Cooked Goose

protection.
    Savannah couldn’t blame Tammy for being a bit uneasy, I They had created quite a stir among the patrons, Savannah I with her punk/metal look and Tammy who was shrink-wrapped in a black latex top and pants and high-heeled slides.
    “Over here,” Savannah said, guiding her to a cozy, U-shaped booth in the back... one where they could both sit with their backs to the wall. Strategy was everything.
    As they slipped in, Savannah said, “I’ll get in the middle, you on one side. Don’t let anybody sit next to you; we need an escape route.”
    “Gotcha.” Tammy glanced around at a dozen faces, all looking like mug shots, who were ogling them. “Do you see him?”
    “Don’t know. I don’t want to look around yet and be too obvious about it.”
    Tammy flinched. “Oh, yeah... sorry.”
    “No problem.”
    A heavyset guy with sweat stains under his pits and booze stains on his long-ago-white apron came out from behind the bar and sauntered over to them. “What’ll you ladies be having tonight?”
    Tammy perked up at the mention of refreshment. “I’ll be having a min—”
    “A couple of beers,” Savannah said, squeezing Tammy’s knee under the table. “Whatever you have on draft will be fine.”
    “Beer? Why did you order me a beer?” Tammy whispered as he turned to walk away. “You know I don’t like to drink anything but—”
    “Mineral water. Yes, I know. Come on, Tammy. You’re undercover here. You can’t sip Perrier in a place like this. Dirk’s right; you are a fluff head.”
    “A healthy one.”
    “Obnoxiously healthy... so one beer won’t hurt you. You gotta nurse it all evening anyway. We have to stay alert, just in case this Edward fellow turns out to be a rocket scientist and we have to outwit him.”
    At that moment, a skinny, emaciated fellow who looked fifty-something going on eighty walked through the door. Edward Stipp was only a shell of the man he had been in his early twenties when he had made that police officer kneel and beg for his life... the life Stipp had taken anyway.
    Savannah resisted the urge to pull her Beretta out of her purse and shove it in his left ear... although she did play with the fantasy for a few seconds before turning to Tammy.
    “That’s our date for the evening. The William Holden over there in the gray sweatshirt with the swollen black eye.”
    Tammy’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “William? I thought you said his name was Ed something.”
    “It is. William Holden was an old... oh, man... sometimes you make me feel like an Edsel.”
    “Ed who?”
    “Forget it and look seductive. We’ve got a pigeon to pluck.”

    * * *

    Fifteen minutes later, the “pigeon” was sitting at their table, already missing a few tail feathers. Having bolted several shots of whiskey, Edward Stipp had succumbed to Savannah’s considerable down-homey charms and was pouring out his life story to her and Tammy. All except the San Quentin part, which he had edited from his narrative.
    “So, you’ve been a legal advisor for the past thirty years,” she mused. “How interesting. Where did you get your law degree?”
    “I don’t have a degree,” he said proudly as he studied his empty shot glass with his one good eye. Dirk—or rather, the door frame at the station—had done a real number on the other one. “I’ve just had a lot of spare time on my hands, so I studied law and gave advice to my buddies who needed it.”
    Savannah bit her tongue and painted a sweet smile on her lips so that she wouldn’t spit on him. Scum like this kept the legal system mired down with ridiculous lawsuits about the fat content of their prison menu and the thickness of their pillow. Furnished with a law library that most pre-law students would envy, these jailhouse “lawyers” spent hours poring over texts that would instruct them how to bring such asinine charges.
    “I wish you’d been around yesterday for me and my friend here,” Savannah said, nodding toward Tammy, who was trying not to make a wry face every time she took a sip of her now lukewarm beer. “The cops were hassling us... picked us up at the corner of Lester and Oak... seemed to think we were working girls.”
    Ed looked them up and down with his good eye. “Well, aren’t you?”
    “Yeah,” Tammy said, “but we weren’t then. Once in a while, even pros have to go grocery shopping.”
    Ed waved to the barkeeper for another round of drinks. Having consumed his, he didn’t seem to notice