“Then from when they phoned you today. Incidentally, too many Mexican beans in mine. Just for the color and a little smell it should go in, because now it’s too sweet.”
I bring his mug back under the counter, take the coffee pot off the heater and act as if I’m pouring more coffee in while with my other hand I pour in more vodka from a bottle from the speedrack by my knees.
“Mine’s perfect as it is,” the other policeman says.
“What do you know? I introduced you to these. But Shaney, and thanks, just right now if you ever had to make it for me again,” and stirs the mug with the spoon I gave him, “when they phoned you should’ve phoned us to be at the booth to get them if there was one.”
“They would’ve seen me lift it. I only had ten minutes. They have to be watching me almost always to know so much of my movements, though I don’t know from where. Maybe a window across the street. Or even that dog lady with the two giant wolves who just passed. But one hand on the receiver from me and I’m sure they wouldn’t have been at the phonebooth and neither the envelope and tape underneath and then you really would’ve thought me nuts. Because you don’t believe me much, do you?”
“Nice as you are, it’s hard to. This nothing note. Your threatening calls. Phantoms on the street. From what window? Which dog lady?”
“You were staring straight out there same as me. You didn’t see her?”
“No.”
“And that street window across is for you to check. Rap on doors. Do what you’re paid to. I’m only giving ideas. But you figure out how they know when I’ve no customers here and am phoning when I do and so forth. But you’re not going to be any help.”
“I’m not knocking it, and the lure would more than undo me, but maybe you tipple a little too much on the job when you shouldn’t.”
“Me? Only just recently. Ask anyone. Tell them, Lance. You ever see me throw one down before I closed?”
“I’m not sure what I should say for you after that last time, but no I never seen him drink since the mini one they almost had to force down his throat New Year’s or was it Christmas eve?”
Police finish their drinks and get up to leave. “Anyway, you get something further on them, let us in on it quick. Otherwise, don’t crankcall Stovin’s anymore and subject yourself to arrest. They were being kind specifying us not to bring you in this time, not that you would’ve been held long, but next time on both you might.”
“I get it. Thanks for coming.”
I answer an apartment ad but then think I’m safer in the hotel. They want to burn me out again let them get past the desk and tobacco stand and all the traffic by the elevators and television lounge first. My room’s small, bed too lumpy and soft, furniture’s depressing, walls need mending, I miss my old things and parrot squawks and not having a refrigerator for early morning snacks and stove for breakfast and view of the planes and helicopters passing and sun rising and pigeons and sometimes gulls flying and tower tips of the lit bridge.
For a few days I get calls at four or five a.m. from Turner or Pete just saying before they hang up “Sleeping late?” or “Rise and shine!” and once reveille blown on what sounded like a potato flute accompanied in the end by a humming kazoo. After the third call I phone the police and say “All right, you want to see who’s threatening who, start listening on my phone,” but they say there’s a state law forbidding them to tap hotels because they’d also be intercepting and snooping on other guests’ calls.
So I tell the hotel not to put any calls through to me till eight a.m. But they still manage to get through with excuses to the nightclerk that my wife was just raped and is phoning me from a crisis center or some doctor from a hospital’s calling saying he has to speak to me because my sister just had a stroke in her sleep.
“I have no sister, wife, child or anyone close enough like that to wake me before eight. Unless someone says my bar was broken into or is on fire, tell them to call back.”
Next call to get through is from someone claiming to be a policeman who says my bar was just robbed. I say “I’ll cab right over,” hang up, call the precinct and find it’s another lie. From then on I don’t let any calls in of any kind till after I awake and phone downstairs and tell them it’s okay.
Couple of weeks after I last see the police something’s slipped through the door. I’m bent down behind the counter looking for a dropped bottle cap when I hear the mail slot flap clink. I run around the bar to the door. Envelope’s on the floor. Same kind: my initials and address. I don’t even pick it up but run outside and look around. Only a kid on a tricycle and a dog lady but a different one from two weeks before.
“Ned,” I yell to the only customer in the bar, “don’t let anyone touch the till.”
“Sure, Shaney, but what about my potatoes and grilled cheese?”
I run after and catch up with the woman and her dog starts barking at me. “Pull it back, lady, call it off,” and she says “Let go of me first.” I didn’t even know it but my hand’s holding her shoulder. I let go and the dog stops barking but still snarls and I say “I’m sorry, but you just shove something through my door?”
“You kidding me?” and she walks away.
“If you’re the one, lady, I got your face. I now know who you are, so don’t try and come in my bar.”
“And I got a pocketful of coins to phone the cops if you bother me again, crazy,” and her dog starts barking less at me than at the air over his head.
I go back to the bar. Sandwich and potatoes are burning.
“Shaney, will you? Potatoes are okay welldone but you know I don’t like my toast burned.”
I run to the stove. “You should’ve gone around the bar and fixed it yourself.”
“You might’ve thought I was stealing.”
“Are you the one crazy now? Are you?”
“No, but I just thought—”
“Ahhh,” and I flip the potatoes and sandwich over, toss the sandwich to the side because it’s burned, prepare another one and smear butter on the grill and put the sandwich on it and open the envelope. Inside’s a note typed on my old typewriter. It says: “Memory still serves? Well, set 2, same booth, mixed metaphors, clever clever, lost game, 12 mins this time as bank’s a pinch packed, tho 2 thou now, sport, not won, your move, except 1st get on the ball and table your customer. Love.”
“You see who put this through the mail slot, Ned?”
“No, I was staring into my glass. Still nothing in it but foam. Fill her up please?”
“Know what a mixed metaphor is?”
“Hey, if you’re tossing away the burned sandwich, give it here for free but keep the new one cooking for me. I hate seeing good food go to waste no matter how bad it is. But mixed what?”
“Metaphor.”
“Something to do with English in high school.”
I give him the potatoes and burnt sandwich, flip over the other one and call George Ecomolos and ask him to drop by, it’s very important, “Don’t ask me why I didn’t think of this sooner. “He comes in that night and I say “I got a terrific problem,” and tell him about it and he says “So what you want from me to do?”
“You know about it then?”
“Course I do, so?”
“So fight it, like me. Tell the police Stovin’s is trying to run you around too. That way they won’t think I’m insane and you can keep your business.”
“On that I need a brandy. When’ll you get the good import stuff from my country?”
“No call for it except you. Do what I ask though and I’ll buy a case and give you it from me.”
“Say, that a bribe now from you? I wouldn’t’ve think that.”
“No, just my gratitude.”
“Go make it a dozen dozen cases but how I drink without a throat?”