Dutch Uncle

Harry’d been smoking crack.

This left only the Big man himself, and Harry stalled asking the whole night, till he noticed Aggie counting out her money and getting ready to split.

“I give you the twinkiest gig in the whole house, and y’all wanna run outta here,” Palmero said. “Why you gotta do me like that?”

“I got a date with Aggie,” Harry said. “I mean, I do if you cut me loose.”

“That right?” Palmero said. He nodded his enormous head, impressed. “Ain’t she the sweetest?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, Big.”

“Well, shit,” Palmero considered, “I gotta be at the clinic by nine, otherwise I would. Don’t suppose none of these tough guys is gonna help you out.”

Harry shrugged.

“Course not.” He thought a minute. “Alright, look. I’ll do it tonight and tonight only. Not on your account, you understand, but because I like Agatha.”

“Thanks, Big,” Harry said. “I owe you one.”

Palmero said, “You don’t owe me shit. Just do me a solid. In the future, make time on your time, not on my time.”

Agatha St. Denis pronounced her name like the French martyr, San-duh-nee, and unlike the rest of her family, who Americanized it so that it rhymed with tennis. They were sitting in a Stuckey’s in Dania, being waited on by a begoggled biddy who moved like she had arthritis in her ankles.

Aggie didn’t pour syrup over her pancakes, she made a puddle in a saucer and dipped bite-sized chunks into it. And she didn’t use butter. Bad enough she was eating at this hour, a snack like this could wipe out an entire week’s worth of sensible dieting.

“What’re you worried about?” Harry said. “So long as you’re eating, I figure you’re okay.”

“If you live in a Third World Country,” she said, “which we don’t. A few more late-night pig-outs, and you’re asking one of Bryce’s sand bimbos to have coffee with you.”

They talked about exercise and nutrition. She tried to cook at home as much as she could.

Harry said he was in the best shape of his life. No sense filling her in on his recently completed training regimen as Florida’s guest, but since he’d been in Lauderdale he’d kept it up, swimming in the ocean and running and doing his push-ups on the beach. He rarely thought about what he was eating.

“I’m just the opposite,” Aggie said. “I can’t get with this whole sweat-culture thing.”

Harry fired questions at her so he wouldn’t have to field any about himself. He found out she was married and divorced from some guy named Bob.

“I thought I was supposed to be getting your story,” she said.

“The one buying breakfast gets to ask the questions.”

She studied his face and she made a gesture with her hand like she was going to speak a few seconds before she did. “You the trouble man?” A glimmer of a smile brightened her eyes. “You come up hard?”

“Tremendous song,” Harry said. “Great song. That’s my favorite song.” He attempted a creaky, Marvin Gaye falsetto.

“We know one thing for sure,” Aggie said. “You were never a singer in this or any life. You’re also really good at weaseling, like any trouble man.”

She had him pegged for a roughneck and he wasn’t a roughneck. He knew some Shakespeare, didn’t he? “What is it,” he asked, “the teeth? Soon as I get some money, I’m gonna get them fixed.”

She wrinkled her nose, dismissing. She slid a Marlboro out of Harry’s pack, and he put a match to it. Aggie covered his hand with hers.

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“I quit,” she said.

“Why do you think I’m so tough?”

“You’re hiding something with a tough front. It’s your whole vibe,” she said. “But I don’t think I buy it.”

“I know,” Harry said, not listening, “it’s the accent. The accent makes me sound like a tough guy.”

“New Yorkers have very definite accents, but you haven’t got one. Take Henry Miller, for example.”

“Henry Miller, huh? When did you ever hear Henry Miller speak?”

“In that movie Reds. Remember how they kept cutting in with those talking heads? It was like a documentary that interrupted the narrative?”

The narrative. Why couldn’t she have said story?

“Henry Miller was one of the people they interviewed.”

It was time to get the check. Harry looked around for that waitress. “Warren Beatty played John Reed, the commie writer,” he said, “and Diane Keaton was his girlfriend, I forget her name.”

“Right,” Aggie said. “Remember?”

“I never saw it.”

The waitress was resting her bones at the counter, studying the local section of the Sun- Sentinel.

“Excuse me,” Harry said with a bit more edge than he intended, “can we have the check?”

“There was a guy with a real New York accent,” Aggie said.

Who? Warren Beatty? John Reed?

“Henry Miller.”

Henry Miller grew up in Brooklyn and acquired the accent that made even the smartest people sound like retards. If you had money, you sent your kids to schools where they made sure that didn’t happen. Now, Harry was born and raised in Manhattan. People from Manhattan sounded different than people from Brooklyn, but it didn’t mean they didn’t have accents, and people from Brooklyn sounded different than people from Queens. Harry was too tired to explain all this to Aggie. He was tired, period.

Aggie drove him home in her Miata. When he told her to pull into the Wind N’ Sand, she was startled to learn he lived there, but she didn’t say anything.

Harry was startled to learn he lived there, too. He said, “Be it ever so humble.” He climbed out of the car. “Thanks for having breakfast with me,” he said, not looking at her. “I’ll see you over at the job.” Turning and heading for his room, he heard Aggie kill the ignition.

“Hey,” she said. “Get over here.”

He walked back to the car and was about to give her a peck on the cheek when she grabbed his face and gave him a big wet kiss right on his mouth. No tongues or anything, but still.

“Tough guys don’t get their feelings hurt.”

“I’m like James Cagney in Public Enemy. I ain’t so tough.”

She said she didn’t know the film. A minute later, Harry was back in the car and they were smoking his Marlboros and he was telling her about Tom Powers and his brother, and Putty Nose, and if she saw Miller’s Crossing and remembered that scene with the guy begging for his life, that was ripped right off from Public Enemy.

Aggie thought maybe the next night they were off she could make dinner and they could rent the movie, and watch it at her house. Harry said that’d be great, he’d look forward to that, and as he got out of the Miata for good, bad as he wanted to drag her into the Wind N’ Sand, he knew that part could wait.

Chapter Five

Lieutenant John Kramer was a rock-jawed, crew-cut Dick Tracy of a cop who’d had his cold eye trained on his current job since before he made detective. He enjoyed giving orders, and he didn’t enjoy leaving his office unless his squad was about to make a headline-grabbing collar, and then it was a shoo-in he’d be on the scene to provide the media with a statement. With many statements.

It was essential that Kramer keep himself looking sharp for those appearances on the six o’clock news, and today he was sporting a double-breasted suit, the jacket to which hung from a wooden hanger on a coat rack. The clasps on his navy blue suspenders were aligned, and he was standing, which meant he was going to keep it short, with Martinson at least, short and sweet and to the point.