Free Cul-de-Sac by David Martin Page B

thought Camel was hiding something. “I hear anything else I’ll let you know.”
    “Appreciate it.”
    After the security guard left, Camel returned to the dark corner just as a large form stepped off the elevator, shoulders leading, a big Styrofoam cup in each mitt … Eddie bringing the coffee. He walked about twenty paces from the elevator, stopped, listened, then just stood there … figuring Camel should’ve spotted him by now and made himself known.
    But Camel kept to the shadows. Eddie walked up the ramp to the top level, wandered around there awhile, walked back down to the third level where Camel was supposed to be.
    “All right asshole,” Eddie finally said in a conversational tone.
    Camel stepped out.
    Eddie came over and handed him a coffee. “Ha, ha.”
    Camel smiled that peculiar grimace of his.
    “Okay, you going to tell me now … how’d you know Mary and me were having dinner over at Mike and Kathy’s tonight?”
    Camel explained about calling Michael to get information on Cul-De-Sac … he also told Eddie about the homicide that occurred there seven years ago, the trouble Annie ran into when she showed up at the place last night to surprise her husband for their third wedding anniversary. After he got done talking Camel thumbed off the plastic lid on the Styrofoam cup, spilling hot coffee on his fingers and cursing softly under his breath.
    “See this little cutout,” Eddie said, indicating the plastic lid he had left on his cup. “You break it loose, drink through the lid and that way what just happened won’t happen.”
    Camel told Eddie he knew about the little cutout but refused on principle to suck coffee through plastic slits.
    “I suppose a man’s got to take a stand somewhere,” Eddie said.
    “You need to work on this weenie wagger’s pattern.”
    “He’ll hit before seven, he’ll pick on a short woman, five-two or so, it’ll happen here on 3 or maybe up on 4, that’s a pattern, not a guarantee … pattern means tendency.”
    “I have a tendency to get paid for this kind of work.”
    “Consider it your civic duty.”
    “Jake Kempis was here—”
    “Yeah he came into The Ground Floor asking where you were.”
    “Wants us to give him a call if we catch this flasher.”
    “You could do that but first you could put the fear of God in the little pervert. Give him that look you got, you know the look I mean. Tell him, ‘Never again.’ A man sees that dead-eyed look of yours he knows the only way to stop Teddy Camel, cut off your head and bury it in a separate hole.”
    “Am I blushing?”
    “You know what I’m talking about.” Neffering drank some coffee, remembering things. “Without ever raising your voice you could get angrier than any man I’ve ever met.”
    “I’m not like that anymore.”
    “To put the fear of God in this pervert you could fake it.”
    Camel didn’t tell him that the kind of rage he used to carry around, you can’t fake it. He had to sip carefully at the coffee, it was too hot. “I wish I still smoked.”
    “I’m putting in a smoking section over in that far corner where no one sits anyway, separating it with etched-glass partitions, commercial-grade exhaust system. It’ll be real nice.”
    Camel kept trying to drink the coffee.
    “Not very many of my customers smoke but those who do aren’t allowed to smoke at their desks, they feel like lepers standing outside … this way they’ll come in my place and buy stuff, have a nice place to smoke.”
    “Happy as cancerous little clams.”
    Eddie sucked at his coffee. “That woman, Annie … I thought she made you happy but now I see she didn’t exactly put you in a good mood.”
    “I’m in a great mood … freezing my ass off ’cause some guy can’t keep his dick holstered.”
    “When she first came up behind you, the way she was standing there, beaming and grinning, waiting for you to turn around and see who it was … I thought she might be your