As she rides by

with the heavy bits, any law against that?”
    “We also been asked,” the beach bum said, “to see some I.D.”
    “Forgot to say ‘please,’ ” I said.
    “Come on, shithead, hand it over,” the stocky guy said, taking a practice swing or two over his head with the chunk of wood.
    I patted my pockets, then I said, “Oh, now I remember. I didn’t bring any on purpose because once when I was a kid, back in Davenport that was, we went canoeing and it tipped over and everything I had in my wallet, including in the secret pocket, can you believe, got soaked, so ever since then I’ve been mighty careful what I carry in my pockets around boats.”
    “Not careful enough, pal,” the beach bum said. “So tough shit on you, Lofty.” They fanned out and came at me from three sides at once. It could have been worse, I guess, they could have been asked to kill me, not just bat me around like a sponge ball till I went down and then take turns kicking me and then finally, whacking me a good one on the back of the head with either the log or the pipe, I didn’t catch the details, frankly, and laying me out cold on the gritty concrete. I did manage to get in a few licks of my own, fight fans, never fear, including one perfect left hook that caught Shorty right on the button and out went his lights. And the beach bum, or is it boat bum, took one knee from me that would lower his testosterone count for a while and, by a whisker I missed the third guy’s Adam’s apple with a savage karate chop and so on, and then it was all over, Goliath was hurt, Goliath was down, Goliath was out.
    When I inched back to painful consciousness a while later, someone was whimpering and something cold and wet was frantically licking my bruised face. Being a detective and all, I soon deduced that the whimperer was me and the something cold and drooly King’s tongue. I managed to tell him that it was all right, he could put it away now, good boy, and all that. When I got my eyes opened all the way, I saw Popeye hunkered down on his heels beside me.
    “They gone?” I said.
    “Yep.”
    “You OK?”
    “Yep.”
    “My wallet OK? I dumped it in your hole.”
    “Yep. You OK?”
    “Yep. Well, nope, but yep, considering. Wonder why they didn’t eject me from the premises, too?”
    “Probably saw what I did,” he said. “Someone up at the main office lookin’ out with a spyglass.”
    “Where was he earlier?” I said.
    “How come you ditched your wallet?” he said, hoisting himself lithely to his feet.
    “Car registration in it,” I said. “Didn’t want them going through the marina parking lot looking for it and then trashing it up.”
    “Oh,” he said.
    “They ask you anything?”
    “Yep.”
    “Tell them anything?”
    He didn’t bother to answer such a stupid question. I gingerly pushed myself up to a sitting position, then waited for the world to stop whirling around in its madcap fashion, with my eyes closed and one hand on my aching head and the other on King’s, calming him down.
    “Bleedin’s died down to a trickle,” Popeye said after a while. I managed a lopsided grin in his direction.
    “Another reason I stashed the wallet,” I said, running my tongue over my teeth to see if they were still all there, which they were, thank the God of dentistry, considering what I’d paid for them, “I had all my I.D. plus eighteen dollars cash in it, plus a check I got for a job I did this morning.”
    “Prob’ly had yore Dick Tracy Junior G-Man decoder in her as well,” he said.
    “See, Pop,” I said, “with macho assholes like that, you got to leave them something, otherwise their bullshit pride’ll fester away. So I let them work me over a little, big deal, so I took a fall to keep them happy, but I’m not dumb enough to let them know who I am and where I live so they can stop by well tanked up some night for a little more fun.”
    “Thought I’d heard ‘em all,” Pop said, shaking his head. “Just goes to show you, son.”

Chapter Seventeen

    So all I gotta do now is hang on and keep the faith,
    ‘Cause I know my drinkin’ buddy, my old amigo Samuel D...

    O NE HOUR AND seventeen minutes later I was back home sharing a hot bath with a toy submarine that was supposed to run underwater but wouldn’t, a large helping of Epsom Salts, which is supposed to be good for aches and pains, and a liberal squirt of Evonne’s bath gel for added color and excitement. Evonne Louise Shirley... wonder whatever