Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

I looked at the Porsche, turning into the parking garage in front of me and admitted to myself that I was happy to have Hooker involved. It didn’t have anything to do with Hooker being NASCAR Guy. In fact, gender wasn’t the comforting factor. It was just nice not to be afraid and alone.

Hooker and I parked and walked over to Monty’s. The sun was starting to drop in the sky, and another day was passing without word from Bill.

Hooker slung an arm around my shoulders. “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “Are you?”

“NASCAR Guy doesn’t cry.”

“What are we looking to accomplish at Monty’s?”

“We’re going to eat. And while we’re eating we can check out the boats. Who knows, maybe Bill will come cruising in.”

We sat at the bar, and we looked at the boats. We watched the people. We looked down the pier at Flex. Not much happening. No Florida politician or Cuban businessman in sight. I ordered a Diet Pepsi and a turkey club. Hooker got a beer, a cheeseburger, fries, a side of potato salad, and cheesecake for dessert. Plus he ate the chips that came with my club.

“Where does it go?” I asked him. “You eat enough food for three people. If I ate all that food I’d weigh seven hundred pounds.”

“It’s about metabolism,” Hooker said. “I work out, so I have muscle. Muscle burns calories.”

“I have muscle.”

“Do you work out?”

“I take the escalator to get to the nosebleed seats at the Orioles games and then I jump up and down and scream my lungs out once in a while when they score.”

“Strenuous.”

“Damn straight.”

Maria’s address book was lying on the table. I’d thumbed through the little book twice now and nothing significant had jumped out at me. Of course there’d have to be a notation that hit me over the head before a name seemed significant. It would have to read Riccardo Mattes, Cuban mafia hit man for me to figure it out. Because I didn’t have anything better to do, I ran through the book again. Delores Daily, Francine DeVincent, Divetown…

The lightbulb went on in my head. “Here’s something,” I said. “Maria was obsessed with diving. Now Maria has disappeared. Her charts have disappeared. Your boat has disappeared. What else does she need?”

“Dive equipment,” Hooker said.

“Did you have dive equipment on your boat?”

“No. I tried diving a couple years ago, but it wasn’t my thing.”

“The roommate didn’t say anything about dive equipment. And it’s sort of bulky, right? The roommate would have seen it.”

“I’m not an expert, but when I was diving I had a buoyancy compensator vest, some tanks, a regulator, flippers, a light, a compass, a bunch of gauges.”

“So where’s her dive equipment?”

Hooker pulled a folded sticky note out of his pocket and punched a number into his cell phone.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s the roommate’s phone number.”

“You got her phone number?”

“Hey, she gave it to me. She forced it on me.”

I did an eye roll.

“I can’t help it. I’m a hunk of burning love,” Hooker said. “Women like me. Most women, anyway. Except for you. I get a lot of phone numbers. Sometimes they write them on their underwear.”