Goodbye Dolly

14

Tulip Ray shades her eyes with the back of a tattooed hand.

"I don't usually, like, get involved. Nothing personal. I like to, y'know, like, mind my own business."

"Just a few questions."

"Maybe someone else can, like, answer them. I have to get to work."

"It'll only take a minute."

Tulip sighs heavily for the dramatic effect. All right, she hopes the sigh implies, but you're taking up my valuable time.

"What?" she asks, tapping a foot against a privacy wall. Hurry up, the foot implies. Make it quick. She watches a lizard slink up the wall and duck behind a withered vine.

"You were standing on the curb?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"What did you see?"

"Not much. The deed was done when I looked out in the street."

"The deed?"

"That's an expression. I didn't, like, see a thing."

"How about the box? Did you see the box?"

"What kind of box?"

"Cardboard box."

"Maybe."

"What do you mean, maybe? Either you saw it or you didn't. Which is it?"

She narrows her eyes. "Yah, I saw a box. That guy who got killed had a box when he ran up."

"What happened to it?"

"You said this would only take a minute."

"We can continue our conversation downtown."

"Some other guy picked it up."

"What did he look like?"

"Like he's been sleeping on park benches for about a hunnert years. He had a bunch of blue clothes on, y'know?

Smelled, too."

"Ever see him before?"

"Do I look like someone who'd know a bum?" She kicks aimlessly at the curb, then looks down at her black toenails.

Man, how she hates cops.