She blew another perfect ring.
“Knew a girl once who could blow square rings,” I said.
“Yeah?” Her eyes got wider.
“Uh-huh. Down in El Paso. Cute little Mexican gal. Something she did with her tongue.”
“Her tongue? Sounds fun,” the girl cooed, turning a little more in my direction. “You got a name?”
“Damn right. And yours is…?”
“Uh, Holiday,” she said, timing thrown off by my non-response. “Holiday Breeze.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, really. Breeze really is my last name.”
“What about Holiday?”
“My very own.” She looked around, lowered her voice. “We could be friends, hon.”
“Yes, we could, Holiday. You could buy me another beer.” I swirled my bottle. “This one’s pretty much done.”
She pursed her lips again. “Tough guy, huh?”
Hell, yes. Come the dawn I would be a full-fledged PI, or close enough. Beautiful girls were going to flock to me like pigeons to a statue. I could take my pick. My previously humdrum life was about to do a great big one-eighty.
Little did I know.
She smiled. “You here on…holiday, or what?”
Oh, man, this kid.
O’Roarke sidled over, eyes glittering in amusement at the two of us. Patrick O’Roarke was six-five, a lean whipcord of a guy an inch taller than me, balding, with a bushy red mustache. Great bartender. At two-twenty-eight, I outweighed him by the better part of fifty pounds. We’re about the same age. I’d hate to try to outrun him, and he’d hate to have to wrestle me. No one’s the best at everything.
The girl ordered a Tequila Sunrise, then went back to work on me. “So, good-lookin’, what’s up with you, huh, you won’t buy me a drink?”
“Good-lookin’” almost sprayed a mouthful of beer past those sturdy round globes into the depths of that slinky black dress. Last person who’d said I was good looking was my mother, back when I was still in middle school, and she was lying through her teeth, as mothers are prone to do—mine in particular. When I was ten years old I’d run a skateboard into the side of a car that was doing thirty miles an hour, broken my nose, acquired two dangerous-looking facial scars which had eventually helped during field audits with the IRS, and it’d been all downhill ever since.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Holiday was a hooker. Hookers say dumb things. They lie. They’ll tell you things like their name is Holiday. They tell you what they think you want to hear. To her, every schmoo with a wallet was “Good lookin’,” even guys with a face like Wilford Brimley or Edgar G. I decided it was time to spin her around a time or two.
“I’ve got this side mirror on my car, Holiday,” I said, running a finger around a damp ring on the bar’s faux walnut surface.
“Yeah?” A wary note crept into her voice, so maybe she wasn’t so dumb after all. No way was the side mirror of my car going to lead to anything she wanted to hear, conversation-wise.
“Yeah. The freakin’ thing howls, up around sixty miles an hour.”
“Lucky you.” Her jaw worked, trying to decide if I was for real. She ground her cigarette out in an ashtray and stashed her smoking paraphernalia into her purse, preparing to bail in case this business with the mirror took a turn for the worse. Which it did.
“You oughta hear it,” I said with oblivious, cheerful abandon. “Sonofabitchin’ thing howls like a banshee.”
“Fascinating.” Her eyes darted toward the exit, then one final thought crept in. “What kinda car?”
“Toyota Tercel. Nineteen ninety-four. Still got its original paint, too. Yellow.”
She snatched her purse off the bar. “Serves you the fuck right, bozo,” she snarled, then stormed away.
Bozo. Good one, Holiday. I grinned, watching her go.
O’Roarke came over with her drink and the two of us stared with unbridled piggish male admiration at the sight of her marching away, ramrod straight, taut hips swiveling angrily. She disappeared into the video-game jangle of slot machines and the metallic din of dollar tokens tumbling into stainless steel bins.
“I’ve lost her,” I said.
“Howling mirrors. Every girl’s secret dream, good-lookin’.”
I stared at him. “Christ, you must have ears like a radio telescope.”
“Comes with the job, laddie. And I wish you wouldn’t chase ’em off before they’ve paid for their drinks.”
“Maybe next time.” The eleven o’clock news started up on TV. I hit the remote, jacking up the volume for the latest on Jonnie and Dave.
For two days they’d been national news. Another day or two and the story might get international exposure. Jonnie Sjorgen and Dave Milliken, Reno’s mayor and district attorney, had been missing for nine days, since Friday before last. Two of Reno’s most visible public figures, gone without a trace. Twenty-four hours would have been a long time. Nine days was an eternity.
In truth, the story was in danger of growing stale locally. People lose interest when the news is no longer new, or when its interest quotient dips below the public’s attention span. It wouldn’t take much to stoke that fire again, but for the moment the story was like an old comet disappearing into the cosmos, leaving behind a glowing trail of dust. National attention had given it a much-needed boost. It was as if the pair had been sucked into a black hole. Of course, the lack of anything new in the case was itself news, but that only works for a while.
I wouldn’t have followed the story quite so closely, except that my one-and-only ex, Dallas, had been living on and off with Jonnie Sjorgen for the past two years. Mostly on, which had made the gossip columns of the Reno Gazette-Journal, which was hinting that the two of them were hinting at marriage.
Tonight,
