I’d watched Bryan Skopes puff and rage with gusto, then let his eyes dampen in a wounded but manly fashion. He was fully committed, going for the Oscar, but I didn’t buy his story. When we met, there had been a pulse, a moment when he ran a stealthy gaze over my body. It left a faint patina of some filth, sexual in nature, like a slime against my skin. I kept my face impassive, but inside, I’d started smiling. I’d seen his small, soft rotten patch. His weakness was women, and if I could prove it, the wronged husband act would ricochet and hurt his case. He was crafty as hell, though; Nick’s investigator had produced no evidence of extramarital activities. I needed Birdwine.
My stomach rumbled and I checked my watch. The tacos had been hours ago. If Birdwine was on a case—or if he was on a bender—he could be gone for days. So be it. I could walk down to the mom-n-pop on the corner and get a protein bar. I’d grab a rawhide chew for Birdwine’s big-ass mastiff, too, while I was at it. Looper had a dog door to get in and out, and an automatic feeder dropped his dinner every afternoon, but he’d appreciate the thought. I’d sit here all night, if I had to. I had less than three weeks before the Skopes deposition, and I needed Birdwine on it, ASAP. If only he were speaking to me, I could hire him to find himself for me.
I heard a knuckle-rap on the glass right by my head, and I jumped. I peered out to see Birdwine’s old brown leather bomber jacket and his Levi’s. I hit the button to crack the window. Birdwine was a natural mesomorph, built thick with a big, square head like Looper’s. He was tall, too, so he had to step back and bend down to see me.
I put one hand over my heart. “I didn’t see you coming.”
He shrugged as best he could, bent over. “I’m good at sneaky. It’s in the job description.”
He looked fit and clear-eyed. Wherever he had been all day, it hadn’t been a bar.
“I need to talk to you.”
“You don’t say,” he said, very dry.
“I’m serious, Birdwine. Come on. Ten minutes.”
“Well, I’d invite you in, except I hate you,” he said, but he smiled when he said it. It was his real smile, too, showing me the gap between his two front teeth.
It made me smile back, though I didn’t like the way he brought his hand up to press three fingers against his temple. I’d worked with Birdwine for almost nine years now, and I knew his signs. He’d been in AA for a decade, but it hadn’t taken. Not completely, anyway. Two or three times a year he’d drop down a boozy hole, vanishing for days.
I’d learned early to see a binge coming in his body language, in his speech, in the very air vibrating around him. His disappearing acts had never yet blown a case for me, and if they ever did, it would be on me. I knew his limits. I risked hiring him anyway, because when he was sober? No one could touch him. If there was a speck of dirt, Birdwine could find it, and I believed Bryan Skopes was hiding a whole tillable field of loamy sex-grime.
I said, “Climb in here, then. Promise it won’t take long.”
I rolled up my window and hit the unlock button for the doors. While Birdwine walked around to the passenger side, I tossed my briefcase in the back so he could sit. A blast of winter wind pushed all the heat out of the car, leaving me shivering as Birdwine folded his big body and jammed it in beside me. He started messing with the seat controls, scrolling backward, and his face looked like he was readying himself for a root canal.
I had a file on Skopes tucked in my door’s side pocket, and I passed it over to him. His eyebrows puzzled up. He flipped through a couple of pages before turning to me. He had heavy-lidded eyes, large and very dark, the kind that always looked a little sleepy. Now he slow-blinked them, not quite an eye roll, but it spoke volumes.
“This is about a job?”
“Yes,” I said. “What else?”
He started chuckling then. “I don’t know, Paula. Look at these emails.” He shifted his big body forward and fished his phone out of his back pocket. He tapped the screen and scrolled through his trash folder. “Here we go. This one is titled ‘Birdwine, we have to meet.’ And here is one titled ‘I NEED you to call me.’ ‘Need’ is in all caps, by the way.”
“Oh. I see what you mean,” I said. I hadn’t thought about the context when I’d typed those phrases. I’d written the truth, without thinking how it might read to an ex-lover. “You thought I wanted a relationship postmortem?”
“Yeah. What was I supposed to think?” he said.
Ironic, really. He’d ended it because we “couldn’t talk,” but this week he’d ignored every attempt at contact, thinking I wanted to sit down on floor cushions and light up friendship-scented incense and process our breakup over a cup of organic oolong. This from the guy who played his cards so close that when he’d ditched me, I was caught off guard; I hadn’t known we were officially a couple.