The Glass Highway by Loren D. Estleman

couldn’t prove it by me.” I felt for my wallet. The pocket where I keep it was flatter than my ego. She noted the action.
    “Don’t worry, I didn’t roll you. I’ll give it back when you leave. I had to look for identification. It says you really are a private detective.”
    “Investigator,” I corrected automatically.
    “What’s the difference?”
    “In this state, your license. The state cops issue them and being cops they get burned when someone who is not a cop starts calling himself a detective. Semantics. I’m talking for therapy.”
    “Is it true you’re working for Bud’s father?”
    I nodded, wished I hadn’t. I laid palm to floor and pried myself into something that resembled a sitting position. My senses buzzed around like disturbed flies and settled slowly. I fumbled for my cigarettes, found the pack, then didn’t feel like taking it out. Too heavy. “What’s he afraid of?”
    “Nothing,” she said. “For himself, anyway. He’s protecting me, he thinks. That’s why he moved in here. That’s what the heroes always do in that junk he reads.”
    “You need protecting?”
    She smiled that smile girls smile. Enigmatic, they call it. I call it a low ache. I said, “I don’t guess it’s any of my business. I’m just the guy who got his brains spilled because you thought I was someone you needed protecting from too. I’m just the guy Moses True sicked his mutt on because an aggravated assault beef looked sweeter to him than your address in my notebook. The reason he had your address to begin with is someone smeared the man who probably had it before and gave True Grosse Pointe with this charming place as a bonus. Jump right in and stop me when I start making sense.”
    She sat on the floor next to me, folding her legs under her. She was still barefoot. Her face looked a little pale under the dark coloring. Her knuckles were white on my gun in her lap, but it wasn’t pointing at me. That was a novelty. Her eyes probed mine. “Moses True couldn’t have had this address. I never gave it to him.”
    I had recovered enough strength to winch out a Winston. I paused, watching her, then struck a match. “Yeah, I thought he was forking it to me when he said he delivered out here. He probably followed you some night after you made a score.”
    “Why would he do that.”
    It wasn’t even a question, just one of those things you say when you think it’s expected but you’re too tired or disgusted to sell anyone on it. I tipped smoke back down my gullet and shook out the match. I looked around, found a heavy brass ashtray I’d met before on the floor nearby, righted it, and dropped the match into the bowl. Nothing like it to eat the time your brain spends warming up.
    “I think you know why,” I said. “When you feel like telling someone besides good old Bud, use this.” I found one of my cards and stuck it out.
    She took it carefully by the edges as if it were made of brittle glass. She read it, looked down, appeared to notice my gun in her hand for the first time, and gave it to me butt first. There is a certain way a person handles a gun that says she’s handled guns before. I tucked the observation into my creaking mental card file for future reference. She said, “I took out the bullets. I’m sorry I had to hurt you. I didn’t know.”
    “It doesn’t hurt that much less when someone hits me who does.” I stuck the Smith behind my hipbone. “Will you hit me again if I call Bud’s father and tell him where he is?”
    “I’ll have to move anyway. Too many people know where I live.”
    I managed to miss the walls getting up. My skull boomed like a tin hut in a high wind. I filled it with smoke. “Got coffee?”
    She nodded, looking up at me. “I don’t have any made, though.”
    “Make some. Meanwhile I’ll try getting Tarzan onto the sofa without a wrecker.”
    She smiled—a real one this time—and climbed to her feet before I could put out a hand to help her.
    Bud