Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

Hooker felt under his seat, brought out a gun, and got out of the car.

This did nothing to make me feel safe. If anything, it added to the panic.

“Don’t worry about the gun,” Hooker said. “I’m from Texas. We give guns as baptism presents. I knew how to shoot before I could read.”

“I don’t like g-g-guns.”

“Yeah, but sometimes you need them. Lots of people need to shoot varmints in Texas.”

“Like coyotes?”

“That would be in the country. In my neighborhood it was mostly pissed-off husbands shooting guys in their naked ass as they jumped out bedroom windows.” Hooker looked to the open door and then up to the windows. “Tell me about this big guy.”

“He was big. Real big. Like he didn’t even fit in his skin. Like the Hulk, except he wasn’t green. And he didn’t have a neck. And he had a scar running down the side of his face into his mouth where he was all drooly and snarly. And his eye…his eye. Actually he didn’t have an eye. Only one. The other one was fake, but it was a cheap fake. Like it was sort of too big for the real eye. And it didn’t move. No matter what the real eye did, the one big cheap fake eye just stared out at me. Didn’t blink, or anything. It was…frightening.”

“Did he have a name?”

“I’m calling him Puke Face.”

“Did Puke Face say anything interesting? Like why he was in Bill’s bedroom?”

“He said Bill had a woman who belonged to his boss, so he was going to trade me. And that his boss was smart, and that this was all about fear and what it can do for you.”

A blind was slightly pulled aside at one of Bill’s windows. Hooker aimed his gun at the window. The blind dropped back into place, and a moment later we heard a crash from the other side of the apartment building. “Unh,” someone said. And then there was the sound of receding footsteps. Ka thud, ka thud, ka thud.

“Sounds to me like he just jumped out Bill’s window,” Hooker said. “And he’s limping.”

“I kicked him in the nuts.”

“Yeah, that might make him limp. Do you still want to do the club scene?”

I nodded. “I have to find Bill.”

Hooker beeped the Porsche locked, and he tossed a shimmery scrap of material at me. “I hope this fits. It was the best I could do on short notice.”

“It’s still warm.”

“Yeah, you probably don’t want to know all the details.”

I held the dress up by its little string straps. “There’s not much here.”

“Trust me, you don’t want a lot of dress. This is Miami. They really mean it when they say less is more.”

I followed Hooker back into the apartment, and we cautiously looked around.

“I’m a little flustered,” I said.

“Perfectly understandable. If you need help getting into the dress…”

Yeah, right. Not that flustered.

“This is disgusting,” Hooker said, upper lip curled at the mess on the rug.

“He threw up after I kicked him the second time.”

Hooker instinctively put his hands to his package. “I could throw up just thinking about it.”

I dragged myself and the dress into the bathroom. I did some deep breathing and got myself calmed down enough to keep going. Hooker was out there with his gun, and I was safe in here, I told myself. Just get changed and get out.