Behind the glass was a little stage, about four feet wide. At the back of the stage was a tiny door. It swung open, and out crawled a hairy old man dressed in a frilly red two-piece bikini. He gave a little bow and then set an old cassette deck down on the floor. When he pressed the play button, a slow, scratchy jazz tune began.
I kept my face perfectly blank, as if gray-haired cross-dressing octogenarians were a dime a dozen, and Anton said, “Do you know what time the next train leaves for Budapest?”
I held up a long ivory cigarette holder, on the tip of which was a business card, rolled into a little tube to look like a cigarette. “There are no more trains today, sir. Do you have a light?”
The old man in the window started dancing seductively, or at least as seductively as an old hairy man can manage. He was swaying his hips from side to side, but as we talked he held up a giant megaphone to his ear and leaned toward us, straining to hear our conversation.
Anton held a silver cigarette lighter up to the tip of the business card and said, “I believe you’ll find everything is in order.”
He held out his evening bag, and I held out mine. We exchanged them, nodded politely, and then walked away in opposite directions. As I continued on I opened the bag up and slipped my pistol inside, thankful I hadn’t been forced to use it, and then casually took a few long drags on my calling-card cigarette, which gradually turned to ashes and fell away. When I was almost at the end of the alley, the old man in the red bikini ran out into the street and shook his fist at me.
He shouted, “Never mind the thunder!”
Just then a stupendous clap of thunder tore across the entire sky, and I woke with a start. I was shivering like a wet dog, and Ella was standing on my chest, her ears alert and her whiskers all aquiver. I told her it was only a storm, but she hopped off the bed and scampered down the hall to see for herself.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and said out loud, “Really?”
Sometimes I wonder what the hell my brain thinks it’s doing. Most people get to dream about normal things—like flying, or finding buried treasure, or realizing too late that they’ve worn their pajamas to school—but no, not me. I get to dream about hairy old men in skimpy red bikinis.
They say a dream is just your subconscious trying to tell you a story. If that’s true, I wish my subconscious would just keep its dumb stories to its subconscious self.
11
Just about every day of my life, rain or shine, hell or high water, dog fight or fur ball, I stop in at the Village Diner to have breakfast. It’s just up the street from Donkey Joe’s Pizza, which happens to have the best pizza in the world, so you might find me on this block two, three, or—I’m ashamed to admit—four times a day. The diner faces the corner, so it’s bright and airy, with big windows and a good view of the street on two sides and a row of booths covered in soft teal pleather along the wall. Opposite the booths is a long stainless steel counter and a row of bar stools with round seats that spin in place.
As soon as I walked through the door, Judy snatched a mug from under the bar and filled it to the top with piping-hot coffee. Then she slid it in front of me as I sat down in my regular booth in the back, and we gave each other a little nod. Judy is long-limbed and angular, with pale skin that burns easily and a sprinkling of mocha freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her hazel eyes look out on the world with quiet resolve, like someone who’s still holding on to her dreams in spite of the odds.
Tanisha winked at me from her little window in the kitchen, which meant she’d already started on my breakfast. Tanisha is what they call big-boned, practically as wide as she is tall, with a bigger-than-life personality to match. She’s one of my favorite people in the world, not just because the down-home southern food that comes out of her kitchen is delicious enough to make a grown woman weep (it has happened) but also because she’s taught me so much over the years. No matter how bad things get—and Tanisha has had her share of rough times—she always has a happy face for the world.
You might not know it from watching us, but with the exception of Michael and Paco, Judy and Tanisha are my closest friends, which is kind of funny when you consider we hardly ever see each other outside the four walls of this diner. We tell each other everything there is to tell. I know the whole story of all the men Judy’s ever been with, as well as the whole story of all the men who ever broke her heart—because it’s the same story—and I know all about Tanisha’s kids and why she refuses to speak to her mother, and they both know all about Ethan and Guidry and everything else that’s ever happened to me.
I took a sip of coffee as Judy slid into my booth to rest her legs for a second.
She winked and said, “What’s shakin’, pretty mama?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“Oh, honey, I’m a waitress in a diner in a beach town. I’m all-knowing.”
I smiled. “So I guess you heard about the head-on collision.”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“And you know it was me that pulled the guy—”
She waved her fingers like she was shooing away a fly. “Oh please. You’re a hero. Yesterday’s news. Yawn.”
“And you know about the old man at the bookstore?”
“Yeah.” Her face fell and she shook her head. “And I’m just sick about it. I stop in there every morning for a paper, and he’s just the sweetest old man. He always wears that red beret, with those yellow suspenders and that red shirt with gold buttons, kind of makes me think of Santa Claus. When I saw all those cops outside his shop I nearly had a heart attack.”
I said, “Judy, you haven’t see his cat, have you?”
“That old tabby? Don’t tell me it’s gone missing too?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They can’t find it.”
“Oh no.” She leaned back and laid her head on the back of the booth. “Well, maybe that old man took him wherever he wandered off to.”
I realized she didn’t know anything about the bloody paw prints on the counter, or the fact that they’d called in a homicide unit to investigate the scene. Detective McKenzie was probably keeping that under wraps. Sometimes, the less the general public knows about the details of a case, the easier it is to pin down the true culprits.
Just then Tanisha put a plate up in her window and rang the bell to signal my order was ready. Judy eyed me suspiciously. “Wait a minute. Where’d you hear that old man’s cat was missing?”
I shrugged. “Oh, you know. Just around.”
She folded her arms over her chest and studied me. “Just around, my ass. What are you not telling me?”
I pointed at the kitchen window. “I’m telling you my breakfast is getting cold.”
She said, “Huh,” and rushed off to pick it up. She’s fast, though. In the blink of an eye she was back, holding my plate aloft with one hand.
“Tell me now, or the breakfast goes in the trash.”
“Oh please, you don’t scare me. Tanisha would beat you to a pulp.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take my chances.”
I sighed. “Okay, but I don’t want you blabbing it all over town.”
She sat down and slid my plate in front of me. It was the same exact breakfast I have every day: two eggs over easy with extra-crispy potatoes and one hot biscuit and, sadly, no bacon. For a second I considered wolfing it all down and keeping my secrets to myself, but I knew Judy would never let me get away with it.
“I do not blab,” she sniffed. “I share. But I promise I won’t say a word to anybody.”