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I walked to the filling station on the corner, called the dispatcher, and told him to have a wrecker tow the limo into the pound.
Then I went inside the restaurant, which gleamed with chrome and silverware and Formica surfaces, and walked past the long table where two waitresses were in the process of serving Julie and his group their breakfast. Cholo saw me first and started to speak, but I looked straight ahead and continued on into the men's room as though they were not there.
I washed my face with cold water, dried it with paper towels, and combed my hair in the mirror. There were flecks of white in my mustache now, and lines around my eyes that I hadn't noticed only a week before. I turned on the cold water and washed my face again, as though somehow I could rinse time and age out of my skin. Then I crumpled up the damp paper towel in my hand, flung it into the trash can, fixed my tie, put on my coat and sunglasses, and walked back into the restaurant.
Showtime, Julie, I thought.
Even sitting down, he towered above the others at the head of the table, in a pink short-sleeve shirt, suspenders, and gray striped slacks, his tangled black hair ruffling on his brow in the breeze from the fan, his mouth full of food while he told the waitress to bring more coffee and to reheat Margot's breakfast steak. Cholo kept trying to smile at me, his false teeth as stiff as whale bone in his mouth. Julie's other hoods looked up at me, then at Julie; when they read nothing in his face, they resumed eating.
"Hey, lieutenant, I thought that was you. You here for breakfast?" Cholo said.
"I was just passing by," I said.
"What's going on, Dave?" Julie said, his mouth chewing, his eyes fixed on the flower vase in front of him.
"I had a long night last night," I said.
"Yeah?" he said.
"We found a girl in a barrel down in south Vermilion Parish."
He continued to chew, then he took a drink of water. He touched his mouth with his napkin.
"You want to sit down, or are you on your way out?" he said.
Just then I heard the steel hook of the wrecker clang somewhere on the limo's frame and the hydraulic cables start to tighten on the winch. Cholo craned his head to look beyond the angle of the front window that gave onto the street.
"I always thought you were standup, Feet," I said.
"I appreciate the compliment, but that's a term they use in a place I've never been."
"That's all right, I changed my mind. I don't think you're standup anymore, Feet."
He blew up both his cheeks.
"What are you trying to say, Dave?"
"The man I work for got a bunch of phone calls yesterday. It looks like somebody dropped the dime on me with the Kiwanis Club."
"It ain't a bunch I got a lot of influence with. Talk with Mikey Goldman if you got that kind of problem."
"You use what works, Julie."
"Hey, get real, Dave. When I want to send a message to somebody, it don't come through Dagwood Bumstead."
Outside, the driver of the wrecker gunned his engine, pulled away from the curb, and dragged the limo past the front window. The limo's two front tires, which were totally deflated and still on the asphalt, were sliced into ribbons by the wheel rims.
Cholo's mouth was wide with unchewed scrambled eggs.
"Hey, a guy's got our car! A guy's driving off with the fucking limo, Julie!" he said.
Julie watched the wrecker and his limo disappear up the street. He pushed his plate away an inch with his thumb. One corner of his mouth drooped, and he pressed against it with his napkin.
"Sit down," he said.
Everyone had stopped eating now. A waitress came to the table with a pitcher of ice water and started to refill the glasses, then hesitated and walked back behind the counter. I pulled out a chair and sat at the corner of the table, a foot from Julie's elbow.
"You're pissed off about something and you have my fucking car towed in?" he said.
