“That was later. Then he hit the big time.”
“And the rest is history.”
“Hi Ho.”
I gave up on the crustaceans and laid down my fork.
“Is Ho still alive?”
Ryan shook his head. “He died a couple years back.”
At that moment, a sequence of unrelated events coincided on the great space-time continuum that forms reality as we perceive it.
As Rico placed a coaster on our table, a swirling light particle danced off his tooth. Glancing down, I noticed the coaster’s sole design element, a cheesy male totem from another time.
Bang!
The previous night’s dream flashed in my brain. A horse’s white blaze gone gold. Equine teeth.
More images popped.
A maxillary fragment.
Crumbling adipocere circling a drain.
A lopsided gold sliver with two tapering points.
An open-beaked duck.
A pointy-stemmed mushroom.
Rico.
My hand flew to Ryan’s wrist. “Ohmygod! I know what it is!”
“My arm?”
I released my grip.
“The gold thing Danny and I found. I found.” I was totally psyched. “The fragment we thought was part of a dental restoration. Well, I did. Danny wasn’t sure. But the dentist didn’t think so. Craig Brooks. He was right. Well, he was wrong and right. It
Setting his fork on his plate, Ryan raised two calming hands. “Take a breath.”
I did.
“Now. Slowly. In English. Or French. But comprehensible.”
The band segued into a way-too-twangy rendition of “Hawaii Calls.”
I reeled in my thoughts.
“I’ll bet the bandstand the thing we found with 2010-37 is a broken dental inlay.”
“Whose bandstand?”
“Look.” I spun the coaster and pointed to the logo. “What’s that?”
“A Playboy bunny.”
“The whole Playboy shtick is passe now, but it was huge in the sixties. Did you notice Rico’s tooth?”
“Shaken, not stirred.”
I rolled my eyes, a gesture wasted in the dark.
“I had a North Carolina case in which the victim had a dental crown with a gold symbol shaped like a Playboy bunny. It’s how we finally got him ID’ed.”
“Did he also have
“The crown was strictly decorative. I did research. I learned you can get them as full gold crowns with cutouts shaped like crosses, martini glasses, stars, half-moons—”
“The ever popular bunny.”
“Yes. Or you can get what’s called a sparkle. That’s an acrylic crown that looks like a natural tooth with a gold shape affixed to the front.”
“Are these little gems permanent?”
“You can do it either way. Rough-backed sparkles are permanently bonded to the tooth. Smooth-backed sparkles can be slipped on or off at will.”
“For that special night-on-the-town look.” Said with disdain.
“Different people, different tastes.”
“J. Edgar loved marabou trim. Doesn’t mean fluffy pumps will be filling my shoe rack.”
I ignored that.
“The North Carolina guy was a migrant worker missing since nineteen sixty-nine. He was Latino. My research suggested that the wearing of ornamental gold caps is popular among Hispanics. Some articles talked about the
