My phone rang when I got outside.
It was Mary.
“Are you coming over for supper?” she asked.
“Not tonight,” I told her.
“Does this mean you have a date?” she asked, hopeful note in her voice.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Besides, why would I tell you if I did. You’re my ex-wife.”
“Because you need to find someone in your life, Dan.”
“So you say,” I said. “I had someone in my life once. It didn’t work out.”
“So, I’m to blame?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“What I meant is that I’m no good at those kinds of relationships.”
“You need someone, Dan, so you can stop coming here all the time.”
“If you don’t want me there, I won’t come.”
Mary moaned.
“Eventually, Dan, I’m going to find someone else in my life and you won’t be able to come.”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said. “Figure I’ll be over there tomorrow. It’s that’s okay?”
“Call first,” she said. “I might be busy.”
She hung up.
I headed to the library to kill time and do a little research, reading some of Nat’s older columns.
His style had changed over the last few issues and he seemed to have picked up on a thread, following some local characters he had previously ignored in the past.
Nat hated the current mayor, and his columns – even when largely about other subjects, generally raised questions about the mayor’s inner circle, who they were, and what they were up to, and always predicting their eventual downfall.
Had Nat been murdered those names would have made a good list of suspect.
Any one of them would have had motive to kill him for what he’d written.
When the library closed, I strolled back to Jake’s Place.
The woman from the motel video was already there, flirting with so me of the off-duty uniform cops. They crowded around her table like kids around a bowl of cady, acting the way teenagers did with a popular girl.
With good reason. She was stunning, even prettier than the model tape had made out.
Not tall, yet slim, with long black hair and large black eyes. She had a crooked mouth that only added to her appeal.
Unlike her appearance at the motel, where she had dressed casually, wearing an ivory-colored blouse and blue jeans. Here, she was decked out, dressed to the nines, wearing a one-piece black dress and high heels, a stirring sight, enough to make me forget for a moment my semi-regular trips to my ex-wife’s place.
In the midst of this, even as her admirers jostled for her attention, she looked up, passed them to me still standing near the door.
She pretended not to notice me, turning deliberately towards one of her cop admirers she had only teased a moment before.
I moved across the room, through the now-completely full seat of tables and chairs to what had once been my usual spot at the corner of the bar.
“She’s pretty busy tonight,” Jake said, putting down my regular drink in front of me. “Do you want me to call her over?”
“Hell, no,” I said, taking a long pull on my drink. “Even if you did, she wouldn’t come. She needs to get the bait first.”
“Then you do know her?”
“No, but I recognize a trap when I see one,” I said. “She must have driven Nat nuts.”
“She drives all men nuts,” Jake said. “I should know. I make a lot of money off the drunks she leaves in her wake.”
I took another pull at my drink and caught a side glance from her across the room.
I saw her lean closer to a cop whose name was Douglas, and saw him look across the room at me, even when she pretended not to.
He was a typical macho cop, his blond hair cropped close to his head, military style, his neck rippled in the back, his huge arms bulging out from his civilian clothing.
Still staring at me, he shook his head and said something to her, which caused her to look at me more directly.
I could almost hear the warning Douglas gave her, about how dangerous I was, and how I had been drummed out of the force after letting my partner take a bullet for me – all the usual crap a lot of the younger cops believed, having grown up on rumors without any real knowledge of the facts.
“Give me another drink,” I told Jake. “I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
Jake refilled my glass; but I didn’t touch it, waiting instead for the moment when she decided to make her move.
It didn’t take long. She made some excuse to leave the pack and made her way to the restroom beyond the far end of the bar. She glanced at me before she vanished.
When she reappeared, she steered straight at me, taking up the stool next to mine.
“Are you going to buy me a drink or what?” she asked.
I motioned to Jake, who produced a bottle of white wine and filled a glass for her.
“My name is Jeannette,” she said, looking over the rim of her wine glass at me. “What’s yours?”
She held a hand out for me to shake, long nails clean, with clear nail polish. I took it gently.
“I’m Dan,” I said, marveling at how cool her fingers felt.
Most of the makeup she wore was around her eyes, large dark eyes in which a man could easily lose himself.
Her thick, slanted lips were painted dark pink.
“This is a cop’s bar,” she said. “You’re not a cop. What are you doing here?”
“I think you know more than you let on,: I said.
“I know you used to be a cop,” she said. “But that doesn’t tell me why you’re here now.”
“Maybe I just like the atmosphere,” I said.
“If you did, I would have seen you here before,” she said, taking a small sip of her wine. “Since I haven’t, you must have some other reason for coming.”
“I’m looking for somebody.”
“Anybody in particular? Someone I know?”
“Possibly,” I said. “But let’s talk about you. Why are you here.”
“I like being around cops,” she said.
“Why?”
“They make me feel safe.
I laughed.
“You think that’s funny?” she said, more than a little indignant.
“Yes, I guess I do,” I said. “But not because I think you’re funny. What makes you need to feel safe?”
Her eyes dilated with a startled look although her mouth still retained its smile. She leaned closer to me and lowered her voice.
“I have stalkers,” she said.
“And you think a lot of cops can protect you?”
“I’ve tried everything else.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a singer.”
“As on Broadway?”
“Mostly night clubs,” she said, “Although I toured with a band for a few years.”
“Do you sing locally?”
“Sometimes,” she said, a teasing twinkle showing in her eyes.
“Any time soon?”
“I was kind of hoping I might get to sing here,” she said, waving her hand towards the platform in the corner that from time to time served as a stage for wedding bands.
I glanced at Jake; he shrugged.
“We’re still negotiating,” he humbled through his thick red beard.
“So, who exactly is stalking you?” I asked her.
“A few people.”
“Anybody in particular?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes I’m scared to go home alone at night.”
“What do you do?”
“I mostly get someone to walk with me,” she said, giving me an odd sideward glance. “I was thinking about asking you. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“You live near here?”
“Right up the block,” she said, not looking at me squarely, though I still caught the twinkle in her eyes.
“I’m not a cop anymore,” I reminded her. “Maybe you should ask one of your friends over there to help you.”
“Them?” she said with a dismissing laugh. “They’d walk me home and then want something in return.”
“And you think I wouldn’t?”
Her head turned, her dark gaze focusing in on my face. She smiled, but her eyes did not laugh.
“Maybe I wouldn’t mind with you,” she said, then gave me one of her crooked smiles – though again, I caught some different emotion in her eyes, something of a panicked look.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll walk you home.”
This time she actually looked relieved, and the soft smile she gave me more sincere.
“Now?” she asked. “Can we go now?”
“Sure,” I said, finishing my drink in one hard gulp, already feeling woozy. I had given up drinking so many times, it always got bad when I fell off the wagon again.
I staggered as I stood, but only enough for me to notice, then took her hand to help her down from her stool.
A few of the cops across the room looked up, glaring at me.
Jake as usual merely shook his head, then wiped away the drink rings from the bar with a dirty rag. I could read the look in his Irish eyes and could have written the script for what he might have said, “She’s good, Dan,” he might have said, something I already knew, and sharp.
This lady was nobody’s food.
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