“You get a case,” Pryor said. “Currently I’m trying to catch the kids who spray-painted fuck on the middle- school front door.”
“I guess you’re not allowed to shoot them,” I said.
“No,” Pryor said. “They get to talk with a guidance counselor.”
“How’s that work?” I said.
“Keeps the guidance counselor employed,” Pryor said.
I paid for the coffee. Pryor directed me to the bowling alley, and I drove on over to see Pike.
A couple of women in tight jeans and loose T-shirts were bowling candle pins in the first alley. The rest of the alleys were empty. The guy at the desk directed me to Pike, who was replacing the sand in the big free-standing ashtrays that stood near each lane. One of the women bowled a spare, and the clash of the pins echoed loudly off the hard surfaces. I showed him my license and we sat on one of the banquets where, when business was good, bowlers sat and waited for their turn.
Pike was a tallish guy with narrow shoulders and thinning blond hair that hadn’t been cut. His face was red. When he sat next to me I could smell the booze on him.
“Jesus Christ, a fucking private detective? How about that? Goddamn. You ever see that movie Chinatown?”
“What can you tell me about Mary Toricelli?” I said.
“You know, Jack Nicholson gets his nose cut, and he goes around with this fucking bandage on the whole freakin‘ movie.”
“That’s just what it’s like,” I said. “Mary Toricelli?”
“What about her?”
“What can you tell me about her?” I said.
“It worth any dough?”
“Maybe.”
“Lemme see?”
I took a twenty out and showed it to him.
He grinned. “All right!” he said. “Whaddya wanna know?”
“Whatever you can tell me,” I said.
“What if it ain’t worth twenty?”
“Sitting there and saying nothing isn’t worth anything,” I said.
“So I may as well say something, huh?”
“May as well,” I said.
One of the women rolled a strike. Both of them cheered and low fived each other.
“She turned out to be a lot better-looking than she was in school. You know? Sometimes that’ll happen with a broad. She grows up and learns to take care of herself and turns out to be some pretty good-looking pussy.”
“You’ve noticed that, too,” I said.
“You should be talking to Roy Levesque. You know Roy?”
“We’ve met. Why should I talk to him?”
“He still sees her.”
“And you don’t?”
“Well, I mean I see her in town sometimes,” Pike said. “With Roy. But I mean Roy’s seeing her, you know?”
“They intimate?”
“Oh sure, Roy’s been fucking her for twenty years.”
“I heard she was married,” I said.
“Yeah, some rich guy. Never bothered her and Roy though.”
“Was she going with Roy before she got married?”
“Sure.”
“How’d Roy feel about her getting married?”
“He liked it. All that dough?”
“He get some of it?”
Pike looked at me like I’d asked about the Easter bunny. “‘Course he got some of it.”
From the front desk the manager yelled at Pike. “Leagues start pouring in here at five,” he said. “I need them ashtrays clean by then.”
“Fuck you,” Pike muttered but not so loud that the manager could hear him.
