Page 58 of Justice for Radar

I turned back to my laptop screen and let my eyes rove my work in progress.

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” I said to the empty air and picked up my stylus with a sigh. “Maybe I should get a plant or something… so I can talk to it instead of myself. Of course, which actually makes you crazier?” I wondered aloud. “Talking to yourself or an inanimate object? I guess at least the plant isalivewhich helps.”

I snorted.

“Who am I kidding? There’s no real help for someone like me…” Of course as soon as I said it my heart called me a liar. My thoughts, once again, turned to Radar.

God, I missed him…

19

Radar…

“How’s she doing?” Atlas asked a couple of days later, handing me a hot dog from a stand. We had eyes on Billy boy’s truck, as we’d taken to calling him. Where the fuck he got the name Billy Curtis in the first place we didn’t know, but who fucking cared.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She sounds alright, but it’s kind of a false brightness.”

“Mm, well, we’re on the home stretch for finding out what the absolute goddamned fuck,” he said.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“Could swing through Texas on the way home.”

“San Antonio ain’t exactly in the pan handle,” I said.

“No, but since when has that ever fuckin’ stopped us before?” he asked.

“Good point,” I muttered.

“We’re gonna be at this a while,” he said, sitting back and sighing.

“Yup.” I nodded.

“I fuckin’ hate stakeouts,” he griped.

“We do more PI work and less bond work, you know it’s gonna be more staking shit out, not less, right?”

“Ruin my fuckin’ fun, why don’t you?” he muttered and wiped his mouth with his napkin. I laughed under my breath.

We waited, and waited, and waited some more, and finally at around five-thirty our boy showed up, dropping his tailgate on his fancy truck to stow some shit in the back.

“Looks like somebody has had a bad fuckin’ day,” Atlas muttered.

“Yeah, well it’s about to get worse,” I said, firing up the bike. He followed suit and as Billy boy backed out of his space, we followed him.

We knew where he was staying. We were booked in the same motel under false names. We watched him go into his room and went into ours. He didn’t know us from Adam but we had his fuckin’ number.

We watched him from behind the gauzy curtain to our room which was on the first floor with a good view of his on the second. He liked to leave his door open and paced from the railing into his room while he talked on the phone.

Whatever was being said, he didn’t seem to like it. Not one bit – too fuckin’ bad.

He had his dinner delivered, stayed up late watching television and finally, his room’s light went out. The blue glow from around the curtain going out about a half hour later.

“On the home stretch,” Atlas muttered and we waited some fucking more.

“We’re good,” he said, looping the close circuit security feed.

“Let’s roll,” I muttered, and we ducked out. Stockings in hand, to head to dude’s room. We left our colors in our room and wore gear we could strip out of in a hurry and dive into our own rented beds looking nothing like the two punks about to get in this dude’s room to have some words.

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