A Nasty Piece of Work Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone numbers. She returned my call late afternoon. I did most of the talking but found myself leaving gaps between the sentences in the hope of hearing her voice. I suggested we meet at the new diner that recently opened halfway between Hatch and Las Cruces. “The word is out that the sirloins are thick as your thumb and charcoal broiled,” I said.
    She agreed on condition that we go dutch, which made me think of Kubra and that joker whose name escapes me going dutch at the Campus Cave. I proposed a more imaginative way of handling the bill. “You can pay for the solids,” I said. “I’ll pay for the liquids.”
    I was rewarded with a laugh.
    “Does that mean yes?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said, “it means yes.”
    On the way to the diner, I stopped at the hock shop on the street behind the Korean twenty-four-hour market and purchased a used Sony Walkman. Friday beat me to the restaurant—I spotted her Ford van parked around the side. She didn’t beat me by much—the hood over her motor was still warm to the touch. She was sitting in a booth at the back of the diner and waved when she saw me. I can’t remember if I waved back. Then again I can’t remember if I didn’t. Her lips thinned into a hopeful smile as I slid onto the banquette across from her. “So you must have news to bring me all this way,” she said.
    The table top was transparent Plexiglas. I could see Friday had her sandals on. I could see she still didn’t paint her toenails. I could see the thin fabric of a washed-out skirt hugging her thighs. I ordered two glasses of house punch and, producing the Walkman, slipped in a cassette. Reaching across the table, I fitted the earphones over her ears and hit the button marked PLAY so she could hear the anonymous phone call that sent Detective Awlson off to the Blue Grass to arrest Emilio Gava and the Chicano pusher. Here’s what Friday heard.
    [Male voice] “Awright, awright, I want to report a crime that’s going to be committed.”
    [Voice of female dispatcher] “Please state your name and give us a phone number where we can get back to you if we need to.”
    “I don’t got a name, I don’t got a phone number. I don’t want to get involved. I am just an ordinary citizen reporting a crime, is all. Take my woid for it, huh? I heard dese two jerks talking in a bar. A Chicano is selling five ounces of uncut cocaine to some guy at eleven tonight.”
    “Sir, we need to have your name. I can promise you your identity will be protected—”
    “You’re chasing rainbows, angel. Nobody never found a pot of gold chasing rainbows. You wanna know where the sale is going to take place or you don’t wanna know, which is it?”
    “Sir—”
    “Awright, I have not got all night. What do you say we put this show on the road, huh? The merchandise changes hands at a joint called the Blue Grass in Las Cruces. At eleven. The seller is a kid with sideburns, a Chicano. The buyer is in his early forties, dark skin, dark hair, Italian.”
    “Sir—”
    “The Blue Grass in Las Cruces. At eleven.”
    At which point the phone line went dead. Friday handed me back the earphones. I asked her if she recognized the voice.
    Friday nodded carefully. “I recognize the way he pronounces the word ‘awright.’” She turned away to stare out the window for the time it took to clear cobwebs of confusion from her brain. When she finally turned back, she looked like a deer pinned in the headlights of a car. “Shit,” she said. “Excuse my language.” She shook her head in disbelief and said “Shit” again. “When I posted bond for Emilio’s bail, he called me angel—it’s him, it’s Emilio Gava.” She leaned toward me—I couldn’t miss the groundswell of her breasts visible over the bodice of her low-cut blouse—and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Why would Emilio betray himself to the police?”
    I said the obvious. “He wants to get himself arrested. He wants to be inside a jail.”
    She asked the