4
Again I noticed that curious phenomenon: guys didn’t pay the girl any mind. Maybe my eyes were going. Maybe my run of bad luck was giving me a case of wishful thinking. Maybe those other guys were so happily married they never looked at pretty girls. Maybe the sun came up in the west this morning.
I ducked a swooping shoat and tried to catch up a little since I could not track the girl by the stir she was causing. The street was crowded like today was a holiday, but everybody was growling and snapping at everybody else. We needed some miserable weather to cool everybody down. A really hot spell might be like a torch to tinder.
I spied a familiar face headed my way, ugly as the dawn itself. Saucerhead Tharpe towered above the crowd. Nobody gave him any grief. He was a bone-breaker by trade, which meant prosperous times for him. He spotted me and hoisted a ham-sized hand. “Yo! Garrett, my man. How they hanging?” It is always good to have Saucerhead on your side, but he isn’t overly blessed with brains or a flair for language.
“Low. You notice a cute little redhead about a hundred feet up? She’s so short I can’t keep track.”
His grin broadened, exposing the remnants of truly ugly teeth. “You on a case?” Cunning fellow, he had an idea he could get me to hire him to help.
“I don’t think so. She was watching my house, so I decided to follow her around.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah.”
His grin turned into a horror show. “Dean come home? Or did the Dead Man wake up?” He winked at the Goddamn Parrot.
He was smarter than a rock, anyway. “Both.”
Saucerhead chuckled. It was the kind of chuckle I get too often. My friends figure I was put here to amuse them with my travails.
“Look, Saucerhead, this gal is going to lose me if I don’t . . . ”
“Speaking of ones that got away, I seen Tinnie Tate yesterday.”
Tinnie is one ex that my cronies won’t let go away. “Great. Come by the house later. Tell me all about it.”
“I seen Winger, too. She . . . ”
“That’s your problem.”
Our mutual acquaintance Winger, though female, is as big as me and goofier than Saucerhead. And she has the moral sense of a rabid hyena. And, despite that, she is hard not to like.
“Hey, Garrett, come on, man.”
I was drifting away.
“She had a good idea. Honest, Garrett.”
Winger is chock-full of good ideas that get me up to my crotch in crocodiles. “Then you go in on it with her.” There was a small thinning of the crowd uphill. I caught a glimpse of my quarry. She seemed to be looking back, puzzled, maybe even exasperated.
“I would, Garrett,” Saucerhead shouted. “Only need somebody with real brains to get into it with us.
“That leaves me out, don’t it?” Didn’t it? Would a guy with real brains keep following somebody when it was evident that that somebody had decided that she wanted to be followed and was getting impatient with my delays?
Seemed like a good idea at the time. We have all said that.
I considered waving so she would know I was coming, but decided to keep up pretenses.
Saucerhead followed for a way, babbling something about my manners. I showed him my worst. I didn’t answer. I trotted after my new honey. The crowds were thinning. I kept her in sight. Her passage caused no more stir than if she were the crone I had seen looking into Barley Close.
We were just past where Macunado becomes the Way of the Harlequin when she glanced back, then turned into Heartlight Lane, where some of TunFaire’s least competent astrologers and diviners keep shop.