Soon Pat and I were alone in the booth. Over in the bar area, the three stock brokers were having their own after-dinner drinks, and Colby had not invented any more excuses to bump into Sheila.

“Is it my imagination,” I said to Pat, “or was something going on with Shannon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he starts out kind of bitching about this Colby character. Then as I get to asking questions, suddenly I have to work to pry even tidbits of information out of him about the boy. And Casey Shannon going to a rich-guy, personal-trainer-type gym? What the shit? And the friendly way he talks to that ‘Golden Boy,’ and then how wary he seemed, and unfriendly toward him, when Colby wasn’t standing in front of us?”

“Yeah,” Pat said, “I picked up on that.”

“So you’re still a detective, then. Good to know. So what the hell do you make of it?”

Pat sucked in air and let it out again. “Feels like maybe he’s doing some kind of undercover operation pertaining to Colby. Then when you got interested, he pulled back.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“I know plenty you don’t, buddy.” Then, with a shrug, Pat said, “Hey, I’m his boss and I sure as hell didn’t assign anything like that.”

I leaned in. “Could somebody above you have put something in motion?”

“Maybe,” he said, with another shrug and a shake of his head, “but with a guy a few weeks out from retirement? Doesn’t make sense.”

“How about something personal? A case he wants to wrap up before he heads for the exit and pension land?”

“Possible. Possible.” Pat gave me that wry, sly grin of his. “I have known certain assholes go off on private tears, now that you mention it.”

“Screw you, buddy,” I said with my own nasty grin.

As it happened, we almost followed Colby and his party out onto the sidewalk.

Colby was saying good night to his friends, and was just stepping into the street to jaywalk across the light eastbound traffic, apparently to his parked car, glancing back at them as he did with a smile and a wave. I’d already heard the squeal of tires from down the street, and the low-slung red vehicle came up so fast it might have materialized.

Seemed to have come from just down the block, though, so the sports car hadn’t picked up much speed when it clipped Colby, who tumbled across the hood of the car, as the driver saw him and slowed, then picked speed back up when the man who’d been struck lay in a pile on the street.

I didn’t get much of a look at the driver, but I saw a pony tail and it wasn’t a woman—not unless she had a beard.

Pat was yelling at the fleeing vehicle, then got his little notebook out to jot down the license number, but I could see the plate was smeared with mud, so that was a non-starter.