It was late morning and the blood was just starting to return to my wrist. Dixie was busy grabbing things and stuffing them back into her pocketbook, muttering Spanish curses under her breath. I didn't care except I would need her arsenal of weapons. I started to pick up a Desert Eagle off the desk when she went for my wrist again.
"Whoa'" I said, "Don't you know any other moves besides that 'Karate Kid' special?"
"I'm getting out of here!" she yelped, and continued to stuff trinkets into her bag including a John Birch Society pamphlet. She looked angry. I could tell by the look in her eye and the way she scrunched up her face. It looked like a foot.
"Fine, but can't you at least leave the S W Model 29 .44-cal. Magnum revolver?" I said.
"I don't like the games you play, Professor." She continued to stuff her bag. In went a Bee Gees CD.
"Now you listen to me, I'm an detective, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself "slightly" killed." I grabbed my copy of Danish Playboy just as she began to jam it into her purse. She refused to let go and a tug-of-war started between her and me. I decided to let go and the sudden release let the magazine smack her in the face and she fell back with the desk chair. Landing on the floor in a heap, I couldn't help but think she was as bright as Alaska in December. Collecting herself together, she glared at me.
"Røv og nøgler!" she spat.
"Alright," I started, "Lets calm down here." I offered my hand to help her up but she just spat on it and huffed herself to a standing positon. I could see the skirt was ripped a few inches more - inches it didn't really have. She's had a body that wouldn't quit but a brain that wouldn't start.
"Alright," I said, "I'm in the middle of something here and I can't figure it out. Everything is too neat. Call it my women's intuition, if you will. But I've never trusted neatness. Neatness has always been the form of very deliberate planning."
I paused.
"I need your help." I said.
She stopped cleaning herself up and looked at me, her face softening. It was either that or she had bad gas.
"My help? What do you need my help for?" she asked.
"Well, right now you're the only person I've got that has a slight connection to whoever is doing this to me. Maybe its Bucky, maybe an old client, maybe you or maybe even the Borg. They go after everybody. But whoever it is, you could help me get to them." I tried my best Gregory Peck look, "Couldn't you?" (slight eye flutter).
She just stared at me for a minute. Then another minute. Her mouth curled into a very slight smile.
"You should treat me with a little more respect, someday, It's gonna be my tax dollars paying for your prison cell!"
I returned the smile. She went back to her foot-face.
"Just remember: Min igelkot e inte dum." she blurted and picked up the desk chair and sat down in it.
"Ahhh, right!?" I said.
I had a few hours before the meeting at the Brown Willie and I wanted to be prepared. Dixie had the guns but what else would I need? Pepperspray? The phone number to 911? A paperclip? McGyver I wasn't.
"So, you were married before?" Dixie asked.
I looked at the ceiling.
"My wife was the last of 5 Scottish sisters to marry, the confetti was filthy." I replied and grabbed the reciept with the names out of my pocket. What was the connection?
"I've never been married. But I would like to be." she said and poked at the horse food from the night before with a finger nail. The hummus let out a squeal.
I looked at the names on the piece of paper.
"Yeah, well, Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity." I said.
Dixie made the foot face again.
"What's the matter with you, you get up on the wrong side of the bottle this morning?" she asked.
"I don't know, you tell me."
As I looked at the names, I could feel that there was something there. But I couldn't put my finger on it.