I fisted the air. “All right!”
“I had a close encounter with Riley Neil similar to Mary Beth’s.”
I should’ve known. The signs were there. He’d gone into El Rinconcillo hot to trot to rendezvous with her. “Where, when?”
“Brick, please keep your voice down. It was inappropriate touching. I put an end to it in a hurry. I slapped him.”
“He groped you? Copped a feel?”
“If you choose to use that terminology.”
I remade that fist and pounded it into a palm. “If I’d known, I’d’ve dismantled the bastard.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. No harm was done.”
Back at the hotel as we headed for our room, Riley Neil came crashing down the hall, backwards on his heels, backpedaling by us.
Mary Beth Lambuth was in hot pursuit, yelling, “You creep, I warned you what would happen if you tried that again!”
She landed a terrific left hook, flooring him. Darla clapped, starting a round of applause that lasted and lasted.
Like a referee, I stood over Neil, counting him out. There is some justice.
Copyright © 2006 Gary Alexander
Body Shop
by Terry Barbieri
Few women in the mystery field write from a male point of view, as Terry Barbieri does. Her P.I. Nick Gallagher is brilliantly realized in this story, despite the gender gap that exists between him and his creator. The author’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her stories have appeared in many literary magazines.
It’s still dark outside when I shove the bag of ice against the driver’s door and lay my fractured left arm on top of it. I don’t dare stop at an emergency room here in San Antonio; I don’t know how many more thugs Vance has out looking for me. I shift into reverse, peel out of the Stop-N-Go parking lot, and aim my pickup west towards the Rio Grande.
While early-morning commuters crowd the highway’s in-bound lanes, the outgoing lanes lie empty, except for a couple of eighteen-wheelers. I resist the urge to gun past them. The last thing I need right now is for a cop to pull me over.
As the sun rises in my rearview mirror, melting ice runs down the driver’s door. Outside Uvalde, I pull up in front of a liquor store and cross the dusty yard to a gray trailer. An unshaven man answers the door.
“I know you don’t open till noon...”
He squints into the morning sunlight. “You got cash?”
I pull a couple of twenties from my pocket.
He slides his feet into a pair of leather flip-flops and leads me to the store, where I purchase a bottle of Cuervo Gold. Carrying it outside, I sit down on a bench, grip the bottle between my knees, twist off the top with my one good hand, and take three long swigs. The fire in my throat momentarily blots out the pain in my arm.
I climb back into my truck and hit the open road. As the tequila seeps into my veins, the highway blurs to a gentle ribbon. I follow the dotted white line towards the Mexican border.
Close to noon, I cruise into Del Rio and park outside the emergency room. Inside, brown faces crowd the waiting room: the drawn faces of mothers cradling feverish infants; the jaundiced face of a doubled-over teen; the stone-cold face of a construction worker with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand. I print my name, Nick Gallagher, on the receptionist’s clipboard. Then I roll up an ancient issue of Life, place it over one chair’s steel arm, and rest my arm on it.
Leaning back, I close my eyes and see Jessica as I left her, wearing a Bourbon Street T-shirt with nothing underneath. She said she would give me twelve hours, but she had lied. She must have called her father as soon as I’d left, then e-mailed him the video capturing everything I’d done to her, or rather everything she’d done to me. Only it wouldn’t appear that way. Why else would Vance have sent two heavyweight goons to my San Antonio apartment? I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill them. In broad daylight, with two good arms at my disposal, I can shoot the cap off a Corona bottle at twenty yards. Shooting one-handed in the dark, while ducking the swing of a baseball bat, is a different story.
Vance and I grew up together, two white boys in one of San Antonio’s oldest barrios. We learned Spanglish on the streets, ran with the same gang, and shared Marlboros, six-packs, and the occasional joint. Though we’d led vastly different lives since high school, Vance and his wife Lorraine had me over for dinner several times a year. I often wondered whether it bothered the staunchly Catholic Lorraine that Vance had made his small fortune producing black-market porn.
While Vance earned his living by wronging the rights of the underage girls he featured in his flicks, I became a private investigator and earned mine by righting the wrongs suffered by the wives of unfaithful husbands. Sometimes I thought about starting over in some seaside village, where fish fought over baited hooks and a man could make himself at home in a one-room hut, but I’d never made it past the Texas border.
Last Sunday, as Vance and I shared a pitcher of Scorpion’s Tail at The Brewery, I noticed the gray strands which had begun to take over his full head of hair. Across a plate-size table, Vance told me, “I need your help.”
“What’s up?”
“Jessica’s boss has been sexually harassing her.”
The Scorpion’s Tail had wielded a more powerful sting than I’d realized. I could have sworn Vance had used Jessica’s name and the words sexually harassed in the same sentence. Jessica was a doughy girl with a pug nose and frizzy hair the color of swamp water. The Cro-Magnon ancestress of the girls Vance featured in his films. “What was that?”
“Jessica’s boss at Surplex has been asking her for sexual favors in exchange for a promotion. I want you to get everything you can on the bastard.”
“No problem.” I’d played this gig before, taking a job as a maintenance man to gain access to storage closets and between-floor crawl spaces. When I wasn’t installing phone jacks or unclogging toilets, I’d drill holes in walls and shoot footage through them. “I’d like to speak to Jessica. Where does she work?”
“Surplex’s home office in Houston. She’s in Human Resources.”
“Does she know I’m coming?”
“She asked for you. She says you’re the best.”
I left San Antonio at eight the following morning and pulled up in front of Surplex shortly before noon, its tower of tinted glass reflecting Houston’s skyline. Inside, a tropical atrium flourished beneath soaring skylights. An iguana turned a beady eye as I walked past him towards the elevator.
Stepping out on the seventh floor, I approached a young blonde seated behind a semicircular desk. Her sleeveless dress showed off the tastiest stack I’d seen this side of a Big Boy breakfast platter. Her face looked vaguely familiar.
“Is Jessica Sancetti here?”
She stared at me for a moment before answering. “She’s at lunch. Can I help you?”
“I’m here to apply for a job.”
She handed me an application. After I’d completed it, she looked it over. “We don’t have any openings right now, but I’ll keep this on file.”
“Thanks.”
I had nearly reached the elevator when she called me back. “Mr. Gallagher, I bought an entertainment center last Saturday. I didn’t realize, until they delivered it, that it has to be assembled. Do you think you could put it together for me? I’d pay you.”
“When?”
“Tonight?” She printed her name and address on a Post-it and held it out, nails glistening red as a freshly cut watermelon.
I took the Post-it and read her name. Sara Anderson. “I’ll be there.”