“I’m still not sure,” Velda said, “what it is you think we can do that the Motor Vehicle boys and girls can’t do better.”

“Maybe nothing. But we only have one hit-and-run to look into. Plus, there are aspects of this thing that they don’t know about.”

She was nodding. “Colby’s mental state post-concussion, you mean.”

I nodded back. “That, and the cast of players hugging the periphery.”

She bobbed her head almost imperceptibly toward the bar. “Like that kid back there mixing drinks?”

We were both old enough to call anybody under forty a “kid,” even if Velda’s looks still made her a babe.

“Like him,” I agreed. “He seems to know who I am, or anyway my face rings a bell.”

“You’re a regular here or nearly so. Maybe that’s why.”

I shook my head. “No, I never saw him before that night when Colby got clipped by the Ferrari. He might have noticed me when I went out into the street to see if Colby’s Wall Street cronies needed help hauling their pal’s ass to shore.”

The bartender in his black bowtie and white shirt was glancing our way now and then with the kind of blank look that in a bartender reads as a scowl. He had a few filled stools to tend to—for cliff dwellers around here this was a neighborhood bar—and was going through the usual routine of making drinks to fill waitress orders, cleaning glasses, and wiping down areas after a customer exited. It was just that he seemed more interested in Velda and me than he did his work.

“Maybe he just digs older dolls,” I said to her with a shrug.

She kicked me under the table. Gently. Fairly gently.

After sipping her Miller Lite, which they had on tap, she said, “You can’t really suspect a bartender who’s, what? Twenty-eight, thirty? Of having a friend with a Ferrari who he hired or talked into trying to run down his competition with that redhead.”

“I don’t rule anything out. And I suppose it’s worth noting that Ms. Ryan, over there manning her post…and with that shape, ‘manning’ doesn’t seem like the right word, does it? Don’t you kick me again or I’ll kick back. Anyway, it’s worth noting that she denies being involved with Vincent Colby, and appears to be involved with this specimen…and she won’t even admit that one of her male harem gave her that shiner.”

“Which she still has to cover up with concealer,” Velda said, “assuming you’re enough of a detective to have noticed that when she seated us.”

“I’m not only enough of a detective to’ve noticed that,” I said, and sipped Miller, “I also noticed it was the other eye this time.”

Don’t be impressed. Velda couldn’t have copped to that, not having seen Sheila with that other black eye, and only knowing about it second-hand from me.

“It has been a couple of weeks,” Velda said, her own lovely eyes narrowing. “Plenty of time for that first mouse to stop squawking.”