“You’re not just going to lie around and read all the time, are you?”
No, no. Not at all.
“We’re going ashore to shop and ride horses on the beach and maybe get those kinds of braids by the island girls that make your hair all kinky, right?”
I don’t have any hair.
“And dance, right? You said we were going to dance the night away.”
You’ll be dancing on air, honey.
He took a sip of the second double; the whiskey didn’t burn anymore, just went down sweet and smooth. Oh, we’ll dance all right. She never could hold her liquor. He’d keep filling her wineglass all night. Get her so drunk she’d be stumbling. Hell, he’d make sure people saw her stumbling. Then he’d get her to go out for some air, right at the place he’d scoped out on the lido deck, just beyond mid-ship where that cowling stuck out and obstructed the portside camera. Maybe she’d feel a little sick, or he’d convince her she was. He’d get her to lean over the railing a little. Then, woop! Over she goes. He was so much taller than her, so much more athletic. It’d be a cinch. He ordered another.
She was clueless, he thought. When he was home he just kept on smiling, nodding his head, agreeing with everything. He’d already checked out the life-insurance policy. He wasn’t so stupid as to try and raise the coverage. Idiots who want to bump off their wives do stupid shit like that and he was no dummy. And he wasn’t greedy, either. They’d had a hundred-thousand-dollar policy on each other since they’d been married. She had another policy that she got through her work. Then he would be the beneficiary of the 401(k) that she’d built up at her office for the last fifteen years. Hell, he might walk away with four hundred thousand. That’d go a ways in the Keys. He could find a little place down there now that the real estate market had gone in the shitter and all those Northeast rich bastards were having to dump their winter places in the sun. Then he’d sit back, drink some, listen to the surf roll in, one bourbon, one scotch, one beer.
Yeah, he knew it would take awhile to get paid off. They’d do one of those search and rescue operations, looking for her. You see it in the newspapers all the time down here. But they never find them. And she can’t swim a damn stroke anyway. Yeah, there’d be some kind of investigation. He’d have to play the frantic, shocked, and then grieving husband for a while, but big deal. Hah. He’d been grieving over marrying her for years now. This was his chance at the life he really wanted. Be the hell by himself, finally. Be happy, on his own.
He aimed the point of his key up into the wood and etched a final soliloquy:
The End.
He signaled the girl for another double. She raised an eyebrow. He raised his glass for a toast. A toast to himself.
Goddamn. He’d stiffed her, Emily thought.
The guy came in like always, same time, same rumpled look as he’d been carrying for the last couple of months. This time, though, as she could have predicted by his weird, methodical movement, he sat at the final end of the bar. In all her years, she’d never seen a customer move from one end of the bar to the other like this guy. Most regulars sit in their regular spot. That’s the way it’s done if you’re a regular. But this guy, like clockwork, moved a stool over every time. At first she thought he was just trying to get closer to the middle, where she did most of her work. Maybe it was his quiet way of breaking the ice. Maybe it was a compliment. But she dismissed that after a while. He wasn’t the kind for compliments and she’d pretty much figured he had no flirtatious intentions with her or any of the women customers who came and went. This guy had his own agenda, whatever the hell it was. She’d given up trying to figure it out. All she knew for sure was that he was getting deeper and deeper into the bottle and she was starting to worry about over-serving him. But shit, the guy could still walk a straight line, never started blabbing, never told his troubles over the transom like so many others. He just sat there, now gulping whiskey, with that kind of dreamy look on his face like he was writing a book or something in his head.
But this time he stiffed her. Okay, it happens. Sometimes even the best customers walk out and forget. Hell, sometimes they forget to pay completely. She lets it go. They’ll be back. She’ll carefully remind them the next time they come in. They’ll apologize and double the tip. In a neighborhood bar like this it’s only the strangers you have to worry about walking out on the tab.
But there was something different about the guy this time. Today he was kind of smiling. He’d only shown a glimpse of that in the past, the quick grin that said that he wasn’t just a morose guy. She always felt bad about those guys, the ones who just came in and stared into the mirrors or at the bottles behind her like they had nothing to live for but the liquor in front of them. No, she never had that impression of the guy. And today he was actually smiling, maybe at some inside joke. Maybe he got a job, found a girlfriend. Maybe he was celebrating something. When he ordered the third double within the first thirty minutes, she kind of gave him that silent look she saved for the guys who were hitting a little too hard and that was meant to relay the warning: Slow down, fella. But when she poured the last one he raised the glass to her and tipped it toward her as if to a toast and the next time she turned around he was gone. He’d left just enough money to cover the Jameson’s, but stiffed her on the tip. She just shook her head, wiped up the bar, and thought, Bon voyage, buddy.
Emily looked up when the new guy came in. He walked down to the end of the bar, kind of slow, taking the whole place in a little, and then stood near the corner, not like he wanted a drink, more like he wanted to ask her something. Cigaret machine? Yeah, down the hallway behind you. Men’s room? Yeah, same way. Change for the parking meter? Sure. That was her first thought. Her second was: Cop.
The guy was wearing a suit jacket. She could count on one hand how many times a guy in a jacket came in. His haircut was short and conservative, but he was wearing a tight-cut door-knocker goatee, the kind of beard and moustache that guys wear to disguise a weak jawline or thin lips. She asked a regular customer if he wanted a refill. She moved a couple of glasses. She checked the beers she’d put in the ice. She took her time walking down to the new guy, kind of dreading the inevitable. He was probably a drug detective. She’d seen them in here before, looking for someone or something. Information. Free information. That was her guess, and she wasn’t far off.
“Hi,” she finally said, putting on her smile and sliding a coaster down in front of the guy even though she already knew it was a useless gesture. “What can I get you?”
“Hi,” he said, his lips together even when he made an attempt at a smile.
He matched her coaster with a business card, putting it down on the bar like they were playing cards. She picked it up but looked into the guy’s face instead of at the printing, knowing he was going to tell her what it said anyway.
“Mitch Healy,” he said as an introduction. “I’m an insurance investigator for Northwest Mutual Life.”
He stopped after delivering the line. Emily didn’t respond. She did this often with customers who made statements to her that weren’t real questions and as such, didn’t require an answer as far as she was concerned. Ask a question, I’ll give you an answer. Make a statement, what’s to answer? Some people thought it rude, she considered it cutting to the chase.
“Yeah?” she said, offering nothing.
The guy looked at her for a blank second.