Her voice was warm and light. I was relieved, but a little set back by her ability to call after months and be so damned giddy.
"Actually, I'm not out at the shack. I'm in town on the beach."
"Billy's?"
"Sort of. It's a little oceanfront place he keeps to hide clients when they're trying to avoid subpoenas and officers of the court."
"Sounds perfect for you, Max," she said, and we both let that sit for a quiet beat.
"So, you're close by. How busy are you?" she said, her voice shifting up into a tighter, business mode. OK, it was not a social call.
"Busier than I have a right to be, but just finishing up a job with Billy. What's up?"
"I've got a case I'm working on, Max," she started. "The disappearance of some women bartenders here in Broward."
"You're working missing persons?"
I hadn't meant the question to sound like she'd been demoted.
"Not just missing," she said. "Gone. Like off the face of the earth missing. Not runaways, or gone on a lark, or start over somewhere else missing."
"OK," I said. Her tone made me think she'd already heard one too many skeptics on this.
"Similar circumstances? Hours? Physical appearances?" I asked, turning my former cop process on, giving her the professional courtesy she deserved.
"Yes. Thank you," she said. "Enough of a pattern for somebody to take them seriously."
OK, I thought. There's enough sarcasm there to know she's been butting heads with command.
"So, how can I help, Sherry?"
"You know a guy named Colin O'Shea? Former Philadelphia cop. Might have worked patrol during your time?"
It didn't take long for me to come up with the face. Colin O'Shea. Kid from the neighborhood. St. Marie's High School. Touch of the Irish. Good-looking guy. I'd run into him on the corners and after some football games when we were coming up. I got to know him a little better when we both became cops. He was a third- generation cop, like me. After a few at McLaughlin's, when the others were half bagged and horseplaying, we'd talked. He gave off the hint that he wasn't convinced that the blue tradition was his true calling, either.
But he was also a manipulative son of a bitch. Angry. The two traits had come together one night in the streets and O'Shea had, in a way, saved my ass.
"Yeah," I said. "I knew him from back then. Haven't seen him for years. He helping you somehow on this?"
"Not exactly," she answered. "He's my suspect."
CHAPTER 2
The manager at Hammermills let her close down the bar early. It had been slow since the Monday Night Football game had ended in a blowout of the home team. The regulars had lasted through the hopeful first quarter and the suspicious second. At halftime the place was still upbeat and she'd been busting her ass. It was mostly a beer crowd with an occasional round of party shots. On this particular night one of the distributors had put a premium on bottled beer, two for one, so she'd been juggling them all night and carried a big chrome opener which she stuck in the back pocket of her tight jeans, and she knew the guys kept an eye on it when she walked from one end of the twenty-foot mahogany bar top to the other. The opener was like a thing with her. A girlfriend back home had given it to her for her very first bartending gig and confused her when she said it would make a difference. Now the girlfriend was long gone but she'd been working bars long enough to know there was always a bit of performance going on and always a subtle scent of sex. God knows why else she would wear these tight hip-huggers and the cotton shirt that rose above her navel and dipped low enough up top to show what cleavage she could manage to bunch together. Her boyfriend didn't like it, except for when it was just for him, but to her it was a harmless part of the bartending business.
She'd gathered some good tips from the halftime crowd, and then when her regulars started cashing out their tabs in the third quarter she looked up and saw the home team was down by seventeen and registered why the place had gone from festive to grumbling sarcasm. By one o'clock she was restocking the coolers and draining the wash sinks. By two she'd totaled out the register. She'd made four hundred dollars in tips for the shift.
"I'm heading out, Mitch," she called to the manager, who was still in his tiny office next to the kitchen. She heard his swivel chair creak and waited until he stuck his balding head around the corner.
"You got a ride, right?"
"Yeah, I do. A safe one," she said and nothing more. She wasn't the kind to share her personal life with coworkers, and for some reason she especially liked leaving Mitch out of the loop.
She stepped outside and listened for the door to snick shut and the lock to engage behind her. It was a warm night and the air was humid and thick with the smell of stale beer and discarded Styrofoam meals in the alley. There was a half moon high in the western sky, turned on its side like a white china cup. She made the corner and saw his car parked under a street lamp and she smiled. She opened the passenger door herself and climbed in.
"Hi, sweetie," she said, and his own sincere smile greeted her. "Thanks for waiting."
"You know I like to. I should take you home every night," he said, and she knew he meant that, too. He leaned over, his leather creaking, and kissed her softly on the mouth and lingered there. She opened her mouth slightly and took in his warm breath and there it was, that little flutter in her chest like a small bird's wings and she knew this was different, had convinced herself of it. God, he could be so gentle and the kisses were like, well, like some kind of chemistry between them. It had been that way from the first time and that part had never changed. Yeah, she'd seen his temper in the four months they'd been together. He'd get that macho thing going and sometimes lose it, snap at her for "telling him what to do" or condescend to her like she was some bimbo. But after their fights he was so remorseful. Those damned puppy eyes of his and they'd get tears just in the bottom wells and he'd say he was sorry over and over and tell her how much she meant to him.
She wasn't always cool with his calling her all the time and being jealous and shocking her with his anger. But god, the sex was good even if it did get a little rough. And he was gorgeous. And no one before had ever seemed to care about just her and say all those things you want to say don't matter but do. It excited her, kept her oddly off-balance and she liked it.
She sat back in the seat and took the clip out of her hair. She knew he liked it down.
"You get anything to eat?" she said.
"Not really," he answered, starting the car and pulling out onto Seventeenth Street. "Got kinda busy with some asshole thought he was king of the walk down on East Commercial."
She watched the side of his face while he drove, saw the crow's feet start to darken at the corners of his eyes, knew he was in a good mood, building a story in his head. His hands were on the wheel and she noticed the pink abrasions on his right knuckles, a light trace of blood seeping, the moisture catching the light.
"You hurt yourself?" she asked, and he turned and tracked her eyes then flexed the hand.
"Not bad. This punk is still on the sidewalk near the warehouse when we answered the silent alarm. We roll up and he's stupid enough to just stand there thinking he'd act like he was walking the dog or something. I had to drag his ass over the back of the car and give him a little attitude adjustment."
He kept flexing the hand.
"Tell me," she said, turning toward him, her back into the crease of the door and the seat. She liked to listen to his stories, even if she was pretty sure he was embellishing most of them. The perps were always bigger or outnumbered him. He always helped the victims. It was like having someone read TV to you. She listened while he took the city streets west. She never interrupted the story. He didn't like being questioned until he was through. When he went quiet she waited. He stared straight ahead, trying to outlast her.