I hadn’t touched my beer and understood immediately that I wouldn’t be putting my mouth on anything in this bar, unlike the four-hundred-pound guy waving a dollar bill at the dancer hovering over him.

Before I’d left the police station, I’d made a copy of Grasso’s mug shot. I’d had to do it without Ellen noticing, but old habits die hard, and it’d been easy to go around behind her back.

The bartender was a goofy-looking guy. He reminded me of guys I’d gone to high school with that were easygoing and fun, but you knew would never really do much with their lives. I waved him over and showed him the computer printout of Laurence Grasso’s mug shot.

“I’m trying to track down a buddy of mine. Larry Grasso. Do you know him?”

Without looking at the picture, he said, “You a cop?”

I shook my head. “Flunked out of the Academy,” I said.

He barely glanced at the picture, and I knew what the answer would be. “Never seen him,” he said.

“Is there anyone else here I can show the picture to?”

“Why you lookin’ for him?”

“I’m a PI,” I said. “His sister hired me to find him. Their mother died, and they need to settle the estate. It’s not much, but they can’t do it until Larry’s contacted.”

The bartender shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Clearly, I was on my own.

I pushed my beer back and walked around the bar to a door marked with the single word: Office. The bartender watched me and started to say something, but I knocked on the door quickly and when I heard a voice say “Fuck off!” I went right in.

There was a woman behind the desk with big blond hair. I couldn’t see her face because it was buried in the crotch of a thin black girl sitting spread eagled on top of the desk.

“Oops,” I said.

The black girl scrambled off the desk. The blonde wiped her mouth off on her forearm and stood up. She was a big gal.

I pulled out the picture of Grasso and said, “I’m looking for Larry Grasso. Do you recognize him?”

“Get out,” the woman said, and her eyes flickered over my shoulder. I sensed movement behind me and ducked. Something crashed into the door and I pivoted, then reached up and caught the baseball bat under my arm. I swept my left hand up, slamming it into the bartender’s elbow, and I heard a satisfying pop. He let go of the bat, yelped a little, and I flipped it around so it was in my hand. I rested it over my shoulder and winked at him. He glared at me, and I used the bat like a cattle prod to herd him into the office, where I could keep an eye on all three of them. I closed the door behind me.

“Boy, you guys have got a real customer service problem,” I said.

“Fuck you,” the blonde said. The black girl hadn’t moved.

I nodded to the black girl, “Employee of the Month, I assume?”

“Very funny,” the blonde said. “What do you want?”

“Larry Grasso.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Wanna think about it?” I said.

“No,” the blonde said. “Jesus, I never heard of the guy.” She looked at the bartender, and he shook his head. To be honest, I couldn’t tell if they were lying or not. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes you just don’t know.

I thought about it. I could make some more empty threats, or I could just cut my losses and thank God I wasn’t wearing a Louisville Slugger tattoo on my temple.

“Thanks for the souvenir,” I said, opening the door and stepping out into the club. The same girl was dancing, and the same customers were staring at her. Breathing through their mouths.

I walked outside, feeling a little silly carrying a baseball bat on my shoulder like I was about to start hitting fly balls for outfielder practice. Something told me I wasn’t doing this right. Whether or not they knew Grasso was moot. They were clearly the type that didn’t want to tell anyone anything. I thought about what I’d done—maybe I should have come up with a better story. I popped the trunk and threw the bat inside. Who knew when it might come in handy?

I backed the Sunbird out of the spot and was about to turn out of the parking lot when I saw a flutter of movement off to my left. I looked. At the back of the building was the skinny black girl, and she was waving at me. I drove around and pulled up next to her. She leaned in.

“I’ll tell you where he is for five hundred bucks.”

I pulled out my wallet and counted. “I’ve got three hundred and sixty.”

Her face was thin. Her eyes haunted. She was clearly on drugs. Malnourished. Desperate.

I held the money out to her, and when she reached for it, I pulled it back.

“He’s in a house on Barrington with a dancer named Ginger,” she said. I remembered when Nate gave me the address from the black Nova’s registration—it had been in a woman’s name. The name wasn’t Ginger though. It was something plain like Mindy or Missy. Melissa. That was it. Melissa.

“Is Ginger’s real name Melissa?”

She gave me a look like I was certifiable.

“No real names, I get it,” I said.

“Do you know the address?” I said. “Roughly?”

Her eyes took on a strange look, and I said, “If you don’t know, don’t lie.”

She nodded then said, “Alls I remember is it’s got a front porch with a refrigerator on it.”

I handed her the money. She took it, and her face took on a flush, already anticipating the drugs.

“Don’t even think of calling them to tell them I’m coming,” I said. “Or I’ll come back for a refund, do you know what I mean?” Actually, I had no intention of coming back, but I had to at least make an attempt at the tough-guy routine. Sober, she wouldn’t buy it. Strung out like she was, she might consider it. Anyone who knew me, of course, would have doubled over with laughter.

She hurried away from the car and darted back into the building through the door. If the big blonde found out she’d given me the information, I was sure she would have her ass. Literally.

But I had a lead.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Barrington was located on the southern end of Grosse Pointe, bordering Detroit. All the exciting stuff happened down here. You could take your mansions and your yacht clubs and everything else from Grosse Pointe proper, but it was down here in the area they called the Cabbage Patch that all the excitement went down. They called it the Cabbage Patch, by the way, because the homes are so packed together, like, you guessed it, heads of cabbage in a field. Grosse Pointers are sooo creative.

At first, when the stripper had told me to look for a porch with a fridge on it, I thought it’d be easy to spot. But now, driving down the shitty street, I see she should’ve been more specific. Was it a side-by-side? Automatic icemaker? Freezer on the bottom?

Plenty of bikes and chairs and tables and air conditioners and a car bumper and a body (sleeping, I hoped) and plenty of dogs without leashes. Dogs without leashes. Sounded like a punk band.

I finally spotted a house with a lovely avocado-colored Frigidaire on the front porch. I stopped the Sunbird well shy of the house and put it in park, then got out and walked up onto the front porch. The fridge was in worse shape than it looked from the street. There were garbage bags piled inside. There were more garbage bags on the floor of the porch. I saw that quite a few of the plastic bags had jagged holes chewed in them. Rats. Lovely.

The door was cheap and flimsy. Big surprise there. I thought about what to do. Legalities. Options. Should I call Ellen or not? What if she came and the house was an abandoned rathole?

I thought some more and pressed my ear to the door. I didn’t hear a thing. I pressed the doorbell but didn’t hear any corresponding sound. I pressed it twice more with the same lack of result. So I pounded on the door for a good three or four minutes. Still nothing.