Free Tailed by Brian M. Wiprud

Carson?” Lanston sounded almost sarcastic. “Or you?”
    Surrounded by hostile Sioux, Tonto says to the Lone Ranger:
What you mean “we,” white man?
    â€œAre you trying to tell me I’m not part of the investigation? Or are you saying that I’m now a
target
of the investigation?”
    After a pause, Bricazzi cut in. “The FBI is investigating this matter, and you’re not FBI, so we can’t share all of our intelligence with you. It’s against policy.”
    â€œThat’s not an answer to my question.”
    â€œWe appreciate your continuing cooperation, Carson.” Lanston couldn’t have made the comment sound more perfunctory.
    â€œAm I a
suspect
?”
    There was another silence on the other end, and through the hiss on the line I could almost see Bricazzi and Lanston exchange uncomfortable glances. I don’t like being toyed with—it makes me feel foolish, and when someone makes me feel foolish, I get royally PO’d. I didn’t wait for a reply.
    â€œI’ll take that as a yes. Which means you can direct all future inquiries to my attorney, Nico Benevito. He’s in the book.”
    Never mind that Nico Benevito was my barber—I was hot under the collar and fanning my gun. I hung up, not just once, but several times, so hard that I almost broke the receiver.
    To hell with being the FBI’s ball of string, to hell with Stella, to hell with Fowler, to hell with Seattle.
    At least I now knew why the killer had arranged to have me find Sprunty, and possibly why he was using my client list. To make me into a suspect. I was the patsy.
    I cabbed back to my cell, crammed my stuff into my bags, grabbed my briefcase, and shot to the airport.
    Destination? Ann Arbor.

chapter 8
    T his time I met Gabby at a Pickle Barrel, which thankfully doesn’t have a clothing-optional section. We don’t have this chain of diners in New York City—or many other chain restaurants, except in the Times Square area that caters to the tourists. The New York version of a chain restaurant is the independently owned but ubiquitous Greek diner. The burger, souvlaki, moussaka, and gyro platters are universal, dependable, and served by burly Greek men wearing white shirts and black vests. The menus are never less than ten pages, a cornucopia of everything from goulash to gefilte fish. Yet nobody but a rube ever orders any dish but the basics, standard lunch and breakfast fare. How may diner customers stumble in hankering for liver and onions or Athenian stuffed sand dabs? Hepcats know that these delights have been frozen for eons, possibly since the Pleistocene era. It wouldn’t surprise me if the stroganoff were made from mastodon.
    For the life of me, though, I can’t figure out why anybody would want to lunch at a chain restaurant named Pickle Barrel. Today’s specials are: pickles. I like a good cucumber soaked in brine and dill as much as the next guy, but to have chosen that as their namesake gives the wrong impression. Their tour de force is not pickles, in fact, but diner food, not too unlike the Greek places in New York. Perhaps the marketing department felt that pickle barrels—an old-timey touchstone redolent of Mr. Drucker’s General Store and a game of checkers between slow-witted farmers—were synonymous with good food. The association seems mighty flimsy to me.
    The menu at the Pickle Barrel was predictably brief and heavily laminated. I ordered the club sandwich and a coffee. Even the most ordinary restaurant on a bad day has a hard time screwing that up. And I needed the coffee. My trip hadn’t been easy. I’d managed to bag a seat on standby to Cleveland, and from there had gone to the long-term lot to retrieve the Lincoln, where it was waiting to be shipped to New York. I pulled up to the Ann Arbor Arms Motor Court at exactly 2:00 A.M . I’d called Angie from the airport, got the machine, and left her a