Page 4 of Nobody's Fool

“The capitalism part is obvious.”

Debbie has good teeth. That’s rarely the case out here. Her hair is washed. She’s sleeveless and her arms are clean.

“You make money,” I say. Then: “And the ethics?”

Her lower lip quivers. “Sometimes a guy hears me and runs off. Like I knocked some sense into him. Like I reminded him who he should be. And maybe, just maybe, if some girl had yelled that at my daddy, if some girl like me did something, anything, to stop my daddy from going into a place like that…”

Her voice fades away. She looks down and blinks her eyes and keeps the lip quivering.

I study her face for a second and then I say, “Boo friggin’ hoo.”

The blinking and quivering stop as if her face is a shaken Etch A Sketch. “What?”

“You think I’m buying the Daddy Issues cliché?” I shake my head. “I expect better from you.”

Debbie laughs and punches my arm. “Damn, Kierce, you must have been an awesome cop.”

I shrug. I was. I don’t know how Debbie ended up on the streets. I don’t ask and she doesn’t volunteer, and that seems to suit us both.

I check my watch.

“Showtime?” Debbie asks.

“Has to be.”

“You remember the code?”

I do. If she yells “Daddy, why?” that means wrong guy. If she yells “But Daddy, I’m carrying your child,” that means my man Peyton just exited. Debbie came up with the code. I’m giving her fifty dollars for the job, but if I land what White Shoe needs, I’ll up that to a hundred.

Debbie heads down the path to a spot where she can see the club door. I can’t see it from my perch. Debbie saw Peyton Booth’s pic on my phone, so she knows what he looks like. You probably guessed this, but Peyton is getting divorced. My job here is simple.

Catch him cheating.

This is what I’ve been reduced to since getting chucked off the force for messing up big-time. Worse, even though I’m working for a high-end, whitest-of-white-shoe Manhattan law firm, I am not getting paid. This is a barter arrangement. I’m being sued by the family of a high school kid named PJ Dawson. According to the lawsuit, I perilously pursued PJ onto the rooftop of a three-story building. Because of my negligence, young PJ slipped and fell off the roof, plummeting those three stories and sustaining critical injuries. The White Shoe law firm (actual name is Whit Shaw but everyone calls them White Shoe) is representing me in exchange for my working jobs like this off the books.

America is grand.

Peyton is head of a major conservatively based conglomerate and reportedly, because we are all hypocrites, a big-time playah with da ladies. According to his wife’s statement to her attorney, her soon-to-be ex has a weakness for “bottled blonde skanks with giant fake cans.” The wife had been convinced that Peyton was messing around with his neighbor, but I checked it out thoroughly and yes, the neighbor matches this description, but no, he isn’t messing around with her.

Peyton made sure to leave his Lexus in a remote corner of the lot, far from prying eyes. That’s why I’m set up on this hill, in the one spot where I can position my camera and record any action that might take place. If I set up closer, I would be spotted. If I set up farther away, Iwould get nada. The only way to make this work is to be here and to know when my man Peyton leaves.

The parking lot is also cleverly set up so that it shares its spaces with an old-school convenience store called Get Some and a florist called—get this—Rose to the Occasion, thus giving the clientele who are visiting the “gentlemen’s club” proper cover. Point is, if I capture Peyton leaving here or parked here, it won’t be a big deal in court. But if I can capture him with a dancer (again with the euphemisms—don’t we all miss the days when you could just say what you mean?), that would be huge.

“Daddy, why…?” Debbie calls out.

I have the camera on a tripod. I check the aim. Yep, right through the windshield of the car. I’m still looking down the barrel of the lens when I hear a voice behind me.

“Where’s Debbie?”

A quick glance tells me it’s an unhoused (or unsheltered) guy.

“She’s working,” I say.

“My name is Raymond.”

“Hey, Raymond.”

“Debbie usually brings me a sandwich.”

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