5 Highball Exit by Phyllis Smallman

hands planted on her thighs, Buddha-like and immovable.
    I lowered my window for her. “There’s more water in the back if you need it.”
    There was no security system in the building and no super either. There wasn’t even central air in this crumbling structure, so all the apartments had air conditioners hanging from their windows at the front of the building.
    The front door was wedged open to catch any breeze, but even so the hall was stifling and breathless, filled with the odor of stale cooking and garbage. I was boiling in my own sweat by the time I reached the third floor and knocked at Holly’s former apartment. No one answered. I knocked at the neighbor’s across the hall. Nothing.
    Now this was annoying.
    I knocked at the other two doors on the third floor. If anyone was home they weren’t interested in a visitor.
    I went down to the second floor and started there, working my way down the hall and coming up with two annoyed people who didn’t know Holly and weren’t interested in knowing me either.
    On the first floor, the sounds of a couple arguing had me tapping lightly on the door. The door swung violently open and a man, barefoot and wearing only boxers, glared at me. “What?”
    I showed him the picture of Holly and asked, “Do you remember this woman? She lived in apartment 302 .”
    “No,” he said. The door slammed shut.
    No one else was home on that floor and I arrived back at the street dripping with perspiration and totally pissed off. Aunt Kay was going to insist I come back at night, when people were home from work, and do it all over again. That was not my idea of a fun evening. More than that, this was no neighborhood to be in after dark.
    An aged Honda, the trunk covered in Jesus fish, pulled in beside the sidewalk and died. A pretty young woman wearing a white halter dress got out of the car. She smiled over the roof of the Honda at me. Her smile showed impossibly gleaming white teeth.
    At last, someone genuinely glad to see me. I gave a little wave and said, “Hi.”
    “Back at you.” She opened the back door and dragged out a huge shiny vinyl bag covered in buckles. When she slammed the door shut she was already moving.
    I intercepted her. “I’m looking for Holly Mitchell.” I pointed to the middle building. “She lives in 302 ; well, she did a bit ago. Do you know her?” I waved the photograph in front of her.
    She slung the bag over her left shoulder and frowned at the picture. “No, but then I just moved in and it isn’t exactly the kind of place where you know your neighbors.” She walked around me and hit the sidewalk moving fast.
    “Wait,” I called to the already retreating bare shoulders.
    She swung to face me, walking backwards away from me in her high-heeled sandals.
    I followed her. “Is there anyone in the building who might know about Holly?”
    She hesitated and frowned. “Yeah, the witch who lives on the main floor, she thinks she owns the building. Sunny her name is, a bartender at the Flamingo two blocks over.” She pointed to her left. “It’s a horrible place, but then so is Sunny.” She was moving again.
    “Would she be there now?”
    She considered it and said. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do with Sunny. Bartenders aren’t the kind of people you want to know, are they?” She gave a jaunty little wave and spun on her toes before jogging for the front door.
    That girl knew how to survive in neighborhoods like this.

CHAPTER 19
    With flyers and dead leaves piled up in the small alcove at the door, the Flamingo bar looked abandoned. There was a big sign on the glass that said the Flamingo would be going out of business come Saturday. FOR SALE signs already covered the building but there weren’t going to be any takers. The only thing that was going to happen to this property was a bulldozer and another high-rise and, given the economy, that would be years away.
    Another sign said that the Flamingo offered happy hour from eleven