Free Nice Place for a Murder by Bruce Jay Bloom

friendly old lady who’s got some good fucks left in her. Amen.”
    Once again I put my gun in its holster.
    “Good thing he’s not going to send you to your reward right now, amigo,” Wally told him. “Looks to me like you couldn’t handle that old lady if you got her.”
    “Hard to tell, because I don’t receive that many offers. But I could try,” he said. He approached us at an incredibly slow pace, pushing the grasses away with his crutches as he came. “Looking for Hick?”
    “That’s right,” I said.
    “With a gun,” he said.
    “We have to talk to him, but they say he can get nasty,” I said. “You live here?”
    “Over there. I’m Hick’s neighbor.” He pointed at a shack only marginally less hideous than the one we stood behind. “Talk to him? That mean you’re not here to shoot him?”
    “Not unless I have to,” I said.
    “That’s a disappointment,” he said. “But,” he paused for effect, “life is a compromise.”
    “We thought he was home,” Wally said. “Door unlocked, and all.”
    “Door’s never locked. There is no lock.” He looked at me. “You went inside. See anything anybody’d be desperate enough to steal?”
    “You know where Sosenko went?” I said.
    “He doesn’t tell me where he goes. Matter of fact, he doesn’t say boo to me. A lot of the time he’s at his boat, the Tiderunner, just there at the dock.” He pointed down the lane with one of his crutches. “But he’s not there now.”
    “How do you know?” I said.
    “Saw him drive off in his pickup, first thing.”
    “But his boat, it would be at the dock now?” I said. I gave Wally a look that told him I’d like to check it out.
    “Bound to be,” the old man said. “Look, if you catch up with Hick, don’t let him know I talked to you. Unless you’re set to kill the bastard. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him it was me just before you do him in. Long as he can never come looking for me, I’d kind of like him to know it was me put you onto him.” He turned and began his slow motion journey back to his own shack. “Watch yourselves,” he said as he moved along.
     
    Tiderunner was Lulu, all right. We could see the marks where the phony name had been nailed to the stern of the shabby wooden boat, then pried off later. We boarded to take a better look inside, but found the door to the wheelhouse secured with a padlock. Seemed Hick Sosenko worried more about his boat than he did his home.
    “No problemo,” Wally said. “I’ll get a screwdriver or something from the car, pop the hasp.”
    “Don’t bother,” I said. “I see what I need to see. Look on the deck inside.”
    Wally pressed his forehead against a wheelhouse window, using his hands to keep reflections on the glass from obscuring his vision. “Scuba tank and regulator. And flippers.”
    “He changed the name of the boat, in case anybody might see it,” I said. “He anchored near the Julian place, and when Newalis went into the water, he did, too, with scuba and flippers, on the Greenport side of the boat where nobody could see him. He pulled the poor bastard under and drowned him. Then he got back on the boat and took off. It was all planned out.”
    “Adds up,” Wally said.
    “But why did he do it, anyway?” I said. “And why did he return? He was back there hours later, when I arrived. Doesn’t make sense.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER VIII
     
    Time was you could get a lobster roll for four bucks, complete with the little paper cup of cole slaw. Now the menu begged the subject of money entirely with the announcement “market price,” which was supposed to mean the price of a lobster roll changed with what the restaurant had to pay for the lobster that went into it. What it really meant was that a lobster roll cost more every time you ordered one. Today it was fourteen ninety-five.
    Which didn’t stop Wally Prager from relishing his, his long fingers covered with the mayonnaise that leaked