The Hard Bounce - [33]

“He spies on her?”

“Monitors her. But kids are crafty. They’re so much better than adults with the technology, with adapting to it. Most kids, they want to hide online activity from their parents? A moderately savvy kid could do it easily.”

I didn’t do any of that shit. I didn’t “friend” people on a fucking computer. I didn’t Twoot on Twatter or whatever the hell that crap was called, either. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t old school anymore so much as just out of touch. “So there is a possibility that she met some kind of pervo online, and her dad would have no idea, even with the monitoring.”

“That is a possibility.” She shuddered at the thought. “Anything else? Anything less on the potentially skeevy side?”

“Sorry. Skeevy is all we got right now.”

“All right, then.” She stood and wiped the creases off her skirt. “One more drag.” She opened her fingers to grab the cigarette.

I pulled it back. “Tell me I’m cute again.”

She immediately blushed. “Did I do that?”

“Yup.”

“Crap. Well, you are, for old school.” Defty, she plucked my cigarette out of my hand and walked off with it.

“Hey.”

She winked at me. “I might not be old school, but I’m not as good as you think I am, Mr. Malone.”

“No doubt, Ms. Reese.”

No doubt.

I met back up with Junior at a small Chinese restaurant about a half mile down Commonwealth. We didn’t talk much while we ate. We were both trying to think in between chews.

Junior spoke first. “How do you think you’d fuck something that big?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said through a mouthful of pork fried rice. Great partner he was. I was trying to figure out how we could get information out of Sid while he was trying to figure out the mechanics of sex with her.

“I mean, you’d have to have a dick like a Pringles can to get under that belly.”

My gorge did a little hurdle at the thought. “Junior, please. I’m trying to eat.”

“You think Snake fucks her?”

“Junior…”

“He’d be capable, just-”

“Junior! Fucking stop!”

“Sor-ry,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “Didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“Did you see what time the store closed?” I asked, desperate to change the conversation.

“Nope,” Junior said, mopping up the last swirls of oyster sauce with a piece of bread. “Why?”

“Figured we could tail Sid. See where she goes after work.”

“Well, she ain’t going to no gym,” he said with a snort. “Not too far a stretch to guess she goes for food. You don’t get that big unless you eat a good ten meals a day. And I’m not kidding. Take my aunt, Gretchen-”

“No, thank you.”

“Wakka-wakka, Shecky.”

“That was Henny Youngman.”

“Huh?”

“Henny Youngman, not Shecky Green.”

“Fucking hell, you wanna let me talk or you gonna display your knowledge of the Borscht Belt all over my story?”

“The mike is yours, bubelah.”

Junior paused a second, debating whether or not I’d called him something potentially offensive, and whether or not to eat the bread in his hand or to stick it up my nose. He chose to pop the bread into his mouth and continued.

“Anyway, Gretchen, same deal. Actually, she was smaller than Sid, but nobody was calling her to do any underwear modeling, you know? She ate two meals between breakfast and brunch.”

Just thinking about it made my appetite grind to a screeching halt. I dropped my fork down on the plate with a clatter and tossed my napkin on top of it. I was still hungry, but with Sid and Aunt Gretchen in my head, I might not eat for the rest of the week. “Was there a point to that story?”

“Sorry. Did you need one?” Junior nodded at my rice. “You gonna finish that?” I handed him my plate, and he dumped my food onto his. “Anyway, other than thinking about what to eat next, I don’t imagine Sid doing much else.”

“So we’ll follow her when she leaves the store.”

“Should be easy to tail. Not like she’s gonna outrun us.”

“Can’t say that about too many people.”

“True that. Problem is, what do we do once she stops?”

I scratched at the stubble on my chin. “Getting physical on her is out of the question.”

“Not if we call Twitch.” Junior didn’t look at me when he said it, as though he were ashamed for thinking it, much less saying it.

I shuddered at exactly what Twitch could be capable of. “That’s not the way I want to go about this.”

“Me neither,” Junior said. “But what other options we got? Clock’s ticking.”

“We’ll do this on the fly. Let’s see where she goes first. Who knows? I think we rattled her. Her next stop might be Snake’s. Now, he we can fuck up.”

“Sounds like a plan. Kinda.” Junior shoved the last of the fried rice into his mouth.

Yeah. Kinda. Problem was, I had no idea what to do next if Sid didn’t follow my imaginary script.

Our first stakeout. They should make Hummels to mark the occasion. For supplies, we brought six cans of metallic-tasting iced coffee, a carton of smokes, and three pounds of candy from the candy shop right across the street from Sid’s. Good thing neither one of us was diabetic. If we were, we’d find out soon enough.

We parked behind a construction trailer on the far side of the street. Just enough of a sight line for us to see the front of Sid’s and not be obvious about it. If anyone in the neighborhood was wondering why we were sitting in our car for a couple hours smoking and bitching about the quality of canned coffee, they didn’t care enough to ask.