The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  “And then he died.”

  “He was chasing death his whole life, like a dog chasing the same car day after day. Finally, he caught the bumper in his teeth. Damn inconvenient—the timing, I mean. But accidents are always damn inconvenient.”

  “Except the cops think it wasn’t an accident.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “They think it might have been murder. And they think I did it.”

  “You?” His father smiled—or was it a smirk—to think Justin capable of something so hard as that.

  “They suspect I killed Uncle Timmy because he had changed his story and was trying to get you out.”

  “Aren’t they clever. Always trying to pin the tail on whatever donkey they see in front of them.”

  “I was hauled into Mia Dalton’s office and told to watch my step.”

  “Sweet girl, that, like a lemon drop without the sugar. Watch out for her, before she does to you what she did to me.”

  “So who would want to kill him? Who would still care enough?”

  “Other than you?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell that Dalton woman. I don’t know who would have wanted Timmy dead. You make a lot of enemies in that life. Are they sure it was murder?”

  “They seem to be.”

  “Maybe it was a dealer he owed money to. Or maybe it was someone who wants to keep me in here to protect himself. I don’t know. Maybe the real killer is afraid I’ll get out and find the son of a bitch.”

  “Just like O. J.”

  “That’s who you see when you see me?”

  “What else should I see?”

  The old man leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Look around. I’m not sitting on a beach somewhere, I’m not pounding Piña Coladas and dating models. I’m in this hellhole with a life sentence around my neck. And unless something dramatic happens, I’ll be stuck in this pit for the rest my life. You don’t need to keep punishing me. Mia Dalton did a good enough job of that herself.”

  “What kind of relationship can we have if you won’t admit what I know to be the truth?”

  “I envy you.”

  “Why?”

  “With all the world’s uncertainties and injustices, with all the doubt that piles around us like dead leaves in an autumn storm, you remain so sure of your truths. It must be comforting to be so sure.” Justin’s father tapped a couple of times on the table and then rose from his chair.

  He stood there a moment and stared at Justin as if expecting something. Justin stayed seated and watched as his father’s expression veered from sour amusement to something pained. And he looked old suddenly, stooped and beaten, far older than he had seemed before.

  “It’s nice to have something to hold on to,” said Justin’s father, “even if it is just your hate. No one knows that better than I.”

  Justin watched as the bent old man shuffled toward the inmate door. His father had aged three decades in the course of the visit. And as his father was let out of the room, Justin felt a strange longing. Not a longing for this man, who Justin still firmly believed was a murderous son of a bitch, but a longing for that generic emotion he had felt a hint of before, the generic caring of a generic son for his generic father. He wanted a father who hadn’t killed his mother, a father who meant the things he said, a father who truly sought a relationship with his son. It was gone, that possibility, gone forever, for Mackenzie Chase hadn’t just taken away Justin’s mother, he had taken away Justin’s father too. And for a moment he felt the longing and the loss so strongly that it cracked his heart.

  Right in that room he did what he had to do to banish the emotion. He closed his eyes and concentrated, let the longing rise like a dark, foul fluid in the clear pool of his consciousness, let it rise until it nearly choked him with its poison, and then he let it flow out again, all the hope and need, all the longing.

  He felt a tapping on his shoulder and he looked up into the face of a guard telling him it was time to go. But Justin put up a finger and asked for a moment, and the guard, seeing something in his face, backed away. And Justin closed his eyes again and let the emotions flow out and away and disappear so that they could do him no harm.

  Until he was left with nothing but the clearest, purest water.

  In that moment he peered into the clear pool he had now become and saw something in the depths, something bright, iridescent. He reached in with an arm, stretched until he could just get his fingers around the object, green and sparkly and shaped like a turtle. And he clutched it tight in his fist, as if it were his final, brightest hope in a world of tragic illusions.

  16.

  LOW AND SLOW

  Detective Scott was leaning on the hood of a car parked next to Justin’s motorcycle in the prison parking lot. He was wearing a blue sport coat so tight the seams stretched as he crossed his arms. Justin walked up to his bike and plopped the helmet on the seat.

  “Checking up on old friends?” said Justin.

  “I have my share inside,” said Detective Scott. “Most everyone I put in there knows I play the game square.”

  “My father would beg to differ.”

  “I didn’t say all were fans,” said Scott, “but all got the same square deal, your father included. You weren’t at Timmy Flynn’s funeral.”

  “I was busy.”

  “So you visited your father instead. I thought you told us you didn’t see him anymore.”

  “What I said was true when I said it. I’d suggest you check the visitor log, but I assume you already have.”

  “Maybe I did at that. So why now?”

  “After you hauled me in, told me that Uncle Timmy had been murdered, and accused me of doing it, I thought I ought to let my father know what was going on.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said I should watch my ass before you and Ms. Dalton railroad me like you railroaded him. Are you going to railroad me, Detective?”

  Scott smiled. “Not me.”

  “How about Ms. Dalton?”

  “She has it out for you for some reason. So when word was passed that you were here visiting your father, I thought I’d show and give you a heads-up. You don’t want to be getting too involved in this case right now, son. Play it slow and lay low, that’s always been my motto. It’s kept me out of trouble.”

  “Low and slow. Is that how you play basketball, too?”

  “Not when I was young and a terror on the court.”

  “I would have liked to have seen that. Okay, warning received and appreciated.”

  “Good. So now that we’re alone, why don’t you tell me, off the record, who was beating the hell out of you in your apartment when I showed up.”

  “I thought we dealt with that already.”

  “No,” said Detective Scott. “You lied and we let it go, but it hasn’t been dealt with. At first I assumed it was unrelated to your father’s case, a drug buy gone bad maybe, not a good thing for you but nothing for me to get all sassed about. But it turns out you don’t use drugs. You don’t even drink, which is a funny thing for a bartender. And you don’t care about money. And you don’t have any friends. And you don’t have anything to steal. Not even a television. How do you get by without a television?”

  “I stare at the wall.”

  “So it was a puzzle, until I got word that you showed up here. And then I got to wondering if maybe the beating wasn’t somehow related to your father’s case after all. Am I wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. He jumped me from behind and told me that what happened to my mother was over, and my father was where he belonged. And he said if I turned over any dirt, I’d be digging my own grave.”

  “Jesus. Why didn’t you tell us all this at the meeting?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No…Unless…Oh, I get it. It seems to indicate that your father might have been framed, and you don’t believe that. Yo
u still believe he did it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Sure I do. But that warning and Flynn’s murder might be enough to get me asking questions.”

  “If I told you, Detective, that a geezer named Birdie Grackle came into my bar and told me he was an old hit man who had been hired by some unknown party to kill my mother, would you believe me?”

  “You maybe, him no.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And even if something happened to my common sense and I did believe him, it wouldn’t mean that your father wasn’t the one who did the hiring.”

  “Point.”

  “Look, Justin. If Flynn really was murdered, then somebody had to do it. And that somebody could be dangerous as hell to anyone involved. Maybe you ought to listen to that warning, mind your own business, and let us worry about all this.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Is that your way of saying ‘Go to hell’?”

  “I guess you’re not a detective for nothing,” said Justin. Because he absolutely was going to look into it, he had no choice. If there was a possibility that his father was telling the truth and hadn’t killed Justin’s mother, then there was a possibility that Justin could satisfy that strange yearning he had felt in the visiting room. He could never get his mother back, her voice was stilled forever, but maybe he could still get back his father.

  “I have a hard time figuring a kid like you,” said Scott. “Giving up the law to be a bartender I can understand. I met enough lawyers in my day to see how miserable they are. But no television? That’s flat-out weird. Word is you’re some sort of Zen guy. What does that mean, anyway?”

  “When you find out, tell me.”

  “Does it help a sore back, this Zen thing of yours? Because I have this sore back that just kills me.”

  “You want my advice on that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Lose some weight.

  “Don’t I know that. But how?”

  “Get rid of the TV for starters. And then give up meat.”

  “No TV, no meat. Can I still have sex?”

  “I don’t know, can you?”

  Scott laughed. “Dalton wants me to keep an eye on you, so that’s what I’m going to do. But I’m on your side more than you know. I’m giving you heartfelt advice here to just stay out of this.” Scott reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “But if you got anything to say, I’ll be glad to hear it. And if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

  “Anything?”

  “Sure.”

  Justin took the card and stared at it for a moment as he thought about the turtle he saw in the middle of his meditation. “Well, there is one thing,” he said. “I’d like to see some pictures of my mother.”

  “Don’t you have enough?”

  “Not of her corpse,” said Justin.

  17.

  JOHNNIE WALKER BLUE

  Birdie Grackle fidgeted and hitched his way to the bar, moving through Zenzibar’s lively evening crowd as smoothly as a dented old pickup, throwing rods every which way, trying to parallel park in a spot two feet too short. As Justin stood off to the side and checked the IDs of two very young women away from the sorority house for the evening, Birdie sidled up to the mahogany, leaned an elbow on the bar, stuck out his stomach, rubbed a finger over his big fake teeth. Standing at the bar, he held himself like the world owed him a favor that he was born to collect.

  “Do you know how to make a Long Beach Tea?” shouted one of the young women, a sprite with bright-red lipstick.

  “Do you know how to drink one?” said Justin.

  “Sure I do,” she said. “Fast.”

  Justin wanted to put his hand on her shoulder and go all avuncular, but that wasn’t his role. He wasn’t a caring uncle, he was a bartender, he mixed drinks. “Coming right up,” he said.

  “And a Cosmo,” said the other woman.

  “You bet.”

  The Long Beach Tea was simple enough—fill a pint glass with ice, grab bottles of rum and gin with one hand, vodka and triple sec with the other, and fill most of the glass. Top it with sour and a healthy splash of cranberry, pretty it up with a lemon slice, give it a quick stir with a straw. It was the kind of drink college girls ordered, because it tasted like fruit juice but stung like a bee. The Cosmo took a little more work, but it was sweet as candy and went down easily too. And all the while he poured and stirred and shook and strained, he had his eye on Birdie Grackle. The old man wanted money; Justin didn’t have any. So the question of the night was how to get the old man to spill without spilling a check.

  When he cashed out the two college girls, Justin headed over to the old man at the bar. “Thanks for coming, Birdie,” said Justin with a spic-and-span politeness.

  “I knew you’d make that call. Didn’t have no doubts. But I bet it choked your heart a bit to do it.”

  “I had the opportunity to review my mother’s autopsy and some of the photographs taken at the scene of her murder.” Justin reached over and tapped Birdie on the spot behind his ear. “There seemed to be a mark right there.”

  “And so you called.”

  “And so I called.”

  Birdie surveyed the glowing bottles arrayed like little soldiers in their ranks on the shelves behind Justin. “How is it working tonight, doctor? Same arrangement?”

  “You mean am I still treating?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  Justin looked at the old man for a long moment. If he was telling the truth, a definite if, then this bastard had killed his mother. How to handle such a thing? How not to rip his throat right out of his neck? Be not terrified. Be not awed. “Sure, Birdie. Same arrangement.”

  “Then let’s say I have another of those Mojitos you whipped up for me. Make it an extra extra. And since it’s on the house, make one for her, too,” said Birdie, jerking a thick thumb at the pretty college girl who had ordered the Long Beach Tea. “She looks just young enough.”

  “Young enough to watch Sesame Street maybe.”

  “A girl like that, with only a little help she can get so cockeyed she won’t notice how old I am. Just because I can’t no more get it up don’t mean I don’t still like a taste of fresh now and then.” He leered and winked at the same time, a quite attractive duo. “And she don’t even need to be awake for me to get it.”

  “One Mojito coming up.”

  “You getting judgmental on me, boy?”

  “I have no judgments,” said Justin, as he started building the drink. “I’m just a barkeep.”

  “So you got me my money?”

  “Money?”

  Grackle’s face screwed tight, like he was sucking something sour. “The money what we talked about. You know, for the job. Half up front.”

  “Oh, that money.”

  “And here all along I thought you was supposed to be such a smart cracker.”

  “If I was so smart, Birdie,” said Justin, his work with the muddler maybe a bit too vigorous, “would I be mixing drinks? But no, there won’t be any money. There won’t be any job.”

  “No job?”

  “No job.”

  “You’re letting a killer go free, boy.”

  “Karma covers all,” said Justin. “I’m no caped avenger, I’m just a barkeep. And to tell you the truth, Birdie, I don’t think you really exist. I think you’re simply a figment of my imagination.”

  “What the hell’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t need tell me that.”

  “So how about one more drink, and then you go and leave me alone.”

  “That’s what you called me for? You don’t want to never know the truth of the thing?”

  “Whatever truth there is, I don’t think you have it.”

  “I gave you the turtle with them diamonds, didn’t I?”

  “Rhinestones. And the description of the pin was in all the papers. You could have had it
made up just for the occasion, scraped it to make it look old, popped it in my lap to fool my eye.”

  “I ain’t that clever.”

  “That might be the first thing you’ve said all night that I believe.”

  “So you don’t want to know the one behind it all. The one what hired Preacher to hire me.”

  “You told me you didn’t know who it was.”

  “That’s about what I said, paraphrased and without the whoop-de-doo, though it’s the whoop-de-doo what makes it all worthwhile. But even if I don’t know who it was specifically, I can help you find out.”

  “And for that you want money.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  Justin smacked a sprig of mint between his palms, and maybe he smacked it a little too hard. He made an effort to be slow in placing the drink before the old man. “Well, how about this, Birdie. You help me find out who it was that hired you, and if it pans out, then we’ll talk money.”

  Grackle looked at the drink, longingly, looked at Justin suspiciously, looked back at the drink and lifted it. He sipped it daintily at first, and then greedily. When he plopped the half-empty drink on the counter, he said, “Keep them coming, boy.”

  “In a sec,” said Justin. “I need to take care of some people over there.”

  Justin let Birdie stew in his Mojito as he served the other side of the bar. A couple of beers, a Dirty Martini, a Scotch neat, two shots of Tully. He poured Larry a fresh Yuengling. Lee asked for a Cosmo of her own, and Cody, who had just come in, asked for a Sazerac, which was rye sweetened with sugar and bitters, finished with a kiss of absinthe and lemon zest.

  From the corner of his eye, Justin could see Birdie raise his empty glass to show he needed a refill, and Justin pretended not to notice. Have you ever been to a bar and found it impossible to get the bartender’s attention? This wasn’t an accident. She knew you were there, she saw you waving to catch her eye—she sees everything that happens at her bar top—and yet still she went on, seemingly oblivious to you and your thirst as she worked the other side of the bar. It’s all part of the bartender’s creed: make them fresh, make them cold, but most of all, if they’re a little overeager, make them wait. And just then, Justin wanted to make that son of a bitch wait.