“No, thanks.”

“You won’t mind if I do?”

“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

She filled an orange plastic cup with whiskey and lowered herself onto a sagging, zebra-print sofa, tucking her bare feet underneath her robe. I sat down opposite her on a love seat that matched the sofa. Hanging on the wall behind her was a large oil painting of Paris flanked on either side by framed black-and-white photographs of wild horses running across the Desert Southwest.

“So,” she said, “what was it you wanted to ask me about Chad?”

“I understand you may have some insights into who shot him.”

Sissy stubbed out her cigarette in a frog-shaped ashtray overflowing with butts and fired up another one with a red Bic lighter sitting on the coffee table, next to a glass bong. She inhaled deeply, turned her head, expelled the smoke over her left shoulder, and sat back again, massaging her lower face.

“Who told you that?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“It was Chad’s girlfriend, wasn’t it? That little bitch.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She’s making shit up. We never talked about anything like that.”

“You’re scared, Sissy. I can see it in your face.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re lying, Sissy. You’ve stopped looking at me. You’re covering your mouth, scratching your nose. You just placed that bourbon bottle between you and me like a barrier. All of that tells me that you’re being guarded. What are you guarding, Sissy?”

“Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you help me find who killed Chad before he kills somebody else.”

Tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“What don’t I understand?”

She shook her head no and wiped her nose with the back of her right hand.

“I do understand, Sissy. I understand that this is your son we’re talking about. I also know you don’t want anybody else to die the way Chad did. No mother would want that.”

She began to weep, rocking and wailing uncontrollably, covering her eyes.

I got up, gently took the cigarette from her hand, and set it down in the ashtray. I told her I was sorry for having upset her. I was patting her back, trying to console her and get her to talk to me.

That’s when the front door flew open and a stout man burst in, armed with a skinning knife.

He came at me growling, teeth clenched. Five foot ten, 220 pounds, early forties, grizzled red beard, blue do-rag on his head, jeans, Harley T-shirt, heavily tattooed arms, a biker’s keychain, black leather motorcycle boots. Frankly, I was focused more at that moment on his weapon of choice — a ten-inch hunting knife with a curved blade and stag horn handle — than on who he was or why he seemed bent on slicing me like deli ham. What I needed was a weapon of my own, and I had about two seconds to find one.

The first rule of unarmed combat is never be unarmed. Hollywood would have you believe that a body trained in martial arts, ala Bruce Lee, is itself a lethal weapon. Unfortunately, martial arts are rarely, truly effective in stopping an armed assailant beyond the confines of a film studio lot, and only when the cameras are rolling.

Table lamps are a much better bet.

The one on Sissy Barbieri’s end table was made of frosted glass and shaped like an electric guitar, the body of which lit up when turned on. I grabbed it by its neck and swung, connecting with my attacker’s center mass like a batter chasing a fastball. Pieces of lamp flew, along with the knife, as he flopped head first into the coffee table.

“What are you doing?” Sissy screamed. “He’s my boyfriend!”

She pushed past me and knelt beside him, trying frantically to revive him.

“Russell, wake up! Oh, my god, wake up, baby, please!” She looked up at me, seething. “He was only trying to protect me. You didn’t have to hurt him!”

I turned him on his back, checking his carotid pulse, which was strong. Aside from a good-sized cut on his right cheekbone where he impacted the coffee table, I could see no other injuries.

“He’s not moving.”

“Do you have a washcloth?”

“He’s dead! Can’t you see that?”

“He’s not dead, Sissy.”

“Russell, wake up!”

“He’ll wake up when he’s ready. Now, go get a washcloth. Please.”

“What for?”

“For his cheek. Unless you want him bleeding all over your carpet.”

Reluctant to leave his side, Sissy got off her knees, wiping away tears, and made her way to the bathroom.

Russell groaned and held his head.

“What the hell happened?”

“You got a guitar lesson. Let’s get you sitting up. It’ll slow that bleeding.”

I hoisted him off the floor and over to the couch.

Russell looked over at me woozily, head wobbling. “Who are you?”

“I’m looking for the guy who killed your girlfriend’s son. He also kidnapped my girlfriend.”

“Cool.”

Sissy returned with a damp washcloth and sat down beside him. She asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital. He shook his head no.

“Why’d you try to stab me?”

“I thought you were him,” Russell said.

“Who’s that?”

“Chad’s friend,” Sissy said, holding the washcloth to Russell’s cheek, “if that’s what you want to call him.”

As she explained it, Chad’s “friend” had called the day after Chad’s body was found. He told her that he’d done state time with Chad, and that the two of them, along with unnamed others, had become involved in some sort of impromptu business venture that had gone terribly wrong.

“The guy told me the police would be asking questions — who Chad knew, who he hung out with,” Sissy said. “He said the best thing I could do for my own good is to say I didn’t know anything. He said he knew where I lived cuz my son told him. He said he’d be checking up on me to make sure I played it smart and kept my mouth shut.”

“So you go and let some dude you don’t know inside the house?” Russell said to her accusingly, gesturing toward me. “That wasn’t playing it smart, Sissy. That was plain stupid.”

Put off by his remark, she grabbed his right hand and made him hold the washcloth to his cheek himself. “It wasn’t stupid, Russell. I knew it wasn’t the guy.”

“How’d you know I wasn’t the guy?” I said.

Sissy stood and began picking up pieces of the electric guitar lamp, depositing them on the love seat.

“Because you don’t sound like him,” she said.

“What did he sound like?”

“Like he wasn’t from here.”

“He had an accent?”

She nodded.

“What kind of accent?”

“I don’t know. England or somewhere.”

“Could he have been Australian?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

“Foreigners,” Russell said. “They’re all assholes.”

I asked Sissy if her son had any friends from Australia.

“If he did, he never said nothing to me about it.” She reached over, still on her knees, and gulped down some bourbon. “Not that he told me anything after awhile. My mother told him I was a bad mother. She had him convinced I was the reason for every shitty little thing that went wrong in his life. Who knows? Maybe she was right.”

“You got skills, baby,” Russell said, “but mothering ain’t exactly one of ’em.”

“You go to hell, Russell.”

Sissy got off her knees, stormed down a hallway, and slammed a door behind her.

Russell looked at me like he couldn’t understand why she was upset.

“How’s your head?” I said.

“I’ll live.”

I checked his pupils. He seemed OK.

“Sorry about the knife, man. I saw you through the window and I got scared, that’s all.”

“No worries.” I walked over, snatched his knife off of the floor, and handed it to him, hilt first. “Sorry if I scared you.”

“Picked this bad boy up at the flea market in Pasadena,” Russell said, stashing the blade in his left boot. “I know the guy who sells ’em, if you’re interested.”