at the crossover and pulled into a small lot at Hot Dog Heaven. Chicago-style dogs. Best in the city. Plus tables outside in the breeze. I bought two with everything for O’Shea and couldn’t help myself and got a third for me. We sat at a picnic table outside, only fifteen feet from the street traffic. I let him finish the first dog.
“So tell me about the photo.”
“Oh, yeah. OK,” he said, wiping relish off his chin. “Sorry, had other things on my mind.” He finished chewing, took a gulp of coffee, exhaled and looked across the street like he was seeing it.
“I took the third seat from the end of the bar, figuring, like you said, he liked the last seat and I didn’t want to crowd him if he showed. I was a couple of beers into it when some woman sat down on my left. Not my type and besides she was taking up the trap so I belched once, trying to dissuade her.
“She asked a question about the game that was up on the tube, trying to be friendly, so I asked her if she ever heard the joke that goes: ‘What did one tampon say to the other when they met on the street?’”
“Did she wait for the answer?” I said.
“No. She got up and left,” O’Shea said. “Then about eleven the guy in the picture comes in and sits at the end. I can tell there’s something up between him and the blonde bartender. She ignores him at first and he just sits there, same look on his face, passive, not a bit bothered. I’m checking him in the mirror and he’s playing the same game, watching me. Guy’s got cop all over him. Tight haircut, like old Sergeant Rixson used to push on us.
“He’s got that smell of talcum like we all did in the days after we had to wear the Kevlar every night. Get so goddamn sweaty you had to powder up even after you showered at the end of the shift.”
“What about him and the bartender? Did they talk?” I asked, maybe a little too suddenly.
“You didn’t say you were looking for a cop, Max,” O’Shea said, putting both elbows on the table and bringing his coffee cup up with both hands.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. I wasn’t going to offer that I hadn’t known I was looking for a cop until Richards ID’ed the photo two hours ago. “Did they talk?”
He sipped and made me wait.
“She finally came down and put a Rolling Rock in front of him without being asked and they looked at each other for a couple of seconds longer than a barmaid and just a regular would. Now mind you, she’d been pretty friendly before he got there, worked the bar nice.”
“Thanks, O’Shea. I know you’re an expert in that area, but did they talk?”
“Not a word with me sittin’ there but there was a hell of a lot being said, if that’s what you’re asking. They knew each other. She might be dealing for him from the bar. Might be something else. My take was he’s trying to be contrite about pissing her off about something and she’s making a plan that he ain’t got a clue about.”
O’Shea had been a good cop. He knew something about reading people. But he’d yet to prove himself a psychic.
“You picked all this up through their body language, Colin?”
“Some of it, yeah,” he said. “The girl walks down to the other end and I say to the guy ‘Nice ass on that one, eh?’ and he looks at me like I just insulted his mother.”
“And of course you let it go.”
“Sure. I say: ‘Well excuse me, pal, but if your name ain’t on it, every paying customer in the place has the right to at least look.’”
“And?”
“Guy’s got an eye, Max. Kind you see on the street that makes you want to take the baton out of your belt loop just for safety sake.”
“He say anything?”
“No. But it was in his throat, twitchin’. I could see it there so I backed off, bought him a beer and made like I was calling someone on the picture phone. When the girl brought him the Rock, I snapped that shot of him,” O’Shea said, obviously proud of himself. “That’s when he got up and walked out through the back hallway. Left the beer and his money untouched.”
O’Shea said he stayed in the bar and hadn’t tried to tail the