“What hair?” Shakes said.
“That’s what I keep saying.”
Angie hit me again. “Can I get a vodka straight, Shakes?”
Shakes pumped her hand vigorously before letting it go. “Finally, a real drinker!”
“Going broke on my buddy here?” Angie lit a cigarette.
“He drinks like a nun these days. People are starting to talk.” Shakes poured a generous helping of chilled Finlandia into a glass and placed it before Angie.
“So,” I said when Shakes left us alone, “come crawling back, eh?”
She gave me a smoky chuckle and took a sip of Finlandia. “Keep it up. It’ll make torturing you later that much more pleasurable.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What brings you here, Sicilian Spice?”
She rolled her eyes as she took another drink. “I got some oddities regarding David Wetterau.” She held up her index finger. “Two, actually. The first was easy. That letter he wrote to the insurance company? My guy says it’s a definite forgery.”
I turned on my stool. “You already looked into this?”
She reached for her cigarettes, extracted one.
“On a Sunday,” I said.
She lit the cigarette, her eyebrows raised.
“And turned something up,” I said.
She curled her fingers and blew on them, polished an imaginary medal on her chest. “Two things.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re the coolest.”
She placed a hand behind her ear and leaned in.
“You’re aces. You’re the bomb. You put the ‘B’ in bad-ass. You’re the coolest.”
“Already said that.” She leaned in a little closer, hand still behind her ear.
I cleared my throat. “You are, without question or reservation, the smartest, most resourceful, perceptive private detective in the entire city of Boston.”
Her mouth broke into that wide, slightly lopsided grin that can blow holes in my chest.
“Was that so difficult?” she said.
“Shoulda rolled right off my tongue. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Just out of practice kissing ass, I guess.”
I leaned back, took a lingering look at the curve of her hip, the press of flesh on her stool.
“Speaking of asses,” I said, “allow me to note that yours still looks tremendous.”
She waved her cigarette in my face. “Wood back in the pants, perv.”
I placed my hands on the bar. “Yes’m.”
“Oddity number two.” Angie put a steno notepad on the bar and flipped it open. She swiveled her stool so that our knees almost touched. “Just before five on the day he was hurt, David Wetterau calls Greg Dunne, the Steadicam guy, and begs off. Says his mother is ill.”
“Was she?”
She nodded. “Of cancer. Five years ago. She died in ’94.”
“So he lies about-”
She held up a hand. “Not done yet.” She stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray, left several chunks of coal still burning red. She hunched forward and our knees touched. “At four-forty, Wetterau received a call on his cell phone. It lasted four minutes and originated from a pay phone on High Street.”
“Just around the block from the corner of Congress and Purchase.”
“One block down, one over, to be exact. But that’s not the most curious thing. Our contact at Cellular One told me where Wetterau was when he received the call.”
“I’m breathless.”
“Heading west on the Pike, just outside Natick.”
“So at four-forty, he’s heading to get the Steadicam.”
“And at five-twenty he’s in the middle of the intersection at Congress and Purchase.”
“About to get his head squashed.”
“Right. He parks his car in a garage on South Street, walks up Atlantic to Congress, and he’s crossing Purchase when he trips.”
“You talk to any cops about it?”
“Well, you know how the police feel these days about us in general and me in particular.”
I nodded. “Maybe you’ll think twice next time before you shoot a cop.”
“Ha-ha,” she said. “Luckily, Sallis & Salk has excellent relationships with the BPD.”
“So you had someone from there call.”
“Nah. I called Devin.”
“You called Devin.”
“Uh-huh. I asked him and he got back to me in about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Maybe fifteen. Anyway, I have the witness statements. All forty-six of them.” She patted the soft leather bag on the chair to her left. “Ta-da!”
“’Nother drink, folks?” Shakes Dooley emptied Angie’s ashtray and wiped the condensation ring from under her glass.
“Sure,” Angie said.
“And for the missus?” Shakes asked me.
“Fine for now, Shakes. Thanks.”
Shakes said, “What a pussy,” under his breath, and walked off to get Angie another Finlandia.
“So let me get this straight,” I said to Angie, “you call Devin and fifteen minutes later you have something I’ve been trying to get for four days.”
“’Bout the size of it.”
Shakes placed her drink in front of her. “There you go, doll.”
“‘Doll,’” I said when he walked away. “Who the hell says ‘doll’ anymore?”
“Yet he somehow makes it work,” Angie said, and sipped some vodka. “Go figure.”
“Man, I’m pissed at Devin.”
“Why? You bug him all the time for favors. I haven’t called him in almost a year.”
“True.”
“Plus, I’m prettier.”
“Debatable.”
She snorted. “Ask around, pal.”
I took a sip of my beer. It was warm. Popular with Europeans, I know, but so are blood sausage and Steven Seagal.
On Shakes’s next pass, I ordered a fresh one.
“Sure, I’ll be taking your car keys next.” He placed a frosty Beck’s in front of me, shot a look at Angie, and walked away.
“I’m getting dissed way too much lately.”
“Probably because you date defense attorneys who think a good wardrobe makes up for that lack-of-brains thing.”
I turned on my chair. “Oh, you know her?”
“No. I’ve heard half the men in the twelfth ward do, though.”