Sully chewed a couple Maalox, made a face, then washed down three ibuprofen with the water.
“No?” Gert said, holding up the Pepto.
“My mother used to drink that shit by the juice glass.”
Gert returned all three remedies whence they came.
“Where the hell is everybody?” Sully said. It was only ten in the morning, but Gert’s alcoholic clientele generally showed little regard for normal drinking hours, and his morning business was usually brisk.
“That fucking snake’s got everybody in a tizzy,” Gert said. “It was dead last night, too.”
Sully nodded. “Your whole crew was out at the Horse. Joe and the rest.”
“Spinmatics Joe,” Gert chuckled. “His mother’s calling every hour on the hour wanting to know if I’ve seen him. Seems he never made it home last night.”
“He left the Horse around ten,” Sully told him. “Must’ve gone somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
“Good question. There and here are the only two places I know of that’ll serve him, and after last night, it’s just here.”
“Birdie eighty-six him?”
“That was my impression, unless she’s changed her mind.”
“When was the last time you knew that to happen?”
Years earlier, Birdie and Gert had been a couple, until she gave him his walking papers. Her refusal to take him back struck him as pure inflexibility, a serious character flaw.
“How about Roy Purdy?” Sully said. “He been in this morning?”
Gert met Sully’s eye, then shook his head. “I’m sorry about Ruth.”
“You heard?”
“It’s all over the street. I wish I could say I’m surprised.”
“How about that woman he lives with? Any sign of her?”
“Cora? She was in last night looking for him. Haven’t seen her this morning.” He was studying Sully carefully now. “You look like you need to eat something besides Maalox.”
He wasn’t hungry, but Gert was probably right.
“I could probably get Dewey to scramble you a couple eggs,” he offered.
Sully rolled his eyes. “Dewey.”
Gert gave him an up-to-you shrug that conceded the validity of Sully’s misgivings. Dewey was Sully’s age, and until midday usually had the shakes so bad he could barely grasp a spatula. Back before Ruth bought Hattie’s, he’d been the regular breakfast cook there, but she’d had to let him go when customers at the counter complained they could smell him even when he was grilling onions. Here at Gert’s he wasn’t ever allowed out of the kitchen, so orders were shouted to him through a closed service window that opened only when he rested a plate of food on the ledge.
“Dewey!” Gert hollered.
“What?” came his reply.
“Scramble Sully a couple eggs! But wash your hands first! You know how particular he is!”
“Fuck him, then!”
“And bacon!” Gert added.
“No bacon!”
“Ham?”
“No ham! Linguica!”
Gert arched an eyebrow at Sully.
“Why not?”
“Well, you did just chew two Maalox for heartburn,” Gert pointed out.
At which point the front door was flung open and a shaft of bright light pierced the interior gloom. A man Sully vaguely recognized came down the long bar with the confidence of a blind person who knew the layout by heart. Taking the stool next to Gert’s, he squinted toward the other end, his eyes adjusting. “Sully?” he said incredulously. “You lost, or did the Horse burn down?”
Gert moved to the row of taps and drew a tall PBR without feeling the need to ask the man if he wanted one. “What’s the good word, Freddy?”
“They’re letting people back into the Arms,” he said, then drained half of his beer and smacked his lips in appreciation.
“They find the snake?”
“Just now,” Freddy said. “You’re gonna love this. Four of those animal guys in waders up to their asscracks going apartment to apartment. Two hours they’re in there. No snake. So they come outside and give the all clear, it’s safe to go back inside. One of these fuckwads is holding the door open, and guess what slithers out, right between his legs.”
“Yet another government agency to be proud of,” Gert chuckled.
“I gotta give the guy credit, though,” Freddy said grudgingly after draining the rest of his beer. “He put his boot right down on top of it. That took brass balls, waders or not.”
Gert drew him another beer and then returned to Sully, who said in a low voice, “Imagine you’re Roy Purdy.”
“To what fucking end would I do any such thing?”
Sully ignored this. “You’ve just violated your wife’s restraining order, not to mention the conditions of your parole, and just to make sure you’re completely fucked, you beat your mother-in-law half to death. You’re stupid, but not retarded. You gotta know this whole deal ends up with you back downstate, which means you’re on the clock. Do you run or go to ground?”
When it came to role-playing, Gert, as everyone knew, was without equal. All his life he’d been a sucker for similar conundrums. He leaned one elbow onto the bar to get comfortable. “My car got crushed yesterday, so for me running’s a problem.”
Sully nodded. “Say you’ve got your girlfriend’s.”
Gert snorted. “I don’t run anywhere in a half-purple, half-yellow piece of shit that’s held together with duct tape. I just don’t.”
“Then?”
Gert’s eyes glazed over and crossed slightly as he dove deeper into his role as violent moron. “I’m scared and they gave me painkillers at the hospital, so I’m not thinking straight. I fall back on what I know.”
“You actually know something?”
“Home invasion. Among my few skills is an ability to put my elbow through a pane of glass without cutting myself too bad. Over time I’ve become something of an expert at reaching inside and unlocking doors by feel.”
“It’s broad daylight, though. Somebody might see you.”
“Point taken. Someplace out of town, then. A house with no neighbors.”
“Aren’t you worried the owners might return unexpectedly?”
“They’re the ones should be worried. Because me? At this point, I really don’t have much to lose.”
Freddy, apparently feeling neglected, called from down the bar. “Gert! You hear they found Joe?”
Gert swam, blinking, back to the surface. Reality, Sully could tell, wasn’t nearly as compelling as the adventure he’d just been yanked from. “Where?”
“Lyin’ out in the woods. Somebody ran over the poor bastard, then dragged his body out there and left him to die.”
Gert shook his head. “I could’ve told him that straying so far from downtown Bath was a mistake.”
“They don’t think he’ll live,” Freddy said. “Who’d do something like that?”
“Some Spinmatic, probably,” Sully ventured.
Freddy chuckled appreciatively. “He never could fucking say ‘Hispanic.’ ”
“Unless…,” Gert said, lowering his voice and slipping back into character.
“Yeah?” Sully said.
“It’s just possible that under duress I remember my very first criminal endeavor, which even now, adjusted for inflation, is one of my biggest paydays. The old Sans Souci. I think to myself, Why not? It’s sitting out there in the woods, vacant, nobody to hear the glass shatter when I put my elbow through it.” Gert was smiling now, nodding. “The more I think about it, the better I like it. If I’m lucky, I buy myself a couple days. Maybe a week? After things die down, who knows? Maybe I make a clean getaway. Okay, probably not, but stranger things have happened.”