Killer Calories

do, tell the wife you were going to work at the sewer plant a little early? Is she still back at home in bed snuggled up with the kiddies while you’re in there, jackin ’ off in one of Andy’s booths?”
    He winced just a little... from conscience or his hurt finger, she couldn’t tell. So, she decided to drive the shiv in a little deeper. “What would your mother think if she’d seen you five minutes ago, huh?”
    For half a second, he flushed with shame, then he recovered. “Look, sister, you ain’t exactly nobody to talk, prancin ’ around in that getup.”
    “Yeah, and you’re a disgrace to your uniform. Get the hell outta my face before I call a cop.”
    The guy mumbled a few obscenities as he walked away. And not a moment too soon. An old, blue-green Oldsmobile— early seventies with a bashed right front fender—came around the corner and pulled in front of Andy’s.
    “Looks like our boys,” said Dirk in her ear.
    Several witnesses had described the robbers as two Caucasian men, one skinny with short blond hair, one with a dark, stringy mop and a baseball cap, driving a green battleship of undetermined make and model.
    “Yep, looks like,” Savannah whispered as she leaned nonchalantly against a lamp post and watched in her peripheral vision.
    The blond guy exited the passenger’s side and glanced up and down the street. For a moment, his eyes met Savannah ’s, and she did a quick mental estimation of his intelligence quotient. Probably on a par with his shoe size, she decided. He didn’t have particularly large feet.
    After fifteen years in law enforcement and now as a private investigator, Savannah still hadn’t gotten over the shock of seeing how different real criminals were from the ones portrayed on Hollywood screens. Oh, she had met a few cunning, shrewd characters; but, by and large, those who habitually broke society’s laws were numskulls. She assumed this was because most rocket scientists knew better than to try to knock over an all-night adult porn shop for spare change.
    And one look in this guy’s eyes told her that NASA wouldn’t be recruiting him anytime soon.
    After a two-second, salacious perusal, he dismissed her, turned around, and marched into Andy’s.
    According to some of the pair’s previous victims, Bony-Blondie would enter the store, slip behind some sort of display rack, and don a black ski mask. Then he would pop out with a Saturday night special in his hand and demand their cash and jewelry . Savannah decided to be generous and give him 1.2 points for subtlety, 1.1 for originality.
    But the jerk in the car—the one with the long, greasy locks, wearing wraparound shades, had slapped his girlfriend around last Friday night. She had confided in her fellow waitress, who passed the word along to a manicurist, who just happened to live in the same trailer park as Dirk.
    Domestic violence didn’t pay in a town as small as San Carmelita, where the native crops were avocados, lemons, and gossip. Not necessarily in that order.
    Across the street, Dirk had risen from his bench and was drunkenly zigzagging a path in their direction.
    “ Attagirl ,” he whispered in her earphone. “Show ‘ im that waggle.”
    Employing her best Dixie sashay, Savannah strolled by the parked car, making sure that Creep Number Two had plenty of time to check out the merchandise. She had to work fast; Blondie wouldn’t take long.
    Once she was fairly sure she had piqued his interest, she meandered closer to the passenger’s side. The window was down, so she leaned inside. The stench of stale sweat, cigarette smoke, and rotting fast-food containers prompted her to breathe shallowly.
    Number Two was even uglier up close, dirtier, with bad skin, rotten teeth, a baseball cap turned backwards and wraparound sunglasses that were probably supposed to give him an air of mystery, but made him look like a pathetic Terminator wannabe.
    It occurred to Savannah that Blondie might actually be the brains of the operation. Scary stuff.
    “Hi there, handsome,” she said without choking on her own words. Yes, for this Dirk would owe her... big time. “ Wanna date?”
    “Ah... no... not now. I’m kinda busy.”
    She could tell he was weighing his one ounce of common sense against his more urgent needs that were arising, thanks to the abundant cleavage she was displaying in the open window.
    “Don’t worry, Babycakes . With a girl like me, you won’t take long at all.”
    Ignoring his mumbled