I turned toward her. “About that mirror on my car—”
“Stuff your mirror, Mortimer.”
Okay, that set me back. Mortimer? But, as one of the premier gumshoes in the Western Hemisphere—though I tend to specialize in missing persons—I gave her comment a few seconds’ thought.
Finally, I said, “You have cable.”
“Huh?”
“Television. You keep up with the news.”
She smiled, sort of. “You’re good, Mortimer.” Then, showing off, she added, “Angel.”
I grimaced. “Mort.”
“If you like. And I’m—”
“Holiday. Which one, by the way?”
“Huh?”
“Doc, or Fourth of July?”
“Okay, could we talk like normal people here?”
Not my specialty, and not with a hooker, but I was willing to give it a try, so I said, “Let’s go back to that ‘stuff your mirror’ comment.”
Late July she’d told me to glue a rat to the sonofabitch, which might require some explanation. The side mirror of my Toyota, vintage 1994 and the color of a urine specimen, yodels, up around sixty miles an hour. This is one of the finest imaginable conversation pieces if you want to drink alone, as I found out with Holiday a week or so before my stay in the hospital with its drips, catheters, and burly nurses who really hate the IRS.
The mirror, designed by Toyota’s acoustic engineers, whistles—rather atonally—so how good those engineers are is open to question. During our second encounter, and before she stalked out in the second of two huffs, Holiday suggested that I glue a rat to the mirror. No explanation, of course, but the bartender—O’Rourke—and I eventually concluded that her suggestion was based on the sort of applied physics one doesn’t normally expect of a high-end call girl. Gluing a rat to the mirror would alter the air flow, thereby defeating one of Toyota’s finest engineering achievements.
“I’m not here to talk about your mirror,” she said. I thought I heard that huff working its way to the surface again.
“Yeah? What are you here for?”
“You . . . you’re a private detective, right?”
“One of North America’s finest.” It never hurts to advertise.
She gave me the look I often get from Jeri as well as Dallas, my ex—one of pity mixed with a dash of incredulity and a pinch of weariness.
Then she sighed. Her shoulders sagged.
“Buy you a drink?” I said.
“Sure. Why not? What the hell.”
Don’t get too excited, I thought. “Tequila Sunrise?”
She smiled. “Hey, you remembered.” Just then her cell phone rang.
Her smile gave me a tingle that went all the way to my toes. Did I mention that I’m a pig? Man, she was a good-lookin’ kid. She let the call go to voice mail. Probably a hooker thing, when they’re with a prospective client. Hard to believe she was still working on me, though, after what we’d been through last month.
“When I was an agent with the IRS,” I said, “I remembered all kinds of minutiae, which made me both invaluable and feared.”
A frown replaced her smile. “The IRS?”
I thought that might get her attention. Most people lose their tan the moment they realize they’re in the presence of our nation’s Gestapo. But that didn’t happen. She was a nice light brown, what I could see of her, which was a lot. Maybe spray-on tans weren’t susceptible.
I nodded, then added, “Internal Revenue,” in case the acronym hadn’t struck home with enough force.
She gave me a squint. “But you’re not still . . . ?”
“Nope.”
“How long ago’d you quit, or whatever?”
“Three months, give or take. But I had to give it up. Turns out I discovered I had a soul.”
“Do you still have friends in the . . . the business?”
“The racket, you mean? IRS agents don’t have friends. They even hate and fear each other.”
Her smile returned. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“Ain’t it, though? You should’ve seen our Christmas parties. Punch was spiked with antifreeze.”
O’Roarke arrived with her drink. I paid for it with a free-drink coupon. He’s a lean whip of a guy, slightly stooped, balding, with a red Yosemite Sam moustache. Best bartender ever. Even better after I gave him that hundred bucks the other night.
Holiday turned toward me and rewound our conversation of a minute or two ago. “You’re a detective.”
“Yes I am.” I don’t mention that I’m in training since it plays hell with my gravitas.
“You found Mayor Sjorgen.”
“Yes I did.” Just his head, but it was in the trunk of my ex-wife’s Mercedes, which made it fun.
“And the DA.”
“Guilty as charged, ma’am.”
She put a hand on my arm. I think it might have sizzled. Man, she was beautiful, even if she was a hooker.
“So you’re pretty good,” she said. She picked up her cell phone and swiped the screen—multitasking efficiently, which caused me to up the estimate of her income by forty thousand a year.
“You have no idea, kiddo.”
A slow smile. “Kiddo,” she said. “I like that.” She would, of course. Hookers like everything. Tell them you like sugar in your gas tank, and they’ll tell you they like it too. She put the phone to her ear and listened. Five seconds later I had my answer to that “tan” question—spray-on can lighten significantly if the underlying skin tone goes pasty white.
“Allie,” she said into the phone, eyes wild. “Allie!” She stared at the glowing screen. “Omigod. Omigod.”
One “Omigod” was someone telling her she’d left her front door wide open when she left home. Two “Omigods” was trouble of an entirely different stripe.
She hit call back and listened, got no answer.
She grabbed my arm and almost pulled me off the barstool. “Oh, jeez, c’mon.”
“What’s up?” I asked, bracing myself.
“I . . . I need . . . I want you to . . . please. C’mon.”
Well, yeah. A hooker wanting to hire me. Beautiful one, too. And desperate. I figured something like this was only a matter of time. If he weren’t fictional and therefore technically impotent, Sam Spade would be eating his heart out.
“Hire me?”
“Yeah, I . . . I guess so. Right now.” She tugged harder.
“Well, sure,” I said. “Why not?”
This was great, just great. I couldn’t wait to tell Jeri. A hooker offering me
