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Someone peered out of the kitchen at us with uncertainty Maybe they thought ere fro for rat turds There was some sort of whispered consultation and then a waitress appeared She was short and heavyset, a ed Mexican in a white wraparound apron decorated with stains Shyly, she tried out her language skills My Spanish is limited to (approximately) three words, but I could swear she offered to serve us squirrel soup Dietz kept squinting and shaking his head Finally, the two of them rattled at each other in Spanish for a while He didn’t seeed to make himself understood

I studied him casually while he fumbled with his vocabulary He had a battered look, his nose slightly flattened, with a knot at the bridge Mouth wide and straight, turning lopsided when he suess was that some of them weren’t his Looked too even to me and the color was too white He turned back to me

"The place just opened yesterday She recommends the menudo or the coaze "I don’t eat menudo It’s made with tripe Have you ever seen that stuff? It’s white and spongy-looking… all these perforations and bus don’t even have"

"She’ll have the coers, ordering one for himself

She shuffled away in huaraches that she hite socks She returned lasses, two beers, a small dish of salsa, and a basket of tortilla chips still sizzling with lard

We snacked on chips and salsa while aited for our lunch

"How do you know Lee Galishoff?" I asked The beer bottle had a little piece of linored the glasses, which were still hot froarettes before he reht hi his head "I did so doitness on one of his first trials After that, we started playing racquetball and becaood friends What about you?"

I told hih which I’d ended up tracking Tyrone Patty for him "I take it you’ve done security work before"

He nodded "It’s a lucrative sideline, especially in this day and age Tends to limit your personal life, but at least it’s relief froht private-eye work, which is a yawn, as you know Last week I sat for six hours looking at microfiche in the tax assessor’s office I can’t stand that stuff"

"Lee toldburned out"

"Not burned out I’ it for ten years and it’s time to move on"

"To what?" I asked The beer was very cold andsurreptitiously with a paper napkin, looking like a junkie in need of a fix

"Don’t know yet," he said "I got into the business in the first place by default Started out doing repos, serving papers, stuff like that for a guy who eventually took h for his taste-so he did all the paperwork and I dealt with the deadbeats He was the cerebral type, really had it up here" He tapped his te past tense What happened to hiuy jogged, worked out lifting weights He ave up dope, gave up staying out all night Bought a house, had a baby, happy as a pig eating shit, and then he died Forty-six Alike she expected ap It’s bullshit No thanks I had her cash estured dismissively "I’ve lived everywhere I was born in a van on the outskirts of Detroit My mother was in labor and the old one as a kid Pop worked the oil rigs so we spent a lot of tune in L A… this was in the late forties, early fifties when the big booerous daood Pop was a brawler and a bully, very protective of uy who’d get in a bar fight and tear the place apart… just for the hell of it If he had a clash with the boss or decided he didn’t like as going on, we’d pack up and hit the road"

"How’d you o to school?"

"I didn’t if I could help it I hated school I couldn’t see the point ToI didn’t want to do anyway I was never going to work in a feed store so why did I have to kno many bushels in a peck? Is that an issue that co different cities at sixty miles an hour? I couldn’t sit still for junk like that Nowadays they call kids like ulations, just for the sake of it I couldn’t stand it I never did graduate I ended up with an equivalency degree Took so a book The systened for transients I liked phys ed and shop, orking, autoacadeinning and work straight through I always showed up in the middle and had to leave before the end Story of my life"