Stephen White - Missing Persons

“Alan-we didn’t get off to a good start with you and Dr. Estevez last month-Jaris and I didn’t. Water under the bridge, right? Is that okay? Because based on what Sam’s been able to tell us, it sounds like both you and her might have something to do with another situation we’re working.” He lowered his voice here, and leaned closer to me. “Yes, I’m talking about Mallory. Now, it may just all be coincidence. That’s always possible. But it’s also possible that everything’s related.”

I couldn’t resist a jab. “If it turns out that everything’s related, it sounds like you and Detective Slocum-Jaris-might have missed some important details during your initial investigations.”

Sam said, “I’m not sure that’s helpful, Alan.”

I turned on him. My tone was level. My words? Not as much. “And you’re the best judge of that, Sam? Of what’s helpful? Please. He”-I pointed at Slocum-“roughed up Diane last month for no reason other than that he’d had a bad day or his feelings were hurt or God knows what else, and now he wants to have a nice dinner with me and down a few beers and he thinks I’ll just bow down and help him cover up his mistakes on the”-I caught myself and lowered my voice to a coarse whisper-“Mallory Miller fiasco. Because what I think this is about is ass-covering.”

Slocum’s face was red. He raised his glass and drained the dregs from the bottom of his first beer-a version of counting to ten to calm himself down, I thought-before he said, “I’m guessing you need help finding her. Not to mention the guy with the old Camaro. Him, too. I don’t expect you to like me-to be honest, I don’t give a shit-but I’m willing to try to find these people. You want to work something out, or not? Your choice. I don’t have time for your sissy-ass games.”

Sissy-ass games? I supposed that meant that Jaris and I were no longer friends. “What can you do to help? Last time I looked, Las Vegas was in Nevada.”

Sam sighed loudly. I thought he was expressing relief that most of the cards were finally on the table.

The waitress chose that moment to return with Jaris’s second beer. She dropped it off in record time and withdrew as though she’d just remembered she’d left the water running in her bathtub.

“If we reach out from here,” Darrell said as she retreated, “the Las Vegas police maybe show a little more interest in trying to find out what happened to her. I suspect that could make a significant difference. The current situation-an out-of-state husband who can’t find his wife for a couple of days-probably isn’t creating a lot of investigative curiosity in Sin City.”

Of course he was right. I asked, “And the other guy? The one with the Camaro? How are you going to help with him?”

“One phone call-and one BOLO later-every cop in the state will have an eye peeled for that car,” Jaris said.

I hadn’t touched my beer. I picked it up and took a long, slow sip. “On what pretense?” I asked.

Across the table, Slocum had already finished half of his second mug. Sam spied Jaris getting ready to jump back into the fray and decided to run interference. He said, “That’s our problem. We’ll come up with one. It’s not as hard as you might think. By the way, BOLO is be-on-the-look-”

“I know what a BOLO is,” I snapped, almost spitting my beer. “So what do you want from me, Jaris?”

Sam wasn’t done orchestrating. “What do you say let’s order first, okay? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving here. Darrell, what’s good? Think I’d like the tempeh cutlets?”

Sam’s tempeh question was theater-of-the-absurd offered purely for my benefit. Tempeh was so far outside the boundaries of Sam’s comfort universe that Hubble couldn’t have spotted it.

Sam was thinking that he’d won, and he was pretty darn proud of himself.

We’d almost completed a totally silent trek from the Sunflower back up the Mall to my office when he said, “You wouldn’t have come out with me if I’d told you what I was up to.”

“Damn right,” I said.

A few more steps of silence followed. Then, without the slightest bit of animosity in his voice, Sam added, “You should get off your high horse, see what the world looks like from down here with the rest of us.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I wasn’t as careful as Sam was about keeping the animosity out of my voice.

“Your cherished position in life-you know, psych- o -therapist, guardian of all the world’s secrets-it’s not as special as you think it is. You’re just a damn guy doing a damn job. You have trusts to keep. Well, surprise, surprise, other people do, too. Other people take their responsibilities as seriously as you do.

“Me? Tonight? It turns out I saw a way to get Diane some help for whatever mess she’s in. I saw a way to get some serious eyeballs out looking for the guy in the Camaro. You wanted me to find a hook for all this. Well, I found one. The way I see it, call me naive, but no blood gets spilled by my strategy. A few people have to swallow some pride-yeah, you included-but so the fuck what? You think this was an easy meeting for Jaris? The guy has his hands full; trust me on that.”

I was inclined to say that I didn’t give a ferret fart whether or not it had been a pleasant meeting for Jaris, but I didn’t.

Sam had his hands in his pockets and was looking down at the sidewalk as we talked. At Ninth he led us off the curb without looking for traffic in both directions. In half a second a guy heading north on a bike almost creamed him. If the man hadn’t screamed a profanity in warning, I’m not sure Sam would have ever noticed.

Even with the profanity, he seemed unfazed. He muttered, “Too cold for a bike.”

We started up Walnut toward my office. As we passed the building that was the second or third incarnation of one of Boulder’s legendary breakfast houses, Sam said, “I miss Nancy’s. Those herb cheese omelettes? They were something. Lucile’s is great, but I miss Nancy’s.”

“Me, too.” After three or four more steps, I added, “You’re right, Sam.”

“About Nancy’s? Course I am.”

I hadn’t been talking about Nancy’s, but he was right about that, too. “Wonderful biscuits. Remember those biscuits? But I meant that you’re right about what you said.”

“I know that, too.” He exhaled audibly. “The fact that you admit it doesn’t change anything, doesn’t mean that what happens next is going to be what you want to happen next, or even that what happens next is what I want to happen next. All that’s different now is that some people who care about the jobs they do are going to try to find some of these missing people.” He pulled his right hand from his pocket and yanked at the knot on his tie. “How bad a thing can that be?”

He was right.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“For being an asshole.”

“You mean a sissy-ass?”

I laughed. “That, too.”

“Hey,” he said.

And that was that.

Almost a block later he climbed into the cradle of the driver’s seat of his Cherokee. “Carmen likes to buy me clothes,” he said.

It took me a moment to realize that Sam was revisiting the conversation we’d been having in the restaurant at the precise moment when Slocum and Olson ambushed me. I had just asked him about his tie. “I figured,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“About the new threads?” I asked. “Or about the fact that Carmen likes to buy them for you?”

Sam shook his head gently, and I could hear the throaty tang of a little chuckle come out of the darkness. “See, that’s the thing. I don’t know one other guy who would ask me that question. Not one. And that’s why I’m okay with the fact that you’re an asshole sometimes.”