Ice Lake. John A Lenahan

the man asked.

      Harmony put on her lab coat. She was obviously intimidated by the man and was struggling to come up with a response.

      “I hear you been asking about Big Bill?” the man said, stepping into the alcove that wasn’t really big enough for the three of them. “You a cop? If you’re a cop you have to say you’re a cop.”

      “I’m not a cop.”

      The man stepped closer and pushed Harmony behind him. “Then what the fuck are you?”

      This was a hypothetical question that, at that moment, Harry was unprepared to answer.

      “I want you out.”

      “If you back up,” Harry said as calmly as he could, “then maybe I could stand.”

      “You telling me what to do in my own club?”

      There are lots of theories on how to defuse aggressive situations and Harry knew them all. In his experience, predicaments like this usually got defused when the aggressor’s fist made contact with Harry’s nose. After a split second mental game of eenie, meeny, miny, mo Harry decided on polite submissive.

      “No, sir.”

      The man grabbed the cloth on Harry’s shirt sleeve just below the shoulder and dragged him out to the main room. The bouncers jumped to their feet when they saw Harry and the man come out from the back of the club. The man pushed Harry into the bouncers and pointed to the door.

      “Hey hey hey,” came the jovial voice of Cirba as the two men roughly grabbed Harry by his shirt and his arm. “What’s goin’ on here?”

      “This is none of your business,” the man said.

      Cirba reached into his back pocket and expertly flipped open a wallet displaying his badge. “How about I make it my business?”

      The bouncers didn’t let go of Harry but they stopped and looked to the man for instruction.

      “What has my colleague done to prompt such treatment?”

      “He was hassling the girls. The management has the right—”

      “Yeah yeah,” Cirba interrupted. “I read the sign on the way in. Could you unhand my friend, please? He doesn’t really look like much of a troublemaker to me.”

      The bouncers looked to their boss, who nodded, and Harry was released.

      “Is this the woman Mr Cull was hassling?” Cirba pointed to Harmony who was standing in the entrance to the back rooms clutching her lab coat to her chest.

      “One of them.”

      “Multiple hassling – my, you’ve been busy, Harry.”

      Harry gave Cirba a shrug.

      “We came tonight to speak to this woman about a murder investigation.”

      The man turned to Harmony and said: “You don’t have to talk to him.” Then back to Cirba. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

      “Surely the lady can speak for herself.”

      All eyes were on Harmony as she quietly looked at the floor and said: “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

      “Now I’m assuming you don’t have a warrant, officer…”

      “Cirba,” Cirba offered and shook his head no.

      “So I would like to ask you and him to leave.”

      “Do you want me to get a warrant, Mr… ?”

      The man did not return the courtesy of offering his name. “Yes, Officer Cirba, that is exactly what I want you to do.”

      “We shall meet again,” Cirba said and then to Harry, “Come, Watson.”

      Harry took a step towards the door, stopped and said: “Oh, I forgot.” He took out his wallet, pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of it and took a step back into the club. The bouncers closed together like elevator doors. Harry flashed the bill and said: “I just never got to give the young lady a tip.” They let him past and he approached Harmony. She extended her hand, but Harry slid the money into one of the pockets on her lab coat and smiled at her. As he walked out of the club he said: “I’ll recommend this place to my friends.”

      * * *

      Outside Cirba stood next to his car staring up at the starry sky.

      Harry waited by the passenger door for the trooper to unlock it. Finally, he asked: “You OK?”

      Cirba look down from the firmament and said: “What part of undercover do you not understand?”

      “Hey. Firstly, I’m not an undercover cop. You hired me to be subtle, not covert, and secondly – those folks in there are awfully twitchy. I asked the skinny stripper one tiny question and she went straight to the boss. At least I’m assuming he was the boss. Can I ask you a question?”

      Cirba sighed, clicked his car remote. “I guess.”

      As they both climbed in Harry asked: “How come you didn’t haul that guy, and the girl, back to the station? Or at least threaten to?”

      Cirba started the engine but didn’t put the car in drive. “Well, it would have been an idle threat. I wasn’t prepared to haul anybody in.”

      “Why not? That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? I’ve got nothing better to do tonight and those folks really need to answer some questions.”

      “Yeah it’s just… I wasn’t ready to bring you to headquarters yet.”

      “Me? Why?”

      “Well, you don’t have clearance… for interrogation.”

      “I thought you hired me as an interrogator?”

      “I did but that’s just it. I hired you.”

      “What do you mean, ‘I hired you?’ I’m not hired by the PA State Police?”

      “No.”

      “What’s going on?”

      Cirba turned off the engine and faced Harry. “Big Bill had a brother a year younger than him that got killed in a car accident.”

      “I heard about that.”

      “Yeah well, what you probably didn’t hear is that his trunk was filled with Oxycontin.”

      “Hillbilly heroin.”

      “That’s the stuff. From the toll road ‘Easy Pass’ in his car we figure the youngest Thomson boy had driven non-stop from Kentucky right before he turned the statue of St Elizabeth into a lefty. So the department thinks Big Bill’s shooting is just some backwoods drug deal gone wrong. They realize that solving it will be near impossible, and the truth is, they really don’t care if one drug dealer kills another, as long as it doesn’t happen a lot. So I’m the only manpower and expense they’ve allocated.”

      “You’re paying me out of your own pocket?”

      “Well, I figure if we get a result, I’ll put in an invoice for your services.”

      “How come you didn’t tell me this upfront?”

      Cirba smiled. “Maybe I wanted to see if I could get away with lying to you?”

      Harry wanted to be mad but just couldn’t do it. His professional side told him to go home, but he had been so professional for so long it was actually fun to be flying by the seat of his pants. He matched Cirba’s smile and said: “You realize you’re going to have to repay the ninety-five bucks I spent in there?”

      “Spent ninety-five bucks! How the hell did you spend ninety-five bucks?”

      “I paid to get in, tipped the first dancer, tipped Cynthia, paid for a dance, tipped some grandmother,