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“Because people immediately assume they’re either homosexual or redneck?” I offered.
She nodded. “There you go, there you go. Damn, it’s a shame.”
“No argument,” I said.
“Nothing like a man with a good mustache.”
“Damn straight.”
“So what can I do for ya?”
I showed her the driver’s-license photo of Karen Nichols I’d cut from the newspaper. “Know her?”
She gave the photo a good long look, then shook her head. “But ain’t that the woman, though?”
“What woman?”
“The one jumped off that building downtown?”
I nodded. “I heard she may have stayed here for a while.”
“Nah.” She lowered her voice. “She looks a little too, ahm, buttoned-down for a place like this. You know?”
“What kind of people stay here?” I asked, as if I didn’t know already.
“Oh, nice folks,” she said. “Great folks. Salt of the earth, you know? But maybe they’re a little rougher-looking than your average. A lot of bikers.”
Check, I thought.
“Truckers.”
Check again.
“Folks needing a place to, ahm, get their heads together, take stock.”
Read: junkies and recent parolees.
“Many single women?”
Her bright eyes clouded over. “All right, honey, let’s cut to the chase. What are you after here?”
Just like a hardened moll. Magnum would have been impressed.
I said, “Has any woman been staying here who hasn’t paid her rent in a while? A week or more, say?”
She glanced down at the ledger below her. She leaned her elbow on the counter and the fun returned to her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I leaned my elbow on the counter near hers.
She smiled at me, moved her elbow a little closer. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Can you tell me anything about her?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. She smiled. She had a great smile; you could see the child in it, before the road wear and the cigarettes and the sun poisoning. “My old man can tell you even more.”
I wasn’t sure if “old man” meant father or husband. These parts, it could mean either. Hell, these parts, it could mean both.
I kept my elbow where it was. Out in the sticks, living dangerously. “Such as?”
“Such as, why don’t we spread some introductions around first? What’s your name?”
“Patrick Kenzie,” I said. “My friends call me Magnum.”
“Shit.” She gave me a low chuckle. “I bet they don’t.”
“I bet you’re right.”
She opened her palm and extended it. I did the same and we shook with our elbows resting on the counter like we were about to arm wrestle.
“Name’s Holly,” she said.
“Holly Martens?” I said. “Like the guy in the old movie?”
“Who?”
“ The Third Man ,” I said.
She shrugged. “My old man? He takes over this place, it’s called Molly Martenson’s Lie Down. Got a real nice neon sign on the roof, lights up sweet at night. So my old man, Warren, he’s got this friend, Joe, and Joe’s real good with fixing stuff. So, Joe, he knocks out the M, replaces it with an H, and then blacks out the O-N-’postrophe-S. Ain’t centered, but it looks good at night all the same.”
“What about the Lie Down part?”
“Wasn’t on the neon sign.”
“Thank the Lord.”
She slapped the countertop. “That’s what I said!”
“Holly!” someone called from the back. “Goddamn gerbil shit on my paperwork.”
“Don’t own no gerbils!” she called back.
“Well, the friggin midget pig thing, then. What I tell you about letting ’em out of their cages?”
“I raise guinea pigs,” she said softly, as if it were a secret dear to her heart.
“I noticed. Hamsters, too.”
She nodded. “Had some ferrets, but they died.”
“Damn,” I said.
“You like ferrets?”
“Not even a little bit.” I smiled.
“You need to loosen up. Ferrets are fun.” She clucked her tongue. “Whole damn lot of fun.”
I heard a clacking and squeaking from behind her that was too heavy for the hamster wheels, and Warren rolled out into the front office in a black leather and bright chrome wheelchair.
His legs were gone below the knees, but the rest of him was massive. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt over a chest as broad as the hull of a small boat, and thick red cords stood out angrily under the flesh over his forearms and biceps. His hair was bleached blond like Holly’s, shaved tight against the temples, but swept back high off the forehead and hanging down to his shoulder blades. Jaw muscles the size of tea saucers worked up and down in his face, and his hands, clad in black leather fingerless gloves, looked capable of snapping an oak fence post like it was plywood.
He didn’t look at me as he approached Holly. He said, “Honey?”
She turned her head and looked into his handsome face with such immediate and total love that it invaded the room like a fourth body.
“Baby?”
“You know where I put them pills?” Warren wheeled himself up near the desk, peered in its lower counters.
“The white ones?”
He still hadn’t looked at me. “Nah. Those yellow ones, hon. The three o’clock ones.”
She cocked her head as if trying to remember. Then that wonderful smile broke across her face and she clapped her hands together, and Warren smiled, too, enthralled by her.
“’Course I do, baby!” She reached under the counter and pulled out an amber bottle of pills. “Think fast.”
She tossed them at him, and he snatched them from the air without glancing in their direction, his eyes on her.
He popped two in his mouth and chewed them. His eyes were still locked with hers when he said, “What you looking for, Magnum?”
“A dead woman’s last effects.”
He reached out and took Holly’s hand. He ran his thumb over the back of it, peered at the skin as if committing each freckle to memory.
“Why?”
“She died.”
“You said that.” He turned her hand over so it was palm up, traced the lines with his finger. Holly ran her free hand through the hair on top of his head.
“She died,” I said, “and no one gives a shit.”
