I don’t have quite enough hair on top to pull it off, but I’m told I still look pretty damn good.
I named the car Matilda because of her white ragtop, which makes her look like an old lady. She is, without a doubt, my most prized possession. I bought her eight years ago, after an especially lucrative case, and while she was in pretty good condition to begin with, Seth and I restored her to the level of perfection she exists in most of the time these days.
Outside, Seth dropped into the front seat next to me. He looked in the side view mirror and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. That’s what passes for styling for him. He plucked his sunglasses out of the collar of his shirt and slid them on. It never fails to impress me how he can make slovenly look good.
“You goin’ in carrying on this one?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “This guy is money. If he gives me trouble, it’s going to be of the fist swinging variety, which is why I wanted you along.”
“Are we gonna run it the usual way, then?”
“If you expect to be fed.”
Certain people do not take bad news well, and if they can’t lash out at the object of their anger, they’ll often take it out on the closest thing available. I generally happen to be sitting across from them at that point, and I’ve learned to take precautions.
If the guy is big enough, or bad enough, I won’t hesitate to slip my gun into a holster. Most of the time, I just bring Seth for backup. He may be small, but he’s wiry and he likes to fight. Best of all, he’ll do it for the price of a steak.
For situations like this, I prefer to arrange the meet in a nice dark bar. They’re noisy, so you’re not likely to get overheard, and you don’t look out of place. Plus, it feeds the average Joe’s romantic vision of a private eye. People seem to like it better if it goes down the way they see it on TV. And who am I to argue? I like bars.
The “usual way” is I go in first to find the client and get settled, and about five minutes later, Seth comes in and takes a seat at the bar where he can keep an eye on things. Nine times out of ten, nothing happens and he gets to enjoy a beer and flirt with the bartender, but on the rare occasion some idiot decides to take a pop at me, it’s nice to know he’s got my back.
I’d chosen a dive called Henry’s, well outside of Ware’s territory so there’d be little chance of him running into someone he knew. Not like it would be tough to explain, but I hate to put a guy in that position right after he’s found out his wife is the Calamity Jane of the eighteen wheeler set.
I parked around back as usual. No sense in advertising what I drive if there’s a chance there might be trouble. I grabbed my briefcase, which held the folder of photos, and climbed out of the car.
“See you in a few minutes,” I said.
Seth saluted me and slouched in the seat.
Inside, Henry’s was busy, but not packed. Mostly old guys with nothing better to do, or blue-collar types shaking off the workday. I spotted Ware in a back booth, clutching a glass of scotch or bourbon. He looked pretty grim. Of course, he had to know it was bad news. It doesn’t take a face-to-face meeting for me to say, “Hey, your wife is pure as the driven snow and only has eyes for you, and by the way, I have some lovely shots of her shopping for Bibles.”
I sat down across from him and set my briefcase on the seat. “Good evening, Mr. Ware.”
A cute waitress with a ponytail and a low-cut shirt came over, and I ordered an amaretto on the rocks.
“Cut to the chase, Martini.” He took a sip of his drink. “Amy’s cheating on me, isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid so.”
Seth strolled past me and plugged the jukebox, messing around with the touch screen for a minute before he took a seat at the bar. His way of letting me know he was in the room, since Ware had left me with my back to the door.
“Who is it?” Ware asked.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to determine that in such a short time frame,” I lied. Since the guy was just one of many, I didn’t see the need to share that information with Ware. “It’s highly unlikely he’s anyone local.”
The waitress brought my drink, and I spent about half an hour explaining the deal with the truckers and the website to Ware. I also gave him instructions on how he could do a little sleuthing of his own on his wife’s computer. He asked me if that was something I could be hired to do, and I told him it was, but I’d need access to her computer for a while. He said he’d hang onto my card and think about it.
When there wasn’t much left to say, I brought out the folder and passed it across the table. He stuck it into his own case without looking at it. That’s pretty common. Most people don’t want an audience when looking at candid porn starring their beloved for the first time.
At this point, I usually like to say something sympathetic and heartening, maybe give them a bit of advice. I was just opening my mouth when a beer bottle whizzed past my face and bounced off the wall, nearly hitting Ware.
People were shouting and a couple of bar stools crashed to the floor. When I turned to look, a guy the size of a tank had Seth pinned like a bug on the bar, one meaty hand clamped around his throat. Seth gripped the guy’s forearm and kicked his legs in the air, trying to score a hit or get away, I wasn’t sure which. The ponytailed waitress bounced around, swatting at the tank with a bar rag and begging him to stop.
Ware looked horrified and shot up. “I think I should go. Listen, thanks for your time and trouble,” he said, stuffing a check into my hand. “If I decide to have you do that computer thing, I’ll get in touch.”
I gave him a nod and a pat on the back and sent him on his way. Then I turned back to the scene on the bar.
“Rick, honey, come on,” the waitress was saying. “He didn’t mean anything. He’s just a customer, babe, they say stuff like that all the time, you know that.”
“I know his type,” the tank roared. “All these guys think they can hit on you just because you bring ’em drinks. It’s time someone taught ’em a lesson.”
Seth squealed something in protest, but his throat was too constricted for anyone to make it out. He flopped like a fish out of water.
I drained the last of my drink and took a deep breath, then stepped up to the moose and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey jack, why don’t you let the little guy go, he wasn’t hitting on your girl.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?”
“This is my business,” I snapped, getting up in the guy’s face. I may be skinny, but I can intimidate the hell out of people when I want to. “I can personally guarantee he wasn’t hitting on her, so why don’t you get your fucking hands off him before I really get mad.”
There was a crowd of people standing around us staring. I could see them all mentally calculating the odds of me against Rick the Caveman. The bartender hovered near the phone just in case. But see, I fight smart, and I know how to knock guys like this off their game.
“You can guarantee that?” he sneered, pausing in his attempt to strangle
