The Nice Guys Read online

  From the club below, the sound of laughter wafted up. Applause.

  Healy let out a breath. His chest hurt. “I would like to help you…but I just don’t know anybody called Amelia.”

  The younger guy stood, casually, calmly. Then in one swift movement he drew back his leg and kicked Healy, hard, in the gut. Healy folded over sideways, retching.

  More laughter from below, gales of it. Jesus, who’d they book tonight, Redd Foxx?

  Healy forced himself upright again.

  “You don’t talk,” the guy said, “I’m gonna have to start breaking your fingers.” He let out a high-pitched giggle, like he was watching the show downstairs. “You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  The older guy called out, his voice muffled because his head was in Healy’s closet: “Hey, hotshot! Come on in here, I found something hidden in the cabinet.”

  The younger one crossed to the closet, came back carrying a heavy canvas duffel bag, dropped it on the table. Reached for the zipper.

  “Oh,” Healy said, “don’t open that, that’s not mine, it belongs to a friend, I just look after it for him.”

  The man’s hand hung over the zipper pull. A smile creased his face.

  “It’s one of those bags,” Healy said, “if you try to open it—”

  But the man had already grabbed hold of the zipper and pulled it.

  There was a loud splat as a cloud of blue paint erupted from the bag, covering the man’s face and chest, his hair, his gold chains.

  “Motherfucker!”

  And with perfect timing, the nightclub audience below bellowed out its biggest roar of laughter yet. Like a sitcom soundtrack. Healy shook his head. “You know, that, um… that’s not going to come off.”

  The guy snarled, savagely grabbed two fistfuls of Healy’s shirts, rubbed them all over his face. Got them blue. Didn’t get his face white.

  He walked over to the aquarium, plunged his face into the water.

  “Ah, Jesus, don’t make the fish swim in that shit,” Healy said.

  The man pulled his head back out, flinging water all around him, just as blue as before.

  “It’s like one of those charges they put on the money in banks,” Healy said. “It’s supposed to be permanent. I tried to tell you.”

  Still dripping wet, the guy shouted. “You tried to tell me…?”

  He reached into the tank, scooped up one of the fish, lifted it out and flung it across the room. It smacked the wall wetly. Fell to the floor.

  “Oh, hey, come on, not the fish. Don’t do that.” Healy turned to the older man, tried appealing to him. “Can you please tell this guy to act like a professional?”

  The older guy just shrugged.

  Healy turned back to the younger guy, his voice suddenly serious. “You know, kid…when I get that gun off you, it’s gonna be your dinner.”

  “Dinner?” The guy laughed hysterically, turned to his colleague. “This fucking man.” The laughter ended abruptly. “You’re funny. Dinner.” He stuck his hand back in the tank.

  “Don’t,” Healy said. “Don’t.”

  “Come on, fish…” He grabbed the other fish, the bright red one. He strode over in three furious steps, the fish squirming between his fingers. “You want some fucking dinner? You want some dinner? I got some dinner. Here you go. Eat that thing, you fucking fuck!” He threw it in Healy’s lap.

  Healy got to his feet. It was a slow process. His gut ached, his back, his head. He set the fish down gently on the nearby windowsill. “You’ve got to stop and think about this. All right? When you came here tonight, was this what you wanted to happen? What, you came here to make me eat some fish? To shoot me?”

  He locked eyes with the man. Healy was slow to anger, but this guy had managed it.

  “Look, if you come here, you beat up on me, you trash the place, I understand, I get it, it’s part of the job, I accept it. I’ve done it.” He shook his head. “But what did you do? You did something different from that, didn’t you? You pissed me off. You made an enemy. Now even if I knew something, I wouldn’t tell you, kid. You know why I wouldn’t tell you?” While he was talking, he was edging toward the light switch. “And this is not my only reason. But it is a principal reason. No, I wouldn’t tell you, because you’re a fucking moron.”

  Healy’s arm swept up, flicked the switch, and along with the floor lamp in the corner, the television set blared suddenly to life, volume up high. Startled, the two men spun, taking their eyes off Healy for a second, which was long enough for Healy to dive to one side.

  The blue-faced kid swung back, arm up, aimed at where Healy had been standing beside the window. His finger was working faster than his brain, and by the time he realized Healy wasn’t there anymore he’d already pulled the trigger. One of the windowpanes shattered—then another windowpane across the street, and a woman who’d been standing in the window went down with a yelp.

  The older guy grabbed the younger one by the arm. “You stupid son of a bitch!”

  There was screaming now across the street.

  Healy, meanwhile, had hit the floor. Ignoring the pain in his side, he rolled under his table to the bed. He swept one arm under the boxspring and came up onto his knees with a double-action pump shotgun, primed and loaded and—

  And the apartment door was swinging, the two men sprinting out.

  Healy got off a shot, splintering the doorframe, but they were gone.

  15.

  It was Thursday, Holly’s birthday, and the bowling alley had thankfully beaten out the beauty salon as the venue of choice. March could deal with a pack of adolescent girls in ugly shoes swinging bowling balls around. Nail polish remover gave him headaches.

  Plus, they’d serve you a beer at the bowling alley.

  But first the ugly shoes had to be dealt with. The girls were all calling out their shoe sizes at the same time, and the poor son of a bitch behind the counter didn’t know where to start.

  “Whoa, whoa, easy,” March said, raising a hand. “Jesus Christ, one at a time, huh? Thank you. Now. Janet, size…?”

  Instead of answering, Janet said, “You took the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “No, I didn’t,” March said. “I found it useful. Cindy, you a six…?”

  The rest of the afternoon was a blur. March nursed his injured arm, resting the cast on the side of the booth where he was also nursing his beer. The girls were squealing, laughing, cheering their little heads off. He could only imagine how excited they’d have been if they’d ever knocked down any pins.

  The beer flowed, and the consequence followed, which is why March found himself on the toilet after the last frame of the last game had come and gone to a chorus of heartbroken “Awww”s and he’d only slightly reluctantly let himself be talked into paying for just one more. Let ’em enjoy themselves. Let ’em be twelve for one more day.

  So he was sitting on the pot, cigarette between his lips, reading the cover story in the new issue of Time about the whole “Global Cooling” thing, which as far as he was concerned was up there with the killer bees and the Loch Ness Monster in terms of things to be scared of, but what the hell, it was something to read, when a pair of familiar-looking canvas sport shoes tromped into view outside the stall door and stopped, facing him.

  A hand knocked at the door, once, twice.

  “March? Jack Healy. Don’t get upset, I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Just hearing that voice again made March’s broken arm twinge. Spiral fracture of the left radius…

  Healy went on: “I just want to ask you a question.”

  March swung the stall door open. By the time it swung wide enough to reveal Jackson Healy standing just beyond it, he had his gun out and pointed at him.

  Healy didn’t seem scared. Maybe the cast had something to do with that. Maybe it’s just tough to scare someone when you’re aiming at him from a toilet with your pants down around your ankles.

  But you had to play the hand you were deal
t.

  “How stupid do you think I am?” March asked. “Huh…? I’ve got a license to carry, motherfucker. And ever since your little visit the other day…this little baby’s gonna stay right here—” He gestured with his gun hand at his own chest, and the stall door started to swing shut. He banged it back open.

  His cigarette, which had been hanging precariously, fell from his lips. It landed on his leg. He twitched wildly until it was dislodged onto the floor. The stall door started to swing shut again.

  He banged it open once more. Started to get up, wrestling the magazine around in front of him with his bad hand to preserve his dignity, trying to pull his pants up with the same hand, cast be damned. And trying to keep the gun aimed at the same time. It wasn’t working.

  “Look away,” March snapped, and Healy turned to face the wall.

  “You know there’s a mirror here, right?” Healy said.

  “Close your eyes,” March said. He wrestled with his pants some more. Fuck. “All right, you know what? Forget it. Turn around—”

  “Can I open my eyes?”

  “Yeah, open your eyes.”

  Healy did, saw March standing awkwardly in the door of the stall, pants still down, issue of Time clasped in front of his crotch, gun pointed crookedly at him

  “What do you want?” March said.

  Healy took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. He seemed embarrassed, and not just by March’s pathetic situation, or his hairy knees.

  “I, uh,” he said. “I want you to find Amelia.”

  * * *

  They sat at a booth in the alley’s diner, line of sight to where the girls were still playing gleefully. Healy was working on a slice of pecan pie while March stared at an untouched slice of the apple crumb, digesting a mug of coffee and the story he’d just heard.

  “So you think these guys want to hurt this chick, Amelia?”

  “Sure,” Healy said between bites. “After they’re done killing her.” He finished off his ginger ale. They hadn’t had Yoo-hoo. “You know, I asked around about you. A couple of people I trust say you’re pretty good at this.”

  “Well, that’s surprising, ’cause I thought your job ended with breaking my fucking arm.”

  “Well, technically it did. I’m off the clock. This is a separate situation. Trying to do some good, keep this girl from getting hurt.”

  March shook his head. “I’m not buying this nice-guy act, pal. She owes you money, doesn’t she? You coming to collect? You want me to finger her so you can throw acid in her face…? Well, no. ”

  “No,” Healy said, “she paid me up front, actually. I always get paid up front.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Healy said, “I used to let people pay after, or like half up front, half after, but this way really cuts down on problems.”

  “I’d think so.” March thought about it. “Maybe I should try that.” Sipped some more coffee.

  “Yeah,” Healy said. “Maybe.”

  They stared at each other.

  “So what it is,” Healy said, and then stopped, searching for words. What was it, really?

  March just kept staring. Waiting.

  “What it is for me, is…I like where I live. And I really don’t want to have to move.”

  Healy dropped a wad of bills on the table, twenties and tens.

  “Two days in advance. That’s four hundred dollars. Plus whatever the old lady’s giving you.”

  March exploded. “Old lady? Fuck you, old lady, you broke my arm, I quit, remember?” He looked Healy straight in the eye. “You said drop the case, I dropped the case.” It was true enough, if you ignored the part where he let himself get talked into un-dropping it. Something he didn’t much feel like mentioning, since he didn’t want to have two broken arms.

  But Healy floored him with what he said next. “So call her up, get back on the case. Get paid twice.”

  “Wow,” March said. “That’s how you operate? I mean… That is very telling. I’m a detective, and we have a code. We don’t do that. But, interesting. That’s the level you inhabit? Okay. Good to know.”

  “Then get paid once, I don’t care. As long as you find her.”

  “Why do you even need me?” March asked. “You’re the one who got money out of this chick. You telling me you can’t find her again?”

  “I never found her the first time. She found me. I give this course at the Learning Adjunct—”

  March slapped his palm down on the table between them. He goggled at Healy. “No. You’re not—holy Christ. I thought you looked familiar. You’re the ‘real-life tough guy’?”

  Healy nodded uncomfortably.

  “You teach courses in it! How to be tough.”

  “Just like self-defense, assertiveness…”

  “And you need me—”

  “Mr. March, you’re a private eye. I’m not. And you were looking for Amelia already, right?”

  “Well…yes and no.”

  Healy said, “Excuse me?”

  “My profession’s very complicated, okay? It’s nuanced.”

  Maybe that was going to be one of his calendar’s words sometime before the end of the year. But it hadn’t come up yet. “What does that mean?” Healy asked.

  March looked serious. “It’s like there’s mirrors inside mirrors.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Remember I told you, this old lady hired me to find her niece, Misty Mountains?”

  “Wait, Misty Mountains? The, the porno actress? The one who died?”

  “The young lady,” March corrected him. “The porno young lady. But yeah, she died in a crash, and then two days later her aunt goes to her house, to clean out the place, and lo and behold, alive and well: Misty Mountains. She sees her through the window. But when she knocks on the glass, goes to unlock the front door, she hears the back door opening, and by the time she gets around the house, the girl’s climbing into a car. And zoom, off she goes. The girl, not the old lady. Misty.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit’s right. She’s dead, then she’s alive? That’s what I’m talking about. It’s very fucking complicated.” March lit a cigarette. “But I persevere. You know? I work on it. And I think, maybe there was a girl there.”

  “Amelia.”

  March nodded.

  “The old lady saw Amelia.”

  March made a ‘bingo’ gesture with one finger. “Look who decided to show up for class.”

  “So how did you get on Amelia’s trail?”

  March unfolded two more fingers.

  “Three,” Healy said. He frowned. “Three what?”

  “Three days,” March said. “In advance. If you want the rest.”

  “Fuck you. Come on? Six hundred dollars? That’s fucking robbery.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I only got four hundred,” Healy said.

  “Well, it’s early, you can go rob a bank if you hurry.”

  From right behind March came a ba-dum-bum and he swiveled his head, startled. Holly was there, perched at the corner of the booth. She hit invisible cymbals with an imaginary drumstick: Tchh.

  “Jesus, what are you doing here?”

  She sat down next to him. “Giving you a rim job,” she said.

  “Rim shot.”

  “Whatever. Hey, can we get one more game before…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed Healy there, sitting across from her dad, eating pie. “…You’re the guy that beat up my dad.”

  “Hey,” Healy said.

  “No,” March said, “sucker-punched your dad, big difference. But don’t worry, he just did it for money.”

  “You beat people up…and charge money?” Holly asked.

  March nodded. “Sad, isn’t it, honey? How some people have to make a living?”

  “That’s really your job?” Holly said.

  “Yeah,” Healy said.

  “Wow. So, um…how much would you charge to beat up my friend Janet?”

 
; “How much you got?” Healy asked.

  “Okay, this conversation is over,” March said, shoving his plate over to his daughter. “Eat.”

  “We’re just talking,” Healy said.

  “And it’s over,” March replied.

  Healy leaned forward, tapped his fingers on the cash that was lying on the table. “Four hundred. That’s all.”

  March thought about it. “Four hundred. Two days. We find her earlier, I still get to keep it.”

  “Done,” Healy said.

  “Great,” March said. He scooped up the rest of the money, shot a glance at his watch. “Because I already know where she is.”

  16.

  The flyer didn’t say on the air, it said for the air. It also said “for the birds,” which March thought was probably the single stupidest thing you could say on a flyer if you wanted people to show up. But what did he know? The City Hall plaza was absolutely packed full of people, lying on the ground, and they’d all been drawn here by a promise that the time they were spending and the effort they were putting in was all for the birds.

  There were some birds around too, pigeons, but with every square inch of pavement covered by one sprawled body or another, there was no place for them to land. They just circled around and then perched on a tree branch or window ledge or something. Served them right, fucking birds.

  Walking over, March had tried to show Healy the flyer, explain how he’d gotten it from the bulletin board at the Iron Horse, talked to some people in the neighborhood about it after the bartender had chased him out, but Healy had been preoccupied with a newspaper he’d picked up from a bench they’d passed. The headline had caught his eye, and the photo beneath it.

  “ ‘The late adult film star, Misty Mountains,’ ” he read out loud, “ ‘seen here at last month’s Detroit Auto Show…’ ” He shook his head. “Kind of a high-profile case for you, isn’t it?”

  March snatched the paper out of Healy’s hands, tossed it in the next trash can they passed. “You know, the thing about keeping your mouth closed is, it prevents speaking.”

  “Sure,” Healy said. “Unless you’re a ventriloquist.”