Death by Diamonds

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

            Loneliness stalks Indianapolis after midnight.  Despite the bright street, the high-rise hotels, neon bars, Convention Center, and RCA Dome, few pedestrians ply the cooling sidewalks; few cars cruise the asphalt streets.  Not even hookers work Monument Circle after midnight.  The flesh mongers parade up and down north Delaware or Pennsylvania--depending on which street the police have agreed not to patrol.

            The beers and buddies at Klancy's Kool Korner had left me feeling sorry for myself, and I wished a willing woman shared the ride up Meridian Street to my apartment.  I found it easy to feel sorry for myself.  I was 45, unattached, poor, and half sober.  The red and yellow leaves straggling across the white lines in the road didn't help either.  A man all alone doesn't relish October.

            The woman was lurching in starts and stops down the middle of Meridian Street.  Wearing a long, loose dress, like a hospital gown, and shoeless, she grinned wildly and tried to run from my car.  I slowed.  I came to a complete stop as she collapsed atop the yellow line on the asphalt.  The headlamps defined a spare, pale body and short blonde hair like straw stuck at rakish angles into her scalp.

            You don't have to be Clara Barton to pick up a collapsed woman and carry her to your car.  Rail thin beneath the dress, the woman proved light even for me.  I considered the police but decided she needed a hospital first.  Her feet were cut and bleeding, and she breathed like an asthmatic with pneumonia.  I wrapped old newspaper around her feet so the blood wouldn't stain my carpet.  Spilled Coke and hamburger drippings were OK, but human blood wouldn't complement my abject poverty decor.

            I aimed my car for St. Vincent's, a Catholic hospital on the north side; if you can't trust the nuns, who can you trust?  The woman's ragged breathing urged me to drive fast.  The woman neither wore jewelry nor carried a purse, and I wondered what kind of trouble I had loaded into my dated Thunderbird.  Normal people don't play the incognito game.

            She awoke coughing like a patient in an emphysema ward, a place my father had haunted for the last six months of his life, a place I had visited too many times.  People who can breathe tend to take it for granted.  The woman's eyes widened when she saw me.

            “Who're you?” she managed to ask between coughs.

            “Ryerson Caine.”

            “Where're we going?”

            “To the hospital.”

            Terror stretched her face.  “Not back there!”

            “Lady, you hack from your toes and look like death the hard way.  If you want to nix Saint Vincent's when we get there, feel free, but I'm not turning you loose till I dump you into an emergency room wheelchair.”

            She laughed, a raspy laugh that sank into a violent coughing fit.  I handed her my handkerchief and tried not to watch her spit blood into it.  In the AIDS era, you don’t like to see people spit blood.  Another handkerchief to toss into the dumpster.

            “Got a cigarette?” she croaked when the coughing subsided.

            I shook my head.  “A cigarette's the last thing you need.”

            She leaned back, closed her eyes, and chuckled.  “Got away,” she said softly.  “Got clean away.”

            “What's your name?” I asked.

            “Angel,” she replied.  “Angel Leshing.”

            “Where do you live?”

            “Fooled 'em,” she said.  “Changed places in line with Korsi.  First time Korsi said OK.  Slipped away as they marched us.”

            For a moment, I held the uneasy thought that was transporting an escapee from the women's prison on Michigan Street.  Maybe “Angel” cut her feet scaling the razor wire atop the chain link fence.  My discomfort dissolved when Angel started coughing again; her cough filled the car.  She was too frail to crush a marshmallow.

            “How old you think I am?” she asked after her spell.

            Angel looked sixty, but no woman likes to be told how old she looks.  “Fifty,” I lied.

            She cackled and hacked.  “Thirty-seven,” she rasped.  “Remember that.  It's important.”

            If she was 37, I was the Irish Sweepstakes winner.

            “And remember the mansion,” she continued.  “Pergot's mansion.  I dream about the mansion all the time.”

            “Sure,” I said.  She had escaped some mansion in her mind.

            She laughed again.  “Fooled 'em,” she gasped.  “Fooled 'em from the beginning.  Even Stickman.”

            Before I could ask about Stickman, something snapped inside Angel.  She stiffened and gasped, her eyes wide and terrible as if she had seen the soul of Satan.  Her mouth opened in a scream that never arrived.  She wrapped her clawlike fingers around my arm.  Her grip was surprisingly strong.

            “Skill craft,” she hissed fiercely.  “Skill...craft.”

            Angel fainted.  Her hand dropped from my arm.  I reached over and searched for a pulse.  I might as well have felt the branch of a tree.  Angel turned very pale in the faint orange glow of the dash.

            “Don't die, Angel,” I growled and tromped the accelerator.  My battered Thunderbird tried to fly, but the car had suffered too much abuse for too long.  The engine sputtered and coughed like Angel.  I backed off.  Killing the T-Bird wouldn't save anyone.  I tried to think of a short cut to the hospital.  There wasn't one.  Running red lights was the only way to save time.  I shot through intersections with abandon.  The police had taken a holiday.

            The emergency room technicians were efficient.  They wheeled Angel away with relay team speed.  A pretty, brown haired nurse with white pants stretched over a nicely curved bottom handed me a plastic foam cup of hot coffee and sat me in an examination cubicle while I waited for the police.  The blue uniformed officer who arrived a few minutes later was a skinny black with a thick mustache and a bright red tattoo of Saturn on his forearm.  I was reminded of an NBA player.  Maybe he had been in a former life.  We were all something different before.

            “How is she?” I asked.

            “DOA,” he answered.  “Dead on arrival.”

            My hands shook.  My good buddy, Dr. Death, had hitched a ride.

            “Tell me what happened.”  He opened a notebook.

            “She said her name was Angel,” I began and told the middle-aged cop everything, from Meridian Street to St. Vincent's.  I left out running red lights, no need to antagonize the keepers of the law.  My coffee cup was empty before I finished my short story, and I wanted more.

            “Your name?” the black asked.

            “Ryerson Caine,” I answered and added my address.

            “Occupation?”

            “Factory rep.”

            “What?”

            “Salesman.”

            “Phone?”

            I handed him my business card.

            “Thanks.”  He copied the information he needed.

            “Who was she?” I asked.

            “Angel Leshing.”  He handed back my card.  “Escaped from a health care facility this evening.  Got all the way to Meridian, quite a run.”

            “The run killed her,” I added.

            The black flipped shut his notebook, his forearm flexing, Saturn rising.  “You're free to go, Mr. Caine.”

            “How'd she die?”

            “Looks like heart failure.”

            I nodded, wondering if my death would be so swift.

            The black started for the door.  “Think of it.  Heart failure at thirty-eight.”

            I stared at the black’s back.  “What?”

            The black opened the door and turned.  “Thirty-eight, not much younger than me.”

            “She looked sixty.”

            “Not ten years ago.”

            I stared stupidly.

            “The Pergot diamonds.  Where were you?  The moon?”

            I shook my head.  “Out of town.”

            “Too bad.”  He left me alone in the examination cubicle.

            I sat on the table wondering how time covered over events like vines creeping up a brick wall.  Ten years had transformed Angel Leshing from a butterfly into a caterpillar, reverse metamorphosis; ten years had chased me from a house on a hill to a roach infested apartment.  Only, my move had become a slide, soon to be a fall if my luck didn't change.

            The pretty nurse peeked around the curtain.  She was solid looking, practical, a pert nose and green eyes.

            “OK?” she asked.

            I nodded and slid off the table.  “Trying to avoid going home.”

            “Wife waits up?”

            “Just the c**k roaches.”

            She laughed and disappeared.  I walked to my Thunderbird wondering why everyone laughed when they left me.  I wasn't funny.  Maybe it was the night.  Even Angel had laughed, and she had left permanently.

            My cheap, digital watch read 2:00 by the time I reached home.  I glanced at my phone answering machine.  The red message light was dark.  None of the contacts I had made during the day had placed an order.  I fell asleep before I could remember how lonely I had become.

            I dreamed I was running down the middle of a long, asphalt highway.  A huge, rumbling sedan with bright headlamps chased me.  The car thundered behind me, pursuing me, willing to crush me if I slowed.  I sprinted as fast as I could, my lungs burning, my legs aching.  The monster sedan pushed.  I glanced over my shoulder.  Angel Leshing drove the black sedan.  She coughed and laughed and spit blood and peered through the steering wheel.  She was dead but happy, and she wanted me to join her in the sedan.  I would become a passenger in her deathmobile.  I ran as fast as I could.

*****

            Even an unsuccessful salesman hits the road early, so I slid into my Thunderbird with four hours sleep and watched the orange dawn slide up my windshield.  On the seat beside me rested my list of restaurants and eateries, two maps, and a battered thermos full of black coffee.  Catalogues of pots, pans, utensils, and institutional appliances filled my sample case.  I offered every item any decent kitchen or chef could use or want.  All the new food places opening up throughout the city should have kept me swimming in orders, should have.  Unsuccessful careers are full of “should haves.”

            I trudged into Klancy's that afternoon like a whipped pup.  I had driven 150 hard miles and never sniffed a sale; I blamed lack of sleep for my lousy luck.  Orly spotted me at the door and pulled a Budweiser before I hit my stool.  As a regular, I merited a reserved perch close to the spigots.

            “Have a cold one,” Orly bellowed.  “Ain't nothin' too good for a celebrity.”  Orly Dobbs stood 6'4”, weighed close to 300 pounds, and sported a perpetual smile below his shaved head.  Some people made the mistake of thinking Orly slow and fat.  A single observation of Orly maneuvering a full keg of beer educated those saps.

            “Got the wrong boy,” I told Orly.

            “Like hell.”  Orly opened the afternoon paper on the bar and jabbed his thumb at an article.  “Black and white.  Read!” Orly yelled.  Viet Nam artillery barrages had blasted away most of Orly's hearing; an Asian fungus forced him to shave his head.  Orly always yelled and occasionally sported a scabbed shaving nick on his scalp, as if he had met a traditional Iroquois.

            The Indianapolis News had run the Angel Leshing legend on the front page, the whole story from the Pergot diamonds forward, even her escape from Fair Oak Healthcare and death ride in my Thunderbird.  The black policeman must have liked the female reporter.  She had spelled my name correctly which was both a blessing and a curse.

            I had finished half the second paragraph before a hand grabbed my shoulder.  I turned and looked into a face more worn than my own.

            “Ryerson Caine?” the man asked.

            I nodded.

            He showed me a silver badge like the one I once carried.  “Detective Carl Hogan,” he said.  “Got a minute?”

            “What about?”

            “Angel Leshing.”

            Hogan settled beside me and sighed.  His shoulders slumped as if he had lugged a boulder 1,000 miles.  His worn gray suit draped on him; Hogan had lost a lot of weight.  He looked as pained and tired as an arthritic hound dog.  I almost felt sorry for him.

            “Look,” I began.

            He raised one hand to stop me.  “You were a cop once, weren't you?”

            “For a while.”

            “And a private detective?”

            Few people knew anything about those years.  “A poor one,” I answered.

            “Not according to Jim Elam.”

            Jim Elam had been my closest friend on the Indianapolis Police force, perhaps my only friend.  Jim used to trade beers with me in Klancy’s, which accounted for Hogan’s presence. 

            “How is Jim?”

            “Retired to Brownsville, Texas to play golf.  As dry and tan as old leather.  You quit after the Combs thing, didn't you?”

            Hogan referred to the murder of Phineas T. Combs, the last case I worked before I discovered private detectives earned too little money.  Private detectives earned even less respect.  More than a fair number of people died because of my stupidity.

            “I was finished long before that,” I said.

            “Yeah, I know what you mean.”  He flipped open a tattered notebook.  “I read the patrolman's report.  Did Angel say anything while she was with you?”  His hands shook.

            I studied Hogan.  His left gray eye was horribly bloodshot, as if a blood vessel had burst.  His swollen nose looked almost purple.  He wheezed as if every breath brought torture to his lungs, and maybe it did.  He was sicker than I ever wanted to be.  “It's in the report,” I answered.

            “The Pergot diamonds,” Hogan began.  “Million and a half of large, unset stones, including the Capetown and Shirja.  Claude Pergot's safety net.  They disappeared ten years ago and have never surfaced.  That's Angel's claim to fame--the Pergot diamonds.”

            “I don't know the lyrics,” I said.

            Orly set a frosted mug of cold beer in front of Hogan, and Hogan sipped gratefully before he continued.  “Angel Leshing sang the blues in joints around town, more face, legs, and t**s than voice.  She connected with Claude Pergot, a mid-forties type who thought Porsches, p***y, and a night club named Sparkles would prove he was twenty-five at heart.  They sang fast music, but Angel loved Gentle Tim Reily.  Gentle Tim was a musician working the soft side of the street, a few low-grade scams and saxophone till dawn.  Then, Pergot showed the rocks to Angel, and everyone got bug-eyed.

            “Gentle Tim and Angel rigged the robbery.  Nobody to get downsided because the diamonds were insured.  Pergot was home, but he wouldn’t play the straight man, and Gentle Tim or Angel knew the punch line.  A forty-five bullet bullseyed Pergot's heart.  The kids split.”

            Hogan didn't bother checking his notes; he had committed the details to memory.  He reminded me of a fourth-grader reciting the Gettysburg address.

            “They didn't clear the city limits before a cruiser spotted a blown tail light on Gentle's battered Ford.  Cap Garrison and Tom Dysan turned on the red blinkers and chased the Ford.  The ride ended when Gentle played tag with a parked GMC pickup.  Angel banged her head and faded.  Gentle ditched the car and shot it out with Garrison and Dysan.”  Hogan smiled.  “One of those shoot-outs where Gentle fired his first and only shot five minutes after he was dead.

            “After cleaning up the accident, Garrison and Dysan drove to Pergot's.  Garrison knew Angel was Claude's canary at Sparkles.  They discovered Claude face down in his own blood.  The wall safe was open, the diamonds gone.”

            Hogan took a deep breath and coughed deeply.  He was no exercise hound.  A fleeing criminal could have strolled away from Hogan.

            “Angel spent five weeks in a coma.  When she woke up, she was space-o, a walking loony tune.  Claimed she came from 'Lovetonium, the happy planet'.  They packed her off to Central State, the happy place, until the state closed the loony bin and shipped anyone they couldn’t release to Fair Oak.  She never left Fair Oak till last night.”

            “The diamonds were never found?” I asked.

            Hogan shook his head.  “The Capetown and Shirja are semi-famous.  Rumors would have sprouted if they had been fenced.”

            “You think Angel told me where the diamonds are stashed.”

            He brushed a stray hair out of his eyes.  Hogan had maybe a dozen long strands of gray hair he swept across the top of his head.  They looked like cracks in his scalp.  “Angel talked mumbo jumbo, but I always thought she knew about the diamonds.  She pretended to be wacko.”

            Hogan slurped his beer and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his wrinkled suit.  “I'm facing retirement on social security and a police pension,” Hogan added.  “I'd like to find the rocks.”

            “I don't know what this means,” I told Hogan.  “Angel didn't say a lot.  But the number thirty-seven cropped up.”

            “Thirty-seven?”

            I nodded.  “And the mansion.  Pergot's mansion.  And skill.  She mentioned skill.”

            Hogan looked at me as if I had escaped from Fair Oak along with Angel.  “That all?”

            I tried to remember.  Alcohol had eaten holes in my brain, and the babblings of a schizo like Angel didn't merit rote memorization.  “Someone named Stickman.  She said she fooled everyone, even Stickman.”

            Hogan waited, but I had no more.  I read the disappointment in his face.  He had expected the mother lode and found a dry hole.

            “Thirty-seven, Pergot mansion, skill, and Stickman?” Hogan asked.

            “She was dying.”

            “Could've given decent directions.”

            “Probably didn't think she would die.”

            Hogan half smiled.  “None of us do.  None of us do.”

            Hogan finished his beer with one long swallow, and I could guess how he would spend a fair-sized chunk of his meager retirement income.  Perhaps living in an alcoholic haze wasn’t so bad after all.

            He stood.  “If you remember anything else, give me a call.”

            “Not likely.”

            He eyed me for a moment before he chuckled.  Without another word he turned and left.

            “Gettin' famous again?” Orly asked.  Orly knew me from the old days, the police and detective days when reporters and morticians followed me like gulls after a shrimper.  Death has its aficionados.

            I shook my head.  “Bad luck.  Don't ever let me drink past midnight again.”

            Orly laughed.  “I'll stop the Pope from saying mass on Christmas too.”

            I laughed with Orly.  Orly or no, I'd drink until I decided to quit, and we both knew it.  As I sipped my beer I remembered Angel, and I wondered what had aged her--maybe the coma, or maybe Fair Oak, or maybe trying to keep from accidentally blurting out the secret to the diamonds.  Something had saddled and ridden Angel as if she were a pony express pinto, ridden her to an early grave.  I was glad I didn't have any beauty to lose.

            When I arrived home that night, I spotted the blinking red light in the dark, a message on my answering machine.  I hoped someone had phoned in an order for the Japanese cookware I was trying to peddle, “Inscrutable Oriental Steel”.  Unfortunately, the caller identified himself as “Dr. Maupin” from Fair Oak Healthcare.  He wanted to “conference” concerning Angel Leshing and her last minutes on earth, “for his files.”  He sounded incompetent--which accounted for his working at Fair Oak.

            There were no other messages.

*****

            Fair Oak Healthcare occupied what once had been twenty acres of productive corn field.  Long and single story, the red brick building drifted in a sea of grass.  If you concentrated on the building you might not notice the chain link fence topped with barb wire encircling the property.  The fence was a tip-off that Fair Oak patients weren’t your generic senior citizens who couldn’t bunk down with the kids because of incontinence.  Fair Oak denizens played a little rougher, a littler crazier.  The gate guard, a pimpled fugitive from high school, had me sign a clipboard before he directed me to Maupin's office.

            “Watch out for patients,” the guard cautioned.

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah, they climb into any car that comes on the place.”

            “Are they dangerous?”

            He shrugged.  “Don't know till they hatchet someone.”

            “Thanks.”

            I didn't see any patients on my way to Maupin's office, which was fine with me.  I was afraid I'd spot some babbling, drooling i***t and see my mirror image.

            Maupin occupied a smallish but bright office still smelling of new carpet.  The walls were a pinkish tan, the color of a desert at dawn, a color to soothe the savage inmate.  Piles of paper buried Maupin's desk; a bookcase supported stacks of files and books; a computer dominated the credenza behind him.  On the screen was a photo of a porpoise breaking free of the sea.  My chair was comfortable but lower than his, patient-doctor hierarchy.

            The sign on Chester Maupin's desk read, JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN THEY AREN'T OUT TO GET YOU.  The man behind the desk looked mid-30's with carefully arranged, fluffed, black hair and a pencil thin mustache a la Clark Gable.  He smiled, pushed his gold wire glasses up his nose, and offered me a Coke before he belched and scratched his armpit.  His white shirt had been freshly laundered three weeks earlier, and I doubted he had a wife.   No decent woman would allow her husband to dress as sloppily as Maupin--not if she loved him.  Maupin reminded me of a realtor who specialized in illegal redlining.

            “Ryerson Caine, right?”

            I nodded.

            “Good, good.”  He leaned back in his chair and wrapped his hands behind his head.  “Been in Indianapolis long?”  Maupin spoke with a soft drawl.

            “A few years.”

            “Me too.  Two years.  Came from West Virginia.  Most days, I think I should go back.  West Virginia is warmer.  You’re probably wondering about Fair Oak.”

            I wasn’t, but I was still locked into my polite mode.

            “We don’t handle the criminally insane.  No  hard core cases.  We serve people like Angel, too sick to turn loose but not really dangerous.”

            “Not until they s***h someone, right?”

            He chuckled.  “We’re pretty sophisticated about choosing cooperative patients.”

            “How did Angel escape?”

            “I don’t know.  Guards get careless.  Patients get lucky.  Doesn’t matter.  She got loose and died.  Were you in town when Angel had her accident?”

            He peeled a stick of gum and offered it to me.  I declined.

            “Pumping a bullet through a man's heart isn't my idea of an accident,” I said.

            “Oh, Angel didn't fire the gun.  It was the man, Reily.  An interesting case.  They called him 'Gentle Tim'.  I’ve always wondered if the nickname was an opposite.  You know, like calling a giant “tiny”.”

            I shrugged.  I didn’t care how Gentle Tim got his name or where he found the cojones to ace Claude Pergot.  I didn’t even care if Angel sent Claude to his just reward.  I didn’t want to waste time chatting with Maupin.

            “What do you want, Doc?” I asked.

            He regarded me strangely, his black eyes glinty and mean, suspicious.  Maupin had been pitching to Fair Oak inmates for too long.  The batters had scored too many hits and runs.

            “Just to complete my history.”  Maupin produced a key ring laden with keys of all shapes and sizes.  Fair Oak was locks on top of locks.  He unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a thick file.  “What happened?”  Maupin picked up a pen and opened his file.

            “I was driving home,” I began.  I told Maupin the same story I had told Hogan, from beginning to end.  I wasn't interested in Angel or the diamonds or any of it.  Treasure and treasure hunters were movie plots, unreal.  Men who chased hidden booty were either rich or crazy.  Maupin wasn't rich.  Maupin scratched down every word.

            “What did Angel say exactly?” Maupin asked.

            “Need money, Doc?” I asked.

            He frowned, then chuckled.  “A staff psychologist doesn't earn a lot--not in Indiana.”

            “Not exactly a progressive state, huh?”

            “Positively barbaric.  Politicians treat mental health with contempt.  Lock the mentally disturbed in some hell hole and swallow the keys.  This state hasn't joined the twentieth century.”  He spoke animatedly, as if funding measured a state’s commitment to mental patients.

            “Angel said three things,” I told him.  “Her age, thirty-seven--the mansion--and skill or craft.  That's all.”

            Maupin hid his feelings as readily as a four-year-old.  He thought I lied.  “She was thirty-eight.  That's all?”

            “Oh, except for someone named Stickman.”

            “She didn't say anything about Holiday Park or hollow trees or thirteen steps or full moons?”

            “Doc, I have no idea what Angel might have revealed during your sessions, but with me, she said that much.  She either lied to you or to me.  I don't care which.  I don't want the rocks.  You do.”

            Maupin slammed shut his file; his eyes narrowed.  “I was treating her neuroses.”

            “Sure, and the Cubs will win the series.”  I stood.  People who can't hear the truth don't often speak it.

            “Caine!”  Maupin stood and donned his meanest face.  He was taller than I first thought.  Ordinary inmates must have cowered before him.  “I intend to find those diamonds,” Maupin hissed.  “And I don't want competition.”  Maupin must have thought I was the sappy salesman I resembled.

            “How many different drugs did you try on Angel?” I asked.

            He blanched but held his tongue.

            “That many, huh?”  I grinned.  “Don't worry, Doc.  They probably won't bother with an autopsy.”

            I left Maupin shaking with passion and fear.  I considered calling Hogan so the autopsy could be used to sack Maupin, but I rejected the idea.  Could Maupin harm crazy people?  If he abandoned Fair Oak and started psychoanalyzing the public, he might create havoc, but Maupin lived with the talking nightmares.  He couldn't damage those already beyond hurting.

            I signed out with the same gate guard.

            “Got any loonies in the trunk?” the guard asked.

            “Just a couple doctors,” I answered.

            He laughed, a good, clean laugh.

*****

            After Maupin, I had no thirst for work.  I felt I would treat every potential buyer as if he were crazy--or maybe I wouldn't, and the poor sap would be crazy.  People are so

strange that any redefinition of neurosis incorporates another 10% of the population into the body lunatic.  If psychiatrists ever decided that writing on restroom walls is a psychosis, I knew an Air Force General who would board the first plane for the leather couch ranch.  His most poetic thoughts erupted as he sat on the crapper.

            I went to a movie, a Woody Allen rerun I had seen before.  The second viewing didn't lighten my mood.  If you examine comedies, you find they aren't really funny.  Someone's always getting hurt.  Comedies seem funny because someone else is getting hurt.  People revel in the misfortune of others.

            Although the afternoon was young, I headed for Klancy's cold suds.  All men are slaves of habit.

            Orly planted a frosted mug on the bar and grinned.

            “What makes you so happy?” I asked.

            “Ain't got a reason to be sad.”

            “Want one of mine?”

            He laughed.  “Your problems are in your head.”

            “Yeah, my landlord's a figment of my imagination.”

            The blonde stumbled through the door and lurched to the bar.  Lean, wearing an uptown black dress and more gold than a New York pimp, she as much belonged in Klancy's as I belonged in Chanticleer, the upscale French restaurant out at Indianapolis International.  She plopped on the stool next to me; she reeked of gin.

            “Martini,” she slurred.  “Beefeaters.”

            Orly studied the blonde as she fumbled through her Gucci purse.  She slapped a hundred dollar bill on the counter and gaped stupidly at Orly.

            “Where's my martini?” she asked.

            “Some other bar,” Orly answered.

            “Gimme a drink.”

            Orly shook his head.

            “Is some private club?  No women or something?”

            “No.”

            “Then why can't I have a dink?”  She ran her fingers through her hair, mussing the set.

            “Drink,” I corrected her.

            Her smoky blue eyes regarded me as if I were some lowly species of talking rodent before she turned back to Orly.

            “Just one,” she pleaded.

            Orly shook his head.  Orly could be more stubborn than a rusted nut.  The Viet Cong had tried to c***k Orly for a week before he escaped.  If the Cong couldn't budge Orly, the blonde didn't stand a chance.

            “Hundred dollars for a drink.”  She picked up the bill and waved Ben Franklin in Orly's face.  “How 'bout that?”

            “Go home,” Orly said.

            She glared at Orly and stuffed the bill haphazardly into her purse.  “Fuckin' coward,” she muttered and managed to stand.  “Hope you're happy,” she added to me.  I would have retorted cleverly if she had given me five minutes to fashion something.

            She staggered halfway to the door before she collapsed in a heap beside an empty table.