“Shipping biohazardous material. It’s a federal offense.”
The circles stopped again. “Fed-e-ral?” she said in a Spanish accent with a hint of wariness.
“I’m interested in how she looked, any marks on her face like moles, scars, color of her eyes, thin face, big nose, things like that.”
“I din’t see no scars, like yours, which is very . . . sexy. I theenk maybe her eyes is blue, like her dress.”
“How about her hair color?”
“Is dark, except I theenk maybe she was wearing a, you know . . .” She patted her hair. The accent was picking up speed.
“A wig.”
“Yes, a weeg.”
“Was anyone with her?”
“Like who?”
“A girl. Younger than you. Pretty.”
“No. She was all alone.”
“How did she pay for the room?”
“Juss money. She gave me a beeg bill, a hunnerd dollar.”
Cash. Sounded like our gal. And, I hated to admit it, but Ma was right, this wasn’t getting us anywhere. In fact, so far I’d say it was nothing, other than that hand now gently kneading my crotch—which was light-years away from getting us anywhere near the lady in the SUV.
“You didn’t get a license plate number, did you?”
“She was . . . no car. She say it was being feexed. Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“I show you sometheeng, okay?”
“Sure, what?”
“This.” She popped a couple of snaps on her halter and placed my hand on a warm, firm, luxurious, Spanish-speaking breast—the left one, if I wasn’t mistaken—and held it there.
Choices: One, cough and pretend you don’t notice. Two, jump up and yell something. Three, squeeze. Four, fake a heart attack.
Three won, because it was a round, very supple boob the size of a large cantaloupe and I’m a peeg. Oh—and cantaloupe is great with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it. Just sayin’.
She smiled. “Is nice, yes?”
“Very nice.” And Jeri would hear every detail about this, too—except for the hard nub of nipple against my palm, which seemed irrelevant and more than she really needed to know.
“Sophie?”
“Yes?”
“I need to know about this woman. Anything you can tell me. Anything more.” I started to pull my hand away, but she gripped it in both hands and pressed it harder against her.
“I’m theenking,” she said.
Far be it from me to break the concentration of a witness, so I waited. She started moving my hand around on her breast. We were facing the room with a view down the length of the bar. We could see everyone in the room, two flat-screen TVs over the bar, the front door. No one was paying any attention to us.
“Steve?”
“What?”
“I have not had a man for two weeks.”
“Two whole weeks? And you’re still alive? How is that?”
She smiled. “You make the joke, yes?”
“You could go into shock at any moment. If you do, we’ll need to elevate your feet.”
She stared into the room. Her hands stopped moving my hand on her breast, which meant I had to do all the work. Which I did.
“Like that,” she said. She pointed at one of the two televisions. “The woman in the blue dress, she looked juss like that.”
I leaned toward Sophie for a better look. On the television, a lady in a beige suit was in front of a bouquet of microphones. The sound was turned off, so I couldn’t hear her words, but, just like me, Julia Reinhart had gone well beyond her allotted fifteen minutes of fame.
Julia.
Which meant Ma was wrong about Sophie not being useful.
Man, was she gonna be pissed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BUT IT WAS late and she was probably asleep by now, so telling her about my latest success as a gumshoe would have to wait until morning. Meanwhile, I had a breast filling my right hand and then some, success of a somewhat different kind, directly related to my new career—it never once happened when I was terrorizing citizens with the IRS—and I had to find a way to extricate it since Sophie still had a death-grip on my hand, holding it in place.
“We should leave,” I said.
“My place only four blocks away,” she purred.
“I gotta hit the men’s room,” said the dwarf.
“You hurry, Steve. I am so hot—like you wouldn’ believe.”
“I’m on it.”
That bathroom window wasn’t looking any bigger than it had earlier. I hoped the Jaws of Life wouldn’t be needed. I remember a guy on TV who crawled through an unstrung tennis racket. I say it was unstrung to avoid confusion whenever I tell this. He stuck an arm and shoulder through, then his head, dislocated the other shoulder, took half a dozen deep breaths and let it all out because he couldn’t squeeze through the racket with a lungful of air, couldn’t take a breath with that thing around his chest either, so the entire operation looked like an interesting form of suicide, but right now I was glad I’d taken notes.
I put one arm through, then my head, didn’t bother with that dislocate the shoulder part, wormed my chest through sideways, let out some air, felt the frame at my front, back, sides, and popped out, hung upside down for a moment, then dropped to the ground trying for a tuck and a cool-looking somersault, which didn’t work out, then lay on the ground and said hi to Sophie who was eight feet away at the end of the alley staring at me.
“You are a shithead,” she said.
“Yes I am.”
“For all night, I only coss fifty dollar.”
“Only fifty smackeroos? A bargain at half the price.”
She turned on her heel and left. I got in the Caddy and took off. Later when I told all this to Ma, she about busted a gut.
“Julia,” she said in the morning at an IHOP over French toast. “Makes sense, sort of—a lot, actually—but what the hell, Mort.”
“My words exactly.”
“We gotta phone Jeri, let her know.”
“Nope.”
Ma stared at me. “Nope?”
“You know Jeri. She might go out and tackle this dame on her own. But we don’t know what’s going on. Reinhart’s hand chopped off, shipped to me, Wexel dead, burned to a crisp. If Julia Reinhart is involved, we’ve got to check
