Free Briarpatch by Ross Thomas Page A

off till eleven. So we met at this place we used to go to a lot, this bar, and she said I’m sorry, but I’ve met someone else and I won’t be
able to see you anymore. Well, I just sat there for a minute or two trying to get used to the shock and the pain—and don’t let ’em kid you, there’s real pain—and finally I knew I had to say something so I asked her who. She said that wasn’t important and I said it was important to me. She just shook her head as if she was really sorry about everything. Well, I just sat there like a fool and couldn’t think of anything to say. She got up, leaned down, and kissed me on the forehead—on the forehead, by God!—and said, Thank you, Clay. Then she left and that was the end of it.”
    â€œWhen did all this happen?” Dill asked.
    â€œAt six minutes until midnight on February twelfth a year and a half ago. Eighteen months. It was a Friday.”
    â€œShe was with homicide by then.”
    â€œBeen there for two or three months. Transferred in from bunco.”
    â€œDid you give up?”
    Corcoran shook his head. “I got drunk and tried to see her once and made a mess of it. Then I called her three times. The first time she said, ‘I’m sorry, Clay, I can’t talk to you,’ and hung up. The second time I called her I said, ‘Hi, it’s me,’ and she said, ‘Don’t call me anymore,’ and hung up. The third time I called and said it was me she didn’t say anything. She just hung up. I stopped calling.”
    â€œI don’t blame you. Were you in bunco with her?”
    â€œWe never worked together or anything like that. She did a lot of undercover stuff when she was in bunco. I was in public affairs and about all I did was go around and talk to school kids—real little kids—about what wonderful folks policemen are. I’d worked up this funny kind of talk with slides. Public affairs figured if the kids could get used to me, they’d never have any hangups about normal-looking cops. I kind of liked it. But then I started seeing
Felicity around with Captain Colder and I couldn’t stand that, so I quit.”
    â€œWhat do you do now?”
    â€œI’m a frightener.” Corcoran scowled and once again Dill wanted to shrink away. The big man smiled and chuckled a little. “What I am now is almost as ridiculous as being a cuckold. I’m a private detective and you’re gonna ask me how the hell can anybody my size stay private.”
    â€œI was really going to go upstairs and think about it.”
    â€œYeah, well, I do a lot of bodyguard work, for oil companies mostly, who’re in places where the politicians are a little weird—Angola, Indonesia, places like that.”
    â€œYou go there?”
    â€œNo, they use me when those folks come here, and my job is to make sure none of the native nuts get close. They keep me on a retainer—the oil companies—and that pays the overhead, which isn’t all that high except for the phone. As a frightener, I do a lot of work on the phone.”
    â€œWho do you frighten?”
    â€œDeadbeats. Say some guy loses his job out in Packingtown and falls behind on his car payments. Well, he’s a deadbeat, right? Now some folks would say he’s a victim of an outmoded economic system that scraps people the way it scraps old cars, but you and I know better, don’t we? You and I know that anybody in this grand and glorious country of ours can go out and find himself a job if he’ll just put on a clean white shirt and go look. I mean a guy who’s fifty-four years old and has been wrapping bacon for seventeen years for Wilson’s out in Packingtown and gets laid off, well, hell, he can go wrap bacon somewhere else. I’d hire him if I needed some bacon wrapped, wouldn’t you? Sure you would.
    â€œSo this guy, this skilled ex-bacon wrapper, falls behind on his
car