The beard stared through the glass as though he knew I stood hidden behind his reflection. It suddenly became important to me to remember how I knew him. When he slowly turned and walked toward the store’s exit, I followed.

After some hasty scrambling through the holes I picked him up downstairs in Designer Discounts. Again he stood, hands in pockets, scowling, looking through the glass, and I had the uneasy feeling he’d been waiting. A minute after I spotted him he turned, walked to a sock counter, and fingered the goods.

Tired of my lost cause I had just decided to leave when Peacoat picked up a pair of socks and retreated behind the counter outside my field of vision. Then I noticed Harry enter the store. I watched as he moved his bulk purposefully toward the sock bin, tongue flicking rapidly over his partially open mouth.

When the Mole moved out of my sight I dashed to the nearest door, opened it, and startled customers in the rear of the adjoining bookstore. I grunted through the staring people, walked down an aisle, and out the door.

The afternoon crowd was thinning into a suppertime lull, but a circle of curious onlookers had gathered in the concourse in front of the department store. Shouldering my way through, I saw the Mole and Peacoat eyeing each other like Abbott and Costello. I stopped moving when I heard the Mole’s enraged voice.

“You stupid, ugly bastard, you’re going down for socks? Four stinking dollars’ worth! They were on sale, for Christ sake! It’s assholes like you that make me rich.”

I edged closer, but they were so angry that neither noticed me. Two glittering black coals shot sparks from the holes left for his eyes in Peacoat’s full-face beard. He looked like a street lamp with hair on the end of it. A red-faced Harry dangled a pair of handcuffs from his fat hands.

“I don’t make you rich, you fat slob! The rich make you rich, just like they give their guard dogs steak. You’re just a German shepherd that can’t see the leash!”

The words dripped with a nasal singsong sarcasm that shook my skull. Twenty years is a long time to remember anything, but I remembered the voice.

“Ain’t no way you’re going to get them on me, Porker. You try, and I’ll bite your fat fucking ear off.” He waved long, bony-white, nail-bitten fingers toward the cuffs.

Harry glanced at the growing number of onlookers and tried reason. “Everything will go easier if you just come with me. Then I won’t have to use these or call for backup.”

“Call your fucking backup. I don’t go nowhere with police washouts.” His voice had the grind of dry metal twisting against dry metal. I’d hated it twenty years ago, and I’d heard enough to hate it now.

The Mole didn’t like being called a washout, but Peacoat always had an instinct for the short hairs. I took a deep breath and stepped through the front row. “Blackhead. Long time no see.” He seemed surprised to hear his name, and I waited silently while he tried to make me.

Hairy looked relieved; people sensed an end to the confrontation and the circle began to splinter. “You know this smartass?” he asked.

I nudged them to the side of the concourse as I answered. “Years ago. I was a street worker in The End and he was one of the kids.”

“Shoulda left him on the street. Asshole was sitting on the floor pulling the damn socks on his feet. They were on sale,” the Mole added incredulously.

“Yeah, I heard.” I looked at Blackhead and realized he was holding his shoes. He stared at me, oblivious of Harry’s comment. I hoped he would stay quiet. He opened his mouth, but I moved between him and the Mole. “Why don’t you lay him on me?”

“That’ll cost me money.”

I looked around and urged the last of the spectators away. “How many did you score today?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Twelve,” he said, pride poking through his gruffness.

I looked at him with genuine respect. “Jesus, Harry, you must have eyes behind your head.”

A small flattered grin flashed across his round face as he weighed my proposal. “I suppose it wouldn’t break me”—he glanced at the clock on the far wall—”I still got time to make up for it.” He frowned. “That is, if this skinny turd hasn’t hung a sign on me.”

I sensed Blackhead start. When I looked his mouth was open, and he was staring at the Mole with amazement. “The fat man is a bounty hunter? That’s pretty sick shit, Washout.”

“Shut up, jerk.” I shook my head at Harry. “Maybe I should have left him in the damn street. He’s an asshole, Mole, but he’s an asshole I know. I’ll owe you one.”

Harry was stuffing the handcuffs back into his pocket. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll bust two in the time it takes to do this freak’s paperwork. You gonna be here tomorrow?”

“I haven’t checked.”

“Well, maybe I’ll see you.” Blackhead was already yesterday’s news as Harry waddled back toward the department store. Before he disappeared through the entrance he turned and stared. For a second I thought he had changed his mind. But all he said was, “It’s someone, but it ain’t the Dough Boy.”

Blackhead stood shaking his head, a scornful look on his face. “Ain’t this a trip? The original bleeding heart social worker doing security for a bourgeois mall. I’da never figured you for a cop, you were always such a big nanny.”

I waved my arm toward the center rotunda. “I’m touched you remember me at all, Blackhead, but you have your classes confused. This place is a step up from bourgeois. Why don’t you give me the socks and put your shoes back on?”

He looked at me contemptuously. “Give you the fucking socks? Are you crazy? I put up with insulting shit from a fat tub of guts and you want me to give back the socks? You want ‘em? Take ‘em, cop.”

No way I was going to touch his feet. “I’m not a cop.”

“What are you then? I didn’t think malls hired social workers.” A nasty grin crossed his face. “Of course it might be a moneymaker. You might be helping the nervous middle class overcome their spending anxieties?”

It had been a long time since I’d thought about The End, and my memories almost crowded out his sarcasm. “I’m a PI. What do you do when you’re not stealing socks?”

Another brown-chipped-tooth grin split his thick beard. “Nothing as exotic as mall security.” He sat on the polished tile floor and pulled on his shoes, over the stolen socks. When he stood back up, I looked at his added inches. “‘The more things change, the more they stay the same,’ huh, Blackhead.”

He started for the mall’s exit. “Don’t call me Blackhead. I haven’t been called that since I was a kid, and I don’t like it.”

“Is there anything you do like?”

The suppertime shoppers gave way as Blackhead grunted his way through. He leaned his tall frame forward as he walked, moving close enough to create discomfort in anyone he was behind.

I kept my eyes on his long, scrawny neck, hustling to follow before the gaps closed. We made it to the exit in record time until I remembered I hadn’t punched out.

“Slow down, man. You still didn’t tell me what you’re called?” He stopped and turned around. “Emil.”

“Emil?”

“Yeah, that’s my name. I guess your cop friends all call you ‘Flower Child.’“ “I don’t have any cop friends. Matt works fine.”

“What happened to Jake?”

I grinned. “I dropped the nickname when I went into the detective business. I didn’t want anyone to confuse me with Jake Gittes. I like my nose.”

He turned toward me. “Who the fuck is Jake Gittes?” I shrugged. “Never mind.”

“Well, Matt, are you leaving or what? I don’t feel like jawing in Yuppie World.”

I almost felt good about reporting to the detaining room. “Sorry, Emil, I can’t leave. You ever see the rest of the gang?”

A dark look crossed his face but all he did was grunt. “What gang?”

“You know, the kids you ran with.”

He shrugged. “Some of them.” “Well, say hello for me.”

He turned his back without answering and almost ran down a pair of packed jeans pushing a stroller. He started to snarl, then turned back to me with a strange look on his face. “Tell ‘em yourself. It wouldn’t kill you to visit The End once in a while. You used to say it was the first place that felt like home.”

I was surprised to hear my words thrown back at me. “You have a good memory, Emil.” Another strange look crossed his face. “Too good,” he said, quietly.

I watched as he ducked and disappeared through the revolving door. Halfway back to the detaining room I grew annoyed that he hadn’t bothered to thank me.