Page 107

“Rod,” I tried. “Buddy. It’s been a whole . . . do we really still need—”

“Justice does not expire, Mark.” He said it with the weight of scripture. “A back was pressed against my girl, a whole back. With—” His voice dropped, still wounded after all this time. “With intent. I said I would find the man, and I keep my word.” He turned to the photos. “First, I eliminate. Is a big back. Rules out Benji. Even Jacks is too small. Is like comparing door to placemat.”

“Thank you?” Jacks said, flexing his back and looking behind him, as though he could see the muscles move.

“Is not compliment. Is forensics.” Rod held up a photo, next to which he had, I swear to God, drawn a diagram from a true crime drama. “Broad here, the shoulders. This is tall man, heavy, works with body or used to. So, I look around family.” He began to pace. He had clearly been waiting months to do this pacing. “I ask, who? Who is big enough? Who is tall enough? Who would be in my kitchen at night with another person doing”—he shuddered—“humpy things?”

Benji nearly spat and had to turn away.

Jacks’s brow furrowed.

Even Finn, my traitorous former best friend, had to cover his mouth.

“And then,” Rod said, “I remember. Same week of crime, Benji ran through bar screaming two people are in love. This is new. I think to self”—he tapped his temple—“Rod, who got together that exact week? Who is big? Who is tall? Who is always in kitchen because he owns bar—”

“Owns a piece of the bar now, technically,” Jacks offered. “I’m an owner now, too, with Back Man.”

“Back Man!” Benji doubled over, wheezing.

Rod cleared his throat. “I ask again, who owns bar? And who, that week, suddenly has new love?” Rod turned, slowly, the villain reveal in the black-and-white shows his mother used to watch. Then he pointed one thick finger directly at my chest. “You.”

The bar was silent. Benji’s wheezing paused. Jacks’s eyes widened in horror.

“Me?”

“You.” Rod’s finger did not waver. “Was your back, all hairy and sweaty and loving the humpy thing on my Reina. You defiled queen, Mark Delgado, then stood in bar for four months and let me . . . let me investigate. You said nothing. Nothing!”

I could have talked my way out of it. I’d always been a reasonable man. I’ve defused a thousand situations in that bar, and there were a dozen soft exits available to me.

But I made the mistake of looking at Dante.

And Dante, my Dante, the love of my life, looked back at me with his face perfectly composed and said, to Rod, with total serenity, “It was both of us, actually.”

“Dante—” I tried to stop him.

“He’s been carrying it alone for four months, Rod. That’s not fair. We’re partners now.” He put his hand on his chest, solemn as a funeral. “It was both our backs. Well, it was his back, but I shoved him into Reina. That was my—” He cleared his throat. “—contribution.”

Benji screamed, finally released from months of the hardest secret-keeping of his life, “I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT. I WALKED IN ON IT, ROD. I TOLD YOU IT WAS INTIMATE—”

Jacks looked personally wounded. “Wait, on Reina? I thought you were fixing her. I’ve been feeling bad for months that nobody told me why she was so sad—”

Finn put his face in his hands and laughed his silent laugh that shook his whole body.

Rod stood there, vindicated and horrified in equal measure, gaze bouncing between the two of us like a tennis ball. His investigation was complete, his worst fears confirmed. His queen’s honor had been cataclysmically violated by his own boss.

“On my Reina.” Rod sniffed faintly.

“To be fair,” Dante offered, “she’s a very romantic machine. She even dropped ice right as we—”

“You do not—” Rod pointed the diagram at him. “You do not compliment her now. Is too late for charm. You had chance to confess like men. Instead, you let me photograph crime scene and buy red folder—”

“You didn’t have to buy the folder, Rod,” Finn wheezed.

“The folder gave gravitas, Finn—”

Everyone except Rod—even Jacks—lost it. I thought someone might have to give Benji CPR or call a medic. Of all the laughter that occurred in Barbacks, that moment might’ve been the loudest, deepest, most unhinged humor of the bar’s beautiful life.

Only Rod remained stone-faced, which made everything that much funnier.