CHAPTER 28: CROSSING OFF JORDAN

Dai nemici mi guardo io, dagli amici mi guarda iddio.

I can protect myself from my enemies, may god protect

me from my friends.

I wasn’t home more than ten minutes before the phone rang. It was Renee excited, breathlessly explaining what happened at the Little Bobby Hutton Candlelight Vigil. Thank God she hadn’t seen me. Her emotions were raw, she said, and did I want to drive over. Normally Renee with raw emotions would have propelled me out the door and into my Mustang, but tonight, after what I’d just seen, I would have felt. . . I wasn’t sure exactly, maybe a cheat, someone who’d take advantage. For sex, and from a woman who was always straight up with me. And there was more I was feeling. While I was playing at being an amateur sleuth, all around me Americans were going completely berserk. My familiar life: selling cars, playing poker with the guys, driving my Porsche, my relationship with Renee seemed less familiar.

Promising Renee I’d call tomorrow, I hung up the phone, my head spinning, and went to the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of Anchor Steam out of the fridge, chugged the bottle, then a second. After the third beer, I went into the bathroom for a shower. Finished and dried off, I picked up my brand-new woolen slacks that now sported a brand-new hole in the knee. I tossed them from my bed onto the floor and crawled under the covers. It took me a while, but I finally fell into a troubled asleep.

In the morning, I awoke, my sleep shirt sweat-damp, but clear-headed, thinking the first thing I needed to do was have the film developed and deliver the photographs of Jordan Fournier to Carter’s law office, so Carter could begin building the Other-Dude-Did-It-Defense. The second thing I had to do was write Sweets a letter. Carter could deliver it. I found paper and pen and sat down at the kitchen table.

Dear Sweets,

Vincent and I are finished with the detective business. I have provided your attorney with the alternative theory that will save your pathetic, skinny ass. We are extremely happy for you. Pop is delighted. Mom is delighted. All my brothers and my sister are delighted. The entire city of Oakland is delighted. I’m explaining this so you to let you know that I take great delight in severing our relationship with you. Capisci?

The end. If you beat these charges, and I think you will, there will no longer be a car for you from the Brovelli Brothers unless you want to buy it the same way all ourcustomers do. With money. I know you will go whining to Pop. But Pop can do what he wants. Vincent and I have fulfilled our pledge to him. As for any other form of blackmail you might try, it’s our word against yours.

Sincerely, get stuffed,

Victor Brovelli

I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I was after I finished writing. It felt almost as good as selling a car or ending a relationship with a woman who was hinting that her biological clock was ticking. With a friend like Sweets, who needed enemies? The books about being a private P.I. I’d donate to the library for the next amateur sleuth to read, and good luck to him. I’d keep the Ross McDonald novel, which I’d finish one of these days now that I would no longer have to spend all my fucking time trying to save a burglar’s life. I re-read the letter to make sure it said everything I needed to say. Questo e tutto, I mumbled, which means that’s it, done, over. I felt as if I was at a crossroad in my life. I dressed for work. On the way I dropped the film off at the photo lab we used for some of our advertising. Since I was the first customer of the day, I was assured by a cute clerk whose nose looked charmingly askew that she’d have it ready for me by noon. I drove to Ole’s for a celebratory putting-Sweets-behind-me breakfast.

Three cups of coffee and the best breakfast I’ve ever had warming my stomach, I drove to work, making a quick tour of the neighborhood first. The broken window of Furniture Discount and Flynn’s had been repaired. The Donut Hole’s front window was still boarded over, but there was a long line of people waiting to get in. A huge white canvas sign hung above the door read:

Solidarity = No Cost

All donuts = 50% off.

I parked the Mustang behind the office and went in. Sylvia and Vincent were drinking coffee and eating the DoNut Hole’s famous rhubarb muffins. On Sylvia’s desk was a vase of yellow long-stem roses with a card attached to the vase in the shape of a motorcycle. The wheels were red hearts.

“Doesn’t look like I convinced Sunny,” I said.

“If he doesn’t stop sending me flowers, I going to kill the sonavabitch.”

“Means more flowers for the altar,’ I said.

“You’re welcome to them,” Sylvia sneered.

Clearly Sunny Badger didn’t understand the word, no. I almost started laughing, but seeing the look on Sylvia’s face I thought better of it. I took the roses and put them in the bathroom out of sight.

When I returned, Sylvia said, “You know you were on television.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“CBS News,” Vincent said. “Got a shot of you running down the city hall steps hugging a black babe.”

“She’s a friend.”

“Friend?” Sylvia sneered

“Yeah. You gotta problem with that?”

Sylvia shook her head. “Your screwed up love life’s not my business, Vittorio, but you know that black guys don’t like white guys messing with their women.”

This was the first time I’d heard someone refer to my love life as being screwed up. Exciting, over-the-top, sometimes indiscriminate, selfish, all of which was totally false, but never had I heard screwed up. Was this her view of me, or did other people have the same idea? I let the question hang for a moment, then I dismissed it. As for the black-white thing, she was probably right, but screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

“Sylvia told me about Winona’s husband,” Vincent said. “I understand wanting to get photographs of him for Carter, but why the hell didn’t you get out of that jungle once the riot started?”

I ignored the reference to tropical climes and wild animals as unintentional. “You should have been there, Vincent. It wasn’t that easy. It was like everybody was trapped in their own anger. The cops had the entire area surrounded. By the way, Mario was there.”

Sylvia said, “I thought I saw him after I brought you the camera. But I wasn’t sure. He was with a gal who looked like she could play center for the Warriors.”

“That was him, alright. Her name is Grace.”

“Mario? Damn,” Vincent said. “I think our brother lost some of his mind along with his hand in Vietnam, hanging out with all the crazies.”

“Grace isn’t crazy. And you’re wrong Sylvia. Her group is called PeaceLinks. That was a peace sign on her beret.”

“And bats in her belfry,” Sylvia countered.

“Is that an original cliché?” I asked.

“All those people down there, they got screws lose,” Sylvia replied.

Tired of the way this conversation was going, I said, “Forget the riot. Let me tell you what I did.” I explained the letter I’d sent to Sweets via his lawyer.

“You did the right thing, Victor,” Vincent said. “And, believe me, I appreciate you doing most of the heavy lifting.”

The relief on Vincent’s face was visible.

“Glad that’s over,” Sylvia said. “Now we can get back to making money.”

“Nothing can make me happier,” I said, wondering if that were true. These last days had done something to my mind. Maybe there were a few screws lose.

The rest of the morning, Vincent and I went over our inventory. Carlton Motors, which had been so badly damaged by fire, called and offered us a couple of cars. They were closing down their East 14th store and moving over the hill to Danville.

I got on the phone to Joe Carlton.

“Got to get away from these Black Panthers, and their radical friends. You know it’s them stirring up all this trouble,” he stated. I almost said something, but kept my mouth shut since the prices of the cars were too good to antagonize him. You got no balls, Brovelli, I thought to myself as I hung up. This wasn’t the first time I’d listened to racial slurs and said squat. I told Vincent of my telephone call to Carlton, and that I felt badly. He told me I wasn’t the only one without balls. According to him, when it came to confronting the blacks, half the Caucasian male population had lost their coglioni. This was not what I meant, but explaining would have led to an argument. The emotions of blacks, whites, and Chicanos, already hot, were on the verge of a melt-down. I suddenly began to see my twin and me on opposite sides of the political and social divide. As twins we’d always been in tandem, and the thought made me sad.

Sylvia dropped us off at Carlton Motors, and we drove back to the lot, Vincent at the wheel of a powder blue ’66 Lincoln Continental with forty thousand miles on it and me looking sharp in a red ’65 Camaro with custom rims. I knew of a guy who was looking for low mileage wheels for his teenage age son. The Camaro sported red with white stripes, a kid would think was cool. The Lincoln had an eight-track tape deck mounted between the center console and the dash that would give the asking price a boost.

Sylvia sat us down in the office and went over the state of our finances. She cautioned us that we shouldn’t take the bank increasing our line of credit as a signal to go on a buying frenzy. Vincent and I agreed, but I could tell by the set of his jaw that Vincent was determined to keep going. When he’s like this, you don’t get in his way. But she did raise our spirits by pointing out an uptick in profits. Once again I was struck by the irony of our success while all the other businesses on the street had been suffering major hits. Vincent noted that if we could have a good rest of April and May, going into summer when sales historically increased, we might be able to buy a few more classic cars. Vincent and I both knew that the real money in the used car business was in well maintained, classic automobiles. Our ace in the hole was Jitters, whose mechanical genius would allow us to offer three-year warrantees on all moving parts, an unheard-of guarantee in the used car biz. But first we needed to accumulate a substantial inventory and about two years of rainy-day cash. I placed my legs up on my desk and leaned back in my chair. Maybe now was the time to taste Pappy Van Winkle’s fine bourbon. I stood up, then changed my mind and sat down again. I was jumping the gun. The time to celebrate would be after summer, within sight of our goal.

I spent a couple of hours at my desk, making cold calls and doing paperwork. At noon, I declined Vincent’s offer of Flynn’s chili. I needed to pick up the photographs and deliver them to Carter. I got there just in time before he left the office for lunch. He was delighted with the news, explaining that the appearance of Jordan Fournier gave him an additional “wrinkle” to present to the jury. He spread the photographs on his desk and examined them one by one. Most were of the riot.

As he was looking through them, I said, “Let me see that one.”

He handed me a photograph of a man in a hood throwing what looked like a Zucchini or a skinny eggplant. The hood concealed much of the miscreant’s face, but I recognized it. I placed it in my pocket.

“What’re you doing?” Carter asked.

“I know the guy in the photo. I got to check it out for sure.” The negatives were in the glovebox of my car.

“Anything to do with Sweets?”

“No. Something else entirely.” The face in the photograph was of Captain Halpern of the Station Defense Team. Jay would have a heart attack.

“You know, Victor, it’s not Winona’s murder I’m worried about,” Carter said. “It’s Arabella’s that’s the problem. Sweet’s fingerprints in her apartment, I can deal with, but the old gal across the hall puts Sweets at the scene at the time of the murder.”

“Have you spoken to her?” I asked.

“I haven’t and I’m too far behind with other cases I’m supposed to be working on. My father warns me not to let your father down, then he sends me work he needs yesterday, and screams at me if it’s not done.”

He looked up at me, with a gleam in his eyes. “Uh, oh,” I thought.

“Could you interview the woman for me, Victor, it would be a huge favor.”

“Can’t do it, Carter. You read my letter to Sweets, my days as a detective are over. Fatto, finito. Pop has a saying, the best armor is to keep out of range. My brother and I are staying as clear of Sweets from now on as possible.”

“Come on, Victor. Do me a favor. My dad has me in the frigging law library for the next three days. One of our investigators is vacationing in Mexico, and his partner is working on another case that is a money-maker. Your old man is giving my old man a headache about Sweets, so my old man is doing the same to me. Look, you see that vein in my forehead throbbing? Migraine coming on.”

I began inching backwards. “Sorry, no can do. Take an aspirin. I’ve got work too, you know. Cars to sell, promises to keep. Bankers to see. No way. Sweets is your responsibility now, Carter. Send the bill to Brovelli senior.” By the last word I’d reached the door and had my hand on the knob poised to make my exit.

“I’ll fix you up with Veronica,” Carter said.

I took my hand off the door knob. “Your cousin, the stewardess?”“

“Yeah, that Veronica. She flew in last night. Got a two-day layover, and would love nothing better than to go out on the town, say a nice dinner at the top of the Mark, a little nightclubbing after, etc, etc. if you get my meaning.”

“By all means,” I said. That damn Carter was not playing fair. His etc, etc, was turning into a candle lit bedroom and Veronica in a see-through negligee. “Tell me, has Veronica changed since the last time I saw her?” I asked. “She hasn’t gained a bunch of weight, got in an accident and ruined that gorgeous face, anything like that?” I was imagining that face: eyes too big, nose to slender, mouth too wide - but the sum of the parts forming an unlikely but stunning visage. Not to mention the stunning body.

“Nope, still runner up for 1964 Miss Illinois.”

“You’re a very persuasive guy, you know, Carter. I got to give this some real thought.”

“Here, let me show you a recent photograph. It might help you make up your mind.”

Carter opened his desk and removed an envelope, fingered through the contents and pulled a couple out. “Here’s some family snapshots from a get together in Bermuda. You’ll appreciate this one on the beach in her bikini.”

I was now back standing in front of Carter’s desk, feeling like I was the biggest hypocrite in the world. I took the photograph.

“You’ll be doing me a big favor, Vincent. Gael alums have to stick together. Interview the old bag and save me from fornicating with my first cousin, which is a sin in the eyes of the church.”

“What are friends for,” I said. “I don’t have her phone number. Give it to me and I’ll give her a call.”

“No way,” Carter said. “I’ll set it up and call you after I get your interview on paper.”

“You think I’d go back on my word?”

“I’m not taking any chances, Victor. Remember, I grew up with you dagos.”“Not very P.C., Carter. I might have to call the ACLU.

“Fuck those assholes. When shall I tell her you’ll pick her up tonight?”

Oh, Christ, I had plans. “It’s got to be tomorrow night.”

“You got some frigging love life going, Victor,” Carter said.

He just assumed I had a date. I didn’t have a date, but I had a plan.

“Veronica‘s staying with a friend. The set up will be that she’ll meet you in the lobby of the Mark at eight o’clock tomorrow night. Unless you renege on your word, that is.”

A Brovelli’s word is always good, I told him. A matter of onore. As I walked out of the office, I said, “Victor, my boy, you have the will power of a nit,” Carter’s secretary looked up from her desk. “I know what you mean,” she said, fluttering her fake eyelashes. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.

Let’s get the interview over with, I said to myself. Earn my date with Veronica, and put the last obligation to Sweets behind me. For good. Yeah, you heard me, for good.

Thinking of the tall, willowy Veronica, I recalled that our last date had not turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, that is, the two of us between the sheets. I wondered if I should rent a room at the hotel, you know, like have a great meal at the Top of the Mark, overlooking Baghdad by the Bay, then entwine in said sheets.

I felt guilty, planning the seduction of Veronica, while I had a tentative seduction plan for Dila Agbo. Not to mention that I had an ongoing thing with Renee. But I couldn’t really feel guilty about Renee, could I, since we had an understanding that had to do primarily with satisfying sexual urgency. It’s like when you get hungry, you head to the refrigerator, right? When it came to Veronica, the metaphor was more like going to your favorite 4-star restaurant, something that’s expensive and you don’t do very often. As for Dila Agbo, thinking along the same lines, metaphorically speaking. . . Nothing came to mind. It would take a lot more of Dila to see how she would fit into my life. Or, for that matter, how I would fit into hers.

• • •

I hadn’t been fed for a while, so I stopped for a quick lamb curry at a little mom and pop Indian joint called the Taj, close to Arabella’s apartment. They baked their own nan and their curries were fabulous as long as you didn’t order spicy hot. I ate to the sound of Indian music, which always reminds me of belly dancers.

After my meal, I left my car parked in front of the Taj and walked the rest of the way to the apartment. The elderly woman I had to interview was named Rachel Winslow, a very dignified name I thought. I rang her doorbell and heard a voice like sandpaper asking me who I was. I introduced myself first, then explained what I wanted. Reminding me there was building security available to all residents with a push of a button, she buzzed me in. When I arrived at her door, it was opened a crack but secured by a chain. Half a wrinkled face was peering out behind half a pair of spectacles. The one eye behind the spectacles looked like a kind of marble I played with as a child called allys for alabaster.

“You got any identification?” she asked.

I showed her my business card and Carter Innis’s card. One eye examined them.

“Used car salesman,” she said, in that tone, I’ve come to despise, meaning a guy who was willing to tell any lie in order to make a sale, like the jerks over at Dynamite Auto Sales in Hayward who never passed up the opportunity to turn back an odometer. They were also known for grooving bald tires so they looked like they had tread left. Once, they’d tried to pass off a few of their disguised beauties to us, but Jitters, our mechanic crawled under the cars and come out shaking his head. Assholes give us honest car salesmen a bad name.

“I’m helping Innis Attorneys at Law,” I said.

“Doing a little moonlighting, eh? Sales must be down.”

“The Brovelli Brothers are doing fine, Mrs. Winslow. If you ever need a dependable vehicle, you come see me. I will personally see to it you drive away happy. Now, may I come in?”

“Can’t drive,” she crackled. “Eyesight. Bastards took away my drivers’ license.”

I felt a little heart-rush. If she couldn’t see well that meant her identification of Sweets as the guy knocking on Arabella’s door was unreliable. Good news for the Sweet-tooth-man.

I felt I needed to be sure. “Would it be possible I could come in and chat. I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”

“You get that scar in a barroom brawl or some kind of prison fight?”

“You don’t have to worry. I’ve never been in a barroom brawl and never been in jail. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.” Not the truth, since there were two in my desk drawer waiting to be paid. I explained about my youthful baseball injury. When I mentioned baseball, she unhooked the chain, explaining America’s principal pastime was her principal pastime, seeing she was old and widowed and had once dated Ty Cobb.

“Made love like he ran the bases,” she said, as she escorted me down the hall into her living room decorated with Oakland A’s and Milwaukee Brewers posters and pennants. “Fast is good in baseball but not much use to a woman, if you know what I mean.”

She batted fake eyelashes that looked like she’d murdered a couple of moths and stuck them on her lids. I assured her I understood completely. She directed me to an overstuffed easy chair, and I mean overstuffed, with lumps the size of cantaloupes. She sat down opposite me on an antique settee. Her hair was a blueish white. If you ignored the wrinkles and the stupid eyelashes, you could tell she’d once been very cute. The coffee table between us was covered with baseball magazines and racing forms. A corner of it was reserved for a black and white television set. A game was on. She turned off the sound and leaned back.

“You like baseball?” she asked

“Not especially,” I answered. “In college I played rugby.”

“Don’t pay much attention to foreign sports. What college did you attend, young man?”

“Saint Mary’s College, in Moraga.”

“Catholic, right? Got no use for Catholics, although I once dated a real nice dago by the name of Ping Bodie. His real name was Francesco Pezzolo. Caught him on the downside playing in the Pacific Coast League in 1922, or thereabouts. His game wasn’t the only thing on the downside,” she cackled.

I wasn’t interested in why she didn’t like Catholics or why an Italian changed his name to Bodie, which seemed dumb. Time to do the interview and get out of this aging ball park. I pulled out a small notebook and pen from the inside of my blue Brovelli Brothers blazer and spoke in my best detective voice. “Would you mind, Mrs. Winslow, describing the person you saw knocking on Arabella’s door the day she was murdered.”

“I told the police officers. Guess they don’t like to share information. Perry Mason always gets real upset with that silly district attorney, Hamilton Burger, for withholding crucial evidence. I met Raymond Burr one time at a Dodgers’ game. Nice fellow. I think he was coming on to me, but he wasn’t my type, and I was a little too old for him anyway by that time.”

Not a subject I wanted to pursue. I nodded as if to acknowledge that she was way too good for the likes of Raymond Burr. “You’re right about not sharing information. The defense attorney has been kept completely in the dark.” This was not true, but not exactly a lie. “So, could you describe the man?”

“Fellow’s back was turned to me, so I didn’t see the face. He was wearing one of those tan trench coats that spies wear. You know the kind that belts in the middle and has straps on the shoulders. The big thing was the yellow hair, part of it standing up on top of his head like a rooster, rest of it hanging down. Didn’t look all that clean either.”

A trench coat without a hat? The two seemed to go together, but that might be only in the movies. I continued. “You said you lost your driver’s license because of poor eyesight. Are you sure that’s exactly what you saw. Couldn’t have been a yellow hat, say?”

“My left eye is in bad shape, but my right eye is 20/20.”

I recalled that same good eye peering out at me suspiciously through the crack of the door just a few minutes ago. I looked carefully at the left eye, its retina covered by a cataract. Twenty- twenty or no twenty-twenty, the old girl was half blind. Carter could use this.

“Was there anything else you remembered about the man?”

“He wasn’t real tall.”

“How tall would you guess?”

“About your size.”

“So he wasn’t a real tall man?”

“No, but you’re no shorty.”

If the guy had been over six feet, that would have put Sweets out of the picture, I thought. “You didn’t hear anything?”

“Not a sound, and I have perfect hearing.”

I remembered seeing a door chain. “So, did Arabella open the door and let him in? Or did she kind of peek out like you just did?”

The old gal hesitated. “Well, she must have. The hall got empty real quick.”

It was an odd way to put it.

“So, did you or didn’t you see him enter?”

“Well, hell, dearie, he was there, then he wasn’t. Where else would he be?”

“Did you see him leave, by any chance?”

“Eighth inning, tied with two men on.”

Made sense, I thought. Eighth inning, two men out, a crazy baseball fan like her. Why would she even bother? Perhaps Carter could get the jury thinking about this. It was only her word. She could be lying, but I couldn’t imagine why.

I couldn’t think of anything else. I’d done what Carter asked me to do. As I stood up to leave, she’d already turned on the sound and was concentrating on the game, poised on the edge of the settee, leaning forward toward the set like a catcher crouching behind home plate. I thanked her. She waved me away.

“See yourself out, kiddo.”

Outside, on my way to my car, I said aloud, “Adio Sweets. Ciao, Veronica.”

A woman walking toward me moved closer to the building as I passed her.

• • •

When I returned to the lot, Sylvia told me I had a call from Carter Innis. I dialed. Carter’s secretary put me through. I listened without commenting and slammed the phone down.

“You don’t look as if you got any good news,” Sylvia said.

“Winona’s husband, Fournier,” I said, glumly.

“What about him?”

“The cops found him in his motel room last night, shot to death.”

“Since you’re no longer helping Sweets, what does it matter?”

“Minchia,” I swore.

“Well, at least, they can’t blame Sweets for this murder,” She said.

Right, but an important part of Sweets defense was gone. Three shooting deaths, the first two connected by the same kind of weapon. Not the third one, according to Carter. He explained that Fournier was shot with a larger caliber pistol. The news was depressing.

Sylvia stood up from her desk and gave me a hug, her big breasts crushing into me. “Don’t look so down, Vittorio. You said you were finished with the whole thing, didn’t you?”

I had and I intended to stick to my decision. Why the hell couldn’t Innis use the other dude did it defense anyway? Vincent was out on the lot. I joined him and filled him in. His reaction was much the same as Sylvia’s.

I waited for the phone to ring and Pop’s voice admonishing me for letting Sweets down. I was sure that by now the Raging Cajun, ancestor of Jean Laffite, had called and whined and begged and resorted to reminders of the favor he did for the Brovelli family, evoking the sacred importance of onore, or as Vincent calls it, the frigging onore. But no call came, and by five o’clock, I sent Sylvia home and told Vincent I’d close up. Vincent was all too happy to get home. He said he’d drop off Sunny Badger’s roses to the Church because he had to pick up some stuff Mom had for his wife. I spent the next hour making cold calls to prospective customers. It was a theory that I’d come up with: Call telephone numbers at random and tell the person who answers that they’ve won the chance to buy a used automobile at the unheard discount of 30%. Thirty percent, I reasoned, sounded like a lot, but depended entirely on what we took the car in for. In the case of certain cars, if we discounted half, we’d still earn a fifteen percent profit. Cold calls were time-consuming and tedious, and for every twenty calls we made, we might only get one person to take our offer seriously and come down. It was a little like standing at the bus stop waiting for a good-looking woman to get off and asking her if she wanted to go to bed with you. Odds on, 99% of the women would slap your face, but that 1% that said yes might be worth the pain. Vincent had assured me that this was one of my stupider theories. Today, the odds increased. One man and one woman said they were looking to buy and gave me their names, promising they’d be down by noon tomorrow.

After I wrote down the names of our prospective buyers, I went to the storage unit in the back room, slipped on overalls and spent the next hour washing and polishing cars. While I was polishing a pink and white 1958 two-door Impala, the thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t asked Carter a couple of things that were still bugging me. I put down my buffer rag and went to make the call, hoping he was still in the office. I reached for the phone, then stopped. What was I doing? I was no longer a part of this. I’d promised myself and I’d promised my brother.

I went back to cleaning cars. Ten minutes later I was on the phone to Carter. I’d caught him just as he was leaving. He sounded down. I told him what was on my mind. No, he replied, there was no rental car issued to Fournier. No automobile of any kind registered to him abandoned. No car registered to him at all, even in New Orleans.

A guy without wheels, no fucking way. It wasn’t American.

Innis continued with the bad news. The cops had checked trains and buses. They had no idea how Fournier had traveled here and when he’d arrived. I thought this was too weird. I asked Carter if he could still use the alternative suspect theory. He could try was his answer, but now that the man was dead, it would be more difficult. If only Fournier had been shot with a .22, Carter groused.

I hung up. Outside, I began pacing. I stopped at a 1964 Ford Galaxy. Well, hell, I thought, some buddy of Fournier drove him here. Fournier shot Winona and Arabella, and whoever the guy was who drove Fournier shot him. It was possible. I went back to polishing. My thoughts turned from Fournier to a pleasanter subject, Dila Agbo. At six-thirty and little chance of a sale before closing time, I took our key box, and locked the office. I drove my car on to the street, parked, and placed the chain over the driveway. I’d grab a quick beer.

Flynn’s was about half filled when I entered. Swanee was standing by the jukebox, cigarette dangling from his lips, shoving dimes in. Simon and Garfunkel were singing “Mrs. Robinson”. Stuart was behind the bar, but Body was sitting on a stool, a bowl of pretzels and a mug of beer in front of him. He waved me over.

I steeled myself.

“Brovelli, me boyo, tell me, why is Italy shaped like a boot?”

“He’s going to tell, me, right Stuart,” I said to the grinning Tamberg.

“That I am, that I am, lad. But mull it over in that tiny Dago brain of yours for a minute; it’s so obvious.”

Stuart placed a frosty mug of Anchor Steam on the bar, and I drank. It went down smooth. “I give up,” I said.

“Do you think, they could fit that crap in a tennis shoe?”

“Obscure,” I said.

“Vince stopped in for a cold one before heading home,” Body said. “He told me you guys are out of the detective business, that true?”

“You bet your Irish ass,” I said. “Sweets is now in the capable hands of Innis and Innis Attorneys at Law.”

“Which Innis?” Body asked.

“Carter.”

Body chuckled. “Guess the ancestor of Jean Lafitte will be taking the needle won’t he, Stuart?”

The bartender nodded his head. “Better than the electric chair.”

“Nothing fried can be good for you,” Body said.

“You’re a sick man,” I said.

Body might be right, I thought. Stay tough, Victor, stay tough, I thought to myself. Don’t go looking for a way to break your promise, but the part of me that liked Sweets kept nagging, have you really done enough? Obviously, Winona’s ghost didn’t think so. She was standing by the pool table pointing to her Mickey Mouse watch and tapping one of her feet like Sister Marie Rose did when I walked into her fifth-grade class late.

No way, I thought. I blinked, hoping Winona would disappear. She didn’t. Screw it, I’d ignore her. The bar talk had turned to boxing. I tuned out. Let the boxing aficionados argue I nursed my beer and allowed my mind to drift to Dila Agbo. It drifted from idea to idea until I came up with The Idea.

I left without goodbyes and hurried to my Mustang. There was just enough time to go home and change before the eight o’clock performance of Othello. The plan that I’d come up with seemed reasonable in its simplicity: I’d attend tonight’s performance of Othello, and after the performance, surprise Dila with my appearance. I’d wow her with my knowledge of Shakespeare, and convince her to have a late-night dinner with me.