As she rides by

curled up in a heap against the false-brick wall. Also attached to him, to his bare, upper arm, was a dangling, empty syringe. The kid was out cold. I took his pulse; he still had one. I opened up one eyelid and got mostly white looking back at me. Right in front of my nose was a window. Inside I saw this guy with a beard rolling around on the floor. Probably some writer, I guessed. I knocked on the glass. The guy came over to the window on his knees and opened it.
    “Call the cops,” I said. “Tell ‘em they’ll need an ambulance.”
    “You got it,” he said. “Now don’t worry, try and relax, they’ll be right here.”
    “Not me,” I said, “him,” but the guy was already on the phone.
    The kid was still alive when the reinforcements showed up, but his pulse was down to about half strength. As long as he was still breathing, I didn’t figure mouth to mouth would help, so I just kind of held him against me and waited. Not long, either, maybe six or seven minutes was all.
    “Shit,” one of the paras who was lifting him onto the gurney said. “Must weigh all of a hundred pounds soaking wet, poor bastard.”
    “Yeah,” I said. Then I said my piece to a patrol cop, and so did the beard, and off everyone went again.
    “That’s all, folks,” the cop said out of the car window as he took off to a couple of rubberneckers who had gathered.
    “Did you have to bring the cops into it?” the beard asked through the window, frowning at me.
    “If I hadn’t, someone along the line would have,” I said.
    “Yeah, still,” he said.
    "Yeah, nothing,” I said. “Maybe you’re a tourist, maybe that’s it, maybe you don’t know most ambulances out here won’t take you unless you got cash up front or some valid plastic or Blue Cross even if you’re bleeding to death. Figure that kid had any of the above?”
    He shrugged.
    “With the cops on the scene,” I said, brushing some dried leaves off my chinos, “they can make ‘em take him. Or we could have flipped for it, it’s only forty or fifty bucks.”
    “All right, all right,” he said. “So I am a tourist. So I do come from somewhere halfway civilized.”
    “That’s no way to talk about South Miami ,” I said. “Whatever will the city fathers think?” He grinned, gave me a mock salute, and closed the window. I continued up the path, found the right office number, and went in. A stunning redhead in a halter top, with headphones on, was typing away furiously but soundlessly on an electric typewriter almost as big as my car. She arched one perfect eyebrow in my direction. “Dick Distler,” I mouthed. “Appointment with.”
    She pressed a button on her desk, then told me to go down the hall to the first door on the left. I promptly did so.
    Dick Distler was a little bald bundle of sizzling energy. He was also twenty years too old for his wardrobe, which was yellow slacks, lime-green collarless shirt open down to his knees, no socks, and suede, pump-up Reeboks. Dick Distler, however, it became instantly clear, was one smart cookie, and one tough cookie, too, tougher even than those dry, chewy oatmeal ones a certain execrable lady poet of my acquaintance once proudly presented to me in a desperate attempt to butter me up for something. She should have saved the butter for the cookies.
    The first thing Dick did was to answer a question I hadn’t even asked yet. “You’ll wanna know,” he said, “how come we’re still drinkin’ buddies when I was their manager and it was their management, among a long, long list, that ripped the boys off. Right?” He hopped up onto his desk and began swinging his legs busily.
    I took a closer look at the desk. It reminded me of my pal John D.’s desk. He owned and ran the Valley Bowl, which wasn’t that far from where I lived, and he’d rescued some slats when he’d had a couple of his lanes resurfaced and built himself a nifty piece of furniture with them. Dick’s desk looked just like half a shuffleboard table, and when I took a closer look, I saw that’s exactly what it was. To make it easier to work at, one of the boards that ran along the sides to prevent the puck from shooting off into space had been removed.
    Was I jealous?
    Don’t be childish.
    I was sitting in an old barber chair facing him. A gorgeous old thirties Art Deco chair, with green and orange tinted leather and built-in ashtrays. Was I jealous? Extremely, and I am the first to admit it. I must say, otherwise his office was a