She turned loose of my arm, backed off an inch, and gave me The Look. “Jesus, Mort.”
“What?”
“Talking with you is like . . . I don’t know.”
“Fun? Interesting? Educational?”
“None of those.”
“Well then, drink up. Booze produces adjectives.”
She pushed her Tequila Sunrise away. “No time. Let’s go.”
Huh? We? She was serious about hiring me? “Where to?” I gave the television a nod. “Game isn’t over yet. Padres are up by two, and I’ve got twenty bucks on the other guys.”
“I . . . I really need your help. Right now.”
“Slow down, hon. I haven’t seen any money yet.”
“We’ll work it out. C’mon.” She grabbed my arm again and finally succeeded in dislodging me from the stool.
I looked back at O’Roarke. “Remember this moment.”
He lifted an eyebrow at me. Holiday hadn’t touched her drink and here we were, headed for the door.
Outside, the sun was behind the Sierras, clouds lit up in red and gold, starting to lose color. The temperature was into the seventies, down from a high of eighty-four.
I yanked her to a halt on the sidewalk. “What’s this all about? Who was that on the phone?”
“You find missing persons. I mean, you’re good at it?”
“I am, yes.” Although luck had played a part, and every one of those people had ended up dead, so there was that.
“And detectives are, well, tough.”
Jeri was. I wasn’t. “Some of ’em, yeah,” I said, not particularly liking the direction the conversation was headed.
“Okay, then. C’mon.” She tucked my arm against her waist and led me to a nearby parking garage at a trot that made conversation difficult. I went, of course, since my arm felt cold and the warmth and the feel of her waist were making it happy.
In the garage she hit a remote and a new Audi A3 Prestige convertible answered with a chirp and flashing lights, putting my Toyota to shame. The car was fire-engine red and sleek, not top-of-the-line, but damn nice, and I guessed its mirror didn’t howl. We got in. “Nice heap,” I said before she fired up the engine.
She stared at me. “Please tell me you didn’t say that.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You—you’re still impossible to talk to. Heap? You called my great little car a heap?”
“For you, I’ll up it to jalopy.”
“Unbelievable.” She started the engine and backed out.
It didn’t howl, at least not at forty miles an hour, which is what we did up Virginia Street to University Terrace, then over to Ralston Street where I live, tires complaining at the corners.
She slowed near my house while I was still chewing on that “detectives are tough” comment that implied I might have to be tough sometime soon. I stared at her. “How do you know where I live?”
She shrugged. “Research?”
Which didn’t answer the question, but she had me worried. The only thing in my house a hooker might use that required me to be tough was my bed, and that wasn’t going to happen. She turned into my driveway, stopped two feet from my Toyota’s rear bumper, and said, “Go get your gun.”
I felt my eyes bug out. “My gun?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to slur my words like that.”
“How the hell do you know I’ve got a gun?”
“Seriously? You’re a private eye and you’ve got testosterone oozing out of your pores. No way you don’t have a gun.”
Okay, she was holding her own. She was a hooker with a brain. I mentally bumped her IQ up another ten points. “So I’ve got a gun. Why am I going to need it?”
“Well, I hope you won’t, but the point is you never know, so go get it, okay?”
Which was actually a good answer, given that I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. When in doubt, go armed. You don’t have to fire a gun just because you’ve got one.
“Okay, slow down,” I said. “I’m not gonna get a gun unless you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
I guess the intensifier didn’t take because she leaned across me, unlocked my door, and shoved it open.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll explain later, I promise.”
“I get fifty bucks an hour.” But as my boss, Jeri gets thirty-five and I get fifteen. That’s the deal. I was going to renegotiate after we were married and I had more clout. I’m worth sixteen an hour, easy. Of course, she has overhead—home office, phone, Xerox, wear and tear on the Porsche, contributions to my 401(k).
“Fine. Go.”
So I went. In the house I got a .357 Magnum off a shelf in my bedroom closet, not the flyweight S&W Magnum I’d had earlier that year. I grabbed the Ruger since it has more heft. At the firing range a week ago that damn flyweight kicked more than I’d remembered. I wanted something I could fire more than once without having to haul it back down between shots. You never know when you’ll need more than one hunk of flying lead to get the job done.
For a moment I stood there, gun in hand, testosterone oozing out of my pores, wondering what I was getting into, then I put on a shoulder holster, snugged the gun in place, donned a wind-breaker to hide it, and left.
Coming out the front door, I noticed a package off to one side. FedEx. That would be another book from my mom. She often sends me books with anti-IRS themes. The first was Let Us Prey by Bill Branon, then it was IRS Whistleblower by Richard Schickel. Others followed. Mom took great delight in denigrating my former career, and she has a sense of humor like a steam shovel. I grabbed the package and went back to Holiday’s Audi, tossed the package in back, got settled in the passenger seat, and patted the Ruger in its shoulder holster. “You should know I’m not gonna fire this thing at just anyone. What the hell’s going on?”
“It’s my sister.” Holiday chirped the tires backing out, which jerked my head forward.
“That call you
