fast track.”
“Shit, Nicky.” She shook her head slowly. I hadn’t meant to go for sympathy, but her news had made me bitter.
We sat for a while without speaking. I listened to the tick of my watch.
“You look good,” I said, cutting the silence. We had often sat like this without awkwardness.
“Thanks. But I’ve put on a few.”
She leaned forward to stand. I looked down her loose T-shirt guiltlessly. Karen had truly beautiful breasts. I remembered waking before her some mornings and admiring them, slightly flattened as she lay sleeping on her back.
I turned down her offer for more coffee. She washed the cup, and with her back to me said, “What are you going to do now?”
“I’ve got a couple of grand in my retirement account. That will get me through the bills for a while. In the meantime, I was hired by this old guy to find his missing grandson.”
“That why you got beaten up?”
“Yeah.”
“A detective now,” she stated flatly, though she might as well have told me just to grow up. I must have looked pathetic, sitting on the floor wearing my little adhesive nose mask. She rubbed her hands dry with a paper towel. Looking down at her feet, she said, “I’m sorry, Nick. But I’ve got an awful lot to do today, with moving and all.”
“Sure, Karen,” I said, laboring to my feet. “I should get going too.”
As she walked me to the door, I felt unsteady, as if another piece of my youth was being torn away. She faced me. The edge in her eyes, the dark side of her that had attracted me, was gone.
“Take care of yourself, Nicky,” she said. “I’ll write from Philly when I get settled.”
“So long,” I said, and kissed her mouth. I felt her warm exhale on my face when she withdrew.
I stepped out and down the walkway. The sound of her door closing behind me was final, like that of a vault.
* * *
I CROSSED THE RIVER via Chain Bridge and took Nebraska Avenue through to Connecticut, where I turned right and headed south a few blocks to Pence’s building. One look at my battered face convinced him that I was indeed “on the case”; he stroked me an expense check without flinching.
“Good luck, son!” he shouted, as I bolted out the door.
I spent the remainder of my day doing laundry, listening to music, and taking codeine siestas. By evening I had spoken to my landlord as to the location of the cat food and litter box, and packed my knapsack and overnight bag. When I was done, I phoned McGinnes at his apartment.
“What’s going on, Johnny?”
“I’m on vacation till the weekend.”
“Brandon give you a few days off to think about things?”
“Yeah,” he said, “but the little prick wants me back on the floor by Saturday, so he can make his numbers. How’s your early retirement going?”
“Keeping busy. Some guys tried to warn me off the Broda thing yesterday. One of them put a boot to my face to make his point.”
“What now?”
“I’m leaving town for a couple of days to check out a lead. I could use some company.”
He thought it over. “It beats sucking down draughts in the Zebra Room.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up at eight, tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll pack the cooler,” he said.
“Fine. And bring a swimsuit.”
“Now you’re talkin’. Where we headed?”
“Elizabeth City,” I said. “North Carolina.”
EIGHTEEN
BY THE TIME we neared Richmond, traveling south on 95, we had listened to Green on Red’s Gas, Food, Lodging, and on the other side of the tape, Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby. I slid in a fresh cassette, an instrumental mix from the Raybeats, Love Tractor, and the Monochrome Set, and turned off onto 64, heading east towards Norfolk.
“Jesus Christ, man,” McGinnes pleaded, “pull over! I gotta pee like a racehorse.”
“I’ll pull over when your bladder’s ready to burst.”
“It’s ready now. Anyway, I didn’t know we were being timed on this trip. What is this, the fucking Cannonball Run?”
I found a Stuckey’s on one of the turnoffs. He was out of the car before I stopped, running through the pounding rain across the parking lot to the store and rest area. I pumped gas into my Dodge under the sheltering overhang.
“Nice weather,” I said to the attendant, an old guy who stood expressionless in his uniform, shoulders hunched up, hands in his pockets.
“For ducks,” he said.
McGinnes trotted back to the car, a paper bag in his hand, and got in the passenger side. I pulled back onto the highway,