homesick.'
'I could tell,' she said. 'You must have asked me a dozen times to go to Montana with you. But not until spring.'
'And what did you say?'
'Maybe. If you're not in prison,' she said. 'Or working some idiot case.'
'Thanks,' I said, slipping my arm under her neck and my mouth next to her ear, a new easiness between us. 'Anybody call but me?'
'Fucking phone rang all day long,' she said. 'Until I finally turned it off. My Uncle Trav and Phil Thursby want you to call them at their offices tomorrow. Something about money.'
'What?'
'Uncle Trav said he wanted to talk to you about that investment thing and Phil wanted a retainer.'
'Wonderful.'
'And some guy named Renfro wanted you to call him back no matter what time you got in. He said it was very important.'
'Renfro? I don't know anybody by that name. He say what he wanted?'
'He said he couldn't say over the telephone,' Betty said, then reluctantly added, 'he claims to be a friend of Sissy Duval's. A good friend.'
'I expect Sissy's got loads of good friends,' I said, snuggling closer to Betty's soft, warm body.
'This one sounded more like her hairdresser than her boyfriend.'
'Maybe I'll call him. Tomorrow. Maybe he's got work for me,' I said. 'I don't seem to be making any money working for myself.'
'And some woman who wouldn't leave her name wants you to find somebody for her. But she wouldn't say who,' Betty said. 'She said she'll keep calling.'
'Just what I need. More clients.'
'You just use your clients as an excuse to be nosy,' Betty said. 'And me as a place to relieve your hangovers.'
'Not every time,' I said as I slipped the gown off her small breasts. 'Not every time.'
'Okay,' she said, chuckling as she slipped the rest of the way out of the gown. 'Just this once.' Then she paused, naked in my arms. 'I know you hate this,' she added softly, 'but we have to talk about the Molly McBride thing…'
'She conned me,' I said. 'I fucked her, and it nearly cost me what's left of my life. What's left to talk about?'
'Well,' Betty said as she rolled away, then spooned against me, as if it was easier to talk to the drapes than me. 'I slept with her five or six times…'
I clenched my tongue between my teeth to keep silent. 'How'd it start?'
'At a meeting of the Preservation Society,' Betty said. 'She asked me for some background over a drink… and as soon as you came back from Montana you dove back into this idiot detective thing, and we seemed to be in the midst of an endless and silent fight, so much for so long, I guess I'd given up on us, and one thing led to another. I guess you know how it was.'
'Yeah, unfortunately.'
'You knew that I'd done it before… during the bad times… But this was different. More intense. At first, I felt terrifically guilty,' Betty said, 'so I was a bitch. Then I convinced myself that you were leaving, so I didn't feel guilty at all, which made me even more bitchy.'
'I guess I should have noticed.'
'Listen, I love you,' she said, 'and I know you love me. I even love the way we love each other. But I hate the life you live.'
'I'm sorry,' I said, meaning it, 'but it's the only life I've always enjoyed, the only one I can bear to live. And it's far too late to change. But you were half-right about one thing.'
'What's that?' she asked, the sneer loud in her voice.
'This bar thing was a mistake,' I said.
'Well, that's wonderful news,' she said. 'Since I told you not to go into business with my uncle.'
'Only once,' I said, but she didn't smile. 'And it's not him,' I continued. 'I'm used to being at home in a bar, and the people who come in here aren't my people. I got tired of them and taking care of business. I guess I felt that I had to go back to my kind of work or roll over and die.'
'And it nearly killed you,' she said sharply.
'Ah, fuck it,' I said, thinking our moment had passed, and began to disentangle myself from her.
But she turned, rolled into my arms, weeping, and said, 'No. Fuck me.'
Afterward, I slumped into a brief nap, then woke out of a dream I couldn't remember, the hangover still jangling through my nerve sheaths. So I eased out of bed and into my clothes, then picked up the cell phone and Renfro's number, and went down to the bar, had a drink, then returned the call.
Renfro showed up so quickly, I suspected he had been waiting in his car outside the Lodge. He was a tall, bulky, but slightly effete man who couldn't talk without fluttering hands and a nervous giggle.
'So Sissy is an old friend of mine, you know,' he said as he pulled up a stool next to mine, 'and she asked this favor, you know, so I said yes. I'd go by myself, but she insisted I bring you along for protection.'
'Protection? From what?'
'It didn't make much sense, really. She said somebody's been following her,' Renfro said, 'and now that she's shaken the tail, she just wants to go away.' Renfro patted a large envelope in his inside overcoat pocket. 'And not come back for a while, you know.' Then he spread five hundred-dollar bills in front of my drink. 'She said to give you this. Okay?'
'How'd she get hold of you?'
'Called me at work on my cell phone,' Renfro said. 'From a pay phone, I think,' he added. 'She was worried about bugs on her phones.'
'Should be all right,' I said. 'Okay, I'll go with you. I've got a bone to pick with her.'
'You want to talk to her?'
'She fucking lied to me.'
Renfro laughed. 'If every man Sissy had lied to got to talk to her, it'd wear the hide off her little pink ears, you know.' Then he laughed again. 'She did mention something about that, though.'
'Good. I'll hold the money,' I said, 'and if she wants it, she has to talk to me.'
'I suppose that's okay.'
'So where are we supposed to meet her?' I asked, then finished my drink.
'I'm not supposed to tell you that,' Renfro said, 'until we're there.'
'We'll take my ride. We have to make a stop at my gun locker on the way.'
'What for?'
'Well, it seems that I've pissed off somebody around here,' I said, 'so I'm not going off in the darkness with somebody I don't know without a Kevlar vest and my favorite piece under my arm.'
'Wonderful,' Renfro said, laughing and clapping his large hands. 'I haven't played with guns since sixty-eight.' I raised an eyebrow. 'I was a company clerk with the Marines in Hue during Tet. We were all on the line. Even the cooks. We beat their asses silly that time, you know, had the war won, then the politicians sold us out. Chicken fuckers.'
'That was a long time ago,' I said, 'and I'll bet you haven't fired a round since then.'
'You'd win the bet,' Renfro said, then shoved the five bills at me again. 'Sissy told me she owed you at least this much. The price of her lie.' Then he pulled the envelope out of his coat and handed it to me. 'This is her getaway money.'
'I wonder where she's going?' I said.
'Not very far,' Renfro said, laughing as he stood up. 'It's only ten grand, and a woman with Sissy's tastes can't get very far on that.'
