YOU KNOW THAT CHOCOLATE POP CALLED Yoo-hoo?” Fric asked.
“I’ve had it a few times,” Mr. Truman said.
“It’s cool stuff. Did you know you can keep Yoo-hoo just about forever and it won’t go sour?”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“They use a special steam-sterilization process,” Fric revealed. “As long as it’s unopened, it’s as sterile as like, say, a bottle of contact-lens solution.”
“I’ve never drunk any contact-lens solution,” said Mr. Truman.
“Did you know that civet is used in a lot of perfumes?”
“I don’t even know what civet is.”
Fric brightened at this admission. “Well, it’s a thick yellow secretion that’s squeezed from the anal glands of civet cats.”
“They sound like remarkably cooperative cats.”
“They aren’t really members of the cat family. They’re mammals in Asia and Africa. They produce more civet when they’re agitated.”
“Under the circumstances, they must be agitated all the time.”
“Civet stinks terrible,” Fric said, “in full strength. But when you [496] dilute it with the right stuff, then it smells really good. Did you know when you sneeze, all bodily functions stop for an instant?”
“Even the heart?”
“Even the brain. It’s like a temporary little death.”
“That’s it then—no more pepper on my salads.”
“A sneeze puts humongous stress on the body,” Fric explained, “especially on the eyes.”
“We always do sneeze with our eyes shut, don’t we?”
“Yeah. If you sneezed violently enough with your eyes open, you could pop one out of the socket.”
“Fric, I never realized you were such an encyclopedia of unusual facts.”
Smiling, pleased with himself, Fric said, “I like knowing things other people don’t.”
Dinner had progressed immeasurably better than Fric had feared that it might. The chicken breasts in lemon-butter sauce, the rice with wild mushrooms, and the asparagus spears were delicious, and neither he nor Mr. Truman had yet died of food poisoning, though Mr. Hachette might be saving murder for dessert.
At first, conversation had been stiff because they started with the subject of films, which inevitably led to Manheim movies. They weren’t comfortable talking about Ghost Dad. Even if they said only nice things, they seemed to be gossiping behind his back.
Fric asked what it was like to be a homicide detective, and sought especially to hear about the most grotesque murders, hideously mangled bodies, and bugshit-crazy killers that Mr. Truman had ever encountered. Mr. Truman said much of that stuff wasn’t suitable for table talk and that some of it wasn’t fit for the ears of a ten-year-old kid. He did tell cop stories, however, most of them funny; a few were gross, although not so gross that you wanted to puke up your lemon-butter chicken, but gross enough to make this by far the best dinner chat that Fric had ever experienced.
[497] When Mr. Truman noted that Mr. Hachette had prepared a coconut-cherry cake for dessert, Fric tapped his knowledge about the island nation of Tuvalu, exporter of coconuts, to make a contribution to their conversation.
Tuvalu led him to lots of other things he knew about, like the biggest pair of shoes ever made. They were size forty-two, cobbled for a Florida giant by the name of Harley Davidson, who had nothing to do with the motorcycle company. Size forty-two shoes are twenty-two inches long! Mr. Truman was properly amazed.
Giant shoes led eventually to Yoo-hoo, civet, and sneezing, and as they were finishing dessert—as yet showing no signs of arsenic ingestion—Fric said, “Did you know my mother was in a booby hatch?”
“Oh, don’t pay attention to ugly stuff like that, Fric. It’s an unfair exaggeration.”
“Well, my mother didn’t sue anyone who said that stuff.”
“In this country, celebrities can’t sue for slander or libel just because people tell lies about them. They have to prove the lies were told with malice. Which is hard. Your mom just didn’t want to spend years in a courtroom. You understand?”
“I guess so. But you know what people might think.”
“I’m not sure I follow you. What might people think?”
“Like mother, like son.”
Mr. Truman appeared to be amused. “Fric, no one who knows you could believe you’ve ever been in a booby hatch or ever will be.”
Pushing aside his empty cake plate, Fric said, “Well, say like someday I see a flying saucer. I mean, really see one, and a bunch of big greasy extraterrestrials. You know?”
“Big and greasy,” Mr. Truman said, nodding and attentive.
“So then if I tell anyone, the first thing they’ll think is Oh, yeah, his mother was in a booby hatch.”
“Well, whether or not they remembered those stories about your [498] mom, some people in this world wouldn’t believe you if you had one of those big greasy extraterrestrials on a leash.”
“I wish I did,” Fric murmured.
“They wouldn’t believe me, either, if I had one on a leash.”
“But you were a cop.”
“Lots of people are unable to see all kinds of truths right in front of their eyes. You can’t worry about them for a minute. They’re hopeless.”
“Hopeless,” Fric agreed, but he was thinking less about other people than about his own circumstances.
“If you came to me or Mrs. McBee, however, we’d drop anything we were doing to run and see those big greasy freaks beca............