“Richard is very nice guy, Danny. My mom likes him a lot.”
I’m sure she does-mainly because he isn’t me.
“And I like you …” Sam is babbling. “I’m just not sure if I like
Her Oprah moment carries us out the door to the parking lot.
“My Jeep’s over this way.”
I walk. Sam stumbles. If I wasn’t holding her up, she’d definitely be falling down.
I’m wishing I hadn’t parked in the rear. Behind the Dumpster. Near Mr. Ceepak’s pickup truck, which, unfortunately isn’t a Dodge Ram so we can’t lock him up as a suspect in the murder of Gail Baker.
“Danny, seriously, I don’t think you’re ever gonna be my Mister Right. More like Mister Right Now. I’m twenty-one, you’re twenty-five.”
We make it to my Jeep.
And I realize there’s somebody already sitting in the passenger seat.
She’s wearing really short cutoff jeans and a bulging tube top. Has a springy Brillo pad of curly blonde hair.
“Hey,” she says with a nervous titter.
“Danny? Who the hell is this?” Sam is sounding more and more like her mom.
“Marny,” I say. “Marny Minsky.”
24
“She a friend of yours?” Sam demands.
Inside my Jeep, Marny’s eyes go all Bambi-in-the-headlights on me.
“You gotta help me, Danny!” she says, her voice soft and shaky. “I need you!”
That doesn’t help.
“Who is this person?” says Sam.
If Sam were still a cop, I’d tell her.
But she isn’t.
“A friend,” is all I say.
Sam’s been sizing Marny up. Checking out her barely legal top and shorts combo. Diapers cover more.
“When were you going to tell me?” she asks.
“What?”
“That you already had a hot new girlfriend even before I drank two Mojitos and one Cosmo just so I could be brave enough to break up with you because I really used to like you and now I think I’m starting to like Richard and, anyway, my mother is right about you-why buy a cow when the horse is free?”
Yeah. Sam’s drunk. She usually doesn’t mangle her metaphors.
“Problems over there, officer?”
Great. Mr. Ceepak just showed up. He’s leaning against his pickup and sneering at me.
“Came out to catch a smoke. Didn’t know there’d be a floor show.”
“You’re that horrible man,” says Samantha, trying to point, teetering sideways on her heels. “Mr. Sixpack! Joe Sixpack.”
Mr. Ceepak’s eyes crawl all over Sam’s body as he sucks down a deep drag on his cigarette. “That’s what my friends call me, sweetheart. You wanna be my friend? I know I’d sure like to be yours.”
“Gross!” Sam totters backward. I simultaneously break her fall and butt-bounce the passenger side door shut behind me so Mr. Ceepak doesn’t see Marny and start hitting on her, too.
“Hang on, Sam,” I mumble.
“Leggo. You’re grosser than him. You got a girlfriend with gigantic boobs that look fake. Are they fake?”
Mr. Ceepak is laughing a wheezy laugh as wet as the slurped end of a milkshake.
“Don’t they need you inside?” I say.
“I’m on my break. Hey, Officer Boyle-has Johnny come to his senses yet?”
“You mean is he going to tell you where his mother is?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Has hell frozen over?”
“Cute, Boyle. I forgot-you’re the funny one.”
“Hey, Ceepak!” It’s Bud the bartender, yelling out the back door. “College kid just puked all over the dance floor.”
My turn to smile. “Duty calls.”
Mr. Ceepak grinds his cigarette butt out under his boot toe.
“Tell soldier boy he hasn’t heard the last from me.”
“Right. But if he
“Fuck you, Boyle.” Mr. Ceepak strolls back to the club.
I grab the cell phone off my belt. I could call the house; organize police protection for Marny while I drive Sam home.
But then Santucci might find out where she is from one of his friends. He has a few. Well, Officer Mark Malloy. That’s one. There might be another. One of the guys still bitter about John Ceepak cracking so many big cases while they write speeding tickets in school zones.
So I call a friend of mine’s taxi company to haul Sam home.
When she’s safely inside the cab, I climb into my Jeep.
“Is everything okay?” Marny asks.
“Yeah.”
“Who was that girl?”
“That’s Samantha Starky. My ex-girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
“My boobs aren’t fake.”
“Okay.” Good to know.
Marny relaxes slightly. I think because my jacket got all bollixed up when I buckled my seat belt and she saw the pistol strapped to my chest.
“So, how you doin’, Marny?”
“Terrible. I haven’t slept since they killed Gail.”
“They?”
She nods. Her kinky hair bounces like a golden Slinky convention.
“The guys who rent the house on Tangerine Street?” I ask.
“You know about that?”
“Yeah. I’m a cop now, remember?”
“That’s why I followed you here. I waited in the parking lot at the police station until you came out. I was afraid to go in on account of Dominic.”
“Officer Santucci?”
“He runs security for Mr. Mazzilli and Mr. O’Malley at the house.”
“Did you drive over here?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She gestures toward the sporty red Miata parked in the space to next to me.
“Does Santucci know your car?”
She puts two dainty fingers over her “uh-oh-SpaghettiOs” expression.
“He might,” she says in a frightened whisper.
“Okay,” I say. “We need to get you out of here.”
I crank the ignition.
