“Oh, shit. He’s here.”
I turned.
Rambling down the aisle, through the drinking crowd, Cinnamon’s husband came at me like a gray bull in ratty, worn leather.
“Who the hell’s this candy-ass?” He yanked me from the booth and threw me to the floor.
Cinnamon screamed, “Bill, stop!” but he didn’t—a boot lodged into my side, then he yanked me up again and planted a right to the no-fly zone between my nose and my ear—I flew onto a table and it tilted, drinks capsizing everywhere.
The waitress was yelling for us to take it outside, somebody else was on the cell phone calling cops.
Customers scurried. Cinnamon tried to intervene. Billy Boy threw her off and threw me forward and I flew back, toppling into a giant frowning tiki, which fell sideways, still staring as Bill straddled me with a raised fist, about to dislodge my nose once and for all when Cinnamon grabbed his arm, and he grabbed her.
“Who is this punk?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re drunk. This your new stud?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then who is he.”
He was about to smack her in full view of a gaping audience, half the customers halfway out the door, when she confidently lowered his arm and looked into his eyes. To my amazement, she told the truth. At least some of it.
“He’s a private investigator.”
“What’s he want with you?”
“I had an ex who was killed in prison. In high school. This young guy is looking into it.”
“Oh.” He gave me the once-over, looking chastised. Then he turned back to her, a little sheepish. “Well…you help him?”
“Not a whit—I don’t keep track of no exes since I met you, William, you know that.”
Now leather Bill went through the ingratiation of having to straighten out the place and apologize to the waitstaff and the remaining customers. I slipped into the bathroom to splash some water on my own sorry-looking tiki face. I was getting tired of being smacked around, darn tired of it. I spit a little blood into the sink and caught my sad eyes in the bamboo-framed mirror and at that moment I remembered that my school paper, the one on filing search warrants, was due the next morning.
Oops.
When I got out into the low-lit bathroom hallway, Cinnamon was waiting for me alone with her back up against the wall, a little apologetic tilt to her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I sent him home. He’s…sensitive.”
“Not to me he ain’t.”
She reached into her big, brown stitched-leather purse and pulled out a cassette case, thrust it into my hands. It had a picture on it of a stout, bald, dark man with a massive thick honker and oversized glasses, wearing a doctor’s white lab coat over a suit and thick tie. In gaudy bold red eighties font, it read:
A. Bahari, PSY.D., DOCTOR OF POSITIVITY PRESCRIPTIONS
From the Dr. Bahari Spiritual Clinic
Booster Shots to Increase Life Profits
Building a Super-Success Plan Step-by-Step
Remedy for a Life Without Meaning
Rx for Health, Wealth, and Loving Relationships
I shot Cinnamon a curious look.
She said, “Open it.”
Inside: a cassette with a printed label.
TELEGRAPH
1. Big, Wide World 2. Foghorn Nights 3. When I Want You Too
Golden Harmony Mgmt.
And then a phone number in the 213.
Side two was black, no label.
I said, “They changed their name.”
She shrugged, sighed, shook her head a little. “Don’t forget our deal, okay?”
