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It was 6:15 High tea wasn’t doing much for someone with ive arette s by Mc-Donald’s to chon a quarter-pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Coke This was no tiht I finished up with one of those fried pies full of hot glue that burns the fuck out of your ot back toot on the plane for Michigan It’s not my style to be lonely or to la single I like being byand I have a dozen ways to feel amused The problem was I couldn’t think of one I won’t admit to depression, but I was in bed by 8:00 PM… not cool for a hard-assed private eye waging a one-wouys everywhere

10

By 1:00 the next afternoon, I had tracked Lyda Case by telephone to a cocktail lounge at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, where she was si up in my ear with a force thatrechecked Last May I’d been coe bin andever since Lyda didn’t help this… especially as she said a quite rude word to me before she smacked the phone down I was deeply annoyed It had takenup on me once that day

I’d started at 10:00 AM with a call to the Culinary Alliance and Bartenders Local 498, which refused to tell et-ting surly about this sort of thing It used to be you could ring theet the infor-et naet service records, bank balances, or verification of eet confirmation of the facts you already have Don’t even bother with the public schools, the Welfare Department, or the local jail They won’t tell you nothin’

"That’s privileged," they say "Sorry, but that’s an in-vasion of our client’s privacy"

I hate that officious tone they take, all those clerks and receptionists They love not telling you what you want to know And they’re s and dance that worked a couple of years ago It’s too aggravating for words

I reverted to routine When all else fails, try the county clerk’s office, the public library, or the DMV They’ll help Sometimes there’s a small fee involved, but who cares?

I whipped over to the library and checked back through old telephone directories year by year until I found Hugh and Lyda Case listed I made a note of the address and then switched to the crisscross and found out who their neighbors had been two years back I called one after another, generally bullshitting h had died and they thought hisht be un-listed, but I dialed Inforht away Hot damn, this was fun I tried the nu

"Hello"

"May I speak to Lyda Case?"

"This is she"

"Really?" I asked, amazed at my own cleverness

"Who is this?" Her voice was flat

I hadn’t expected to get through to her and I hadn’t yetmistake "My name is Kinsey Millhone I’ I lost soe I called back, but she refused to answer the phone

At this point, I needed to knohere she was em-ployed and I couldn’t afford to call every bar in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, if indeed that’s the sort of work she still did I tried Inforain and picked up the telephone number of the Hotel and Restaurant Eer poised to dial when I realized I would need a ruse

I sat and thought for a moment It would help to have Lyda Case’s Social Security nuus pursuit Never try to get one of these froht up there with banks in their devotion to thwarting you at every turn I was going to have to get the inforh access to public records of some sort