I said, “I think Phil leaves here with somebody who takes him home. I’d like to talk to whoever that is. He may have seen somebody in the area yesterday morning.”
Dennis got the impassive look that people take on when they have information they don’t want to divulge.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not a cop. I’m not here in any official capacity. I’m just Phil’s friend, and whatever this person told me would just be between him and me.”
Dennis and the waiter exchanged a wary look. I completely understood their reluctance. Phillip and his unknown friend were gay. Phillip was still in the closet, and the other man might be, as well. To give me the man’s name was not only to involve him in a crime, but to out him. Given the level of hysterical homophobia that still exists in this country, with its coy “Don’t ask, don’t tell” silliness, no ethical or responsible person would do that.
Dennis said, “Tell you what I’ll do, if I see somebody I think might have given Phil a ride, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. If he knows anything, he can give you a call. How’s that?”
His voice was smooth and friendly, but I knew he would close me out if I pushed. That’s all I was going to get.
I stood up and put my hand on his arm. “Thanks. I appreciate that Phil’s a good kid, and I’m really upset about this.”
Ray whipped out an order pad and I wrote my name and business phone number on the back of a slip.
I nodded goodbye to them and started for the door. Behind me, Dennis called out, “Hey, I just remembered something. You know that bald-headed guy that tried to hit on you the other night? He was back last night, and he asked about you.”
I turned and stared at him. “About me?”
“Yeah. He wanted to know if you came here often. I told him I didn’t know you.”
“Did he know my name?”
Dennis grinned. “He just called you the blonde bitch.”
“That guy’s bad news. He chased me in the parking lot that night. I barely got in my car in time.”
“You call the cops?”
“No. I just went home. I guess I should have.”
“Damn right you should have. I’ll pass the word about him.”
I started to leave again, then turned back. “Does he come here often?”
“Never saw him before that night when you were here.”
“When he came back, did he try to hit on any other woman?”
“Not that I noticed. He stayed at the bar by himself, left when we closed.”
“Okay. I just wondered.”
I went outside and got back in the Bronco, wondering why the man had picked me out to try to pick up. Or stalk.
I finally left the whoosh of traffic and drove under a blessed quiet canopy of green oak branches to my apartment. When I rounded the last curve, I saw Paco in front of the carport. Still in disguise, he was holding a man to the ground with one hand while he held a phone to his ear with the other.
I pulled into the carport and got out.
Paco snapped his phone closed and flashed a white grin up at me. “Got a friend of yours here, Dixie.”
The man was face down with his hands cuffed behind him. His head was smooth and shiny as a dolphin’s, and his piggy black eyes were spitting venom.
I said, “He’s been following me. He chased me at the Crab House the other night and he was at the beach this morning.”
Paco took one of the man’s ears and twisted it. “How come you’re following the lady, pendejo?”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
“Don’t you wish.”
Paco got to his feet and put one foot on the man’s butt to hold him down. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, amigo. The lady used to be a deputy, and she’s still got a lot of friends in the department, and they’re gonna be real mad when they find out you’ve been stalking her. They may decide to dump you in the surf and let the sand crabs crawl in your eyes.”
Any other time, I would have enjoyed listening to Paco pretend to be a zonked-out bum who had no connection to law enforcement, but I hadn’t had a shower all day and I knew company was coming.
I said, “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
I ran upstairs and took a two-minute shower. Just as I was pulling on underpants, I heard tires crunching the shelled driveway. I shimmied into a short skirt and T, stepped into sandals, ran lipstick over my mouth, and sprinted for the French doors.
Downstairs, Paco stood on one side of the downed man, and Lieutenant Guidry stood on the other. Guidry said, “Dixie, I’d like you to meet Bull Banks, a freelance thug who’ll do anything for a buck. He was recently released from one of our penal hotels for beating up an elderly couple.”
Paco said, “I was just asking him nicely to tell us who hired him to attack the kid.”
Bull said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What kid?”
Guidry said, “Bull, it’s not like it was when you started your career. Now we’ve got all kinds of technologies. When we get DNA results from what we found on Phillip Winnick, I think we’ll find that you’re our man.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You gotta have hair or something for a DNA test.”
“Oh, we can use lots of things. Little skin cells from your fists maybe.”
“Fists! Ha, that’s a good one.”
“Oh yeah, we got good skin cells from your knuckles, Bull. Little knuckle cells were all over the kid’s face.”
“Didn’t use my fists!”
Guidry and Paco exchanged looks and grinned. Just at the instant I realized they knew each other, Bull Banks realized he’d just made a tactical error.
“You can’t prove a fucking thing! Anyway, the kid’s a goddamn queer!”
My head exploded, and the next thing I knew, I was on top of Bull Banks like a rodeo cowgirl, using his ears to slam his face in the sand and yelling words at him that would have made my grandmother ground me for a year. I didn’t know how long I’d been on him, but Bull was howling and sputtering and choking from all the sand in his mouth and nose and eyes. From the looks of his face, I’d been at him long enough to cause him some serious discomfort.
Paco pried my hands off Bull’s ears, and Guidry hooked an arm under my waist and lifted me up. Guidry was grinning, and when they stood me on my feet, he kept one arm around me to keep me from falling on Bull again. I kicked Bull in the ribs and yelled, “Who paid you to beat him up? You tell me who, or so help me God, I’ll kick your teeth down your throat!”
It felt so good to kick him that I kept doing it.
Bull yelled, “Stop it, bitch!”
Guidry said, “Now Bull, that’s not a nice way to talk to a lady, especially when she’s going to press charges against you for stalking her. When they add that to attacking the Winnick kid, you’ll get the ‘three times and you’re out’ life sentence. If you’re nice to Ms. Hemingway, she might be persuaded to forget about the fact you’ve been stalking her.”
Paco said, “The way you’re protecting him, you must be a good friend of whoever hired you.”
I turned at the sound of a marked squad car scrunching over the shell toward us. A uniformed deputy got out and took in the scene. When I turned my head back, Paco had disappeared.
Guidry spoke to the deputy. “This is Mr. Bull Banks. He needs to be Mirandized and taken in for the assault of Phillip Winnick.”
The deputy nodded and hauled Bull to his feet. Guidry touched the small of my back with his fingertips and said, “Let’s go upstairs and talk.”
Feeling more surreal by the moment, I climbed the stairs ahead of Guidry. At the porch, he turned the umbrella in the table so it shaded us from the midday sun. “Sit down, and I’ll get us something to drink.”
I sat as if I were a guest and he was the one who lived in my apartment. He went inside as if he owned the place, and in a minute he came out carrying two bottles of water from my fridge. He sat down in the chair opposite me, unscrewed the cap on his water, and took a long drink. When he put the bottle on the table, his eyes were calm and expectant.