“Okay, uh,” he said, reaching inside his jacket and coming out with a photo, giving up on the bedside manner. “Have you ever seen this guy in here?”
Emily took the photo, looked at the face, and recognized the green eyes that absorbed but never reflected light. It had been a couple of months. Shots of Jameson with Yuengling chasers. Stiffed her the last time she saw him. She figured at the time he was gone forever. Again, she wasn’t far off.
“Yeah, but not for a while,” she said, nothing to hide. It wasn’t like she knew a damned thing about the guy, legal or illegal. “Why? What’d he do?”
I mean, this guy did introduce himself as a life-insurance investigator. She wasn’t too stupid to put one and one together. Life insurance meant somebody was dead, right?
“Well, we’re not sure,” Healy said. “We are, uh, looking into him as a matter of routine, something we do.”
Emily looked at the photo again, like she ever needed a photo to recall a customer. She thought back on the last time she saw him. He’d been smiling.
“He came in here, usually on a Wednesday afternoon. But I didn’t even know his name. He was just a customer for a few months and then disappeared,” she said.
The investigator nodded.
“Ever talk to him about anything? Kind of work he did? Family problems? You know, the kind of things people tell bartenders?”
Oh, the kind of things people tell bartenders, she thought. Right, Mr. Investigator, like you would know the kind of things people tell bartenders. Sure, you’ve seen the movie with the drunk who sits at the tap and does the woe-is-me schtick to his friendly bartender. Spills his guts ’cause no one else will listen to him.
“Wow. Those kinds of things?” she said and then waited, like she was remembering. “No,” she finally said as flat as she could make her voice.
Healy was stoic, choosing not to react to her sarcasm.
“Okay,” he said, deciding to try again. “Do you recall this guy ever saying anything about his wife? Did he say anything about going on vacation with his wife? Did he ever talk to anyone else here? Did he have any friends here that he might have confided in? Was he a boozer? Did he get sloppy drunk and fall off the stool?”
Emily stood looking at the guy for a second and then heard her name being called from the other end of the bar.
“All in the form of questions,” Healy said, giving it back to her.
She raised a finger to the investigator with a wait-one-second gesture. Healy did another once-over of the bar, the glass cabinets, the mirrors, the aged wooden bar itself, trying to assess the place. When Emily came back she looked him in the eyes and said:
“No.
“No.
“Not that I know of.
“No.
“Yes.
“And no.”
She knew she was being tough on the guy, but what the hell. It’s the kind of thing you bartenders did, right?
Healy smiled a little, without parting his lips. He then reached into his jacket and came out with his wallet, slipped a hundred-dollar bill out and put it on the bar.
Emily looked at the bill for a few seconds, shrugged, and then started in. She told him the mystery man started coming in several months ago, at first sitting in the exact place Healy was standing now. Every Wednesday he’d show up. Every week drinking a little more heavily. He never introduced himself, never talked to anyone, and never gave her a hard time. He was polite, always had clean clothes on, and drank with his left hand.
“His left hand?” Healy said.
“Yeah, I remember stuff like that,” Emily said. “He was wearing a wedding ring, but it was his right hand that he kept below the bar, which is the opposite of a lot of guys who come in here. Sometimes they keep the ring out of sight.”
Healy loosened up a little now that the hundred had established a relationship.
“My information was that Mr. Sharper was right-handed. But you’re saying that’s the hand he kept in his lap?” he said, raising an eyebrow, wrinkling his nose a bit, jiggling his arm a little, mocking like he was a bit disgusted, and pretending to step back a little from the edge of the bar.
“No. If he was whacking off, somebody would have noticed,” Emily said, letting an authentic grin play on her face. Okay, Mr. Investigator isn’t that uptight. Just doing his job, right?
“So Sharper was the guy’s name?” she said.
“Yeah. Simon Sharper,” Healy said, now obviously looking at the bar. “And you say he sat here all the time?”
“Well, that was another weird thing about the guy,” Emily said. “It was like he moved every time he came in. He started there and then, like, moved down a stool or two every time. After a while he was all the way down to the other end where my regulars usually sit.”
Healy followed the bartender’s hand as she pointed out Mr. Sharper’s progression.
“Huh,” he said, puzzling the information in his head.
“So,” Emily said. “What did the guy do?”
“Oh,” Healy looked up, like the question had surprised him. “Uh, well, we’re not sure, you know. I’m from the insurance company. He either fell overboard or committed suicide. One or the other. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“No shit?” Emily said, hitching her hip up onto the edge of the cooler, half sitting, like she was going to get a story. “He was the one in the newspaper? The one they said they caught on the ship’s video going overboard but never found the body?”
Healy nodded. “Crew members said he’d been drinking heavily in the ballroom all night. His wife too. The wife says they’d gone out on the deck and she was busy puking over the side when he somehow bent over to help her and accidentally went over. At least that’s the way they’re playing it, an accident. Which means my company pays off the insurance policy to the wife.”
Emily was shaking her head, thinking about the guy, bringing his face back into focus from her memory.
“You don’t think he was drunk? That’s why you’re here?”
“No. No. There wasn’t much doubt he was drunk,” Healy said. “The wife said he’d been drinking heavily for months but had been trying to keep it from her. She knew he’d quit his job also, but she hadn’t let on. She said she figured it was some kind of midlife thing, but she claims no way was he suicidal.”
Emily put an elbow on the bar. “They always think they can hide it,” she said, but not directly to Healy, more out to the world.
“The crew in the ballroom said he’d been hitting the whiskey pretty hard all night. The band conductor even got pissed because he kept asking him to play that Bob Seger tune — you know, with that line ‘When I drink alone I prefer to be by myself.’ ”
Emily smiled this time. “Yeah, we’ve got that one on the jukebox.”
The investigator nodded and smiled back.
“Well,” he said, reaching out and taking the photo back off the bar and putting it back into his jacket, “that’s probably the way it’ll end up. Guy got drunk, fell overboard, we pay off to the wife and take the cruise line to task for over-serving him or whatever. Let the attorneys figure that out. I’m no lawyer.”
Someone from the other end of the bar called Emily’s name. Before she turned she put her hand on the hundred-dollar bill and pushed it back toward the investigator.
“I was just messing with you,” she said. “Take your money.”
“No, really,” Healy said. “You were very helpful. You keep it.” He put his palms up, like he was refusing it.
Emily pushed the bill farther.
“Really,” she said. “I’d feel bad taking it.”
The investigator smiled and stepped back. She gave the hundred another push and as she turned the bill fluttered over the edge. She saw the guy go for it, miss, and then have to bend over to fetch it from under the bar. After she’d popped a beer for another customer she looked back and saw Healy coming up from under the bar with an odd look on his face, his eyes a little wide with surprise. The investigator then disappeared again and Emily could only see his hand, his left hand, working its way along the lip of the bar, moving as he shuffled along in a crouch, pushing the empty stools away as he worked his way down. She’d seen a lot in bars, but never this. Finally the guy came up, a fascinated look on his face and a smile that showed all of his teeth this time.