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There are only two stories to this house, but it rambles all over the place, as if the original builder could never bring himself to stop. There are five cars crammed into the driveway, bumper to bumper and side by side. A sixth is on grass which strikes Holly as too tired and near death to complain.
A young guy sits on the concrete front step, head hung low, smoking either a cigarette or a doob. He looks up when Holly gets out of her car—blue eyes, black beard, long hair—then lowers his head again. She weaves her way through the flamingos, which probably struck some young man or men as the height of Juvenalian wit.
“Hello there. My name is Holly Gibney, and I wondered—”
“If you’re a Mormon or one of those Adventists, go away.”
“I’m not. Are you by any chance Tom Higgins?”
He looks up at that. The bright blue eyes are threaded with snaps of red. “No. I am not. Go away. I have the world’s worst fucking hangover.” He waves a hand behind him. “Everyone else is still sleeping it off.”
“Saturday Night Fever followed by Sunday Morning Coming Down,” Holly ventures.
The bearded young man laughs at that, then winces. “You say true, grasshopper.”
“Would you like a coffee? There’s a Starbucks down the street.”
“Sounds good, but I don’t think I can walk that far.”
“I’ll drive.”
“And will you pay, Dolly?”
“It’s Holly. And yes, I will pay.”
4
Having a strange man—big, bearded, and hungover—in her car might have put Holly’s nerves on edge under other circumstances, but this young man, Randy Holsten by name, strikes her as about as dangerous as Pee-wee Herman, at least in his current state. He rolls down the passenger window of Holly’s Prius and holds his face out into the hot breeze, like a shaggy dog eager for every passing scent. This pleases her. If he throws up, it will be outside rather than in. Which makes her think of Jerome’s drive to the hospital with Vera Steinman.
The Starbucks is thinly populated. Several of the customers also look hungover, although perhaps not as severely as young Mr. Holsten. She gets him a double cap and an Americano for herself. They take chairs outside in the scant shade of the overhang. Holly lowers her mask. The coffee is strong, it’s good, and it takes the curse off the motel brew she drank earlier. When Holsten begins showing signs of slightly improved vitality, she asks him if Tom Higgins is also sleeping it off in the House of Flamingos.
“Nope. He’s in Lost Wages. At least as far as I know. Billy and Hinata went on to LA, but Tom stayed. Which doesn’t surprise me.”
Holly frowns. “Lost wages?”
“Slang, my sister. For Las Vegas. A town made for such as Monsewer Higgins.”
“When did he go there?”
“June. Middle of. And left owing his share of the rent. Which I can tell you was Tom all over.”
Holly thinks of Keisha’s short and brutal summing up of Tom Higgins’s character: Wimp. Loser. Stoner.
“You’re sure it was the middle of June? And these other two went with him?”
“Yeah. It was just after the Juneteenth block party. And yeah, the three of them went in Billy’s ’Stang. Tom Terrific is the kind of dude who’ll suck on his fellow dudes until there’s nothing more to suck. I guess they wised up. Speaking of sucking on people, can I have another one of these?”
“I’ll pay, you get. One for me, too.”
“Another Americano?”
“Yes, please.”
When he comes back with their coffees, Holly says, “It sounds like you didn’t like Tom much.”
“I did at first. He’s got a certain amount of charm—I mean, the girl he was going with was way out of his league—but it wears off in a hurry. Like the finish on a cheap ring.”
“Nicely put. You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”
