The Hard Bounce - [19]

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I forgot to ask.”

After Junior had himself a hissy fit and called me a couple of colorful names, I went up to the office to check out the envelope on the desk. Plain yellow manila with nothing written on it. I tore open the end and dumped the contents onto the desk.

A business card for Kelly Reese. Business line read: Donnelly for Mayor Committee. Chairperson under her name. It listed an office number, extension, and e-mail. If I’d owned a computer, I might have dropped her a note and apologized. Again.

Three pictures of Cassandra. The first one a school picture complete with forced smile. She was in a private school uniform with a coat of arms patch on her blazer. Surprisingly, her hair was a natural chestnut in the picture.

The second looked like a blow-up of a family photo, carefully cropped not to show anyone else in the picture. The third showed her on a beach, grinning. She was running into a wave and hugging herself from the cold. They were all solo shots of her. I pulled out the picture from my back pocket and looked at it again. Then the beach shot again, seeing the subtle but present signs of damage done.

What the hell happened to you, kid?

Chapter Six

In the dream, I was eating a huge Italian grinder. Really big. The size of a coffee table. Then the red peppers started to beep and I woke up. Even my subconscious was busting my balls.

Hardy-har. Biting off more than I could chew. Very subtle.

Goddamn brain.

I swept my hand across the nightstand, looking for my beeper, grumbling curses to the air. I knocked over a glass of water, my Harry Crews Reader, and an ashtray before my fingers found the beeper and turned it off. I squinted at the number. Didn’t recognize it. I shuffled over to my phone and dialed.

The line picked up after one ring. “Call back later, dude. I’m waiting for a call.” It was Paul.

“It’s me, jackass. What’s up?” I was already dripping sweat. Another boiler of a day.

“Oh. Hey, Boo. I didn’t think you’d call back so fast.”

I yawned so hard my jaw cracked. “Yeah, well, I did. What do you want?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Paul…”

“It’s eleven, dude. You’re missing the day.”

“Paul!”

“Okay, okay. You know The Pour House?”

“On Boylston?” Where the hell were my smokes?

“Yeah. I’m here now. I got some stuff to tell you.”

“What?” I picked my pants off the floor and rifled the pockets. Success! Lighter?

“I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring money. You’re buying me lunch. Ha-hah!” With that, he hung up on me. Little prick.

I lit my smoke and stumbled to the shower.

And yes, I can smoke in the shower. I have a technique.

I got to the restaurant a little after noon. When I walked in, the mingling smells of beer, hot sauce, and frying hamburger made my stomach croak frog-noises. The stupid dream had made me hungry, so I wasn’t all that upset at meeting at The Pour House. They made the best burger in town. Cheap too, thank God. When I found Paul in a table toward the back, he was finishing a plate of buffalo wings and a basket of mozzarella sticks.

“About time, man. My burger’s almost here.”

Before I could say anything, the young waitress came over for my order. For breakfast, I went with a double bacon cheeseburger and a Sam Adams. Paul watched her exit as she walked off with my order.

“I think she wants me. What do you think?” His lips were red with wing sauce. He popped another in his mouth. The kid ate like he hadn’t been within three feet of a meal in days. For all I knew, he hadn’t. I remembered that kind of hunger. The ghost of it echoed in my gut as I watched him tear into his food like he was worried somebody would take it from him.

I stifled a yawn. Probably should have ordered coffee instead of a beer. “What have you got?”

He held up his finger and pulled the bone from his mouth, meat sucked clean off. Jesus. Maybe the answer to Cassandra’s disappearance was because Paul ate her.

“Nothing,” he said through a mouth full of half-chewed chicken.

I stared at him. “You beeped me, called me here, to tell me you found nothing?”

He gave me look filled with indignant hurt that nobody over the age of sixteen can quite pull off. “Nothing is something.”

I continued to stare. “What the…” The waitress brought over my beer. I practiced Zen breathing. Slow and even. It wasn’t working. I tried rubbing the remaining sleep from my eyes. “What are you talking about, Paul?”

“It’s weird. I been asking everybody, real casual like, you know? Just like, ‘Hey, seen Cassie around?’ Nobody has.”

“It’s only been two days since you saw her at The Cellar.”

He looked at me like I was missing an obvious point. “Dude. It’s summer. We’re off from school. Only got a couple weeks left before school starts again. Somebody should have seen her somewhere. It’s not like she’s some computer nerd or one of those inside-kid weirdos reading Twilight and shit. She’s normally out and about. Hanging, you know?”

“I know.” He was starting to make sense.

“I mean, she’s not at home, right?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Shit, man, I’m not eating a retard sandwich, here. If she was home, nobody would be looking for her, right?”