do when you’re mad as hell. The last thing he expected was that he’d have a credibility problem. It’s making him crazy.”
“Er,” she says.
“Huh?”
“Crazier. Send him another message, Bill. Poke him harder. He deserves it.”
“All right.” He thinks, then types.
17
When he’s dressed, she walks down the hall with him and treats him to a lingering kiss at the elevator.
“I still can’t believe last night happened,” he tells her.
“Oh, it did. And if you play your cards right, it might happen again.” She searches his face with those blue eyes of hers. “But no promises or long-term commitments, okay? We take it as it comes. A day at a time.”
“At my age, I take everything that way.” The elevator doors open. He steps in.
“Stay in touch, cowboy.”
“I will.” The elevator doors start to close. He stops them with his hand. “And remember to BOLO, cowgirl.”
She nods solemnly, but he doesn’t miss the twinkle in her eye. “Janey will BOLO her ass off.”
“Keep your cell phone handy, and it might be wise to program nine-one-one on your speed dial.”
He drops his hand. She blows him a kiss. The doors roll shut before he can blow one back.
His car is where he left it, but the meter must have run out before the free parking kicked in, because there’s a ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. He opens the glove compartment, stuffs the ticket inside, and fishes out his phone. He’s good at giving Janey advice that he doesn’t take himself—since he pulled the pin, he’s always forgetting the damned Nokia, which is pretty prehistoric, as cell phones go. These days hardly anyone calls him anyway, but this morning he has three messages, all from Jerome. Numbers two and three—one at nine-forty last night, the other at ten-forty-five—are impatient inquiries about where he is and why he doesn’t call. They are in Jerome’s normal voice. The original message, left at six-thirty yesterday evening, begins in his exuberant Tyrone Feelgood Delight voice.
“Massah Hodges, where you at? Ah needs to jaw to y’all!” Then he becomes Jerome again. “I think I know how he did it. How he stole the car. Call me.”
Hodges checks his watch and decides Jerome probably won’t be up quite yet, not on Saturday morning. He decides to drive over there, with a stop at his house first to pick up his notes. He turns on the radio, gets Bob Seger singing “Old Time Rock and Roll,” and bellows along: take those old records off the shelf.
18
Once upon a simpler time, before apps, iPads, Samsung Galaxies, and the world of blazing-fast 4G, weekends were the busiest days of the week at Discount Electronix. Now the kids who used to come in to buy CDs are downloading Vampire Weekend from iTunes, while their elders are surfing eBay or watching the TV shows they missed on Hulu.
This Saturday morning the Birch Hill Mall DE is a wasteland.
Tones is down front, trying to sell an old lady an HDTV that’s already an antique. Freddi Linklatter is out back, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and probably rehearsing her latest gay rights rant. Brady is sitting at one of the computers in the back row, an ancient Vizio that he’s rigged to leave no keystroke tracks, let alone a history. He’s staring at Hodges’s latest message. One eye, his left, has picked up a rapid, irregular tic.
Quit dumping on my mother, okay? Not her fault you got caught in a bunch of stupid lies. Got a key out of the glove compartment, did you? That’s pretty good, since Olivia Trelawney had both of them. The one missing was the valet key. She kept it in a small magnetic box under the rear bumper. The REAL Mercedes Killer must have scoped it.
I think I’m done writing to you, dickwad. Your Fun Quotient is currently hovering around zero, and I have it on good authority that Donald Davis is going to cop to the City Center killings. Which leaves you where? Just living your shitty little unexciting life, I guess. One other thing before I close this charming correspondence. You threatened to kill me. That’s a felony offense, but guess what? I don’t care. Buddy, you are just another chickenshit asshole. The Internet is full of them. Want to come to my house (I know you know where I live) and make that threat in person? No? I thought not. Let me close with two words so simple even a thud like you should be able to understand them.