Tannehill chewed on his lower lip as Phil spoke, "that's alright, I've got other options. When you do have time, I'd like you to take a look though."
"Yeah, sure. My pleasure," Spinoza answered with no hint of pleasure in his voice. "Chat soon." He hung up abruptly.
Tannehill leaned back in the phone booth and wondered what an excursion to Loving's Bakery would uncover. Snell hadn't been bothered much by a moral compass and had no problems flaunting his indelicacies in the open. So, for him to spend effort hiding something, the secret must point to something of high value or nefariousness. Or both.
He left the booth and took an express bus that landed him home at the debatably reasonable hour of 10 PM. He undressed, downed a large glass of water, and crawled beneath the blankets. He placed his revolver in the drawer of his nightstand. He didn't know if Otto had access to his home address and he wasn't relishing the prospect of an unwanted excursion on his property in the middle of the night.
He turned out the light and inhaled a deep, contented breath in the pitch-black air. Still suffering the after-effects of the recent sleepless nights he fell asleep within five minutes.
He awoke nine hours later, shortly after 7 AM. He felt generally refreshed with only some residual grogginess that a strong cup of coffee could easily cure. He showered, dressed, holstered his revolver and headed for The Happy Hour.
He'd debated restricting his movements but hadn't given much credence to Otto's strategic planning. He knew he wasn't up against a criminal enterprise, so his adversaries could only spend so much time tracking his movements - if they even had the wherewithal to think that far ahead.
When he arrived, Vera eagerly seated him and poured him a cup of coffee. She serviced a couple of other customers and bussed a third table before returning to greet him formally.
She pulled a pencil from behind her ear with her order pad in hand. "So?"
"I'll have the spinach omelet."
She kicked him under the booth table and widened her eyes in a combined expression of exasperation and anticipation.
"OK," he said, bending down to rub his shin, "I'll have the spinach omelet after I tell you what happened last night."
"You have expensive tastes for a penny-pinching PI living through the worst economic downturn in US history."
"What can I say? I appreciate the finer things."
"I'm waiting."
"You're the one chit-chatting," he took a slow pull of coffee as Vera rapidly tapped her pencil against the pad. "I can start off by saying that they certainly aren't happy with me. They were expecting me to hand off the information we discovered yesterday. When that didn't happen, they tried to threaten me."
"How?"
"By implying that they had people lurking around our meeting location waiting to shake me down."
"And that doesn't concern you?"
"No, I cased the place for a couple of hours before they arrived. No one else appeared for back up and no one else was tailing me after I left. If this thing is about money - which it almost always is - they'd want to keep their operation as small as possible."
"Aren't you worried that they're following you now?"
"I don't think they're that smart."
Vera frowned mildly. Tannehill pointed at the table and mouthed "omelet." She turned away muttering very un-ladylike phrases on the way back to the counter.
10 minutes later she re-appeared with his omelet and a second cup of coffee.
"Thanks, I'm good," Tannehill pointed to his own cup.
"It's not for you. It's for me," she sat abruptly in the booth seat across from him.
A disembodied voice from the back yelled out, "Vera we've got customers!"
"I'm on break and we've got five customers, all of whom have received their orders in the last five minutes!" The voice didn't respond. "So what else did you find out?"
"Beederman's real name."
"Any reason why he hid it?" Tannehill shrugged. Vera continued, "I assume you're going to Loving's to see what's there?" Tannehill nodded. "I assume you know I'm coming with you?"
"It might be dangerous. I don't want to put you in harm's way."
"From everything you've told me about Snell he seems more like to be a simple boob than a booby trapper. Besides I've done quite a bit to help you out so far. And, you just said that you don't think your adversaries are likely to qualify the varsity chess squad."
Tannehill sighed, "Didn't you say that you have to work your hooker job on the docks? I don't want to get you in trouble with your pimp."
"I'll check with him, but we're reviewing Chaucer and Middle English exhausts me, so missing one appointment with a john should be acceptable. He's really a nice guy. He's just misunderstood like all of the working gals he takes care of are."
Tannehill shrugged again in resignation. "OK, I'll come get you shortly after 10."
Vera smiled, took a brief sip of her coffee, bared her teeth and made an up and down motion with her index finger while pointing to her central incisors. Then she left the booth.
[Author's Note: March is coming in like a lion with another 922 words. I've completed my broad outline, so I hope to be back on my regular cadence going forward. The running total for the story is 27,366 words.]
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