said, in a crisp voice laced with magnolias,
“and I?ve got a good ten years on her.”
Closer to fifteen, I thought, but a very well-disguised fifteen.
“You don?t look a day over twenty-six,” I lied.
“Oh, I think we?re going to get along,” she said, pointing to a chair. “Sit.”
I sat and slid the card across the table to her. It identified me as Wilbur Rasmussen from the Las
Andreas Gazette in San Francisco. She looked at it, snorted, looked at the back, and slid it back across
the table.
“Phooey, a visiting fireman,” she said. “And here I thought I was going to be wooed by some dashing
Mafioso.”
“Do I look like a dashing Mafioso?”
“You look like an English professor with a hangover.”
“You?re half right.”
