“Fuck you. You don’t know shit.”
“Shhh, shhh,” Matt said, sitting up straighter. “Lookie here. This, my dear Cass, is what we call luck.”
“What?” I asked. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You see the taxi that just pulled out? Two cars ahead?” He nodded at a car ahead of us. “That, my friend, is Mr. Wheeler. The passenger, however, is NOT Mrs. Wheeler.”
I spent the next hour hiding in a motel parking lot, listening to Matt explain the ropes. I wasn’t listening. I was too busy thinking about my new information. Unscrambling beer guy’s name in my head. I said each letter in my head. K.C.B.E.E.R. Becker. I was talking to him all along and didn’t even know it. Right from day one, and I was blowing it by being a bitch. What if he blew me off now? I’d be pissed at myself for a month. I was in direct contact with the maker.
I hadn’t even noticed the cheating couple exiting the hotel, not until Matt started taking pictures again. The guy backed the girl against the closed door, kissed her and ran his hand up her short skirt.
“Yes, that’s it. Make it easy for me. Rub that pussy—shit. Sorry, Cass.” Matt embarrassingly turned to me. I snickered like a teenage girl, hearing the word pussy for the first time. That word sounded funny coming from Matt.
Looking at me with a big smile, Matt boasted, “And that’s how it’s done.”
“Great. Can you take me to my car now?”
“Hardly. I’ve got time to check out a new case. Let’s head down to the shore. Calimar Charters is bringing in some fake designer merchandise,” he explained, turning the car in the wrong direction.
I was hot on Becker Cole’s ass. I didn’t give a shit about some fake sunglasses or designer handbags. I wanted to go home. Matt made me sit in a busy shipyard, waiting for a boat he didn’t know when was coming. I sat there all day.
“I’m hungry. Can we go yet?” I whined, tired of listening to him give me pointers, looking at the same river all damn day. UGH.
“We leave and the barge shows up, and we wasted an entire day for what? A couple hot dogs?”
“I could go get it. You can wait here. I saw a food truck parked over that way,” I offered pointing in the direction of food. It wasn’t like he was letting me out of this boring car anyway. May as well let him feed me.
“Okay, fine. See if they have coffee, too.”
“It’s ninety degrees outside. You want coffee?”
Tilting his head, he offered a grave look. “Do you really need an answer to that?”
“No,” I decided, taking the twenty from his hand. It was a given. Every agent in the office drank coffee. Morning, noon, night, twenty degrees, a hundred degrees. It didn’t matter. I think it was like a PI law or something.
Daydreaming about having a conversation with Becker, I strolled to the end of the line. He spoke to me. I heard his voice. He heard mine. As a woman in my profession, that wasn’t the smartest decision on my part. Then again, I didn’t know it was him. I thought he was some loser trying to pick me up. The fine print. I needed to read the fine print. He told me to read the fine print. Stupid Matt. I didn’t have time for this shit.
Oh my god! I used my real name. My dad would be furious with me.
I groaned, wanting out of Matt’s car. I hated this, always did. I used to hate sitting in my dad’s car when I was a little girl. Hours and hours was spent in that grease and coffee smelling automobile. He’d feed me junk food and buy me coloring books and dumb little games, trying to keep me occupied. Eventually, he bought me a DVD player and I watched movies until I’d fall asleep in the back seat. Those were the early days, when he stood outside the bathroom door, waiting for me to go pee. I couldn’t be out of his sight for two seconds.
“You ordering food or what?” the man behind the cart asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I spoke, being pulled from my daze.
I struggled, walking back to the car with the food I loved to hate. I ate it too much growing up to have a real love for it. I was hungry though. I walked to Matt’s window and he took his spilling coffee.
The boredom of listening to Matt’s mouth talk about the same things I’d heard from my father for years, mixed with adrenaline of getting home to see if my intuition was right, left for a very long day. We never did see the boat come in. What a wasted day.
“You really could care less about this, huh, Cass?”
“What?” I asked, trying to recollect what he’d just said.
Matt took a frustrated breath. I couldn’t help it. I had other things brewing that held superiority over his imposter merchandise.