Free Everything but the Squeal by Timothy Hallinan Page B

talking. When he wasn't hurting somebody he was always talking. Sometimes he talked when he hurt people. She, as usual, was looking down at the table. Given her probable condition, maybe her head was too heavy to lift.
    “Hey, plainclothes,” Muhammad said pleasantly as I sat down at the counter. “Coffee again? Hold the sugar?”
    “Muhammad,” I said. “This is a nice little place.”
    Muhammad looked around, his dark eyes unreadable. “You got a funny idea of nice,” he said at last. “I don't know, sometimes I feel like I should go back home, except home is so crazy now. The Shi'ites, all the crazies.” He wiped his hands on the damp towel that hung from his belt. “I guess maybe I don't know where home is anymore. Same like these kids.” His eyes traveled over the tables and then came back to me. “You know what I mean?”
    “What I mean,” I said, “is that it's nicer open than it would be closed.”
    He put up both hands and waggled them. “Hey,” he said, “no argument there.”
    “Open, it's a living,” I said remorselessly. “Closed, it's just another Hollywood rathole.”
    “I'm listening,” he said.
    I took out one of the yearbook pictures of Aimee Sorrell and dropped it onto the counter. His eyes flicked down to it and then back up at me.
    “So,” I said, “have you seen her?”
    “Cop,” he said. “I knew you were a cop.”
    “You get an A,” I said. “Seen her or not?”
    “I don't know,” he said. “There's twenty girls in here look like her. She's a blond, you know? How do you tell blonds apart?”
    “Very carefully,” I said. “Right now, you tell them apart very carefully.”
    He picked up the picture and squinted at it. “How old?” he said.
    “Twelve, thirteen.”
    “How tall?”
    “Four-eleven.”
    “This isn't fair,” he said. “There shouldn't be such a world. Somebody should have this baby on his knee.”
    “Somebody does,” I said. I pulled out one of the Polaroids and handed it to him. He went green, which is something Meryl Streep couldn't do on purpose.
    “Áhhh,” he said, losing another chunk of his innocence.
    “Don't talk to me about there shouldn't be such a world,” I said. “What are you doing here? Without you, where do these kids go? What's this place about, anyway?”
    “Hamburgers,” he said. “We make hamburgers.”
    “Throw the shit in another direction,” I said. “I'm not catching. Have you seen her or not?”
    He looked down at the Polaroid and then up at me. “I don't think so,” he said. I sat up and he took a step backward. “No, really, really, I don't think so. We get a lot of kids in here, right? But she's too pretty. I'd remember.”
    “Make an effort,” I said as his eyes slid toward the ice-cream pimp. “Don't look around for help. If you're lying to me, there isn't any help. There's only me, Muhammad, and I'm not fucking around.”
    “No, no, me neither. You've always been straight with me, right?” He remembered that he thought I was plainclothes, and reconsidered. “Considering your job, I mean. You've always been straight. Now I'm being straight with you.” He dropped the Polaroid onto the counter and wiped his hands again, more thoroughly this time. “What am I supposed to do?” he said. “I got a family to support.”
    “Any little girls?” I asked unnecessarily. I wanted to bite someone.
    “Three,” he said before he thought. Then his eyes dropped to the picture, and he said “Ahhh” again.
    “Aside from the two specimens in here, and the guy with the Mohawk and the tattoos who was here on Thursday, how many regulars you got who deal in the little ones?”
    He poured me some coffee to look busy, and I swiveled my chair around. The hardcase with the Japanese or Korean girl was looking at us. He was giving me what he probably thought of as his chain-saw look. I managed to get my metabolism back under control, nodded to him, and turned back to Muhammad.
    “So,” I said, “how