The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  “Hey, boy,” Grackle called out in his desiccated voice. “I’m still thirsty.”

  Justin gave Birdie a glance to let him know he’d heard the baying of the wolf, and then went back to ignoring him. Grackle wanted alcohol, Justin would make him wait. Grackle wanted money, Justin would make him wait.

  “A couple guys came in a little earlier looking for you,” said Justin to Cody as he built the Sazerac.

  “Friends?” said Cody, looking around like a ferret in a trap.

  “They didn’t look so friendly, and they were big enough to back it up. Said something about a Solly something.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Cody who?”

  “Exactly. Christ, I stepped in it now.”

  “I guess the ‘sure thing’ wasn’t so sure.”

  “Kobe missed two free throws just before the buzzer. When’s he ever do that? Ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Exactly.”

  Justin twisted a strip of lemon rind over the Sazerac, releasing the oils into the drink, before dropping the rind to the bottom of the glass. He slid the drink in front of Cody, and then leaned close enough so Lee or Larry couldn’t hear their conversation. “I might have an opportunity for you to make some of it back. You see that old guy making the fuss over there?”

  “Yellow hair?” said Cody, without turning his head. “Tats on his forearms?”

  “That’s the one. I’ll cover you here for the next few weeks if after he leaves, you find out where he heads off to.”

  “You care if he spots me following?”

  “It’s better if he doesn’t. And I’ll pay twenty bucks an hour for you to find out what you can about him.”

  “A little detective work.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Anything I should be worried about?”

  “A man that old and a guy tough as you?”

  “Nah, you’re right.” Cody looked at Justin for a moment more and then smiled slyly. “Thirty-five.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Deal.”

  Without so much as a nod, Justin moved along the bar and filled more orders. When enough time had passed for Grackle to get seriously pissed—and one thing bartenders know is how to get someone waiting for a drink seriously pissed—Justin ambled over.

  “Sorry, Birdie, but it’s a busy night.”

  “I told you to keep them coming,” said Birdie. “I’m a paying customer.”

  “You’re half-right.”

  “You called me, sonny, not the other way around. Let me have a couple shots to take the edge off. And then we’ll talk again about my money.”

  Justin turned around and checked the selection. At the Capital Grille, Birdie had ordered Johnnie Walker Red, a cheaper blended malt. Red was all right for mixing, but if you were drinking your blended Scotch straight, you wanted something with a bit more character. There was Black, which was better, and Gold which was better still. And then, on the very top shelf, glowing like a shiny doubloon, was a rare bit of luxury, a bottle so cherished each was individually numbered. Justin reached up and pulled the bottle from the shelf.

  “You ever have any Johnnie Walker Blue, Birdie?” said Justin.

  “Is it better than Black?”

  “It makes Black taste like kerosene.”

  “Oh my. I might have heard something about it. More like a rumor than anything else. Is that it?”

  “That’s it. But it’s expensive.”

  Someone called out for a beer from the far end of the bar. Justin ignored him, his eyes flat on Birdie.

  “Let’s not let expense get in the way of a friendship,” said the old man.

  “Let’s not,” said Justin, before opening the bottle, waving it beneath his own nose, and rising on tiptoes like he was smelling youth itself. He slammed a rocks glass on the bar and poured, slowly, as carefully as if the amber liquid were as precious as gold. He poured, and he kept pouring, the level rising generously until the six-ounce glass was more than three-quarters full. A feast of smooth oblivion.

  Birdie licked his lips involuntarily and reached for the liquor. Before he got hold, Justin pulled it away.

  “After,” said Justin.

  “After what?”

  “You said you were handled by a man named Preacher. You said Preacher let slip something that told you it wasn’t my father that had hired you.”

  “That’s what I said, all right.”

  “What did he let slip, Birdie?”

  Birdie eyed the glass and the Scotch whiskey inside. His fake teeth chattered. “You’re not playing fair, boy.”

  “My mother played fair every damn day of her life.”

  “No need bringing her into it. What about my money?”

  “Are you drinking, or am I throwing this away?”

  “You ain’t that cruel.”

  Justin snatched the glass and dashed the contents into the sink.

  He ignored the appalled gasp from behind as he lifted the precious bottle back to the top shelf and, making a point not to look at the old man, went off to satisfy the orders that had been piling all around him. Birdie Grackle was playing him, had been playing him from the start, and it was time he played back. Sure, the geezer could just pick up and leave, but Justin had read Birdie as a battered old alky from the first, and one thing Justin had learned as a barkeep was that an alky never lets go of his drink. Even more so when it is something from the top shelf. Old drunks have a truly unholy reverence for expensive spirits. Birdie most likely could no longer taste the difference between the finest Scotch whiskey in the world or the rawest rotgut hooch, but he understood that Johnnie Walker Blue was a holy grail of liquor, and he’d wait until the gates of hell opened wide to get a chance to worship.

  “Pour it again, boy,” said Birdie when Justin finally returned to his perch at the bar. Birdie was trying to look hard-bitten as he said it, but the desperation glinted through the effort.

  “I wouldn’t want to waste any more of the good stuff,” said Justin. “Why don’t I pour you something house?”

  “Don’t be smart. That bottle up there. I’ve a hankering to taste it.”

  Justin shrugged and pulled down the Johnnie Walker Blue. He had already thrown away about a hundred bucks’ worth retail, which is what Marson, keeping a wary eye on him from the corner of the bar, would make him pay. Still, it was having the desired effect. As he repoured, he watched Birdie’s Adam’s apple bounce. Justin pulled up when the glass was a third filled. The shock in Birdie’s eyes was priceless.

  “We were talking about Preacher,” said Justin, still holding the bottle.

  Birdie smacked his lips. “A bit more maybe, just for flavor.”

  “I’ll fill it to the rim, Birdie, if you start talking.”

  “All right, boy. You keep pouring, because this is what I got. But it ain’t just talk now. A deal’s a deal. We start on something here, we’re going to finish it, you understand.”

  Feeling himself close to getting an answer, Justin heedlessly pressed his advantage and put his hand atop the glass. “Go ahead.”

  “It ain’t much, but it ain’t nothing neither. Preacher, like I said, didn’t never say nothing about who was doing the paying on our jobs. But this time he slipped up a bit, slipped up even though he didn’t know he was slipping. Like I said, I was supposed to rifle the place, steal what I could. I was supposed to make it look like I slipped in for some easy cash. Preacher told me the client, she wanted it to look like a deranged druggie killed your mother dead.”

  “She?” said Justin.

  “Picked it right up, didn’t you?”

  “You’re saying the person who set you after my mother was a woman?”

  “I’m just saying what Preacher was saying, is all. What you do with it is up to you. But it seems to include your father out, don’t it? So figure what you need and then scrape up my money and we’ll get to it. Now, give me my damn drink afore you get the urge this time to flush it down the to
ilet.”

  Justin stood there for a moment, let it sink in for a bit, and then pushed the glass forward.

  Birdie looked down at it and then up at Justin, with a crocked smile on his crooked face. Justin filled the glass until the surface of the liquor domed between the edges of the rim. Birdie Grackle’s eyes closed dreamily in anticipation. He reached for the glass with a shaking hand and was even able to get most of the Scotch in his mouth.

  Justin was serving beers to two dudes in ripped T-shirts, their hair so wildly unkempt their dos could only have been carefully and obsessively kempt, when he noticed Birdie Grackle staggering out of the bar. As soon as Birdie left, Justin looked over at Cody, who nodded. A minute later Cody was gone, too.

  Then Justin went back to serving the beers, thinking about his father, and trying to figure out who the hell was the woman who had so urgently wanted his mother dead. And though he didn’t have a clue, he certainly had a clue who would.

  18.

  PINK SQUIRREL

  Mia Dalton knew how to express incredulity on her hard features. Wide, shocked eyes, a wrinkled brow, an open gape leaning toward a smile, as if some dirty limerick had been recited in open court. You have got to be kidding me, the expression as good as shouted. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. It was quite the useful expression to flash in front of a jury during a damaging argument from the other side. One wide-eyed look at the jury and every sensible thing being said sounded like so much twaddle. She practiced the expression regularly in the mirror.

  And now, in her office, she flashed her patented expression of incredulity at Detective Scott, but it wasn’t aimed at him. Instead it was aimed at Sarah Preston, who had just said the very words Mia had been hoping she wouldn’t hear.

  “We’re sort of still intending to go forward,” said Sarah Preston, Mackenzie Chase’s lawyer. “With that motion, you know, the motion for the new trial.”

  Cue the incredulity.

  “Go forward?” said Mia, the expression still on her face. “We are all sorry that Mr. Flynn passed away, but passed away he has, along with the basis of your motion. We only kept this meeting because it was previously scheduled, but both Detective Scott and I fully expected you to withdraw your motion.”

  “I’m sorry, really, I didn’t mean to disappoint you,” said Sarah Preston with a nervous twitch in her lips. “If you want to reschedule or something, that would be okay, I guess.”

  Preston wasn’t one of the usual members of the defense bar, or one of those public-interest lawyers always looking for a fight. She was, instead, a middle-aged, midlevel partner at a middling patent-law firm, without much litigation experience, who was representing Chase pro bono. How it pro’d the bono to help someone like Mackenzie Chase was another matter, but Preston seemed a bit of a squirrel, and in a matter like this, she was far out of her league.

  “I understand you haven’t spent much time in a courtroom, Sarah, but how the hell do you intend to go forward without a witness?”

  “Well,” said Preston, “you know, we do have Mr. Flynn’s affidavit.”

  Mia laughed, raising her hands into the air for effect. “An affidavit. Sarah, you know as well as I do that without an opportunity for us to cross-examine Flynn, your affidavit is hearsay, which makes it useless.”

  “Yes, that is a problem,” she said, pushing the glasses back up on her nose. Mia had met Sarah Preston before at bar association functions and political events, and Sarah had always come across as a bit dowdy, but her hair was glossier now and her lipstick brighter, and she was proving a bit harder to shove around than Mia had originally thought.

  “A fatal problem,” said Mia.

  “You’re probably right. But I’ve been looking at the Rules of Evidence, and I think there might be an exception for a statement like this.” Sarah Preston reached into her bag, fumbled around, kept speaking as she fumbled. “Mr. Flynn in his affidavit claimed he lied on the stand. Which means he could have been prosecuted for perjury. Which means—wait a minute, here it is.” She pulled from her bag a small blue book and leafed through it. “His statement would have been against his penal interest, and Rule 804(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Evidence states—”

  “I know the rules, Sarah,” snapped Mia. “But the statute of limitations has already passed from the time of his testimony at the trial. So there was no penal danger.”

  “True, yes,” said Sarah Preston, again pushing the glasses up her nose. “By just a few months, actually, which makes it harder.”

  “So you see—”

  “But we do have some arguments.”

  “Arguments?”

  “Well, you know, we could kind of argue that because Flynn’s testimony was used by the state in the appeal, the statute could have been tolled until the appeal was ruled upon.”

  “Do you have any cases to support a position that ridiculous?”

  “Not yet, but I have an associate looking it up for me in her spare time.”

  “She won’t find anything, because it’s not there.”

  “Then we’ll have to make new law, I suppose,” said Preston. “And Mr. Flynn was still on probation. Which meant the judge could have revoked his probation if the perjury was admitted.”

  “No judge will buy this, Sarah. Trust me, it’s bullshit.”

  “Probably, yes,” said Sarah, nodding. “And if so, I guess that’s what the judge will tell me during the hearing.”

  Mia looked at her and then at Scott, who was smiling slightly, the son of a bitch. Mia had predicted to Scott before the meeting that she wouldn’t have any trouble with the likes of Sarah Preston. Patent lawyers, she had told the detective, were the gym teachers of the bar, lawyers sure, but still.

  Scott was now obviously enjoying seeing Mia being pushed around by a patent lawyer.

  “Even if the statement is allowed in,” said Mia, “it’s not enough. Changed testimony by itself is insufficient basis for a new trial. The case law is crystal clear.”

  “But we won’t only have the affidavit,” said Sarah. “We’ll have something else.”

  Mia looked again at Scott, who shrugged. “What something else?”

  “We’re going to present evidence about the real perpetrator of the crime.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re going to tell the judge who really did it.”

  “Who did what?”

  “Who killed Mrs. Chase. And we’ll tell the judge how we’ll prove it to the jury. Newly discovered evidence. I think that might be enough for a new trial, don’t you?”

  Mia looked at Scott, who had suddenly leaned forward. “What kind of evidence?” said Scott.

  “I guess we’ll talk about that at the hearing.”

  “No, we’ll talk about that right now,” said Detective Scott. “If you have evidence about a homicide and a murderer on the loose, you need to turn that over.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective, really, but I can’t do that.”

  Mia looked at Scott, then at Sarah Preston, then back at Scott, the incredulity not manufactured now, but real. “What the hell are you doing, Sarah?”

  “I’m trying to represent an innocent man and save lives, Mia. How did Mr. Flynn die?”

  “You know how,” said Mia slowly. “An overdose.”

  “Then why is there a murder investigation going on?”

  “It’s routine with a death like that.”

  “Really? Because to me it seems if you were sure the death wasn’t a murder, and wasn’t related to the Chase case, you would not have hauled Mr. Chase’s son into your office. Do you have any suspects in the Flynn murder investigation other than Justin Chase? Do you have any leads?”

  Mia looked at Scott.

  “If we do,” said Scott, “we can’t disclose them to you.”

  “And I can’t disclose my evidence either. We gave you one name, Ms. Dalton, we gave you Mr. Flynn, our crucial witness. And next thing we know, he’s dead.”

  Mia loo
ked more closely at Sarah Preston. She was actually pretty sharp, for a patent lawyer. But there was something about her manner that was worrying. Maybe it was the shinier hair or glossier lipstick, but more likely it was the tone that underlay her words. She wasn’t just taking a case or representing a client, she was more invested than that, no matter how hard she was trying to hide it.

  “How did you get involved in Mr. Chase’s case in the first place?” said Mia.

  “I happened to meet Mr. Chase while he was in prison. He asked me to look into his case and I agreed. What I found raised questions, and then Mr. Flynn had some answers.”

  “You met Mackenzie Chase in prison?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What were you doing in prison?”

  “I was doing volunteer work. Teaching a class.”

  “On patent law?”

  “On Shakespeare. I was an English teacher before I became a lawyer. I was helping the prisoners put on a play.”

  “What play exactly?”

  “Does it matter?” she said, dropping the little blue book back in her bag before standing. “I expect to be kept appraised of the Flynn investigation, if that’s not too much trouble.”

  “We’ll let you know what we can,” said Mia.

  “Good. I guess I’ll see you in court.”

  After she left, Mia rubbed her jaw as if she had been clubbed. “What do you make of all that?”

  “She’s got nothing,” said Scott. “She’s playing for time.”

  “Which means she might expect to have something in the future. The Chase boy obviously told his father about our meeting during his visit in the prison. But I’m wondering what the father told the Chase boy during the visit. And this whole other suspect thing. Who do you think they have in mind?”

  “No idea.”

  “Well then, Detective, I think you better get off your ass and grab one, before we’re coldcocked in court.”