Driving back out the Rickenbacker Causeway, Garcia was saying, “Didn’t you have an old Chrysler? Funny thing, we got one of those shitheaps in a fire the other night. Somebody filed off the V.I.N. numbers, so we can’t trace the damn thing—maybe it’s yours, huh?”
“Maybe,” said Mick Stranahan, “but you keep it. The block was cracked. I was ready to junk it anyway.”
Garcia drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, which meant he was running out of patience. “Hey, Mick?”
“What?”
“Did you blow up that asshole’s Jag?” Stranahan stared out at the bay and said, “Who?”
“The doctor. The one who wants to kill you.”
“Oh.”
Something was not right with this guy, Garcia thought. Maybe the funeral had put him in a mood, maybe it was something else.
“We’re getting into an area,” the detective said, “that makes me very nervous. You listening, chico?”
Stranahan pretended to be watching some topless girl on a sailboard.
Garcia said, “You want to play Charlie Bronson, okay, but let me tell you how serious this is getting. Forget the doctor for a second.”
“Yeah, how? He’s trying to kill me.”
“Well, chill on that for a minute and think about this: Murdock and Salazar got assigned to Chloe’s murder. Do I have to spell it out, or you want me to stop the car so you can go ahead and puke?”
“Jesus,” said Mick Stranahan.
Detectives John Murdock and Joe Salazar had been tight with the late Judge Raleigh Goomer, the one Stranahan had shot. Murdock and Salazar had been in on the bond fixings, part of the A-team. They were not Mick Stranahan’s biggest fans. “How the hell did they get the case?”
“Luck of the draw,” Garcia said. “Nothing I could do without making it worse.”
Stranahan slammed a fist on the dashboard. He was damn tired of all this bad news.
Garcia said, “So they come out here to do a canvass, right? Talk to people at the boat ramp, the restaurant, anyone who might have seen your ex on the night she croaked. They come back with statements from two waitresses and a gas attendant, and guess who they say was with Chloe? You, Blue Eyes.”
“That’s a goddamn lie, Al.”
“You’re right. I know it’s a lie because I drive out here the next day on my lunch hour and talked to these same people myself. On my lunch hour! Show them two mugs, including yours, and strike out. Oh for ten. So Frick and Frack are lying. I don’t know what I can do about it yet—it’s a tricky situation, them sticking together on their story.” Garcia took a cigar from his breast pocket. Wrapper and all, he jammed it in the corner of his mouth. “I’m telling you this so you know how goddamn serious it’s getting, and maybe you’ll quit this crazy car-bombing shit and give me a chance to do my job. How about it?”
Absently, Stranahan said, “This is the worst year of my life, and it’s only the seventeenth of January.”
Garcia chewed the cellophane off the cigar. “I don’t know why I even bother to tell you anything,” he grumbled. “You’re acting like a damn zombie.”
The detective made the turn into the marina with a screech of the tires. Stranahan pointed toward the slip where his aluminum skiff was tied up, and Garcia parked right across from it. He kept the engine running. Stranahan tried to open the door, but Garcia had it locked with a button on the driver’s side.
The detective punched the lighter knob in the dashboard and said, “Don’t you have anything else you want to ask? Think real hard, Mick.”
Stranahan reached across and earnestly shook Garcia’s hand. “Thanks for everything, Al. I mean it.”
“Hey, are we having the same conversation? What the fuck is the matter with you?”
Stranahan said, “It’s been a depressing week.”
“Don’t you even want to know what the waitress and the pump jockey really said? About the guy with Chloe?”
“What guy?”
Garcia clapped his hands. “Good, I got your attention. Excellent!” He pulled the lighter from the dash and fired up the cigar.
“What guy?” Stranahan asked again.