Bad Guys

“So they killed this Miles Diamond,” Sarah said. “Did they also rob the store?”

“Pretty much cleaned it out of Hugo Boss and Versace and-”

“It’s a ch sound. It doesn’t rhyme with ‘face.’ ”

“Okay, so I’m not familiar. It’s not the Gap.”

Sarah, in the middle of cutting off a Mustang, said, “Yeah, well, you haven’t even seen the inside of a Gap in years. You could use some sprucing up, some new clothes.”

“I sure won’t be buying them at Brentwood’s. It’s very expensive Italian suits, designer stuff, silk ties, you get the picture.”

“You’re right. That doesn’t sound like your kind of place.”

“It’s Lawrence’s, though. Nice dresser. Why do gay guys always dress better?”

Sarah scowled. “You might be surprised to learn that there are heterosexual men who know how to look good in clothes. Does he never go by Larry?”

“No. It’s Lawrence Jones, Private Eye.” I used my TV announcer voice.

“So, you got enough to write this piece? You’ve got color, there was the incident last night.”

“You promised me a week. I’m going back out with him tonight, this’ll be night three.”

Now Sarah looked apprehensive. “You’ve probably got enough already.”

“Look, don’t worry, I’m perfectly safe.”

At which point Sarah swerved from the middle to the inside lane to avoid a green Cutlass. “Jesus,” she said. “Was he going slow or what?”

Now Sarah was taking the off-ramp that would lead us down to the Metropolitan building. The ramp was designed as a single lane, but Sarah was trying to squeeze along the inside, so close to a Mazda that if she put her window down she could hand the guy a coffee. I kept jamming my right foot into the floorboards, figuring if I shoved hard enough I could stop the car. There were a lot of things that made me feel anxious.

I said, “Do we have any jazz CDs?”

“I hate jazz,” Sarah said. There wasn’t a CD player in the Toyota; it was too old to have come equipped with one. But at home, she often slipped a disc into the stereo. Rock, lots of seventies stuff, Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Why you asking about jazz?”

“No reason.”

This was a new wrinkle to our relationship, this business of having Sarah as my boss. Well, one of my bosses. At a newspaper, you had so many, it was hard to keep track. This was my first experience working for the same person with whom I slept. I had been back working at a newspaper for almost a year now, after spending a few years writing commercially unsuccessful science fiction novels. Okay, the first one did reasonably well, which had given me the confidence to quit a salaried job and write fiction full-time. But as most people who write fiction understand, unless they happen to be Tom Clancy, or a former president penning his memoirs, you can’t support a family and pay a mortgage without a regular job. And I was back at one.

The Metropolitan offered me a feature-writing position. Given my experience, coupled with the fact I’d written four novels, the editors in charge seemed to feel I had graduated beyond the level of general assignment. To my surprise, and Sarah’s, they put me among the stable of city feature writers who reported to her. Although she wouldn’t admit this to me, I’d heard through the newsroom grapevine that she’d fired off a memo to the managing editor, Bertrand Magnuson, expressing some concern, something along the lines of “I can’t get him to do anything I say at home, so what makes you think I can do it here?”

The problem was, the newsroom has a long history of people who sleep together-spouses, and non-spouses, and a few spouses with non-spouses-being thrown into the mix together, and Sarah’s superior probably wrote her back with a note consisting of three letters-“DWI”-which in the Metropolitan newsroom meant “deal with it.”

Moving on, I said, “You know about this Trevor Wylie kid?”

Sarah thought a moment. “The one calling Angie? Not much. He the one had a face like a pizza?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know anything.”

“I just don’t like the sounds of this guy.”

“Has he done anything?”

“He’s calling Angie all the time, shows up where she is, like maybe he’s following her.”

“You mean, like when you were interested in me?”

“I just don’t like him. You should talk to Angie, find out more about this guy, tell her to be careful.”

“You talk to her.”

“I think she’s still mad at me, over the Pool Boy incident.”

“Yeah, well, who can blame her. I can’t believe Harley didn’t give you a prescription. You ask me, you need to be on something.”

4

THE PHONE RANG as I sat down at my desk. “Zack Walker,” I said.

“Lawrence here. You get any sleep?”

“Not much. You?”

“No. I ended up going back to the scene, talking to Trimble a bit more, trying for more information, but there wasn’t much to get.”

“What’s the deal with you two? I didn’t sense a whole lot of mutual admiration there.”

“We used to be partners. When I was still on the force.”

“Partners? You were partners?”

“Yeah, well, maybe sometime I’ll tell you all about it. We still on for tonight?”

“Of course. I was afraid, after what happened to Miles, maybe you wouldn’t let me tag along.”

“No, it’s okay. Meet me at ten, doughnut shop around the corner from Brentwood’s. Still too much traffic that time of night for anyone to try anything. Anything happens, it’ll be later.”

“You think they’ll come out, the night after they hit a store and ended up killing a guy?”

“Honestly, no.”

“I hate to ask, but you go anywhere near Crandall on your way?” If he wasn’t able to pick me up at home, I’d have to grab a cab, what with Angie needing the car.

Lawrence said nothing for a moment. He was probably consulting one of several mental maps he kept upstairs. “Yeah, sure, why?”

“No car tonight. But if it’s out of your way, I can get a cab, bill the paper-”

“No, no, that’s fine. Give me your address.” I did. “See you round nine forty-five.”

We were parked in the same place we’d been the night before, on Garvin, half a block down from Brentwood’s.

Although we’d not had to meet at the doughnut shop, Lawrence and I still pulled in there. He still had the old Buick, what Lawrence called his “business” car, at least the one he used when the business involved surveillance. When he wanted to make a better impression, he drove a Beemer or Jaguar or some other type of high-end yuppiemobile that he kept back at his apartment.

“Don’t get coffee,” Lawrence warned me. “You’ll be having to take a leak every twenty minutes.”

I ignored him and got an extra-large, triple cream with two low-cal sweetener packets, and half a dozen doughnuts.

“That makes sense,” Lawrence said. “Why don’t you get one more sweetener, and then you can get two more doughnuts.”

But later, sitting in the car, he said, “You got a double chocolate in there?”

“Aren’t you the one who mocked me for buying these?”

“You got one or not?”