The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

never too early for me."
    Then I chuckled like Aldo Ray. If I had to endure his
    l'homme du monde act, he had to suffer my jaded,
    alcoholic private eye.
    "Of course," he murmured, then reached into a
    small refrigerator on the other side of his chair and
    came out with a can of Tecate, a perfect pinch of rock
    salt, and a wedge of lime already gracing the top of the
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    can. He had prepared, the devil. "Do you like Mexican
    beer?"
    "I like beer," I said, "just like Tom T. Hall."
    "I see," he said, trying to hide a superior smile with a
    supercilious eyebrow. "Mexican beer is quite superb.
    Perhaps the best in the world. I'm quite fond of it
    myself. I summer in Mexico, you see, San Miguel de
    Allende, every year. Takes me away from the mundane
    world of high school," he said as he handed me the
    beer.
    "Must be fun," I said, guessing that he spent his
    summers wearing a three-hundred-dollar toupee which
    looked like a dead possum and boring hell out of
    everybody for forty miles in every direction.
    "A lovely country," he sighed, meaning to sound
    wistful and longingly resigned to a life unworthy of
    his talents. Then he glanced up and said, "A touch
    of salt on the tongue, then sip the beer, and bite the
    lime."
    "Right," I said, then gobbled the salt, chug-a-lugged
    the whole beer, ate the lime wedge, rind and all, and
    tossed the empty can onto the lawn. Gleeson looked
    ready to weep, and when I belched, he flinched. "Got
    'nother wunna them Mexican beers?" I said cheerfully.
    "That weren't half bad."
    "Of course," he said, the perfect host, then doled me
    another can as if it were rationed. Before I had to
    destroy that one too, I was saved by the bell. Or the
    chirp. His telephone chirped like a baby bird. "Oh
    damn," he said. "Please excuse me."
    After he went back inside, I stood up to let the heavy
    beer lie down. Out of an old nosy habit, I checked
    Gleeson's glass. Cranberry juice and a ton of vodka.
    He was either a secret tippler, a pathological liar, or
    more nervous about my visit than he cared for me to
    know. I sidled up to the kitchen window but I couldn't
    hear anything except the distant throb of his voice and
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    the insane buzz of a frustrated fly. I opened the back
    door to let the poor starving devil out, then sat down to
    watch a hummingbird suck sugar water from Gleeson's
    feeder. I couldn't believe the little bastard had come all
    the way from South America for that. Or that I had
    come all this way to talk about a girl who had run away
    ·
    ten years before.
    Gleeson came back muttering gracefully about the
    foibles of his simply, simply lovely students. "Now," he
    said as he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands
    around his knee with a soft clink of silver rings. "What
    can I do for you?"
    "Betty Sue Flowers. "
    "Quite." A brief frown wrinkled his forehead up
    toward the fragrant, glistening expanse of his scalp.
    "Betty Sue Flowers," he sighed, then shook his head
    and smiled ruefully. "I haven't thought about her in
    years. "
    "What comes to mind?"
    "Such a gauche name for such a lovely, talented
    child," he said. "When it became apparent that she was
    more than just a good amateur actress, I advised her to
    change her name immediately, discard it like so much
    childhood rubbish."
    "I sort of like the name," I said. I didn't like women
    who changed their names. Or men who wore jewelry
    before sundown.
    "Quite," he said. "What exactly was it you wanted to
    know? I haven't seen or heard of her since the Friday
    before she ran away. What was that? Six, seven years
    ago?"
    "Ten. "
    "How time does fly," he whispered with a dreamy
    lilt, mouthing the cliche like a man who knew what it
    meant.
    "Quite," I said.
    He glanced up, narrowed his eyes as if he was seeing
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    me for the first time. "It isn't polite to mock me, " he
    suggested politely. He sounded half pleased, though,
    that I had taken the trouble.
    "Sorry," I said. "A bad habit I have. What did she
    talk about that day?"
    "I'm