George Pelecanos - Firing offence

My next stop was a free-standing restaurant in Nags Head that was done in a stucco and adobe motif, one of those Tex-Mex chains that American families love specifically for their blandness. It was their dinner rush, and when I saw the waitresses’ uniforms-green and gold dresses with some type of elaborate headgear more appropriate on a trotting horse-I had the feeling that Kim Lazarus had never worked here.

The woman behind the register, thin and sharp-featured, seemed to be the only one around not doing anything. I walked up to her and smiled.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” she said. “The hostess will seat you.” She made a jerky, pigeon-like movement with her head.

“I’m not looking for a table. My cousin works here. I’m on vacation, thought I’d say hi.”

“Everyone’s kinda busy, sir. But what’s her name? I’ll see if I can get her attention.”

“Kimmy,” I said. “Kim Lazarus.”

“There’s no one here by thate h"27" name,” she said.

“I thought for sure she said this place,” I whined. “Did she used to work here?”

“Honey, I’ve been on this station since we opened two years ago. No Kim ever worked here.” She jerked her head again.

“Are there any other places like this?” I asked. “I guess I got confused.”

“Casa Grande in Kitty Hawk. Or maybe she worked at Carlos Joe’s. But they closed down last year. Had some trouble.”

“What happened?” I asked, winking conspiratorially. Then I jerked my head like hers, for punctuation. “Taxes?”

She leaned in and whispered, “Owners got in drug trouble.”

“Oh. Anybody work here who used to work at Carlos Joe’s? Maybe they know my cousin.”

She pulled back and buttoned up. “Not that I know.”

“Thanks.”

I walked to my car with my head down. Carlos Joe’s was the type of place Kim Lazarus would have been attracted to. But it was closed now, and I had driven into a stone dead end.

The bar at Casa Grande was above the dining room and accessible by a staircase to the left of the hotel entrance. I picked a magazine up off the table in the lobby and went up the stairs.

McGinnes was seated at the bar when I entered. He was leaning across the rather appalled-looking woman to his left, showing her companion a trick involving a swizzle stick. He saw me but averted his eyes. I took a seat at a deuce near the window and the hors d’oeuvre station.

The young cocktail waitress who arrived at my table had that look of false health common to beach employees who party every night, then spend a couple of hours in the sun each day for recovery purposes. She had the scrubbed, Baptist good looks preferred by ACC frat boys, but her best days were already behind her. Her summer tan was fading like an Earl Scheib paint job.

“What can I get you?” she asked with a pained smile, and set a basket of chips and salsa on the table.

“A Dos Equis, please. And some queso.”

The place was filled with older, successful men, stag or with younger women, gray-templed gents who tie the arms of their summerweight sweaters around their necks and drink single malt scotch or beer from green bottles.

McGinnes was doing an awful lot of buddying up to the bartender, one of those doughy ex-jocks who “parlay” a summer bartending job into a full-time career that leaves them forty-five at thirty.

The queso was spicy and hot. I ordered beef and chicken enchiladas with a side of sour creae o

The food arrived and was of the same quality as the queso. Someone in the kitchen obviously liked their job. I watched the bartender whisper something to his barback, then leave his station and walk into the men’s room. Half a minute later McGinnes followed him in.

I finished my meal and the waitress removed the plates. The bartender returned to the bar, where he immediately lit a cigarette and drew on it hungrily.

McGinnes emerged from the head and took his seat at the bar, turning to his neighbors and quickly starting a conversation. Then he pulled the rope on a bell that hung from the ceiling. There was applause in the bar, as McGinnes had just bought the house a round.

I raised my bottle in a toast to McGinnes, via the bar mirror. He winked at me, a little too broadly, though he deserved to be somewhat reckless. Clearly he was on to something.

As I finished my beer, McGinnes was in close conversation with the bartender. He looked at me again, then stepped away from the bar, and said loudly, “What do I owe you, professor?” I left twenty on sixteen, walked down the stairs, and out to my car.

I turned the ignition key and knocked the ocean mist off my windshield with a stroke of the wipers. McGinnes bounded out of the hotel and goose-stepped to my car, settling in on the passenger side. He grinned the same cocky smirk when he closed a major deal.

“What’s my name?” he asked childishly.

“Johnny Mac.”

I pulled out onto Virginia Dare, heading south. McGinnes brought the snow seal out of his breast pocket, unfolded it carefully, dipped in with his pinky nail, and did a hit. Then he fed the other nostril the same way.

“What did all that cost me?” I asked.

“Call it a hundred. Thirty for the house round, seventy for the half.”

“Seventy, for a half? You’re pretty generous with my money.”

“You got to ante to play the game, Jim. It was worth it, for what I got.” He pointed ahead. “Pull in there. I’m thirsty.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

He was out of the store quickly with a tall brown bag in his arms. He handed me a cold bottle of beer and took one for himself. We drove on.

“Spill it, man.”

“All right,” he said. “Soon as I walk in the bar, I can see everyone working the place is wired. I strike up a conversation with the barkeep and ask if he remembers Kim Lazarus, used to work there. I’m a good friend of hers from D.C. Not only does he remember her, she was in town last week. I steer the conversation to coke, and how Kim told me I could look him up if I wanted to cop. He gets suspicious now and I ease off. But I get him back on the track when I tell him I’m use hiion tod to spending one-forty, one-fifty for a gram.” He looked at me and smiled.

“Keep going,” I said.

“This guy can’t resist the high dollar. He offers to sell me a half for seventy. I gotta try it first, I say. We go into the john, he turns me on. Let me tell you, this shit is good. I know you’ve found Jesus and all that, but if this was the old days, you would concur on this, Jim.”

“Get to the meat, Johnny.”

“We go back out to the bar. I tell him this freeze is so serious, I’ve got to cop more. How can I get my hands on some quantity?”

“Kim and the boys, right?”

He nodded. “Let me tell it, man. The bartender, he’s juiced now, he’s my buddy. He tells me that it was my friend Kim that sold him the shit.”

“Where are they?”

“This bartender was too small-time to take on quantities. There was another guy, though, a surf rat by the name of Charlie Fiora who used to work with Kim at Casa Grande. He’s got his own gig now down the coast, a little bar called the Wall. He’s the one that Kim and Eddie and your boy Broda went to see to sell their supply to.”

“Where?” I said.

“Wrightsville Beach.” He took a swig and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

I slapped the steering wheel as we pulled into the lot of the Arizona. “Good job, man.”

“I know,” he said.

In our room I laid out maps and ferry schedules. McGinnes tapped out some lines on the mirror he had removed from the wall.

“You want a blast?”

“No,” I said. But like any former cokehead, I really did.

He did a couple that had the width of fingers. “Let’s go out and have a few.”