Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

He said Bill would be added to Missing Persons. He said I should call him if I was threatened again. He suggested I follow the hit man’s advice and go home. He asked Hooker what he thought about the restrictor plates NASCAR was imposing on the cars. And he left.

“Sort of unsatisfying,” I said.

“Cops are like that. They have their own way of working.”

“Mysterious.”

“Yeah. Are you going home?”

“No. I’m going to keep bumbling along, looking for Bill. Let’s check out some dive shops.”

We drove back to Hooker’s building and stood in front of the bank of elevators. Hooker pushed the up button, and I refused to crack my knuckles or faint or burst into tears. It’s just a stupid elevator, for crying out loud, I told myself.

Hooker looked at me and grinned. “You really do hate elevators. You didn’t blink when that guy threatened to kill us, but you’re breaking into a sweat over this elevator.”

The doors opened, Hooker stepped in and held the door, waiting for me.

I was thinking, get in the elevator, but my feet weren’t moving.

Hooker reached out and grabbed me and pulled me into the elevator. He hit the button for the thirty-second floor, and I inadvertently whimpered. The doors closed, and he pulled me to him and kissed me. His tongue touched mine, and I think I whimpered again. And then the elevator doors opened.

“Do you want to go up and down a couple more times?” Hooker asked.

“No!” I jumped out of the elevator.

He slung an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward his condo. “Do you have any more irrational fears? Snakes? Spiders? Monkeys? Fear of eating pizza? Fear of making love to NASCAR drivers?”

“The NASCAR fear and the monkey fear might be redundant,” I said.

Hooker unlocked his door, stepped in, and looked around. “Everything looks okay,” he said. “I was worried I was going to find it had been destroyed. Every place we go into lately has been searched at least twice.” He got a phone book and turned to the div

e shop advertisements. “You’re going to call,” he said. “People are more willing to give information out to women. And besides, you’re getting good at lying.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Tell them your roommate called and asked you to pick up a regulator, but you don’t know anything about diving, and she didn’t say what kind of regulator. Ask if they know her, and they remember what she bought.”

There were two dive shops in South Beach, a couple in Miami and one in Coral Gables. I called all of them. The store that was listed in Maria’s book, Divetown, remembered her but hadn’t seen her in weeks. The others had no knowledge of her.

“Maybe we’re looking too close,” Hooker said. “If they were running from someone, they might have stopped under way. Like in the Keys.”

I got a hit on the second try. Scuba Dooba in Key West. Maria and Bill had been in on Wednesday.

“Hold a regulator for me,” I said. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were in the garage, arguing over cars and driving.

“We should take the Mini,” I said. “The shooter with the slicked-back hair probably knows your car.”

“Fine,” Hooker said, “but I’m driving.”

“No way. It’s my brother’s car. I’m driving.”

“Yeah, but I’m the man.”

“What the heck does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. It was all I could come up with. Come on, give me a break and let me drive. I’ve never driven one of these little things. Besides, I know the roads.”