The Prettiest One: A Thriller (29 page)

Longo nodded. “Who’s the dweeb with Katie?” he asked.

Bix glanced at Josh, who, though clearly out of his element here, was doing an admirable job of not wetting himself in fear.

“That’s part of the long story. We’ll talk about him over our second beer.”

They stood together awkwardly for another moment, and Bix sensed that Longo was about to walk away, so he quickly said, “To be honest, Longo, I’m not too thrilled that Katie’s been coming here. I didn’t know about it until tonight. I thought she was working.”

Longo gave a low whistle. “Oh, boy. Well, listen, if it makes you feel any better, I was telling you the truth. She hasn’t left with anyone or even gotten close to anyone, as far as us guys can tell. Sure, she’s a world-class flirter . . . but that’s it. And it’s not like she’s a tease or anything. Nothing like that. She just chats you up, lets you buy her drinks, listens while you talk her up right back.” He shook his head with a wry grin. “It’s like she’s a social worker or something, like it’s her job to make you feel good about yourself. Like if a chick like that’ll spend time with you, well, hell, maybe you aren’t as bad as you think.”

Bix nodded to himself.

“So don’t worry, man,” Longo said. “She ain’t been naughty. And like I said, everyone seems to . . . I don’t know, respect her, I guess.”

Bix nodded again. He needed more. “So . . . what? She just comes in, flirts with guys, then leaves?”

“Flirts, dances a little, shoots pool . . . Hey, she’s pretty good, too.”

“And there’s nobody she got close to? Nobody she talked about?”

Longo frowned. “Talked about?”

Bix sighed, as though this were hard for him. “Well, maybe you didn’t see her with anyone in particular, but maybe you heard her talking about some other guy? Somebody I should be worried about?”

Longo said nothing.

“She ever talk about anyone in particular, Longo?”

Longo shifted his eyes over toward Caitlin again, then back to Bix. “Well, she did ask me about a couple of guys she said she was looking for. A few other guys in here told me later that she’s asked them, too.”

“Let me guess,” Bix said. “One of them’s a blond guy with one eye?”

“So you know them?”

“I heard about them. She ever find them?”

“I’m not sure, but a few nights ago, or maybe it was last week, some guy told her that he knew the guys she was talking about. He’d seen them someplace a few times. She left right after that.”

“Where did he send her?”

Longo shrugged loosely, as though he could not possibly have cared less. And he very likely couldn’t have. “I don’t know,” he said.

“How do you know that some guy told her that?” Bix asked.

“I was shooting pool with the guy.”

“Didn’t you hear where he told her he’d seen those guys?”

“We were shooting pool, Bix. They were talking but I walked away when it was my shot. I didn’t hear the rest of what they said. As I recall, I went on a good run, sank five or six balls, and when I was done, Katie was gone.”

“The guy you were playing, the guy who told Katie where she might find those other guys . . . is he here tonight?”

Longo gave a cursory glance around the bar, then shook his head. “Don’t see him.”

“Does he have a name?”

“It would be weird if he didn’t, right? But I don’t know it. I’ve seen him here two, maybe three times before. He’s not a regular. Just some guy.”

Bix exhaled in frustration and rubbed the stubble on his chin as he thought.

“Can I make a suggestion, Bix?” Longo said. Without waiting for a reply, he continued. “If you and Katie really are together, why the hell don’t you just ask her these questions yourself?”

It was a fair question.

“Maybe I’ll do that, Longo. Thanks.”

Longo held his fist up for a good-bye bump and Bix complied.

“Don’t forget those beers you owe me,” Longo said.

“I don’t owe you yet. We’re arm wrestling for them, aren’t we?”

Longo looked at him with amusement for a moment, then laughed as he turned back to the pool table and said loudly, “Okay, so whose turn is it to lose money to me?”

Bix wended his way through the bar, back to Caitlin and Josh, who reported that they hadn’t learned anything of value. Josh said he would tell them what little he discovered when they were back in the Explorer, assuming it was where they’d left it, which wasn’t a given in this neighborhood. They all agreed it was past time to leave.

As soon as the cute redhead left the bar with the men she was with, a guy with a scruffy goatee named Richie Janzen left his stool at the bar and made his way to the pool table. He put a ten-dollar bill on the edge of the table, reserving his place to play the winner. Two shots later, one of the players scratched on the eight ball and said, “Damn it, Longo, you got lucky that time.”

“Seems like I get luckier every time I play you, Chet,” Longo said with a laugh.

Janzen starting racking the balls. “Longo, right?” he asked.

“Do I know you?” Longordo asked.

“We shot stick a few weeks ago,” Janzen lied. “You took me for twenty bucks. I’m back to get even,” he added with a smile.

Longo shrugged and scattered the balls with a thunderous break.

Janzen waited through a few shots before casually asking, “Hey, I think I saw you a few minutes ago talking to a guy I used to work with. He left with that sweet little redhead.”

“Bix?” Longo asked.

“Bix . . .” Janzen repeated, frowning, as if that didn’t sound right. “Are you sure that’s his name?”

Longo sank two balls, then said, “Last name’s Bixby. First name is something weird, like Delbert or Desmond.”

Janzen snapped his fingers. “Now I got it. Everyone calls him Bix, right?” Which, of course, Longo had called him a few seconds ago. “What’s the deal with him and that redhead?”

“Katie? I guess she lives with him, the lucky bastard.”

Janzen nodded, as if he once knew that but had temporarily forgotten. “I can’t remember Katie’s last name,” he said.

Longo was leaning forward for a shot. He looked sideways at Janzen for a moment. “I never caught her last name. How did you say you know Bix?”

“Worked with him, I think.”

“Doing what?” Another ball dropped.

Janzen had no idea. “Landscaping,” he said.

“Didn’t know Bix ever landscaped.”

Longo lined up a shot on the eight ball.

“I think he was only with the company a few months. I was there less than a year myself.”

The eight ball settled into a corner pocket. Janzen hadn’t taken a shot. That was fine with him, though. He left the table a winner.

On the street outside, he took out his wallet and removed a folded cocktail napkin from it. He read the phone number written on it and dialed it on his cell phone. A moment later, his call connected.

“It’s Janzen,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, I’m down at Bob’s. The redhead you were looking for the other night, Katie, she was in tonight. Just left . . . Swear to Christ, she was . . . No, I didn’t get her last name, but I got something almost as good . . . The name of the guy she lives with. That’s gotta be worth the hundred you promised, right? . . . Well, fifty, then, at least . . . Yeah, okay, next time I see you.”

Janzen gave up the name and ended the call. It had cost him ten bucks to get the information from Longo, but he’d make forty bucks in profit. Not a bad return on twenty minutes of his time.

Martin Donnello slipped his cell phone back into his pocket and gave a quick scratch to the skin under his eye patch. He was a little surprised to have heard from Janzen. Sure, the guy spent his every waking hour in that dump, so if the redhead ever returned, he was likely to see her, but Donnello hadn’t expected her to return so soon after what happened the other night at the warehouse.

Donnello knew she’d been there that night. Not her, necessarily, but someone. When bullets started buzzing and Donnello saw her in the shadows, he and his partner, Mike, gave chase, but even though they split to cover more ground, they lost her. Then when Donnello saw the woman’s face in the police sketch, he remembered where he’d seen her—at the Barrel O’ Beer two nights ago, the night things went to shit just hours later at the warehouse. It was only the second time Donnello had been to Bob’s, so he didn’t know who the woman was, but when he went back today shortly after the place opened at three this afternoon, he asked around and everybody seemed to know her. But no, that wasn’t really true. They all flirted with her, they said, and she flirted back, but nobody actually knew who she was. And given what had gone down the other night, Donnello had doubted that she’d ever show up there again. More likely, he’d thought, she was on a Greyhound at the moment just outside of San Antonio or somewhere equally far away. So when Donnello gave that pathetic boozehound Janzen his number and asked him to call if the redhead ever came back, he didn’t really expect to hear from him. But Janzen had called.

Donnello dialed his phone and waited. Damn voice mail again. Where the hell was Mike? Donnello thought he might have been shot the other night, but he figured it was only a flesh wound. But maybe Donnello was wrong. Maybe it was much worse.

When Mike’s outgoing message ended, Donnello said, “I don’t know where the hell you are or what the hell you’ve been doing, but I’ve been busy looking for the girl from the warehouse, like you should have been doing. And I found her. Well, almost. I’ve got her first name and the name of the guy she lives with. As soon as I have his address, I’ll call you. Pick up next time, would you?”

Donnello hadn’t talked to Mike since the warehouse. When things go to shit like they did that night, you stay the hell away from the people you were involved with for a little while. But things were different this time. This time, that damn redhead got involved. The cops would find her eventually. Donnello planned to get to her first.

Fortunately, he had a name now. Delbert or Desmond Bixby. Couldn’t be too many of those around. Shouldn’t be hard to find him. And when he did, he’d find her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CAITLIN SAT LOW IN HER seat, her back to the rest of the diner behind her. She hoped the high seat backs of the booth would keep people from seeing and recognizing her. For good measure, she was wearing a worn Red Sox baseball hat Josh had found on the floor of Bix’s car.

“Relax a little, Katie,” Bix said. “No one’s going to recognize you. And if they do, no one in this place is gonna call the cops on you.”

“How can you be so sure?” Caitlin asked.

“Because there’s no reward in it for them. If the cops ever put a dollar figure on you, then we’ll have to be careful.”

“What about someone seeing me and calling the police just to do his or her civic duty?”

“We’re in the wrong part of town for something like that.”

When they’d left the Barrel O’ Beer a couple of minutes ago, they’d driven a few blocks until spotting a hole-in-the-wall with the no-frills name of “Diner.” They were hungry, not having eaten since breakfast, so when they saw the diner, Bix slowed down the SUV and they looked in the windows as they passed. There were only a few customers, so they decided to chance it. Once inside, Caitlin walked with her head down to a booth in the back. Josh slid in beside her and Bix sat across from her.

“I like what I see here,” Bix had said.

“What’s that?” Josh had asked.

“That nobody gave a shit about us when we came in. Nobody looked up, not even the waitresses.”

Bix’s observation was borne out over the next several minutes when nobody came to take their orders. As much as they craved anonymity, they also wanted food, so Bix finally whistled for a waitress, who shuffled over and took their orders without looking up from her little notepad.

While they waited for their food, Bix finished telling them what Longo had said, that he overheard someone telling Caitlin where he’d seen the one-eyed blond guy once or twice.

“But he didn’t say where?” Josh asked.

“He didn’t know.”

“So we still don’t know where the hell to go.”

“Maybe we do,” Caitlin said. “I think we should go back to the King of Pawns.”

“The shop was closed,” Josh said.