I think you can do a whole hell of a lot more than that, Bro, she said.

I sighed heavily, mostly for her benefit. Sighs register so nicely on the telephone. This is the trouble with having a reputation as a gunslinger, Debs, I said. Everybody thinks I can shoot the eye out of a jack at thirty paces, every single time.

I still think it, she said.

Your confidence warms my heart, but I don’t understand a thing about this kind of adventure, Deborah. It leaves me completely cold.

I have to find this guy, Dexter. And I want to rub Kyle’s nose in it, she said.

I thought you liked him.

She snorted. Jesus, Dexter. You don’t know anything about women, do you? Of course I like him. That’s why I want to rub his nose in it.

Oh, good, now it makes sense, I said.

She paused, and then very casually said, Kyle said some interesting things about Doakes.

I felt my long-fanged friend inside stretch just a little and absolutely purr. You’re getting very subtle all of a sudden, Deborah, I said. All you had to do was ask me.

I just asked, and you gave me all that crap about how you can’t help, she said, suddenly good old plain-speaking Debs again. So how about it. What have you got?

Nothing at the moment, I said.

Shit, said Deborah.

But I might be able to find something.

How soon?

I admit that I was feeling irked by Kyle’s attitude toward me. What had he said? I would be in the shit and you will get flushed? Seriously—who wrote his dialogue? And Deborah’s sudden onset of subtlety, which had been my traditional bailiwick, had done nothing to calm me down. So I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. How about by lunchtime? I said. Let’s say I’ll have something by one o’clock. Baleen, since Kyle can pick up the check.

This I gotta see, she said, and then added, The stuff about Doakes? It’s pretty good. She hung up.

Well, well, I said to myself. Suddenly, I did not mind the thought of working a little bit on a Saturday. After all, the only alternative was to hang out at Rita’s and watch moss grow on Sergeant Doakes. But if I found something for Debs, I might at long last have the small opening I had hoped for. I merely had to be the clever boy we all believed I was.