Focusing the Private Eye
Jonathan Pearce
It's probably true that her heart is captured by that slick guy. Slick is the word. He could be the actual Starfighter, and Claire could be in for a great tragedy, what with she having to wait for him, knitting a long scarf outside the gates of San Quentin for 25-to-life for arson.
When all that happens and Jess is back in the pokey, I will be a hero and all kinds of guys will hire me for my expert crime fighting. But my ma will get mad at me for solving the crime and trashing our chances of getting back our inheritance.
I get this feeling even stronger when I got back home from the Preenes and my ma is there in the living room in her bed with my dad rubbing her back.
"Where you been?" she demands.
"Over to Claire's."
"All right. About time." My ma wants me to spend more time over there, softening Claire up for marriage.
I don't feel like revealing my thoughts about that right now. "Yeh," I go, which is a sort of agreeable thing to say without saying anything much.
"There, not there," goes my ma to my dad, who's not giving her a massage at all. Instead, he's scratching her where she can't reach, since she's got fleas. "Da-blonkin wimp scratcher!" She wants my dad to scratch harder. "Not so futta-pookin hard," she complains. My ma complains about everything. "Get that gah-damoo-chin dog out of my house or I swear I'm gonna crawl over there and get that gah-damoo-chin pistol out and shoot the skonk-a-plop out of it." She is being pretty unkind about poor old Killer who's sitting there watching, scratching toward himself slowly with one hind foot.
"Hey, I know what!" goes my dad, snapping his fingers. He beacons me. "C'mon, Joey, uh, Joe. I got a way to cure our problem with fleas, for a while anyway."
We go into the kitchen and he points at a paper bag on the kitchen table. "Take a look here, Joe. I went into Mr. D. H. Carp's today and got this. See? A fleabomb! Yeh! This'll do it, all right!" My dad's always so enthusiastic about stuff, when he's enthusiastic, which isn't all that often. He squints at the directions, holds the can out from his eyes, pulls his glasses out from his nose so he can see the small print better. "Aha! Got it!" He is really enthusiastic. He puts his finger over his lip at me.
"Baps, honey, me and Joey're gonna go by Veterans. See what's going on. Take a nice nap, honey." My ma is already napping, a usual chore, her eyes shut, mouth open. He whispers at me: "You don't got any homework, Joe?" I wag my head. I can always use one of the comps I got a B on in Mrs. Hernandez's sophomore English class, especially the one about "My Hopes and Dreams," which I've already used in two classes at CCCC, not to speak of Mrs. Carp's senior English class.
Dad sets the fleabomb on the table and turns it on. It makes a squishing sound and the fog comes out of it right away. "Okay, guys, let's go," says my dad, and me and him and Killer sneak out the front door and take off for a look into Veterans Hall. Nothing doing there except some old guys playing pinochle. So we go on into Ned's where we actually intended to go in the first place. Regular Balona guys don't have to tell each other stuff about our intentions like that. We just know.
Me and dad sit up at the bar and I suddenly get a chill in my bladder colder than my Hires can. Ned is lighting a guy's cigar with one of the huge long matches he's got standing up in a glass behind the bar. Ned looks at the flame like he wants to drink it up. The guy with the cigar has to push the flame away since the cigar is practically burning up, Ned's paying the flame so much attention. My bladder chill is not about the cigar smoke which is actually illegal in bars and places around here. It's about the way Ned looks at the flame.
I right away remember about the way Jess Pleroma strikes his kitchen matches with his thumbnail or on the seam of his Levi's.
It occurs to me about Mr. D. H. Carp always flicking his Zippo and like he's fascinated by the sparks, even if it's not loaded with fuel.
Grandpa Lee mentioned a while back how Dad always liked fires. And Grandpa Lee himself likes fires.
I got the impression from some Tale somebody once told that Cousin Nim himself clapped his hands when he saw a fire.
Kenny Fring uses matches from the little books of matches you steal from restaurants to light incense to cover the stink of the dove cage in his garage. He'll light a match and hold it up and look at it a while before he lights up the incense. Sometimes he burns his fingers he looks at so long, and has to light a new one.
All Prime Suspects.
We spend a few minutes looking and listening, me with my Hires and Dad with a Pepsi tonight. Cousin Nim isn't here. Probably doing his diary. A lot of the regulars are over bowling with their leagues until about 2000 hours. They'll all come in here for another few beers, them having had previous beers during the bowling. It'll be loud in here. We decide to go on home.
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