The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  “What do you want, Frank?” said Justin, after he had made his way, order by order, back to his brother.

  “More wine?”

  As Justin filled the glass, he said, “What are you really doing here?”

  “I came to say hello to my little brother.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Dad says you need to see him.”

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He put you on his visitor list. He thinks you need to come.”

  “If he wanted to see me again, maybe he shouldn’t have killed my mother.”

  “She was my mother, too, and he didn’t do it.”

  “A jury said he did, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Really? The jury convinced you? Because it looked like you made up your mind long before a jury ever heard a stick of evidence. And considering Dad had an alibi and they never found the real killer, it seems really—”

  “I’m not going over it again. I’m so far beyond it now that if I turn around, all I see is a single speck on the clean line of the horizon.”

  “Must be nice,” said Frank as he stared into the pale, ruddy wine. “Uncle Timmy died last night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Of a drug overdose.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’m springing for his funeral. At Mulligan’s. Thursday morning at ten. He never really had any family except for us.”

  “Frank, I hate to break it to you, but he wasn’t our real uncle.”

  “Still, Dad asked me to make the funeral. I thought you might want to come.”

  “Maybe, I don’t know.” Justin thought of the strange, skinny man on his motorcycle in his blue-jean jacket, looking so unlike Justin’s straightlaced father it was almost comical to see them together. “I’m surprised Dad still cared after what Uncle Timmy did at the trial.”

  “He had changed his testimony,” said Frank.

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Timmy. He changed his testimony and claimed that Dad never asked for help in killing Mom and that the police forced him to lie. He signed an affidavit and was ready to testify. Dad was trying to get a new trial based on Uncle Timmy’s changed testimony. And then he has to go and die of a fucking overdose.”

  Justin thought about this, didn’t understand what it might mean, didn’t want to understand. “Thursday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can’t make it.”

  “Justin.”

  “Look, I have to go. I have other customers.” Justin tried to smile, grimacing like he had an attack of gas. “The wine’s on the house.”

  “Cindy says hello.”

  “Give her my regards. I always liked Cindy.”

  “No, you didn’t. And what about Dad?”

  “What about him?”

  “You need to see him.”

  “I think I very much need not to see him. He’s found his place in the world: prison. I’m still looking for mine, and frankly, Frank, I don’t think he can help.”

  “You know,” said Frank, calmly staring at his brother, “when I found out you were back and tending bar, I thought you might have changed. I thought maybe life had knocked the breathtaking arrogance out of you. But I was wrong.”

  “Change is a mirage,” said Justin. “Like everything else in this fucked-up world.”

  Frank opened his wallet and dug out a ten. “For the wine,” he said as he dropped the bill beside the wineglass.

  9.

  SLIPPERY NIPPLE

  Lee was inspiringly beautiful, especially when she was naked and lying beneath Justin with her legs hitched around his waist and her hands grabbing at his hair like it was a mane. Her cheekbones were sharp and high, her lips glossed, her teeth pearly, her tongue moist and pink, her breasts soft mounds of perfection, her stomach lean, her legs long, her knees dimpled. If the Buddha was right, and all suffering derives from desire, then Justin, as he moved slowly atop her and gently pulled at her lower lip with his teeth, was suffering greatly.

  There were times, especially in the middle of his suffering, when Justin desired more than raw sex with Lee. In those moments he longed for some deeper attachment than their pale friendship-with-benefits. Part of him wanted to hold her, to hold on to her, to love her and commit to her, to add a level of possession to their relationship, to create for themselves and all their progeny a sun-dappled future. The craving became almost unbearable, and he felt his heart break with the wanting.

  And then he would come. To his senses.

  For who knew better than Justin Chase where all of that emotional attachment would lead. The holding would devolve into a jealous clench, the loving would become a bitter chain around both their necks, the possession would turn into soul-killing ownership, the sun-dappled future would darken, the spawn would die, and there would be nothing left but the misery and the pain.

  “That was so nice,” said Lee.

  “That’s what I aspire to,” said Justin, lying on his back now, his hands clasped behind his head, “a genial niceness.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Lee leaned over and kissed him, and Justin sort of kissed back.

  “It was strange seeing your brother at the bar,” she said.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You never mentioned your brother before,” she said. “And whatever you guys were talking about, it sure as hell got you upset. I had never seen you like that before.”

  “A momentary lapse.”

  “I liked it, it showed you were human.”

  “More like an adolescent turkey, squawking away. Family can do that to you.”

  “Do you see him much?”

  “I hadn’t seen him for years actually.”

  “He doesn’t look like you at all.”

  “He takes after my father.”

  “Oh,” said Lee, the exclamation filled with all manner of understanding, just to remind Justin that she knew, along with everyone else, his sordid history. He closed his eyes for a moment and tasted the emotions before they slipped away. It wasn’t embarrassment he was feeling, it was more a bitterness at the note of pity that had slipped into the “Oh.” Oh, you poor boy. Oh, I understand your tragedy. Oh, if there is anything I can do… Part of him wanted to spit all the bitterness back into her pretty face, but that would be just another sad crack in the wall he had built around his emotions over the years, and two in two days was enough. So instead he did what he always did when things grew uncomfortable with Lee, he acted like a dog.

  He rolled over, sat up, fetched his underwear.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I need to go.”

  “Oh,” she said, another of her “Ohs.” This one was just as clear. Oh, it’s going to be like that, again, is it? “I could go in late tomorrow if you wanted to stay,” she said as Justin buttoned his shirt. “We could play in the morning.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I bought some new shoes.”

  Justin’s head whipped toward her.

  “Stilettos,” she said.

  “The plot thickens.”

  “Black patent leather with red soles.”

  “They sound dangerous.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  He thought for a moment, the image of those shoes slicing at the sheets before they slowly rose into the air working at his resolve. But then he’d have to go through this again, the buttoning of the shirt, the mute entreaties to stay. “I can’t. And you look tired, Lee. You’ve looked tired for a while. You need your sleep.”

  “I’d sleep better with you here.”

  “I doubt it. Have you ever heard me snore?”

  “No.”

  He looked at her, at the way she looked at him. “It’s getting late.”

  “Sure. I get it. Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  She gave a rueful little laugh. “Hey, Justin, just go fuck yourself, all right.”

  “L
ee?”

  She looked at him for a moment and then rolled away from him, showing him her lovely back, her clavicles spreading her smooth pale flesh. “Sorry,” she said. “It just slipped out.”

  “We talked about this before. The rare beauty of nonattachment.”

  “And it is so rarely beautiful. But everything’s good, everything’s perfect. I have too much going on anyway for anything more. It’s just that it’s hard to tell what we are. What are we, Justin? Lovers? Friends? Am I your whore? Because that I can deal with, I just want to know.”

  “No, you’re not that.”

  “Then what? Cousins.”

  “That would be pretty hot.”

  “It would just help if I had a name. Hi, this is Justin, he’s my—”

  “Bartender,” said Justin. “I’m your bartender.”

  “Is it as sad as it sounds?”

  A Zen master was deciding who would be named abbot for a monastery. He put a pitcher on the floor and asked a number of monks what it was, adding, “Don’t say it’s a pitcher.” The monks in the room were very clever, and they each came up with a clever answer to his question. Then the cook, untrained in Zen, stepped up and kicked the pitcher over, shattering it into tiny pieces. “This man,” said the master, “is our new abbot.”

  “We are what we are,” said Justin. “Everything else is just words.”

  “Of course you’re right. Don’t mind me, I just haven’t been sleeping. I need to drink more. Or less. Or something. Good night, Justin. We’ll save the shoes for next time.”

  “Promise? Because I love that new-shoe smell.”

  “I promise.” She turned to him and smiled weakly. “God, you are filthy.”

  He tried leering, but his heart wasn’t in it. Whatever they had together, it was collapsing under its own weight. He could see the signs. Her dissatisfaction was showing, like a slip beneath the hem of a crisply pleated skirt, and it ruined the whole effect. When he was fully dressed, he sat on the bed and leaned over her. “I’ll see you at the bar.”

  “Sure,” she said, putting her hand on his cheek. “Good night, my barkeep.”

  “You should sleep in anyway. It would do you good.”

  “This does me good,” she said, and then she grabbed his cheek with her fist, gripping the flesh tight like an insistent aunt, and pulled him close. “And next time it’s going to hurt.”

  He leaned in and kissed her. And even as he was kissing, even as he felt her mouth soften and open to him and her tongue reach for his, he knew it was time to kick the pitcher. Which meant he’d have to find a new bar soon. Which was a shame, because he liked Zenzibar. But Lee was letting him know he had already been there too long. And with his brother back in the equation, and with the likes of Birdie Grackle trying to scam him back into his past, maybe this whole back-home thing wasn’t working like he had hoped. Maybe it was time to move on, not just to another bar, but to another city. He’d heard good things about Louisville. Or Kansas City. And there were some amazing sunsets in Sedona.

  Sedona, that was the ticket. He’d head out as soon as he could. But not before he got a whiff of those shoes. Because what was life but suffering?

  10.

  BLACK MAGIC

  Mia Dalton was mired in the paperwork that had defined her job ever since her promotion when Detective Scott entered her office with a big old smile on his face. She stared at him balefully over her reading glasses. In Mia’s experience, cops didn’t smile like that unless they had just opened a box of doughnuts or closed a case. The lack of powdered sugar dusted on Scott’s jacket indicated the latter.

  “I’ve been babysitting Kingstree on the Flynn investigation like you told me,” said Scott. “The forensics just came in.”

  “And you’re smiling like a customer walking out of a whorehouse because I was wrong, and the case is going to be closed as an accidental overdose, and now you get to go back to your quiet little desk.”

  “No, Mia, I’m smiling because every time I step into this office and see the sign that reads CHIEF, HOMICIDE DIVISION, I remember when you first showed up in court. You were so green the sap was still dripping from your elbows. You couldn’t stop your knees from shaking. I never thought you’d last.”

  “I grew up quick.”

  “Yes, you did. And I’d almost be proud as a papa if you weren’t such a pain in the ass.”

  “Are you going to make me wait?”

  “They found a load of different prints around the house, and they’ve logged them. Most are unknown. A few match some known drug users, and Kingstree is running them down. The place was just a step up from a shooting gallery, so there was probably loads of traffic. Kingstree doesn’t expect the prints will lead anywhere.”

  “Anything indicate Flynn had help getting his last high?”

  “The only partial print they found on the rubber tourniquet belonged to the victim. The autopsy showed no fresh bruising, no signs of a struggle of any kind. Flynn strapped himself up, slipped in the needle, injected himself, and then stopped breathing.”

  “So I was wrong.”

  “It’s hard to take, isn’t it?”

  “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “Well, there is something else. They tested the heroin our boy had bought, the Blue Star. Just as narcotics had told us, it had been cut over and again. The coroner said even something at that strength could be enough to kill—things happen to users, and all their organs weaken over time—but even so, this was a pretty mild brew.”

  “What about toxicology?”

  “More interesting. They found a level of heroin inconsistent with the quality of the Blue Star. He would have had to inject a suitcaseful of the crap he bought to get that level of intensity. But it wasn’t just that. They found something else in the blood. Fentanyl.”

  “Fentanyl?”

  “You remember a couple years back when addicts started dying all over the city and they blamed it on this new superheroin that was coming in from Mexico. They called it ‘Magic.’”

  “I remember. It was a bloodbath.”

  “A decade before, the same crap devastated the addict population of New York under the name ‘Tango and Cash.’ It comes in waves, this stuff, heroin with a synthetic additive that makes it way more powerful and way more dangerous.”

  “And the additive is fentanyl?”

  “That’s it. At first I wondered if someone gave him a second shot while he was nodding off from the first, so I had the coroner go over the whole body again. He squawked, but he did it, and said there was only one fresh injection site. Flynn shot this supercrap into himself.”

  “Something pure and deadly, which would be irresistible to a goner like Flynn.”

  “Except,” said Scott, “the guys in the drug lab told me there hasn’t been anything with fentanyl in the city for a couple of years.”

  “So how did Flynn get hold of it?”

  Scott tossed the file onto Mia’s desk and slumped into a chair. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “What do you think?”

  Scott leaned back. “I don’t know what the hell to think. I guess either the son of a bitch got lucky and somehow got his hands on this killer stuff, an addict’s dream, or he got a gift designed to kill him.”

  “Anything going on with him?”

  “Other than the Chase case? I sent Kingstree out to interview known associates. He’s grumbling, but he’s afraid of you, so he’s doing it.”

  Mia smiled.

  “But he’s not finding anything,” continued Scott, “and I don’t think he will. The timing is too perfect for it to be anything other than connected with Chase. Maybe it’s not just cops that you frighten. Maybe you frightened Timmy Flynn enough that he offed himself so he didn’t have to come down and talk to you.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “You have Kingstree shaking in his loafers. But no, not a hard case like Flynn. But why would someone care enough about his changed testimony i
n the Chase case to give him a gift this deadly?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out, Detective,” said Mia. “I hate to interrupt the hours of leisure available to you in your declining years, but I have a job for you.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “Remember Chase’s youngest son. The law student who told us about his father’s affair with that Overmeyer woman when we still had nothing.”

  “Sure. The defense made some argument the jury never bought, like the son was setting up the father for some twisted oedipal revenge.”

  “His name is Justin, Justin Chase. Last I heard he had checked out of some insane asylum and left the city. See if he’s back, and if he is, find him and bring him in. Let’s see if maybe the defense had a point after all.”

  11.

  SOMETHING NEAT

  There is something untidy about the job Vern has given to Derek that Derek does not like.

  Derek does not like untidiness of any kind. He makes his bed every morning when he has a bed, launders his pants in the sink every evening. Sammy D taught him that cleanliness is important in this line of work. Sammy D was neat for an addict. Usually addicts had the worst teeth, like that guy in the row house that Vern sent Derek to a couple nights back, but Sammy D’s teeth gleamed. And there was always a pleat in his pants. Grooming is the sign of a professional, Sammy taught him.

  Rodney, on the other hand, was a slob. He was too nervous to keep anything clean. Wherever he went, he shed like a Labrador retriever: tissues, papers, coins, hair. Sammy taught Derek that anything left at the scene is like a map from the deed to the doer, but Rodney never cared. His method was to keep moving, always stay one step ahead. “They can’t catch you if they can’t find you” was his motto. This untidy job would have been perfect for Rodney. After this job Rodney would have been headed right out of the city, to Altoona or Ypsilanti. Derek traveled halfway across the country with Rodney, washing his pants in motel sinks from Maine to New Mexico as Rodney stuffed the powder up his nose and made fun of Derek’s habits.