Tail Spin

“You know kung fu or jujitsu, foreign stuff like that?”
    “All of it,” Jack said. “You always gotta go with a pro.”
    “I’m thinking I’d like to hire a bodyguard, a hunky one like you, to keep that rat ex-husband of mine away from me. Could you kick him in the face for me? Can you kick that high?”
    “Well, maybe a kidney shot instead?” Jack asked. “That’s more in my range.”
    “You could start just about anywhere, honey.”
    They ordered coffee, and Rachael asked Millie about any customers she’d had last Friday night who were strangers to her. There’d been maybe a dozen tourists driving through who stopped in, but none of them had struck her as being weird or nasty.
    She left to pour more coffee into a local man’s cup, then came back, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Last Friday,” she said. “Hmm.”
    She handed Rachael some creamer she didn’t want.
    “I remember this one gent, he came in to get two coffees to go, one black, one blond with three sugars. Now that I think of it, he looked kind of on edge. No nervous tics, nothing like that, but he was impatient, tapped his fingers on the counter while I was pouring the coffee. It was maybe thirty, forty-five minutes before you came straggling in.”
    “What did the gent look like?” Jack asked.
    Millie pursed her lips. “He was maybe forty, longish black hair, sunglasses on, if you can believe that, like he was some sort of celebrity or some asshole wanting to look like one. He wasn’t big, kind of thin, I think, and his clothes didn’t fit him all that well.” She screwed up her face, thought about it. “Sorry, that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else. But I remember thinking I wasn’t sorry to see the back of him.
    “I was pouring a refill for a guy next to the window and looked out. I saw him sitting in the passenger seat of a big dark-colored car, maybe a Lincoln, but I’m not sure. He and another guy were talking, drinking their coffee. Then my boss called me and that was the last I saw of them.”
    “Did they seem angry?” Rachael asked. “Or pleased, congratulating each other?”
    “Honey, I was too far away and it was too dark, sorry.”
    Jack asked Millie more questions, then asked the same ones again, using different phrasing until he knew the well had run dry.
    Rachael hugged her before they left. “Thank you, Millie, thank you very much.”
    Millie patted her on the back. She looked at Jack again, up and down. “You being a professional bodyguard and all, you see to it you take good care of her, all right?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Jack said, and smiled at her. “Millie, do you think you’d recognize the gent from Friday night?”
    “I might be losing brain cells at a fine rate, but I still got enough to remember that face, even with the dumb sunglasses. He’s the kind you wouldn’t want to see in a bad dream.’’
    “Good. I’ll bring you some photos to look at.”
    A man shouted out from the kitchen, “Millie! I got the flats and strips for number three!”
    “That’s pancakes and bacon,” she said. “I’m coming, Moe!” And she winked at Jack.
    Once outside the diner, Rachael threw her arms around Jack, hugged him hard until he grunted. “You’re a genius. I didn’t say anything, but I never thought it would be of any use at all to come back out here. But Millie was here and she remembered me. And that guy. You are so smart, Jack.” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him. “I’m glad I laid out the big bucks and got myself a real pro.”
    He was laughing as his arms came around her. In the back of his mind, the FBI agent was screaming, Stop it, you moron, are you nuts? Step away from the girl, now. The FBI agent was loud and insistent, but he didn’t make any headway. Jack didn’t release her. In fact, he kissed her back and it felt so good he’d have given up his season tickets for the Redskins without a moment’s hesitation just to keep his mouth on hers and his hands—but the unwanted agent finally kicked him in the butt. Jack set her away from him to keep from yanking her down into the backseat of the car.
    She looked up at him, her mouth open, face blank, eyes wide. She was breathing fast, which his agent self demanded he ignore. She swiped her hand over her mouth. “What? Oh my God, Jack, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just that... I lost it. You’re really smart, Jack. Oh damn.”
    “It’s standard