I didn’t say anything. I just sat there with a bag of ice against my right eye.

“Jackie, this is damned good,” he said.

Jackie came over, looked at me for the seventh time since we had come in the place, and shook his head. “Alex, tell me again what happened.”

I gave him as nasty a look as you can give a man with your right eye swollen shut.

“Are you telling me, Randy,” he said, still looking at me, “that this man forced you to throw to him?”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Randy said.

“And he made you try to throw that pitch you used to throw? What was it called?”

“The slinky,” Randy said. “On a cold day, without even warming up. I could have ruined my arm.”

“Well, it serves him right,” Jackie said. “He got what he deserved.”

“If you guys are about done,” I said, “I could use some more ice.”

“Hurry up and eat, will ya?” Randy said. “We gotta go see your partner.”

“Randy, I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said. “He’s not really my partner. I mean, he is, but it’s because we have this arrangement. All his life, Leon has wanted to be a private investigator. His old boss fired him and talked me into taking his job. Don’t even get me started on that. Let’s just say it didn’t work out very well.”

“But you are still a private investigator,” Randy said.

“I still have the license,” I said. “But I don’t do anything with it. Leon helped me out of a jam, so in return I agreed to be his partner. You know, just to have my name on the business cards.”

“And in the phone book.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re in the phone book. Like we’re gonna get a lot of business up here.”

“And on the Web site.”

“Yeah, the Web site. I’m gonna have a little talk with him about that.”

“I’ve got plenty of money, Alex,” he said. “I plan on paying you for this.”

“It’s not the money, Randy. Are you listening to what I’m saying? I’m not really a private investigator. Two times now I’ve gone out trying to find somebody, and both times it ended up being a disaster. I’m not any good at it.”