The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

Two

It turned out she could. They established as much on her first visit to his new house, and it was a few days after that momentous occasion that he paid his first visit to the Gallatin County sheriff’s office. It was a courtesy call, and a counterpart to one he’d made to the Taylor County sheriff not long after the state of Florida had licensed him as a private investigator. He didn’t even know how much use he’d get out of the license, he could get by easily enough on his NYPD pension, but it never hurt to be on good terms with the local law, and he’d known retired cops back home with P. I. tickets who picked up the occasional piece of work through friends still on the job.

The sheriff of Taylor County turned out to be a piece of work himself, a slick article with a college diploma framed on his wall, and enough of a cracker accent to establish his bona fides as a good old boy. Doak could tell the man had an eye on the state house in Tallahassee, along with a snowball’s chance of getting there, but he was young enough that it’d be another five years before he figured out that last part. Sheriff D. T. Newton was cordial enough, because he’d never be less than cordial to anyone without a reason, but Doak could tell right away they were never going to be Best Friends Forever.

The Gallatin County courtesy call was a good deal more fruitful. Bill Radburn was a genuine good old boy who didn’t feel the need to act like one. If he’d ever had ambitions for higher office, he’d shed them somewhere along the way, and now all he wanted was to do his job well enough to keep the voters happy. His age was around sixty to Doak’s forty-eight, and he liked ESPN and his wife’s cooking, and the photo cube on his desk showed pictures of his grandchildren.

“Retired from the NYPD,” he’d said. “Put in your twenty years?”

“Closer to twenty-five.”

“And Tallahassee saw fit to give you a private license, though it’s hard to guess what it’ll do for you here in Gallatin County. Though I guess you never know, given the tendency folks have to get themselves in messes they can’t get out of on their own.”

“Oh, they do that down here, do they?”

“Now and again,” the sheriff said.

And Doak had found occasion to drop in now and again himself, to drink a cup of coffee and swap war stories in a way he’d never have tried with D. T. Newton. Folks did get in messes, and now and then one of them turned up on his doorstep, and he got to pick up an honest fee for a little honest work. Sometimes he had to drive around, sometimes he had to talk to people, but a surprising amount of the time he got the job done and made the client happy without leaving his desk. More often than you’d guess, your computer could go around and knock on doors for you — and did it all without pissing off the person on the other side of the door.

None of his clients ever came to him through Bill Radburn. But then one day his phone rang, and half an hour later he was in the man’s office on Citrus Boulevard. He’d said he’d done undercover work now and again, hadn’t he? Well, here they were looking at a local fellow who very likely knew everybody with a badge within a fifty-mile radius, and he hated to call in the staties in Tallahassee if he didn’t have to. So was he up for a little exercise in role-playing?

And the following afternoon he was sitting in his beat-up Monte Carlo in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie, settling into the role of a mobbed-up hit man from northern New Jersey — “Bergen County, maybe you’s heard of it” — agreeing to rid a man with the second most profitable auto dealership in Gallatin County of his business partner.

“He won’t buy me out, he won’t let me buy him out, and I can’t stand the sight of the son of a bitch,” the man said. “So what choice do I have here?”

“The man has a point,” Radburn said, when they listened to the recording of the conversation. They played it again for the District Attorney, Pierce Weldon, whose vision of the future was not limited to Gallatin County, and who clearly liked what he was hearing.

“How’s a man that stupid sell so many cars?” he wondered. “Jesus, the dumb bastard lays it all out there in black and white, or it will be when it’s typed up. Though credit where it’s due, Mr. Doak.”

“Just Doak,” Radburn said. “Last name’s Miller.”

“My mistake, but all the same, Doak, I have to say you make a very convincing hit man. I damn near bought your act myself. I don’t suppose you ever crossed the street to do a little moonlighting, did you?”

“If I did,” he said, “I wouldn’t say so. Be just my luck you’d be wearing a wire.”

They all assumed he’d have to testify, but the auto dealer’s attorney listened to the tape a couple of times and convinced his client to plead guilty. After sentencing, Doak and Radburn and Weldon shook hands all around. “And another solid citizen wins himself a ticket to Raiford,” the D.A. said. “That trophy wife of his was all teary-eyed, but I don’t guess she’ll have too much trouble finding somebody to elevate her spirits. Won’t be me, I know that much, and I’d like to think it’s my high moral principles but it may just be cowardice.”

“They do dress alike,” Radford said, “and it can be tricky to tell them apart.”

“And it won’t be you either, Grandfather William, because you’re just too damned comfortable with your life as it is to reinvent yourself as Foxy Grandpa. But our cop-turned-hit man might find an opening here, so to speak. You’re not married, are you, Doak?”

“Used to be.”

“Was that a note of bitterness there? And you live alone? No entangling alliances? But maybe your sensitive self recoils at the idea of literally doing unto the wife what you’ve already done metaphorically to the husband.”

“I did that once,” he remembered.

“Oh?”

“Guy was a burglar, caught him before he could get the goods to a fence.”

“And he had a hot wife?”

He nodded. “I knew better, but...”

“So many sad stories start with those four words.”

“This wasn’t that sad because it didn’t last that long. She liked her booze, and after the third drink something in her eyes would change, and I realized I was afraid to fall asleep in her bed for fear that she’d stick a knife in me.”

“Or go all Lorena Bobbitt on you.”

“Jesus, there’s a name from the past. Which is probably where it should stay.”

And he knew he wouldn’t hit on the auto dealer’s wife, either. Because he was capable of learning from experience.

Besides, hell, she wasn’t that hot.