Candy read it and giggled. “Well,” she said, “you can operate on my software anytime.” Then, laying a warm hand on my leg, she stretched and kissed me on the neck, sliding her lips up to my ear.
I must have closed my eyes for a moment, because next thing I knew a grim-faced man with a silver Cervélo road bike stood across the table glowering at me. He wore a black leather vest over a sleeveless Ramones T-shirt, and tattooed snakes crawled up his arms to bare their fangs on his biceps.
His eyes fixed on mine. “You got some kind of death wish?”
“When I go,” I said, recalling a line from Nick at Nite, “I just want to be stood outside in the garbage with my hat on.”
“Done,” he said, leaning his bike against the table. “Too bad you forgot your hat.” He flexed his muscles, making the snakes writhe horribly, and grabbed a handful of my shirt. The cotton ripped as he yanked me off the bench and spilled me onto the blacktop.
He bashed me in the leg with a surprisingly heavy chukka boot, and I rolled with the motion, pushing to my feet just in time to avoid a second kick. Catching him off balance, I landed a roundhouse right to the side of his head. The blow should have knocked him to his knees, but he merely snarled and threw a solid jab to my jaw. My head swam with stars.
“Quinn!” the cry was Candy’s, and she sounded plenty mad. “Leave him alone!”
I blinked, clearing my vision, and saw her grab Hobbs’s gnome from the table and swing it towards Quinn’s face. He swore as the figure smacked him in the nose, then wrenched it from her and dropped it at his feet.
“Watch close,” he said to me. “Here’s what’ll happen if I catch you sniffing around Candy again.” He raised his boot and slammed the heel down on the gnome, scattering chunks of colorful plastic over the blacktop. “Get the message?”
I did.
Quinn swung aboard his bike like an outlaw who’d just shot the sheriff. With a parting sneer, he sped off into the night.
I expected some reaction from Hobbs. At the very least, a pointed I told you so.
Instead, he turned to Candy. “Quickly! Tell me where that fellow lives.”
She shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me squat about himself. That’s why I dumped him.”
Hobbs swung to the four boys behind him.
“I have five dollars,” he said, “for the first lad to bring me that fellow’s address.”
The boys looked at each other.
“Ten,” said the white-haired kid.
Hobbs grimaced. “Ten.”
When my cell phone rang next morning, the kid wanted twenty. I served as go-between for the negotiations.
“Twelve,” Hobbs said.
“Twenty,” countered the kid.
“Fifteen.”
“Twenty.”
An hour later I pulled my ultra-blue PT Cruiser into a Burgerville lot kitty-corner from Cartopia. The white-haired kid was there leaning on a black Schwinn and munching a cheeseburger.
Hobbs spoke through the car window. “Sorry,” he said, pawing through his wallet. “It seems I only have eighteen dollars.”
“Sorry,” the kid said. “Seems I caught amnesia.”
Hobbs scowled and handed him a twenty.
“Couldn’t get his address,” the kid said, pausing as Hobbs turned purple, “but I got something just as good. His license number.” He pulled a crumpled paper from his pants pocket.
Hobbs stared at him. “His bicycle has a license?”
“You don’t know nothin’, do you? Nah, the dude stashed the bike in the back of a Subaru. You really think he’s the bandit?”
“Quite possibly.” Hobbs eyed the kid with new interest. “You remind me of someone I once knew. By any chance, is your name Wiggins?”
“That’s a dumb name. Everyone calls me Whitey.”
Hobbs nodded as if the kid had said yes. “Tell me, Whitey, would you be interested in earning an odd dollar now and then, purely in the pursuit of justice?”
The kid flicked his fingers, making the twenty snap to attention. “At these rates, sure. Call me.”
“And how will I reach you?”
Whitey leaned down, looking past Hobbs at me. “Why do you hang out with this tool?”
I shrugged. “Because I seem so cool by comparison.”
The kid studied me a moment. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t.”
While I fired up my laptop and plugged in my wireless Internet connector (guaranteed to work anywhere this side of the Sahara Desert), I explained that I had Whitey’s phone number in my cell-phone log.
“Your telephone knows who calls you? That’s ingenious.”
“You bet. It was the latest thing back in 1988.” I was now into the DMV records. “2006 Subaru Outback, registered to Gregory Aaron Lafarge. 13606 SW Gaston Circle.”
“Gregory, eh? Your young lady addressed him as Quinn.”
“My fiancée” I lied, just to needle him. “Candy is only a nickname, you know. Her real name is Martina McBride.”
“You are a poor liar, Doctor. I happen to know that her given name is Candace Blotnick.”
“Don’t tell me. You somehow deduced this from her accent, her brand of cigarettes, or the chips in her fingernail polish.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I searched her purse while she was busy trying to save you from that Lafarge fellow.”
I had now breached another supposedly secure site. “No criminal record,” I said. “At least under that name. And for your information, I was just about to open a can of whoop-ass on him when she interfered.”
“Of course you were.”
The bossy lady in my GPS device, whom I affectionately call Gypsy, led us across the Willamette River and up the steep slope of Council Crest. That hill is a mare’s nest of twisty streets and treacherous dead ends, but once she’d sorted through Gaston Lane, Gaston Avenue, Gaston Street, Gaston Drive, and Gaston Court, she brought us at last to the Lafarge abode.
It was a canary-yellow house with a plastic picket fence, a deflowered dogwood, and a bunch of flowers I couldn’t name. There was no garage, and the carport was empty.
“Our bird is out.”
“So it would seem,” Hobbs said. “Still, we had best make sure.” And before I could stop him, he hopped out, trotted up the walk, and pressed a finger to the doorbell.
I watched from the car, wishing I’d brought a baseball bat, or my set of ninja stars. I didn’t want to end up like that gnome back at the food-cart lot.
No answer.
“Too bad,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Holding up a finger, Hobbs strode briskly along the front of the house, into the carport, and opened a gate into the backyard. The finger beckoned me to follow.
“Damn,” I said. But I went. And stopped short, staring.
The front yard had shown the hand of a skilled gardener, but the back was where that gardener really went to town. And that person had an inordinate fondness for garden gnomes. They peeked from under bushes, lurked behind flowerpots, and lounged upon birdbaths.
“Bingo,” I said.
“Or in the modern vernacular,” Hobbs said, “cowabunga.”
I’d counted over a dozen gnomes when a patio door rolled open and a head emerged, bundled in a fluffy white towel.
“What the hell,” said the head, “are you doing in my yard?”
The head belonged to a woman swathed in a pink bathrobe and fluffy white slippers.
Hobbs said, “I am pleased to inform you, madam, that your yard is being considered for a feature article in Horticulture magazine. Tell me, is this masterpiece of your own design or have you employed a team of professionals?”
“If you’re from Horticulture,” the woman said, “I’m Lady Gaga.” She thrust a hand through the door, a hand clutching a telephone. “See this? I’m already dialing nine-one-one.”