“Okay,” he answered. “It’s crossed my mind.”
“Neal!” Karen said.
“No offense,” Neal said. “My mother was a bimbo.”
Polly’s head snapped back and she gasped. “That’s an awful thing to say about your mother! You should be ashamed, talking about your mother that way!”
Neal shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“All the more reason,” she said. Then she turned to Karen. “You know what I don’t like about men?”
Karen took a moment to give Neal a dirty look before answering. “I have a few ideas.”
“They’re stupid,” Polly said.
We sure are, Neal thought.
Walter Withers sat at the bar at the Blarney Stone and snuggled up to a glass of Jameson’s that felt so good, he didn’t mind Rourke’s habitual harangue.
“This used to be a great town, you know that?” the bartender asked. “When Jimmy Wagner ran it, him and the Irish and the Italians.”
Withers nodded agreeably.
It’s a great town right now, he thought. I’m sitting in a nice warm dark bar with a glass of good whiskey in my hand and fifty thousand dollars in cash at my feet. And as soon as I complete my business here, I’m going to meet Gloria at the Oak Room, speaking of the days when this was a great town. A drink or two at the Oak Bar and then a taxi over to the Palm for a rare porterhouse and a glass or two of dark red.
And I wonder where Blossom Dearie is singing tonight.
“A great town,” the bartender repeated. “Guy got out of line, the cops smacked him around, and that was that.”
Withers nodded again. As the only customer at the bar, it was his job.
“Ah, Walt, the wife walked out again.”
Withers shook his head sympathetically. “Women, huh?”
“Yeah, says she can’t stand my drinking. I don’t drink that much. You know that bartenders aren’t drinkers, Walt. We see too much.”
An opening.
“Have you seen Sammy Black, Arthur?” Walk asked. “Has he been around?”
“Just this afternoon he was in here asking about you,” Rourke answered. “So I says to her, I say, ‘You don’t like my drinking? I don’t like your eating.’ She gets pissed off, packs her things, and storms off to her mother’s-who’s what, maybe ninety?”
Withers was almost grateful when Sammy Black walked in, even if he did have Chick Madsen with him.
“Break his wrist, Chick,” Sammy ordered. Sammy was wearing a black overcoat, black sports jacket, black shirt, black shoes, probably black underwear. “A man who picks Minnesota to beat the spread on the road on Monday night deserves a broken wrist.”
Chick waddled over to Withers’s stool, started to grab his wrist, then hesitated.
“Right or left, Sammy?” Chick asked.
“You right-handed or left-handed, Walter?” Sammy asked.
“The sinister hand,” Withers told him.
“What?”
“Left-handed, Sammy,” Withers explained.
“His left wrist,” Sammy ordered.
Chick grabbed his left wrist.
“That won’t be necessary,” Withers said. “I have the payment in full.”
“You do? Hold on. Let me tell Tinkerbell. Tink, Walter has the money,” Sammy said. He paused to listen, then said, “Tink doesn’t believe you, Walter. Let’s all clap and say we believe.”
“I can’t clap, Sammy. Chick has hold of my arm,” Withers said.
“And I don’t hear any snapping of bones or screams of agony, Chick,” Sammy chided.
Withers said, “It’s in the briefcase by my feet. Let me get it.”
“Okay, I’ll play.” Sammy sighed. “Let’s see what’s in the briefcase.”
“Unhand me, sir,” Withers said.
Chick let go of his arm. Withers took a hit of the Jameson’s, then reached down and picked up the briefcase. He turned on the stool so his back was to the bookie and his goon and dialed the combination. Then he opened the briefcase and set it on the bar.
Sammy Black’s eyes got big the way they always did when he saw a lot of cash. Then he got mad.
“You been betting with someone else?” he asked with the righteous indignation of a wronged spouse. “Walter, you munt, I carry you all this time and you get well with someone else? This is gratitude, Walter?”
“I didn’t win this money,” Withers said. “I found gainful employment.”
“Very gainful, indeed, Walter,” Rourke said as he looked into the briefcase.
“Now, my good sir,” Withers said, “how much do I owe you?”
“As of today, it’s twenty-two five,” Sammy said. “Walter, do you know there’s a very interesting line on Raiders-Pittsburgh tomorrow?”
Withers handed him two stacks of the cash and then counted three thousand dollars off another. He closed the briefcase, slid off the bar stool, and handed the money to Sammy.
“Keep the change,” he said. “Buy yourself some clothes that don’t make you look like a lounge singer at the Albany Ramada Inn.”
“You’re a loser, Withers,” Sammy said.
“Not tonight, my good man. Not tonight.”
Withers tossed Arthur a jaunty wave and strolled out the door.
“Don’t bet on it,” Sammy mumbled.
“The wife walked out on me again, Sammy,” Arthur said.
Sammy Black just stared out the door.
“Women, huh?” answered Chick.
“The missus still believe you?” Joey Foglio asked as he stood at the urinal.
“Candice is the least of my worries,” Jack Landis called out from his stall.
They were in the men’s room of Big Bob’s, one of Joey’s restaurants. Big Bob’s was a barbecue joint so basic, they didn’t even have plates. They just dumped slabs of meat on sheets of butcher paper and sent you out to the long picnic tables to gorge yourself.
“There ain’t no Big Bob really, is there?” Jack asked.
“You wanna see Big Bob?” Joey asked. “Come on out here!”
Joey, Harold, and the two guys guarding the door laughed. Harold was Joey’s personal assistant, which usually meant he personally assisted Joey in beating up people. The two guys at the door were bodyguards, just in case any of those people came back with a resentment coupled with a gun.
Jack Landis didn’t laugh, truly believing that Joey Foglio was egomaniacal enough to name an eating establishment after his own Johnson-which he guessed was preferable, anyway, to naming one after somebody else’s.
Joey shook himself off, zipped up, and stepped over to the sink to wash his hands.
“I got a lot of unhappy people out there, Jack,” he said.
“The sausage?” Jack asked.
“I mean my subcontractors,” Joey answered.
Jack hitched his pants up, took his jacket off the hanger, and put it on.
“I ain’t exactly delirious with joy, either,” Jack said.
He opened the door and walked over to the mirror to check his hair.
Joey Foglio came and stood beside him. It was not a comfortable feeling. Joey Foglio was a big man. He had a big broad head with a flat forehead you could sell advertising space on.
Foglio looked into the mirror and combed his own full head of silver hair straight back.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “You ain’t been paying your bills.”
“Maybe it would help if your contractors would just overcharge me by, say, fifty percent instead of a hundred,” Jack said.
“That was the deal,” Joey reminded him. “You get your kickbacks.”
“Not lately,” Jack complained.
“Because you ain’t been paying your bills,” Joey said.
“Because contributions are down.”
“Because you tripped over your own dick,” Joey said. He put his comb back in his pocket.
Jack eased a stray strand of hair back over his ear. “Someone put her up to this. The bitch isn’t smart enough to do it on her own.”
“Smart or stupid,” Joey said, “she’s got you by the short and curlies.”
Jack always thought Joey sounded stupid when he tried to talk like a Texan. He was even dressed like one today, with Tony Lama boots, brand-new jeans, piped cowboy shirt, and a vest.
A greaseball cowboy, Jack thought. Great.
“Just find her,” Jack said. “Find her and pay her off.”