“Are you crazy or what?” He laughed in a phony way, as if saying he knew we were just fooling around, but he rubbed his shoulder and moved away from me. Angrily he stalked over to the phone, but with a smile plastered on his face like he was playing along with a little joke of mine. Rudy Sancerre was a short man who was used to trying to con his way through life by playing the clown. I could see how much hostility he really had in him. All the abuse and taunts heaped upon him when he was growing up. The bullies who beat him up. Rudy picked up the phone, dialed and heard the disconnect message. Frowning, he slammed the phone down and glanced at me uncertainly, not disarmingly but schizy, like he didn’t know what he might do next.

I stared back at him without blinking but just as uncertainly. Many short men have been megalomaniacs. Or serial killers. Napoleon. Wasn’t Hitler only about five feet tall? Yes, Rudy could be a stone-cold killer. No one can put up with the shit of being a midget. It’s going to bubble out of them sooner or later. Was Rudy the one who called Cathy Vega downtown? Did he know the Guatemalans? Was he Monica’s partner in the drug business? Had they bumped Cathy Vega off after the deal to get rid of her? A thousand questions raced through my mind. “So, where’s Monica?”

In apparent shock he crumbled onto the stool next to the counter. It was like the scene at the end of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and sees the Wizard is only a little man. I feel this sometimes when I look at my father.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” muttered Rudy.

“He’s not going to help you.”

“I’m not talking without a lawyer,” Rudy announced churlishly, looking not at me but at the invisible thread he began to pull at on the knee of his jeans.

“I am a lawyer. I’m not a cop. Monica hired me to help her.”

He looked up suspiciously. “You? A lawyer? What’s your name? Where’s your office? What did Monica tell you?” His words tumbled out; his eyes darted around the room.

Coke makes people paranoid. The first law of paranoia: whatever you think is happening, there’s more going on. But then, if he was involved with Monica Fullbright, he had good reason to be paranoid.

I gave him one of my business cards, which he studied closely as he felt the engraving with his fingertip. The engraving seemed to assure him that I was a real lawyer. “Let’s talk about Monica and Cathy.”

He put one of his little feminine hands up to me. “Shh. Pipe down, will you? Somebody’s in the darkroom.”

“Who?” I asked, my voice jumping into the upper registers.