King Maybe by Timothy Hallinan Page B

sense, however rudimentary.”
    â€œYes, I do. But I confine it to things that are valuable on purpose . It doesn’t extend to accidents.”
    â€œI can’t tell you who—”
    â€œOne,” I said, lowering the stamp toward the coffee. “Two.”
    â€œI hate to be pushy,” Ronnie said, wagging her fork at him, “but just to sidestep the melodrama and move things along—and not attract any more attention from les gendarmes— look at it this way. It took less than ninety minutes after the Slugger almost caught Junior here for him to show up at your house. So what that suggests to me—and, I’m assuming, to Junior—is that he didn’t have to work his way through a long list of alternatives, a random selection of acquaintances. The people who are normally closest to collectors—and to junkies, too, since it’s sort of the same thing—are dealers. Ergo, the person who asked you to steal the stamp might well be the person who sold the stamp to the Slugger in the first place, and the Slugger figured that out, and somewhere in the course of being beaten into pâté de foie gras, the dealer spoke your name. Something along those lines, Junior?” She gave me a bright smile and put her fork in her mouth.
    Stinky was giving her that look again, the sort of silent eeeek he’d unleashed on her in the car, and I felt something like it on my own face, so I just smiled and said, “That’s exactly where I was going.”
    â€œYou don’t even have to tell us his name,” Ronnie said as I sat there wondering which act of the play I’d missed. “Just call him and see if he’s there.”
    â€œIt’s late,” Stinky said.
    She patted his hand comfortingly, and he snatched it away. “If you get him, tell him what happened tonight and suggest he go to Colorado or someplace. He’ll be grateful.” She felt the cop’s gaze, returned it, turned her palms up and indicated Stinky and me, and then shrugged, as though to say, What can I do?
    Stinky pulled an antique cell phone, complete with a hinge, out of his pocket, angled it away from us so we couldn’t see the dial pad, and punched a bunch of buttons. His eyes wandered the room, hopscotched over the cops, and came back to the surface of our table. Probably unaware that he was doing it, he pressed the balls of his thumbs to some piecrust crumbs on the table, then licked them off. He looked up at Ronnie and then at me, and Ronnie said, “No answer?”
    â€œHe should be there,” Stinky said.
    â€œHe probably is,” Ronnie said, “but in no shape to take calls.”
    Stinky said again, “He should be there,” and I realized he hadn’t heard Ronnie. His forehead was shiny with sweat. He closed his eyes like someone fighting seasickness, and then, without opening them again, he put the phone on the table and snapped it closed. The hand he rested on it was trembling.
    â€œIt’s probably nothing,” I said, and at that moment there was a burst of electrified chatter, several people talking at once, coming from the table with the cops at it. The two on the ends of the banquette, including the one who had been lofting pheromone flares in Ronnie’s direction, scrambled to their feet, and the other two slid out. One made writing motions on the air, which I interpreted as On the tab, we’ll be back , and they all pushed their way through the door.
    Ronnie said, “It’s probably something,” and sirens wailed into life in the street, accompanied by blinking red lights, and then they were gone. “Does your guy live near here?”
    â€œI still don’t know where here is,” Stinky said. “I don’t drive, and when you’re in the backseat of a limo, knowing where you are is the driver’s job.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “What street does he live on? Even in a limo, you