Gumshoe on the Loose

by Rob Leininger

  “Sure, thanks. Make it a diet. I’ve reached my sugar limit.”

  She laughed as waitresses do, got me a refill, hurried away now that her workload had suddenly doubled.

  More trucks.

  The crow flew away.

  A kid on a bicycle glided downhill as the temperature finally hit a hundred.

  My fried chicken arrived. Half-size corn on the cob, too. I had a leg and a few fries down when Lucy came in the door with a small suitcase and sat down opposite me in the booth. She had on black nylon running shorts that barely covered her butt, and a lightweight ribbed cotton tank top, pale pink, that hugged half-sized breasts like a second skin, complete with nipple bumps.

  “Buy me lunch, Mortimer? I’m starved.”

  I stared at her for six long seconds. “I’ve seen pictures of Ethiopia. You don’t look starved.”

  She looked down at herself, then stole a fry off my plate, stuck it in her mouth. “I was about to go on break. That would’ve been lunch—free, too, but then . . .” She shrugged. “Your plate got loose and Earl reached his limit. Fourth one I’ve dropped in two weeks, so it’s like I’m not supposed to be a waitress.”

  A beefy guy, fifty years old, wearing a chef’s hat, came out of the kitchen as if shot out of a cannon. “Get outta here, Lucy.”

  “Hey,” she said. “I don’t work here, Earl. I’m a customer. You treat customers like that in this place?”

  “You’re not a customer—”

  “Yes, she is,” I said. I handed her a menu. “What’ll it be?”

  She put the menu back in its slot. “I pretty much know what they serve here. I’ll have a toasted cheese and cole slaw. And fries.” She took another one of mine, then looked up at Earl.

  “You, you, you . . .” he said. The backs of his hands were hairy. His apron was smeared with cooking grease.

  “She’s with me,” I said. “Toasted cheese, fries, and slaw.”

  He glared at me for a few seconds, then left. Terry came by, gave Lucy a cool look, me, too, took her order since she was the waitress, not Earl, and departed without a word.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said. “I was so hungry. I’ve been on since eight without a break—well, a little one, like five minutes, just enough time to go to the bathroom then, wham, in come three truckers and mom and pop with four kids and two other couples and I’m scrambling again and Earl’s all grouchy, goin’ like hell back there and it’s hard to keep it all going—I mean, you’d know what it’s like if you ever waited tables, which I never did until like about three weeks ago. Less than three, actually, so it’s not like I’ve had a lot of experience or—”

  I made a T with my hands. “Time out, kiddo. Take a breath.”

  She took a fry instead, dipped it in ketchup, popped it in her mouth. Nice mouth, too. Even white teeth.

  “Mortimer?” I said, backing her up to the moment she sat down and asked me to buy her lunch.

  “Well, sure. That’s your name, right?”

  Took me five seconds to say, “Mort.”

  “Close enough.” She aimed a fry at my face. “Nice scars. Kinda sexy. You get them last year from that chick, what’s-’er-name, Winter?”

  “Yep.”

  She leaned closer. The tabletop pushed her boobs in a quarter inch, like the kind of solid rubber bumpers you’d find on a boat. “I followed it on TV—when you were finding all those heads. It was like a big soap opera, except it was real, which made it, I dunno, cool and weird and like that—don’t know why I got so interested, but there you go. I tracked it every day on the news, even when there wasn’t much happening, until you finally caught them—those two crazy women. Which made me glad, you catching them, but sad, too, sort of like getting to the end of an interesting novel. Then, you found that senator guy’s hand, got it in the mail or something, so there you were again, which was amazing. You should keep eating. It won’t take me long to finish up a toasted cheese. Earl will probably whip it up fast to get rid of me.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Recite the entire Gettysburg Address in one breath.”

  “Good lungs?”

  I glanced involuntarily at her pink top. Her eyes sparkled in amusement at me. In that waitress outfit she’d looked okay, nice little figure, but in her current getup she was something else, a hot little girl-child with a tight body that was singing an aria. Which, of course, was par since the night before I’d become a gumshoe. But maybe par wasn’t right this time; this girl was easily a birdie. Her breasts were a third the size of Shanna’s, but perfectly shaped, legs, too, and I consider myself an expert on both.

  Her toasted cheese arrived with a solid thump. Terry might have tossed it over from the kitchen. Lucy kicked off a sandal and put a foot up on the seat, heel to her butt, hooked her left arm around her knee, which was almost up to her chin. She picked up a wedge of toasted cheese, took a bite, looked at me, and said, “So, cowboy—which way you headed? North or south?”

  I paused with a chicken wing in my hand. “Cowboy?”

  She shrugged. “I could call you stud. How’s that?”

  “How about Mort?”

  She shrugged again. “Little old-fashioned, but okay, I can get used to it.” She took another bite. “So. Which way?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Take me with you?”

  “Not a snowball’s chance, girl.”

  “Why not? I’ve got a good heart. I’m a nice person. You’ll see. Anyway, you have to take me with you.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “I dropped your fried chicken. If you hadn’t ordered it, I would still have a job. So there. And I just checked out of that motel, the Stargazer. Week’s rent was due tomorrow anyway, and now I don’t have a place to stay, so it’s time to move on.”

  “Not with me.”

  “Why not? I don’t have a car. I saw you on TV all the time. You’re harmless.”

  Not sure I liked that. It bumped up against the noir image I was working on, especially after last year’s scars.

  “Big problem,” I said. “Bigger than just big.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Your age, kiddo.”

  “Really? How old you think I am?” She watched my face like a hawk eyeing a field mouse.

  “Eighteen. If I’m lucky.”

  “You’re not. But I am.”

  “You are what?”

  “Lucky. Got a quarter?”

  “A quarter?”

  “That’s money. A nickel would work, too. They’re metal, round, pretty much flat on both sides.”

  Smart-ass little girl. I dug a nickel out of my jeans.

  “Flip it,” Lucy said. “Don’t show it to me.”

  I didn’t want to argue. I flipped the coin. Tails.

  “Tails,” she said. “Do it again, nine more times.” I flipped the nickel, not showing it to her, and she called heads or tails another nine times. “How’d I do?” she asked when I was done.

  “Nine out of ten.”

  “See? Lucky.” She looked into my eyes as she poked another fry in her mouth. “So, which way we goin’? North or south?”

  I studied her for a moment. Which was nice on the eyes, I have to admit, her in that tight pink top, generous mouth, big blue eyes, bright and dark blue, skin like cream. “South,” I said. “Not that it’ll make any difference to you.”

  She smiled. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re probably only seventeen and that’s trouble I don’t need.”

  Her eyes glowed. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  Jesus Christ.

  She picked up another French fry and gnawed it. “Okay, if it bothers you, I’m not seventeen.”

  “Eighteen wouldn’t be much better.”

  “Seriously? If I were eighteen I could marry you without my parents’ consent. That’s huge.”

  I felt my eyes bulge. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

  She shrugged. “J
ust stating a fact. Don’t get all hyper. You haven’t asked me yet—although, just so you know, I’d probably say yes.”

  Would a heart attack qualify as hyper? “You’re something else, girl.”

  “So I’ve been told. Anyway, you get off track pretty easily. So you’re going south. Stopping in Vegas?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Suits me. What’re you gonna do there? Investigate this thing with Jo-X?”

  Again I stared at her. “Goddamn television.”

  She laughed. “You are, aren’t you? I mean, you found him.”

  “Wouldn’t concern you, one way or the other, since you and I are going to part company in—best guess—eight minutes.”

  She lifted her arms above her head and stretched, which did wonders for everything beneath that tank top. “Really? You won’t take me with you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Her arms came back down. “I could help. I’d be a big help. I’m smart. I know things. I can get into places you can’t. People trust me. I can act. I could distract people, guys mostly, so you could get past them.” She lifted her boobs half an inch. “Think what you could do with a nice little rack like this.”

  I stared at her—them—her.

  She picked up another fry. “What I mean,” she said, “I’ve got attributes you could use. I’ve got good legs, and like I said, I’m real smart.”

  I was still speechless, but words were tumbling around in my head. I was sorting through them when she said, “Are you listening to any of this? Am I getting through?”

  “A little. Mostly I wonder what your high school guidance counselor would think.”

  “That was Mrs. Lambros. And it’s been a while.”

  “How long is a while? Two weeks?”

  She laughed. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So I was about to say—not that you were paying attention, because I think you’ve got a problem in that area—boobs like these are almost like keys. They open doors. Think how much help I could be.”

  Je-sus. “Okay, it’s settled. You can’t go with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re too withdrawn. We would have long silences during which I would never know what you were thinking.”

  She tilted her head and smiled. Her eyes sparkled. “So that’s a yes, right? I get to go with you?”

  “You don’t have a car? This is America. Everyone has a car.”

  “Not me. I’ve been traveling by bus.”

  “Which you could still do.”

  “But not with you, and that’s the point here, Mort.”

  “Got a driver’s license? Some ID that gives your age?”

  She pursed her lips, then opened her suitcase and dug out a wallet, opened it, handed me a California license.

  Lucy K. Landry, five-five, brown hair, blue eyes, a hundred eighteen pounds. And, doing the math, thirty-one years old.

  Thirty-one.

  I laughed and flipped the license back to her. “Nice try, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “It’s real.”

  “Looking real and being real aren’t the same thing.”

  “So we’re good to go, right?”

  “I am. You’re not.”

  Ten miles out of Tonopah, a hundred five miles an hour, Lucy said, “Might want to cool it a little. Truckers say there’s a speed trap somewhere around the next whorehouse.”

  So I cooled it, took it back down to seventy-five.

  “What’s the rush?” she asked.

  “No rush. Just cooling off my brain.”

  She laughed.

  I glanced over at her. “You might be eighteen, but you’re not thirty-one. There’s no freakin’ way.”

  “I am. Since April. You saw the license.”

  “It’s a terrific fake, even got a hologram. It might keep me from being arrested, giving a minor a ride. A minor girl at that. Where’d you get it?”

  “California, of course. And it’s not a fake.”

  “Twenty bucks says it is.”

  “Great. Now you owe me twenty.” She held out a hand.

  “Not yet, I don’t.”

  “Hey, no one can ever guess my age. I can pass for sixteen if I need to. You might be able to use that.”

  “How? To spend twenty years in prison?”

  She smiled. “And if I get dolled up just right, I can pass for thirty, maybe thirty-two. I have to really work at that, though.”

  I glanced at her. “What you’re wearing now . . .”

  “This’d be like eighteen. You’re not so bad with ages. Want to hear my Valley Girl impression? Makes me sound fifteen.”

  “Please don’t. You’re not married, are you?”

  “Nope. No boyfriend, either, in case you want to know, which is why I’ll marry you if you ask.” She gave me a look.

  I felt a shivery feeling in my belly, like maybe the fried chicken was acting up. “Please don’t say that again.”

  “Maybe later.” She sat back and lifted her face to the sun, eyes closed, let the wind buffet her hair around.

  We went another three miles in silence.

  “How old are you really?” I asked. She couldn’t be older than Jeri would’ve been. Six years older than Holiday? No way. I could probably trip her up if I asked a few more times.

  “Thought we covered that already.”

  “With a fake license, yeah.”

  “It’s not fake.”

  “Yeah, it is. I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, kiddo.”

  She looked over at me. “I can tell. You’ve got little crow’s feet in the corner of your eyes.”

  Shit.

  “I’ve been around,” she said. “And around and around. I have a degree in art history from the University of San Francisco. I can tell early Renaissance from late Renaissance, spot a Grant Wood at forty paces, tell you all kinds of weird stuff about Picasso, van Gogh. Know how many homeless people have degrees in art history? It’s like, if you don’t want to be employed, that’s the degree you get. It’s sort of like an educational death wish, especially if you don’t much care for art.”

  “Which, of course, you don’t.”

  “No, I like art—now. Not so much when I first started out. The degree’s okay with me. I could get a job as a waitress or checkout girl just about anywhere with it. And I did the Vagina Monologues last year.”

  The Mustang swerved two inches. “Say what?”

  She looked over at me. “Vagina Monologues. You’ve heard of vaginas, right?” I caught a little smirk in her voice.

  I had trouble getting air. “Yep,” I said. She still looked like a high school kid to me. No way was she thirty-one. I just needed to come at her in a new direction, and this wasn’t it.

  She leaned back again, eyes closed. “I played two parts. I did My Angry Vagina. That’s where a woman rants about all the injustices done to her pussy. But humorously. It’s a tirade against tampons, douches, the tools used by OB/GYNs, that sort of thing.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, stalled on the word pussy.

  She smiled. “The other part was Because He Liked to Look At It. That’s where this woman describes how she’d thought her vagina was ugly and she was embarrassed about that. But then she changed her mind ’cause this guy, Bob, liked it so much he would stare at it for hours. Which is just what the title says.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said again. “Hours. Right.”

  “Okay, now you’re totally embarrassed.”

  “Actually, I’m trying to catch up with the monologues part of this conversation. But, embarrassed by the words you’re using? No—if only you weren’t seventeen. But we could talk baseball. Who’re you rooting for? Giants, Dodgers?”

  “Can you actually say ‘vagina’? Let’s hear it.”

  “Vagina.”

  She grinned. “Okay, good. Anyway, you’ve never heard of the Vagina Monologues?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, that’s a first.”


  “Talking vaginas? I would think so.”

  “No, silly. Women talking about their vaginas. Openly. Using words like cunt and pussy—not swearing, just using the words to talk about female anatomy more openly. It’s an episodic play by a woman named Eve Ensler. It really is a legitimate play. Thousands of people have seen it. Hundreds of thousands. You oughta go see it, expand your horizons.”

  “See a vagina? I’ve done that.”

  “The play, dope.” She smiled at me. “Of course, if it turns out you’ve got a hankering, I could—”

  “Stop,” I said, setting the volume at ten. “Do you have proof that you’re at least eighteen?”

  “Proof ?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t think I am?”

  “I don’t know what you are. That fake ID doesn’t cut it. I’m not going to talk about . . . about . . .”

  “Pussies?”

  “Yeah, that—with a seventeen-year-old juvenile delinquent high school kid running away from home. And if you can’t prove you’re older than seventeen, or God help me only sixteen, you’re getting off at the next place that sells gas.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, pull over.”

  The car swerved again. “Why?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna take a selfie or flash you. Not right now, anyway. But driving and talking on a cell phone is dangerous, and I’m all about safety, so pull over.”

  I got us off the highway and stopped on a wide verge. I didn’t expect cell coverage out here, but I was wrong. Guess Verizon was working the US 95 corridor.

  Lucy took the phone from me. “What I’m going to do is call my mom, tell her it’s me, then hand you the phone, okay?”

  “Terrific.”

  She dialed a number, waited, then: “Hey, Mom, it’s me. Yeah, I’m with this really nice guy and . . . yeah, you’d like him . . . no, it’s totally cool . . . uh-huh, he wants to know how old I am so tell him, okay?”

  She handed me the phone. I took it and said, “Hi.”

  “Yes, hi.”

  “Is this Lucy’s mother?”

  “It is, yes.” Nice voice, refined, touch of humor there, too.

  “What’s your last name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “It’s Landry.”