I considered finishing off the pint of White Label on my desk but finally shoved it back in the drawer. It was the middle of Friday in August and hotter than an asphalt roof on a boiler factory. I got up and looked through my greasy window at the shiny new banjo case going down the stairs, accompanied by my last customer, a hairy kid named Todd, and for the umpteenth time I wished I had listened to my old lady and stuck with the piano lessons. Well, this is my life. Take it or leave it. Plink, plank, plunk. There are a few perks. Todd's old lady is a knockout and divorced. Unfortunately she never comes with him.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead and hung my guitar back on the wall. The strings were so dead rigor mortis could have set in, but I never have to play much backup at a lesson. They take six months to learn a forward roll, and then they get a bug in their ear and want to switch to clawhammer. Sometimes they go the other way. I could have leveled with Todd's old lady and told her for one thing no banjo player has ever been named Todd, and also that people have been known to take potshots at frailers and lately their aim is getting better. It would have been a good excuse to see her, but it would have cost me dough, and business was thinner than a greenhorn's flatpick.
The phone jumped up at me and it was Trixie at the other end, and she had a workshop for me. I turned it down and put my feet on the desk and stared at the business end of my air conditioner. A few minutes later Trixie called again and said I was wanted down at the Ninth Precinct. For a minute I thought there was a connection.
I gargled with cinnamon and went down to the station; somebody shot off his mouth and said I smelled like cinnamon and White Label, but they took me into the fridge and rolled out a stiff with no name and more holes in him than a Tennessee tonering. I knew what they wanted me to do. I looked at his fingers on his right hand; sure enough, the nail of his middle finger stuck out about a quarter of an inch and had traces of acryllic on it. The fingers of his left hand had no nails at all and had calluses the size of tennis balls. I nodded to the sergeant in charge and he paid me my fee and they color-coded him.
At least some business is looking up, I thought to myself. Maybe I'll invite Todd's old lady to dinner at Luchow's. Expensive, but I hear they got a guacamole to kill for and maybe enough atmosphere to make me look like a success story.
Yours truly — Johnny Dime.