dated Tracy a few times,” he said, tipping his head to the bartender as she left. “And there she is, in the flesh.”
“Yeah, how about Amy Strausshiem?” I said and the name made him turn his face away. He sipped at one of the whiskeys.
“So Amy’s one that your new friend Richards is looking for. Who else?” he said.
I didn’t answer and just shook my head. Even if Richards had given me the other names, you don’t give information to suspects. Besides, it wasn’t my case, I kept telling myself. All I did was agree to talk with the guy. O’Shea seemed to accept the silence.
“I heard Amy’s mother was in town,” he said and I almost believed the sound of sympathy in his voice. “I went out with her. Nice girl. Smart. But she was too much of a challenge for me if you know what I mean.”
“No,” I said. “Tell me what you mean.”
“She liked excitement. Liked to get her adrenaline up, which is fine to a degree, but Amy was walking a wire. I don’t need that challenge, Max,” he said, finishing the shot and winking at me. “I don’t date women for the challenge.”
O’Shea had a reputation as a ladies’ man back in the day. The dark curly hair and the smooth talk. But I remembered a time at McLaughlin’s, a cop bar in Philly, when three of us watched him try to work a woman at the jukebox. No one warned him it was another cop’s girl and when the guy got back from the men’s room an anticipated confrontation went flat in a hurry when O’Shea tucked tail and slunk away.
“You ever date my ex-wife back home, Colin?” I said, surprising myself, but suddenly wanting to know. The question made him laugh.
“Christ, Max. Everybody dated your ex-wife,” he said and then watched my face.
“Look, only time that woman took a break was the months she was married to you, Max. But once that conquest was done, she kept right on mowin’ through ’em.”
I tried to keep my face straight, just stared at the booze sitting in the tiny glass in front of me.
“Is that an answer, Colin?”
“OK. Yeah, I went out with Meagan. The girl was like a dominatrix without the whip, man. Goddamn control freak. Everything was about her. First sign of weakness—Bam!
“You know that television show, Highlander?, tough guy with the sword who lops some other guy’s head off and then sucks the guy’s power in to make himself stronger? That’s your ex, Max. No way. I bailed quick on that one.”
I was shaking my head, watching the ripple my own movement set up in the amber whiskey. Maybe I let a wry grin of my own move the corner of my mouth, remembering.
“Hey, Maker’s Mark,” O’Shea said, signaling the shot. “Have some good stuff with me, Max.” But I was thinking and didn’t respond.
“Hey,” he said again. “I’m serious.”
I left O’Shea at the table with the glass still full. I shook his hand, told him to stay out of trouble in a half jovial way, and made my way outside. On the sidewalk I took several deep breaths of night air to get the stink of cigarette out of my nose and looked up to find the moon. It was nowhere in sight and the city lights obscured even the brightest stars. I looked at my watch, almost eleven, and weighed the effort it would take to get back out to my river shack. The world seemed infinitely more complicated now than when I’d started my day.
I went down the street to my truck and for some reason noted the deep shadow cast by the intracoastal bridge. I flashed back on Fulton Street where we played summer basketball in South Philly in the shade of the I-95 overpass as kids and where we would then hang out and smoke stolen cigarettes in that same darkness. Simpler times, I was thinking, when I made the corner and came upon two men breaking into my truck. The sight deeply soured my mood.
The larger of the two was standing at my driver’s door, his weight leaning into the panel, his attention on something inside. The other one was up in the truck bed, actually sitting on the far rail, elbows on his knees like he was waiting for something. They were either the laziest car thieves I’d ever seen or weren’t car thieves at all. I glanced quickly behind me and then stepped out