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kept shrinking in size, so what evolved next? Some world zealot in the name of God, love, or whatever embedded his microscopic thought-control microchips in our brainstems.
    I was getting to be a bughouse case. Did my anti-progress rants cast me as a Luddite or curmudgeon? I liked to think not, but in my profession, cell phones enabling fast, easy links could bring disastrous results. They doubled my challenge to do a clean, neat hit where stealth and surprise made it go my way.
    When I returned to my window table Wynton's trumpet had gone mute, and the three young ladies had departed on the city bus. I polished off my beer and left as well. My phone conversation with Amanda had stirred up my latent brooding of my earliest boyhood spent in boondocks Texas , and I dreaded how the old, gut-wrenching memories would be tumbling to the fore if I let down my guard.

Chapter 7
     
    A few minutes before seven o'clock sent me back to Esquire who was waiting at his auto upholstery shop. On the way there I pit-stopped at an Afghan bodega I liked to patronize and stocked up on a carton of Blue Castles. Tearing off the filter and lighting up might repair my raked over nerves. As I turned from the checkout lane my peripheral vision keyed on a pint-sized man with the flamboyant neck tattoo of a fire-breathing dragon. He came chuffing through the double glass doors.
    Arky and I were acquaintances who returned nods if we passed on the street. Here we crossed paths at the bodega, but we didn't exchange nods. I knew he moonlighted as a gopher in Mr. Ogg's outfit. Arky's hooded eyes enlarged at seeing me, and his face ashened to an unhealthy hue. Gwen's hit was no longer a secret, and the fear had petrified him. I was a deranged killer in the middle of a blood spree, and he'd no weapon to use except his pudgy bare hands.
    He puffed up a blustery bravado. "Tommy Mack, you must've grown some bigger balls."
    We squared off just inside the double glass doors out of earshot.
    "Come again?"
    "Mr. Ogg wants your head on a silver platter."
    "The hell you say."
    "You whacked his niece Gwen."
    "Bullshit, I never touched her. Did you hear me?" I swallowed my rage to pummel him until he believed me. "Why are they saying I did it?"
    Arky rubbed at his missing digit. "I ain't putting words in their mouths. It's just what I heard around is all."
    "Then give me what you heard."
    "Gwen and you argued, and the bad blood made you go ballistic, and you took her out the way you pros like to do it."
    "Then I must've lost my brains, not grown bigger balls. Why would I off Gwen with my signature MO? Who told you this stupid bullshit? Mr. Ogg?"
    "I don't work for Mr. Ogg. He owes me a wad of money, and I've never seen a red cent of it. No sir, we're strictly on the outs."
    "Uh-huh." My hard eyes latched to Arky. "Maybe he pays you back, plus he kicks in a bonus for a finder's fee on your talking to me in here."
    "Hey, if I meet Mr. Ogg, and if he asks me, I'll say I ran into Tommy Mack Zane." Arky tried a crooked smile on me. "But we're talking two, maybe three years from now, and that's no time soon."
    I coined my own crooked smile. "I'm not carrying, a lucky break for you. If I was, I'd jack two caps behind your ear." An obese lady, who'd struggled to climb out of her land yacht she'd just parked beside the coupé, waddled toward us. "All right, I'm gone, Arky. When you see Mr. Ogg, give him a message. Tell him I said I did not kill Gwen. Tell him she was a stiff on her mattress when I went in and found her."
    "Sure, Tommy Mack. Nice seeing you again."
    "Remember what I said." I poked my forefinger in Arky's chest to emphasize each word. " I. Did. Not. Kill. Gwen. Ogg."
    The lady shoved in the bodega's door, and I sidestepped her and then left the bodega. Arky was a punk ass, but I'd never get away with popping him in the entrance to a bodega with the security cameras filming us. I considered why Mr. Ogg had a reason to off Gwen, and it didn't tally up. He'd coddled,