Page 54 of Never Flinch

“The cops already know my name,” John says. “I found the body.”

“Oh. Yeah. Holly told me that.” Jerome feels like a doofus. “What do you think? Ring a bell?”

John’s reply comes with disheartening speed. “Nope.” He taps the square for May 4th. Printed in the Rev’s neat block letters is CATHY 2-T. “I know her. Seen her at meetings off and on for a couple of years now. Had one side of her hair dyed red, the other side green. People started calling her Cathy 2-Tone, and eventually she started IDing herself that way at meetings. These other names could be almost anybody. Do you know how many AA and NA meetings there are in the metro area?”

Jerome shakes his head.

“Three dozen is what I told your boss, but when I checked the meeting book, I found out it’s almost triple that, if you put in Overeaters Anonymous and DDA, which is Dual Diagnosis Anonymous. Once you add the burbs, you’re over four hundred groups.”

“Holly’s not my boss,” Jerome says. “She’s my friend.”

“Mine, too. Holly’s a skate.”

“What does that mean?”

John grins and slides his hand palm down above the table. “She’ssmooth, man.”

“Got that right. How long have you known her?”

John calculates while the waitress brings them lunch. “Long time, man. It was around the time her friend died, the ex-cop—”

“Bill Hodges.”

“If you say so. I guess they were tight.”

“They were.”

“She was struggling to keep the agency open, too,” John says, “but she managed to keep it afloat, and good for her.”

Jerome doesn’t tell him about the inheritance she got from her late mother. That’s not his information to share, and besides, by the time Charlotte Gibney died, Finders Keepers was in the black.

“How did you meet her?” Jerome asks. He’s never thought of Holly as a drinking-establishment habitué, let alone a barfly.

John laughs. “That’s a good story, man. You want to hear?”

“Sure.”

“She was skip-tracing a guy wanted for all sorts of debt-related shit, including taking a pickup truck on a test drive and ‘forgetting’ to bring it back. I was newly sober. Holly talked to the guy’s mom, who said he was going to look for a guitar at Dusty’s Pawn & Loan, which is just three doors down the street from my bar. So Holly’s pulling into a parking space across from Dusty’s and sees this guy, his name was Benny something, walking from Dusty’s down to Happy with a guitar case in his hand. She follows him in. By then my man Benny’s at the bar, asking for a bourbon-rocks, which I didn’t want to sell him.”

“Why?”

“I’d seen him at meetings. I’m like, ‘Do you really want to do that? Sobriety’s a gift, man.’?”

Jerome can’t wait to hear the punchline.

“This Benny was a big guy, well over six feet and had to go two-seventy. Holly, on the other hand, is five-three and change. She’s put on some weight since then, but back in the day she couldn’t have gone much more than one-oh-five soaking wet, as they say. Benny sees her, okay? Knows who she is because Holly has talked to some of his friends, and the friends have reported back to Benny. So he hauls ass for thedoor, which she’s standing in front of. I think, holy shit, he’s gonna run her down like a Mack truck. But she never moved a step. She says, ‘If you don’t go to Provident Loan to make a plan, Benny, and bring back that truck, I’ll tell your mother you’re in a bar.’?”

Jerome is too gobsmacked to even laugh. It’s the perfect Holly Gibney story.

“Benny stops two feet in front of her. Towers over her. She has to look up at him, but she still never budged. She says, ‘I’ll trust you on your own, at least this once, because it’ll look better.’ Benny says okay and kind of shuffles out. Holly comes to the bar and orders what she always orders in here, a Diet Coke with two cherries. I tell her I know Benny from the meetings I go to, and I was trying to persuade him not to buy a drink. Or at least not an alcoholic drink. I asked her if she thought Benny would really go to Provident to make a restitution plan, and Holly says probably, because he’s scared to death of his mom. She got that from his friends. She also says, ‘I always like to give a fellow one chance, if I can.’ Then she picks up the guitar case, which Benny left behind on account of he was so foozled, and lifts it over the bar to me and says, ‘Hold my drink.’ I do, and she goes out.”

“To Dusty’s.”

“I guess you know her, all right. Yeah. She comes back five minutes later and tells me Benny actually paid for the axe. With cash. Says when he comes back in, I can give it to him.”

Jerome nods. “That’s Holly.”

“So anyway, we get talking. She gives me her card and the names of four skipjacks and jills she’s looking for. Says if any of them come into the bar, will I give her a call. It was a cash-for-info thing at first, but I got to like her. She’s got a lot of bells and whistles, but like I say, she’ssmooth.”

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