W Is for Wasted

spare was in place, I thanked both of them profusely. I didn’t want to bolt when he’d just done me such a service, so we chatted for a bit. I expressed my gratitude again and he waved aside my thanks. I knew better than to offer him money. He was clearly a man who enjoyed being of service to women in distress.
    We finally affected our farewells and I continued on to the pay phone, where I piled change on the metal shelf, inserted coins, and dialed Henry’s number.
    He picked up on the third ring. “This is Henry.”
    “Hey, Henry. It’s Kinsey. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to call you earlier.”
    “Where the heck are you? I thought you were on your way home.”
    “I am but I had a flat.” I filled him in on my stop for lunch, wondering how far I might have gotten driving on a tire with a nail driven into it. No point in worrying about it now, so I moved on. “How’s Felix doing?”
    “Not well. He developed a clot on his brain, so they had to go in and operate. Now it looks like he’s fighting some sort of secondary infection, which is more bad news.”
    “Is he going to make it?”
    “Hard to know. William swears he’s on his way out.”
    “William thinks everybody’s half dead. What do the doctors say?”
    “They don’t seem optimistic. It’s not what they say; it’s the look in their eyes,” he said. “I’ll be glad to have you home. What time do you think you’ll get in?”
    I checked my watch again. It was now 1:22. “Not for another couple of hours.”
    “Why don’t you plan on having supper here? You’ll be tired and you’ll need a glass of Chardonnay.”
    “Sounds good.”
    We were winding up the conversation and I was close to hanging up when he said, “Oh! I almost forgot. Your friend Dietz is on his way down from Carson City. He says he should be here by six, so I invited him for dinner, too.”
    I could feel myself squint. “Dietz? What’s he want?”
    “I guess there’s a problem with that job referral.”
    “
Job
referral?”
    “That’s what he said. I figured you’d know what he was talking about.”
    “I have no idea.”
    “You can ask him yourself when he gets here,” he said.
    And with that, he hung up.

23
    Naturally, the rest of the trip was uneventful and the miles flew out behind me at warp speed. Just when I longed for a delay (a minor car wreck, perhaps, or a sudden bout of the runs that would have me getting off the highway at every other exit lest I mess my underpants), there was no such luck in store. Feeling crabby and out of sorts, I brooded about Ethan Dace hammering a nail into my tire and then, as if I wasn’t sufficiently annoyed, I took a little trip down memory lane, summing up my relationship with the aforementioned Robert Dietz.
    I’d met him five years before, in May of 1983, when I found myself on the hit list of a small-time Nevada punk named Tyrone Patty, who’d been charged with attempted murder in the shooting of a liquor store clerk. He’d fled to Santa Teresa and I was assigned the task of tracking him down, which I did. He was sent back to Nevada, where he was tried, convicted, and thrown into prison. From that point on, his life had spiraled out of control and he held four of us personally accountable: me; the Carson City DA; the judge who’d sentenced him; and Lee Galishoff, the public defender who’d represented him. Never mind that Tyrone Patty was a persistent felon long before we entered the picture. Like many whose poor choices have led them astray, he accepted no responsibility as long as he had someone else to blame.
    Once out of prison, he’d gone right out and murdered three more hapless victims—also our fault, no doubt—but while still in prison, he’d put out feelers for a contract killer to whack the four of us. Galishoff had gotten wind of it and called, urging me to hire a bodyguard, which I thought was absurd. Who can afford a bodyguard twenty-four hours a day? Was he nuts? He’d suggested Robert Dietz, a PI who specialized in personal protection. I’d recognized the name because I’d put a call through to him the year before when I needed a quick job done and it made no sense for me to travel to all the way to Carson City.
    Galishoff gave me his number again and I jotted it down with no real intention of contacting him. I’d just picked up a new job and I was on my way to the Mojave Desert. I didn’t take the threat seriously until someone ran my VW off the road and into a ditch. I ended up