his lips. Then it was Buddy and Bubba taking up the middle of the place, two pitchers deep, and later a gentleman I’d never seen before, who started off fine but degenerated howdegenerspectacularly after his first drink, and an obnoxious judge named Len Dorfman, who spouted off to a dead-eared audience, and Dave, reading a paperback Harry Whittington, and a couple of plainclothes detectives talking bitterly about the criminal-justice system, cross- eyed drunk and armed to the teeth. Finally, after all of them had gone or been asked to leave, it was just Darnell and I, closing up.
“You about ready?” Darnell said, leaning one long arm on the service bar.
“Yeah, but-”
“I know. You’re gonna have yourself a drink.”
“Just one tonight. If you want to stick around, I’ll give you a lift uptown.”
“That’s all right.” Darnell tipped two fingers to his forehead. “Do me good to catch some air, anyhow. See you tomorrow, hear?”
“Right, Darnell. You take care.”
He went through the door and I locked up behind him. I dimmed the lights and had a shot and a beer in the solitary coolness of the bar. I smoked a cigarette to the filter, butted it, and removed my
shirt. I washed up in the basin in Darnell’s kitchen, changing back to my clothes from the afternoon. Then I set the alarm and walked out onto 8th.
Parked out front beneath the streetlamp was a white sedan, a big old piece-of-shit Ford. I recognized the grille as belonging to the car that had tailed me earlier in the day. No one sat inside the car. I looked around and saw nothing and began to walk. A voice from the mouth of the nearby alley stopped me.
“Stevonus?”
“Yes?”
I turned around and faced him. He walked from the shadows and moved into the light of the streetlamp. He had a revolver in his hand and the revolver was pointed at my chest.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Jack LaDuke,” he said. He jerked the gun in the direction of the Ford. “Get in.”
SIX
I stood there staring at him. He had a boyishly handsome face, clean-shaven and straight-featured, almost delicate, with a long, lanky body beneath it. His light brown hair was full and wavy on top, shaved short in the back and on the sides, a High Sierra cut. His manner was tough, but his wide brown eyes were curiously flat; I couldn’t tell what, if anything, lived behind them. He tightened his grip on the short-barreled. 357.
“Why aren’t you moving?” he said.
“I don’t think I have to,” I said. “You’re not going to mug me, or you’d already have me in that alley. And you’re not going to shoot me-not with your finger on the outside of that trigger guard. Anyway, you’nt›bre not throwing off that kind of energy.”
“That a fact.”
“I think so, yeah.”
He shifted his feet, tensed his jaw, and tilted his head toward his car. “I’m not going to ask you again, Stevonus.”
“All right.” I moved to the passenger side and put my hand to the door.
“Uh-uh,” he said, and tossed me his keys. “You drive.”
I walked around to the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat. LaDuke settled into the shotgun side of the bench. I fitted his key in the ignition and turned the engine over.
“Where to?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, the gun still pointed at my middle. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a plain black tie tightly knotted to the neck. His slacks were no-nonsense, plain front, and he wore a pair of thick- soled oxfords on his feet. A line of sweat had snaked down his cheek and darkened the collar of the shirt. “Drive around.”
I pulled the boat out of the space and swung a U in the middle of 8th. I headed toward Pennsylvania Avenue, and when I got there, I took a right and kept the car in traffic.
“You gonna tell me what this is about?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m ready to tell you.”
“That’s a good line,” I said. “But you’re in the wrong movie. Let me help you out here. This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘I’m asking the questions here, Stevonus.’ ”
“Shut up.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I said, speeding up next to a Mustang ahead of me and in the lane to my left. “You’ve been making mistakes all day. Your shadow job was a joke. Stevie Wonder could have made your tail.”
“I said, shut up.”
“Then you sit out front of where I work for I don’t know how long. How many people you figure walked down 8th in that time happened to see you? Those are all people that could ID you later on.”
“Just keep pushing it,” he said.
“And now this. ‘You drive’-that’s some real stupid shit, pal. You let me drive, and who do you think’s got the power? Yeah, you’re holding the gun, but I’ve got both our lives in my hands. I can drive this shitwagon into a wall, or into a cop car, or I can drive it right into the fucking river if I want to. Or I can do this.”
I stuck my head out the window and yelled something at the driver of the Mustang. The man turned his head, startled. I yelled again and flipped him the bird. The driver was alone, but he was a Southeast local, and he wasn’t going to take it. He screamed something back at me and swerved into my lane.
“No Cizet. He scw he’ll remember us,” I said, talking calmly over the man’s angry shouts. “And he’ll remember the car. In case you got any ideas of doing me and dumping me out somewhere. I guess I better make sure he’s got our plate numbers, too.”
I accelerated and cut in front of the Mustang, then jammed on the brakes. The Mustang missed us, but not by much. I floored it, leaving some rubber on the street.
LaDuke’s fingers dug into the armrest on the door. “What the fuck are you doing, man!”
“Put that gun away,” I said, and cut across two lanes of traffic. The oncoming headlights passed across LaDuke’s stretched-back face. I jetted into a gas station without braking. The underside of the Ford scraped asphalt, and as the shocks gave it up, the top of LaDuke’s head hit the roof. I continued straight out of the station lot, tires screaming as I hit the side street.
“Put it away!” I said.
“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head. He opened the glove box in front of him, dropped the revolver inside, and shut it. I pulled the car over in front of some row houses and cut the engine.
LaDuke wiped his face dry with his shirtsleeve and looked across the seat. “Fuck,” he said again, more pissed off at himself than at me.
“Just sit there and cool down.”
“You know,” he said, “she told me she had the feeling you were some kind of headcase.”
“Who told you?”
He turned his head and stared out the window. “Shareen Lewis.”
“What is she to you?”
He withdrew his wallet from the seat of his pants and slid out a business card. I took it and read it: “Jack LaDuke, Private Investigations.” His logo-I’m not kidding-was one large eye. I stifled a grin and slipped the card into my shirt pocket.
“You know,” I said, “you didn’t need to pull that gun.”
“Just wanted to see how you’d handle it.”
“Am I auditioning for something?”
“You might be,” he said, giving the mysterious routine one last try.
