The blond man automatically took my card and looked at it and at me, and carefully laid the card on a bleached-oak bench next to the door.
'I told you, I don't know anything about it,' he said and walked out of the room.
I sat at the counter in Wally's Lunch drinking coffee and eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Wally was working the counter in a white T-shirt, wearing a black baseball cap that said Jack Daniel's above the bill. It was four in the afternoon and I was the only customer.
'Hey, Wally,' I said, 'you wouldn't know where I might score a little coke in town here, would you?'
A new approach.
'Do I look like Frosty the fucking snowman?' Wally said.
Actually, Wally looked considerably like a toad, but I didn't think it would help matters to tell him that.
'You look like a guy who knows what's happening,' I said. 'Just asking.'
Wally was scraping the grill clean with his spatula.
'I ain't Frosty the snowman,' he said.
'I know it,' I said. 'Don't look like him either.'
I finished the first half of my sandwich.
'Anyplace where it would make sense to ask about coke?' I said.
'I ain't Information Please neither,' Wally said. He scraped the grill some more, pushing the scraps off the back and into a trap.
'I hear some reporter got murdered around here,' I said.
Wally didn't say anything. He finished scraping off the grill and wiped the spatula on the towel he had tied around his waist.
'Hear he was messing with somebody's wife.'
'Spics take care of their own business,' Wally said. 'Without no help from me. You want to know about spic business go ask the spics.'
'Valdez was killed by a Hispanic?' I said.
'I don't know nothing about Valdez,' Wally said. 'He's a spic, it's spic business. Spics don't come in here.'
'I can't imagine why,' I said. 'Good food, good conversation, keen wit.' I shook my head.
'That'll be two and a quarter,' Wally said. I left two singles and a quarter on the counter. No tip. Back at ya, Wally.
I bought a copy of the Globe in a little store next to the Beal & Church insurance agency.
The woman behind the counter didn't know anything about Eric Valdez. Neither did the bald guy who ran Mahoney's Barber Shop, nor the fat kid who drove the Wheaton Taxi, nor the waitress in Devon Coffee Tyme, nor the gaunt woman with the tight gray chignon in the Wheaton Deli-ette. Neither did anyone else I talked with that day or the next. By Thursday afternoon everybody knew who I was. Kids looked at me on the street. The private eye from Boston. Everybody knew me. Nobody liked me. Nobody talked to me. Everybody avoided me. I'd been unpopular before in my life, but never with this kind of heady pervasiveness. People who'd never met me disliked me. Beyond that I hadn't accomplished much. I knew that something bad was happening in Wheaton. People were afraid to talk about Eric Valdez. And I knew that what happened to Valdez was generally perceived to have happened in the Colombian community. And I figured my notoriety wasn't necessarily bad. If I kept hanging around asking questions, maybe someone would get annoyed enough with me to do something hostile. And maybe I'd thwart them and then maybe I'd have a name or a face or something clue-like for my efforts.
Right now all I had was tiredness. I missed Susan. Friday afternoon. She'd be here in five hours.
I drove back over to the Wheaton Library. Caroline Rogers was on duty behind the counter along with a young woman who looked like a college kid working part-time. 'Hello,' I said.
'Do you wish to borrow a book, Mr. Spenser?' she said.
'No, I want to know where to eat in the greater Wheaton area.'
'Eat?' she said.
'Yes, the love of my life will be coming out here to spend the weekend with me and. I was wondering if there was someplace that didn't serve salmon loaf.'
Caroline stared at me for a moment. 'Funny, it never occurred to me that there might be a love of your life.'
'A guy with this profile,' I said. 'Surely you jest.'
She smiled. 'I mean I never thought of you as anything but an intrusion. I never thought of you as a person, someone who would love or want to dine well.'
'Or do both,' I said. 'Where can I do that?'
'Well, this is not an area of haute cuisine.'
'I sensed that,' I said. 'That's why I came to you.'
'And once again,' she said, 'I'll fail you. The restaurant at Reservoir Court is all there is really, unless you wish to drive to Springfield, or Amherst.'
'Well,' I said, 'I'll improvise. Thanks anyway.'
'This time I wish I could be more help,' she said. 'Have you made any progress on the other thing?'
