House of Blues

nearly
jumped. "Get your butt over here and talk to this cop."
    He walked off, picking up a clipboard and roaring
someone else's name. "Larry! What the fuck are you doing?"
    Orrin appeared, a confused expression on his gentle
features. He seemed a different breed of cat from Rayson.
    Skip gave him her best smile, feeling guilty about
bullying Rayson, wanting to leave that part of herself behind. If you
were a cop, you didn't have to take any crap from anybody; that was
the good news. The bad news was, if you pulled rank, if you did what
she'd just done, it made you hate yourself. At least it did Skip.
O'Rourke probably loves it; he's Rayson in uniform, anyhow. She also
had a superstition about it. It was like marijuana leading to heroin.
You started popping off at the Raysons of the world and you couldn't
stop. Next thing you knew, you were beating up innocent people with
your nightstick; then you started shooting them.
    She believed this because she had seen it. She had
seen perfectly good policemen start out slowly, mouthing off at jerks
like Rayson, and end up suspended, even fired.
    Then there was the toughness issue. She did not
believe that nastiness was a charming quality in either sex, and she
did not think it signified its owner was tough. Toughness, to her,
was more like Hillary Clinton's quiet self-possession, her ability
simply to stand firm. She had been mystified the first time she heard
the joke about the meanest woman in the world—Tonya Rodham Bobbitt.
    "What is that about?" she'd fumed at Jimmy
Dee. "What does Hillary have in common with leg-breakers and
dick-slicers?"
    "Haven't you heard? Men are threatened by
assertive women. Should make your job easier."
    In fact it didn't. Instead, whatever personal power
she had just made people like Rayson hostile. Which meant she
eventually pulled out the stops, which in turn meant the whole thing
was a self-fulfilling prophesy: You wont to sec a bitch? Watch this.
    Why , she thought, can't
people just be nice to each other?
    "Orrin," she said, "I'm looking for a
guy named Manny Lanoux."
    Orrin was probably six-feet-four, and skinny, with a
prominent Adam's apple. He would have been a dead ringer for Ichabod
Crane if not for a pair of exceptionally broad shoulders. Skip was
willing to bet he had a terrific chest and good biceps as well.
    "Oh, Manny. Yeah, he used to work here. Left
about six months ago." He had sun-bleached hair that looked fine
as corn silk.
    ''What happened?"
    " He got a better job. But I don't think it was
working on cars—said he'd never have to get his hands dirty again."
    "Do you know where he went?"
    "Well, it wasn't a company, I don't think. Some
kind of', like, assistant's job or something."
    "Assistant to whom? Did he say?"
    "He told me, but it was a while ago." He
looked troubled. "Hey!"
    "Beg your pardon?"
    " Hey!" Orrin stared into space. "He
gave me an address. See, I'm the one does the hirin' and firin'. I
was s'posed to send his last check to the new place. He had some kind
of problem with things getting stolen out of his mailbox." He
started walking toward a cluttered office. "Come on. Let's see
if I still got it."
    Rayson was in the office, but thought of pressing
matters elsewhere when he saw Skip bearing down. Orrin rummaged in a
wooden box full of three-by-five cards.
    "Here it is." He pulled one out in triumph.
"Damn. It's only a P.O. box. Got a name, though. Think that'd
help?"
    " Might. What is it?"
    "Larry Carlini."
    "Did you say 'Carlini'?"
    "Umm-hmm. Don't know him. Do you?"
    " I don't think so."
    But she did. Larry Carlini was a small-time creep
with alleged mob connections, nobody important, but nobody you wanted
to meet in a dark alley either.
    He wasn't in the phone book, but she knew that was no
problem, any more than locating Manny had been. He had a record the
approximate length of a fishing pole—mostly minor offenses, but
lots of them. A little research and she found he lived near the lake,
in a new-money neighborhood that prided itself on its ostentation.
His house was of white-painted brick, originally a sort of two-story
rectangle with a narrow balcony on its otherwise plain facade. It was
a couple of decades old and therefore hadn't been built to take up
every inch of its lot. Later owners, perhaps the Carlinis, had added
a couple of wings that remedied that situation. The thing looked like
three oversized building blocks piled together by some demented baby.
    To Skip's delight, there was a