Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) by Jesse Sublett Page A

over his decision to name his first-born son Dylan. “What can we expect from you, Martin? About twenty hours a week?”
“I think I can manage that. I’ve got a few things still up in the air since I got back, but ...”
“We’ve got an office softball game and picnic on Sunday. We’ve been doing it every other week. Like to see you there.”
“I don’t know.”
    “You don’t have to bring a glove, we’ve got plenty. But bring a covered dish, or, well, you probably don’t cook, do you? How about some Doritos?”
    “I promise not to come without any.”
    He nodded, adjusting a paisley tie on a cheap dress shirt. “How was the tour? Did you rock out, Martin? Lots of groupies following you around?”
    “You know how it is,” I drawled through a conspiratorial one-sided grin. You can’t let people like that down.
    He chuckled, squeezing his eyes shut, playing a wild lick on an air guitar, saying, “Yeah, man. You gotta take me along next time. I’ll be your road manager, OK?”
    “No problem.”
    He left me alone. I looked down at the stacks of files and envelopes marked “return to sender” and the late notices and all the sneaky city directories and microfiches full of names and addresses that were supposed to help me find people so the collection agents could call them and badger them into paying their bills. I felt like the new animal in the zoo and all the junk on my desk was some kind of new zoo food that the keepers were waiting for me to eat and say, Yeah, tastes great, just like the stuff in the jungle. It was going to be rougher than I thought.
     
     
    &&
     
     
    I did some legitimate work, sorting out accounts, calling up some landlords and getting the names of relatives of tenants who’d skipped out. Because if they skipped out on their cable TV bills or their telephone bills, which we handled, there was a good possibility that they’d also done something to make their landlord want to fink on them. But I also fired up the computer that was hooked into the central computer at the retail merchants’ credit bureau and pulled a credit file on Victor Angelo Travis. Just as I’d thought, he was pretty much of a cash operator, but he had taken out a small bank loan back in 1985. I called the bank. He’d put up his store for collateral, and at that time the store was worth a net of about $15,000. Then I entered the name of Retha Ann Thomas and the city of Los Angeles. A file came up. It listed her as unemployed, with Tower Records being her last employer. There were a few department store accounts, American Express, and the name of her bank. There was something a little disturbing about the waxy computer paper with the squiggly computer fonts, coldly revealing what it knew about her. I tore the printout off the printer, folded it, and slipped it in my jacket.
    I looked around. I was probably the only guy in the room who knew the real words to “Louie, Louie.” It was 3:30, time for an afternoon break. Most of the other employees headed for the break room for some microwave popcorn, burnt coffee, or a diet drink. I went over to the front door, where Detective Sergeant Jim Lasko of the Austin police department’s homicide division stood resetting his beeper.
    “Howdy,” I said.
    “Howdy doo,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”
     
     
    &&&
     
     
    “Man you have no sense of humor whatsoever,” drawled Lasko as we rode toward downtown in his pickup truck. “None what-all.”
    “Put yourself in my shoes, why don’t you.”
    With the thermometer registering somewhere between the high seventies and mid-eighties it was temperate for a May afternoon, the kind of weather that was pretty livable as long as you were under some shade. The windows were rolled down and the humid air and traffic sounds rushed through the cab, making our voices sound thin and raspy.
    “I mean, I could arrest you if you didn’t want to come down, but I don’t have to. Do I?”
    “Must be nice to have so many