a few moments, a man in cook’s white pants and a sweat-stained T-shirt came out. He was in his late thirties, but hard work and harder partying had already carved deep lines in his face and under his eyes. His scraggly hair poked out at odd angles from beneath his flat round paper cap. A bushy cavalryman’s moustache almost, but not quite, hid his badly crooked teeth when he spoke.
“You lookin’ for Laurel?” he said. His voice was a raspy croak, his eyes narrow and suspicious.
“Yeah,” Keller said. “I work for her bondsman. She skipped bail on us.”
The eyes grew less wary. “You tryin’ to put her in jail, huh?”
“That’s right.”
The manager leaned back and smiled. “Well shit, somebody sure’s hell ought to. Jesus, that bitch was flat crazy.” He extended a hand covered with healed burns and old scars from kitchen mishaps. “I’m Bart,” he said. He didn’t offer a last name.
Keller shook his hand. “Jack,” he said.
Bart leaned back and took off his cap. He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. He produced a cigarette and lit it. “You got a card, Jack?” he said. “I mean, it ain’t like I don’t trust people, but…” He left the sentence hanging.
Keller handed him a card. Bart studied it through the haze of his cigarette smoke. “H & H Bonds. Yeah, I used them a time or two.” He pocketed the card. “Actually, Alicia’s the one you ought to ask about Laurel,” he said. He looked around.
“’LICIA!” he bellowed suddenly. The men at the counter looked up. The painters at the nearby booth stopped talking. “‘LICIA!” Bart yelled again.
A rail-thin blonde girl in the same uniform as the other waitress came out the back, wiping her hands on a rag. “What is it, Bart?” she whined. “I got side work to finish …” She stopped as she caught sight of Keller. She smiled at him and walked over to stand beside Bart. “Who’s your friend, Bart?” she asked. She tried to make it sound flirtatious, but the nasal quality of her voice spoiled the effect.
“Jack here works for Laurel’s bail bondsman. She skipped bail and he’s lookin’ for her.”
“That bitch!” Alicia said. Her voice went up an octave and the word came out as two syllables: bee-yitch. “Look what she did to my arm!” She pulled the polyester sleeve of her uniform up almost to one bony shoulder. All Keller could see was the bandage that ran from her shoulder down to her bicep. “She coulda kilt me!” Alicia said dramatically. She looked around to where the men at the counter were still staring. “She coulda kilt me!” she announced again to the room.
Bart slid out of the booth. Alicia took his place. “Don’t take too long,” he growled at Alicia. “I ain’t payin’ you to talk.” He didn’t wait for an answer before walking off.
“Fuck you, Bart,” Alicia said, too softly for him to hear. She smiled at Keller again. She twirled a lock of her thin blonde hair around her index finger. “So,” she said, “Crazy Laurel skipped out on you” Her voice was light and teasing.
Keller nodded. “Yeah. Thought I’d check and see if anyone knew where she might hang out. Or where she lived, stuff like that.”
Alicia’s eyes brightened. “Whatcha gonna do when you catch her? You gonna cuff her?”
“Probably. Most people don’t really want to come with me.”
She leaned forward. “You bring your cuffs with you? Can I see ‘em?”
“They’re in the car.”
“Maybe you can show ‘em to me later,” she said. Keller grinned. “You always ask guys you just met to show you their handcuffs?”
She grinned back. “If they’re cute enough,” she said.
“You could get in trouble that way,” he replied.
“Honey,” she said, with all the clueless bravado a twenty-year-old can summon, “I love trouble.” She punched him lightly on the forearm, then leaned back. “I’m just playin’,” she said.
It was an old game, invitation and withdrawal. Keller played along. To keep her talking, he told himself.
“I know,” he said.
“I don’t know all that much about Laurel, tell you the truth,” Alicia went on. “She came in, always acted like she was pissed off at somethin’. Most of us just steered clear of her.”
“Why’d she cut you?” Keller asked.
She grimaced. “I made some stupid joke about that creepy boyfriend of hers.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” she folded her arms across her chest, as if the memory made her cold. “He was good-looking, I mean, for an older guy, but he was old enough to be her father. And he was … I don’t know, there was somethin’ not right about him.”
“Was she staying with him?”
Alicia shrugged. “I guess. She always left with him. And he dropped her off in the morning. Anyway, I made some crack about how her daddy was here to pick her up. Next thing I know, she’d cut me.”
“Either of them ever say anything about where the boyfriend lived? What he did?”
“Naw. He kept tellin’ people he was an actor. Said he knew a lot of people at the movie studio. Talked a lot about movies he’d been in, but they was all older stuff. He never seemed to be workin’ these days.” She leaned forward and her voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “Dealin’ drugs, is what I think.”
Keller thought for a moment. He knew a couple of people working at the Screen Gems lot outside of town. Maybe they had a listing of people who had worked there. It would be a long list; the studio was the biggest production facility on the East Coast. This was assuming the boyfriend wasn’t just a poser. Still, the boyfriend was all the lead he had right now. “This guy named Roy by any chance?”
“Yeah,” Alicia said. “Roy Randle. Sounded fake to me.”
“Probably,” Keller said. “But I’ll check it out. Thanks.” He slid out of the booth and stood up.
The flirtatious grin was back. “So when you gonna show me them handcuffs?” She darted a glance at the kitchen, where Bart was haranguing the other waitress about something. She lowered her voice. “I get off in an hour.”
“Sorry,” Keller said. “My workday’s just starting.”
“Well,” she said, disappointment obvious in her face, “I work every weekday ‘til three. Stop by, when you have some time.”
“I could be an axe murderer for all you know,” Keller said.
She smiled at him. “You don’t look crazy,” she said.
Shows how much you know, Keller thought. He left a twenty on the table for the coffee and the information and walked out.
Out
