“All I can tell you is what happened,” Renata said. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s your business.”
“So what did these two men look like?”
“I didn’t get a good look at them.”
“Of course not,” Tricia said.
“They were sitting behind me!”
“Naturally,” Tricia said. “So what bar was it?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because we can go there and see if we can find anyone else who remembers these guys.”
“It was a month ago!”
“What bar was it, Renata?”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “It was a month ago. I had a couple of drinks in me. Maybe more than a couple.” Tricia kept staring at her and so did the gun. “One of the ones on the west side, maybe Royal’s Brew or the Rusty Bucket. Probably the Bucket. I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure.”
She shook her head. “They pretty much all look alike. My father used the same crew to build them all.”
“You know what I think?” Tricia said. “I think these two men in this mysterious bar are like the three men you said were watching us just now on the street, the ones who were supposed to kill me when you dropped your cigarette. You’re a liar, Renata, and not even a good one.”
Tricia stood.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Renata said.
Tricia put the gun in her pocket, but kept her hand in there.
“Let’s see this bar of yours,” she said. “Then I’ll decide.”
41.
Zero Cool
The Rusty Bucket was a wood-paneled bar, inside and out, and at first glance it did look a lot like every other dark, nondescript bar in the city: high stools, low lights, assorted pictures and gewgaws hanging from the walls. But when you walked through the door you realized the place had a certain atmosphere of its own, less the result of its décor than of the people clustered around its tables and in the booths against the back wall. They were young, for one thing, many just a year or two older than Tricia and some of the girls not even that. The men wore striped t-shirts and worn dungarees and tennis shoes or moccasins with no socks; one had kicked his off and was barefoot. Only a few were entirely clean-shaven, the rest sporting combinations of sideburns and goatees and unkempt half beards. The girls wore their hair in horsetails or just hanging straight to their shoulders, with no makeup on and hand-rolled cigarettes burning between their fingers.
There was no jukebox; instead, a small stage had been constructed out of low wooden blocks, and a combo—two men and a woman—sat on chairs there, sluggishly stroking their instruments. The woman pulled a low, slow melody out of her guitar while the men accompanied her on bongos and bass.
“What kind of place is this?” Tricia whispered, feeling self conscious.
“It’s where the far out crowd gathers,” Renata said, her voice rich with contempt. “Especially on weekends, when they’re not in the fancy schools mommy and daddy are shelling out for.”
“It’s different during the week?”
“During the day it is. Then it’s just a bar. The rest of the time, it’s—well, you can see.” She folded her sunglasses and put them away in her purse.
The girl stopped strumming and the crowd gave her performance a light spray of applause, some murmurs of approval. In the silence that followed, glasses were emptied and filled, voices raised and lowered. Tricia heard a match flare and then smelled the cloying odor she remembered from the artists’ house in Brooklyn.
“So this is the place,” Tricia said, “where you heard your two master criminals plotting?”
“I told you, I’m not sure. You remember every place you’ve ever been?”
“The important ones I do.” She prodded Renata in the back. “Let’s see if the bartender remembers anything.”
“He’s probably not even here during the week.”
“We’ll see.”
The bartender was a slope-shouldered, narrow-faced character with long arms and long skinny fingers and black Buddy Holly glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Behind them, his eyes were red.
“Can I ask you something?” Tricia said.
“Lay it on me,” the bartender said.
“You work here during the week, or only weekends?”
“Only when I need bread,” the man said with a grin, “which means I slave all seven, sister.”
“Well, my friend here,” Tricia said, “tells me she was in a couple of weeks back, saw two guys here, sitting in one of those booths, talking about something pretty important. We’re trying to track them down.”
“All right,” the bartender said. “I dig. What’d they look like?”
Through her pocket, Tricia nudged Renata with the gun.
“I don’t know...one was about your height,” Renata said, “but a little bigger around, huskier. He had a beard, or the start of one, anyway.”
“You just described half the people here,” the bartender said. “And the other?”
“A few years older, a little smaller, a little thinner. Less hair—like maybe he was starting to lose it. No beard.”
“You’re putting me on, right? You want to know if I’ve seen a couple of guys, one’s taller, one’s shorter, one’s heavier, one’s skinnier. Well, sure I have, and so’s everyone else who’s ever been to an Abbott and Costello picture.”
“Thanks, mister,” Tricia said. “That’s a lot of help.”
“Cool down, mama, don’t you blow your top,” the bartender said. “I didn’t say I couldn’t help, you just got to give me more than that to chew on. You remember anything else?” he asked Renata. “What those cats were wearing? What they sounded like?”
“They sounded like New Yorkers. The older one might have been from Brooklyn, it sounded like. The other one, the bigger one with the beard...I don’t know, could’ve been from upstate somewhere. Sort of a flat voice, like Warren Spahn—you know what he sounds like? The ballplayer?” The bartender shook his head. “You ever hear Harold Arlen, when he sings his own stuff?”
The bartender nodded this time. “Strictly dullsville—not my scene at all. But yeah, I’ve heard his sides.”
“Well, like that.”
He mulled it over.
“You remember what they were having?”
“No.”
“What day it was?”
“About a month ago.”
“But what day of the week?”
“No.”
“What time of day?”
“Lunchtime. A little after noon.”
“Two guys a month ago at lunchtime? That’s all you’ve got?”
“That’s all.”
He mulled some more.
“Strikeout,” he said finally. “Sorry, baby. I come up dry.”
“Well,” Tricia said, “there you go.”
“I told you—” Renata said.
“You told me lots of things,” Tricia said.
The bartender waved at the selection of liquor behind him. “Can I get you wrens anything else? Something to drink?”
“Thanks, but no. We’ve got another bar to try. My friend’s got one more shot to get this right.” Tricia started to pull Renata away. But Renata yanked her arm out of Tricia’s grip, and sat down firmly on one of the stools.
“Actually,” she said, smiling up at the bartender, “I’d love a drink.”
He looked from one of them to the other. “Fine,” he said, a little uneasily. “What’s your kick?”
“Nothing,” Tricia said. “We’ve got somewhere to be.”
“I’m staying,” Renata said. “You run along. I’ll see you later.”