"you've been in a couple of times, I was wondering, you know, because I'm curious that way, uh, what's your name?"
"Audrey."
"Hi, Audrey. I'm Ray."
"Nice to meet you, Ray. Gotta go. Bye." She waved over her shoulder and headed out the door.
Ray and Lily watched her walk away.
"Nice butt," Lily said.
"She said my name," Ray said.
"She's a little bit - I don't know - unimaginary for you."
Ray turned to the nemesis Lily. "You have to watch the store. I have to go."
"Why?"
"I have to follow her, find out who she is." Ray began to gather his stuff - phone, keys, baseball cap.
"Yeah, that's healthy, Ray."
"Tell Charlie I - don't tell Charlie."
"Okay. So is it okay if I switch the computer from the UGLY Web site?"
"What are you talking about?"
Lily stepped back from the screen and pointed to the letters as she read, "Ukrainian Girls Loving You - U-G-L-Y, ugly." Lily smiled, a perky, self-satisfied smile, like that kid who won the spelling bee in third grade. Didn't you hate that kid?
Ray couldn't believe it. They weren't even being subtle about it anymore. "Can't talk," he said. "Gotta go." He ran out the door and headed up Mason Street after the lovely and compassionate Audrey.
Rivera had driven up to the Cliff House Restaurant overlooking Seal Rocks and forced Charlie to buy him a drink while they watched the surfers down on the beach. Rivera was not a morbid man, but he knew that if he came here enough times, eventually he'd see a surfer get hit by a white shark. In fact, he sorely hoped that it would happen, because otherwise, the world made no sense, there was no justice, and life was just a tangled ball of chaos. Thousands of seals in the water and on the rocks - the mainstay of the white shark diet - hundreds of surfers in the water, dressed like seals, well, it just needed to happen for all to be right with the world.
"I never believed you, Mr. Asher, when you said that you were Death, but since I couldn't explain whatever that thing was in the alley with you, didn't want to explain, in fact, I let it slide."
"And I appreciate that," said Charlie, showing a little discomfort at drinking a glass of wine with handcuffs on. His face was candy-apple red from having been burned by the pepper spray. "Is this normal procedure for interrogations?"
"No," Rivera said. "Normally the City is supposed to pay, but I'll have the judge take the drinks off your sentence."
"Great. Thanks," Charlie said. "And you can call me Charlie."
"Okay, and you can call me Inspector Rivera. Now, braining the old lady with the cinder block - just exactly what were you thinking?"
"Do I need a lawyer?"
"Of course not, you're fine, this bar is full of witnesses." Rivera had once been a by-the-book kind of cop. That was before the demons, the giant owls, the bankruptcy, the polar bears, the vampires, the divorce, and the saber-clawed woman-thing that turned into a bird. Now, not so much.
"In that case, I was thinking that no one could see me," Charlie said.
"Because you were invisible?"
"Not really. Just sort of not noticeable."
"Well, I'll give you that, but I don't think that's any reason to crush a grandmother's skull."
"You have no proof of that," Charlie said.
"Of course I do," Rivera said, holding up his glass to signal to the waitress that he needed another Glenfiddich on the rocks. "I saw pictures of her grandchildren, she showed me when I went in the house."
"No, I mean you have no proof that I was going to crush her skull."
"I see," said Rivera, who did not see at all. "How did you know Mrs. Posokovanovich?"
"I didn't. Her name just showed up in my date book, like I showed you."
"Yes, you did. Yes, you did. But that doesn't really give you a license to kill her, now does it?"
"That's the point, she was supposed to be dead three weeks ago. There was even a death notice in the paper. I was just trying to make sure it was accurate."
"So in lieu of having the Chronicle print a correction, you thought you'd bash in granny's brains."
"Well, it was that or have my daughter say 'kitty' at her, and I refuse to exploit my child in that way."
"Well, I admire your taking the high ground on that one, Charlie," Rivera said, thinking, Who do I have to shoot to get a drink around here? "But let's just say that for