He had on a white shirt and wore one of those odd little shoestring pieces of neckware fastened at the throat with a silver clasp. On his head was a big black cowboy hat with the brim turned down all the way. His face was thin and he had a long pointy nose and prominent upper teeth and a large Adam's apple. His hands were big and the knuckles were outsized. He wore a big ring with a blue stone in it on his little finger, left hand. There was a thin, jagged-looking scar along his jawline almost back to his left ear that looked as if someone had tried to cut his throat with a broken bottle five or ten years ago and made the swipe too high.
The woman said, 'A nice massage today, sir?' She had on a red blouse and wore big round rose-tinted glasses with blue frames, the kind where the bows come off the bottom instead of the top.
I said, 'This is sort of embarrassing, but may I speak to the manager?'
The tall guy in the cowboy hat said, 'What do you want to see the manager about?' He was looking very hard at me. Hard enough to notice that someone had whacked me recently along the side of the head. He seemed like a man who noticed such things.
'I'd like to ask about a young woman,' I said, 'used to work here.'
'You ain't a cop,' he said.
'I'm too polite,' I said.
'Un huh.'
'-I'm working on a thing in New York,' I said. 'No problem for you.'
'Private cop,' he said.
'Yes.'
'There a reward?'
'No,' I said, 'except I go away and don't annoy you.'
He nodded. 'What's her name?' he said.
'You the manager?' I said.
He grinned. His bottom teeth were missing in front. 'I represent the manager,' he said. 'What's her name?'
'Ginger Buckey.'
A guy in a gray plaid suit came in. He looked at us uneasily. The tall guy gestured with his head and we walked over to a door beyond the sofa. Behind me I heard the lady with the purplish red hair say, 'A nice massage today?'
We went through the door and into a corridor. There was a stairwell up the right wall. The tall guy opened one of the doors. It was a small room like the examining room at a doctor's office. The walls were narrow vertical planking painted green. There was a table covered with a white sheet, a straight chair, and a small side table with baby oil and lilac water and a small pile of towels on it. The tall guy closed the door and leaned against it.
'Customers get sort of nervous they see a guy looks like you hanging around in the reception area.'
'Afraid I'm a cop?'
'Well, you got the look, 'cept you're so polite.'
'Nothing wrong with a good massage,' I said. 'No law against that.'
'Sure, what do you want to know about Ginger Buckey?'
'Where she went from here,' I said.
'Beats me,' he said.
'Her father brought her to you,' I said, 'and you gave him a finder's fee. Now that may be doing business just like U.S. Steel does business, but it might be white slavery.'
'And if it was?'
'If it was, or if it looked like it was, I bet I could get the cops and Cumberland County and maybe the U.S. Attorney's office interested enough in whether it was white slavery or not to make a genuine economic impact on the business here.'
'Maybe you'd end up feeding lobsters in Casco Bay, you did that,' he said.
'Tough talk for a guy wearing a shoestring for a tie,' I said. 'I'm already the toughest guy in Lindell.'
'Where the fuck is Lindell?' he said.
'It's where Ginger came from. Why do this hard? You tell me where she went from here and I go away and leave you to massage your way to health and fortune, maybe even get yourself a lower plate. You don't, and either you've got to put me in the bay, which I don't think you can do, or have me accusing you of trafficking in children. The Press Herald will be on your ass, and the cops. It'll be awful.'
He was wearing a gun under his left arm. You can wear a gun without it showing, but some guys want it to show, and some guys don't care.
'You don't think I can handle you,' he said.
'If I thought you could, would I still be here annoying you?'
He put his left hand into his side pocket and came out with a pair of brass knuckles. He put them on his right hand and moved it in a little circle at waist level and said, 'Now what do you think?'
I sighed. 'I think it's been a hard year,' I said. 'And I'm tired. And I think you are dumb as hell to put those things on your right hand, which means it will take you an hour and ten minutes to get your gun out from under your left arm, whereas I…' I took the gun off my hip and showed it to him without really pointing it. He looked at the
