I was late on purpose, to let the ambience sink into his pale, soft skin. I found him sitting between two drunken bikers at the bar, a glass of wine in front of him.
“I didn’t know they served red wine in this joint,” I said.
Lavender Hill, in violet velvet, sniffed with disgust. “They don’t,” he said. “This is ox piss mixed with lamb’s blood, flavored with iodine.”
“The house specialty,” I said.
“Charming place you picked.”
“Only the best for you, Lav. I thought this was a nice anonymous place for conducting our underhanded business.”
“Anonymous maybe for you, Victor, in that suit – burlap, is it? – but I don’t quite fit here, or haven’t you noticed. If you had clued me in to the type of establishment you were directing me to, I would have worn my black leather catsuit.”
“I hate to admit it, but I’m sorry I missed that.”
“Oh, you would have been charmed, I’m sure. Meanwhile I’m drinking this awful concoction, the smoke is making my eyes tear, which is hell on the mascara, and the Neanderthals on either side of me are preparing to get into a puking contest.”
One of the bikers, the man behind Lav’s back, lifted his head up off his arms at the comment. “What’d you say?”
“I wasn’t addressing my comment to you, sir,” said Lavender Hill. “Be a dear and crawl back into your beer. One thing this establishment has going for it, Victor, is the very real possibility of a barroom brawl. Nothing gets the blood stirring like a good barroom brawl.”
“I’m not a barroom-brawl kind of guy.”
“I figured that out.”
“But I wouldn’t take you for a brawler either.”
“You wouldn’t take me at all, trust me. Maybe we should find ourselves someplace more private to talk? Ah, there’s an empty booth.” He slid off his barstool. “Care to order us a round of beers? The swill they call wine, I’m afraid, is too vile for imbibition.”
I watched him mince his way to a booth with a filthy table and torn seats. The bartender came over and watched along with me. It was quite a show. When he reached the booth, Lav looked down, his head shaking with sorrow. He took out a handkerchief and dropped it onto the seat before finally easing himself down upon it.
“A friend of yours?” said the bartender, a nice-looking woman in a black shirt.
“A business acquaintance.”
She eyed the still-full glass. “He didn’t like the wine.”
“Not especially.”
“I can’t imagine why. It’s fresh out of the box.”
“His tastes are a bit too refined for his own good.”
“Maybe yes,” she said, “but he sure smells nice.”
“A pitcher of Yuengling and two glasses,” I said as I slipped a ten onto the bar.
Lavender was sitting at the booth, trying to find a spot upon the table clean enough for him to rest his elbows, trying and failing. He looked up at me, exasperation writ clear on his face, and then dropped his little hands into his lap. I sat across from him and leaned forward over the table.
“I understand you’ve been in touch with my client.”
“There has been communication. I don’t know how he got my number” – wink – “but he did, and as of late we have been in frequent contact. Has he spoken to you about our discussions?”
“No.”
“Then how did you learn of it?”
“Joey Pride.”
“Ah, yes, the recalcitrant Mr. Pride. It was quite difficult to find him after what happened to his friend.”
“How did you track him down?”
“I have my ways.”
“Did you talk with him in person or on the phone?”
“He was not willing to meet me face-to-face after the unfortunate death of his friend.”
“It wasn’t unfortunate,” I said. “It was a murder.”
“Are the authorities certain of that?”
“He was shot in the head.”
“Ah, quite gruesome. Not a suicide, perhaps?”
“Shot in the head twice. After being shot in the knee. And there was no gun at the scene.”
“Oh, I see. Sloppy technique, that, but the training they give out today is simply appalling. So I guess murder indeed is the likely cause of death. Well, that is truly regrettable, though perhaps not as regrettable as this establishment.”
“Joey told me he’s not happy with the deal Charlie is proposing. He doesn’t want a fifth, he wants half.”
“How unsurprising. But I fear he might be looking for half of nothing. Your client’s initial enthusiasm for my offering has seemed to diminish.”
“He’s wavering?”
“Yes, unfortunately he is. This could be so clean, so beneficial to all involved, but the pathetic sap keeps on babbling about his mother.”
“He’s quite attached.”
“An unfortunate condition. Are you close to your mother, Victor?”
“Not really.”
“That means you are still too close for comfort. Come back to me when you resent her with a murderous passion that still boils your blood decades after they buried her bones in the foul, swampy earth, and then we can talk. Oh, my, we have an uninvited visitor.”
“Where?” My head swiveled. All I saw was the bartender coming our way with a tray and our pitcher. “No, she’s just bringing the beer I ordered.”
“Not her. On the table.”
There it was, darting for my elbow. I pulled back quickly as a cockroach, fat and brown and quick, sprinted to the edge of the table, spun in a circle, and then stopped, its antennae waving slightly in the air. It started again, sprinting back the way it had come, when a pitcher of beer fell out of the sky and squashed the arthropod flat as toast. Two foamy drops of beer flew out of the pitcher and flopped onto the table.
“Here’s your Yuengling,” said the bartender. Thump, thump. Two glasses appeared. “You want another pitcher, just give me a holler.”
Lavender Hill stared at me with an amused glint in his eye. The brown in his irises pretty well matched the brown thing that had been scurrying around our table just an instant before. Lav laughed as he grabbed the pitcher by the handle and poured us each a glassful. As he poured, I could still see, through the beer, the lifeless blob adhering to the glass bottom.
“Sometimes you’re the pitcher,” said Lav, “and sometimes you’re the bug. I’d like you to talk to your client for me. Convince him that the deal is in his best interests.”
“Convince him to commit a crime, you mean. No thank you.” I took a long draft of beer. Funny, it tasted great, cool and crisp. Maybe they should squash a roach at the bottom of every pitcher of beer, sort of like the worm in the tequila.
“I have an idea,” said Lav with a disingenuous ingeniousness in his voice, as if he had just come up with the idea. “You could talk to the mother. I understand you’ve been in touch. You could advise her as to what you believe to be the most profitable, and safest, course of action for her son. You wouldn’t be advising Charlie to commit a crime, but you would be doing something that could quite possibly save his life.”
“If you want to lobby Charlie’s mother, be my guest, but it won’t do any good. She wants her boy to come home, that’s what this is really all about. And trust me, Lav, you don’t want to get in her way.”
“Oh.” A little smile played out on his pouty lips. “I think I can handle her.”
“Bring an army with you when you try, because you’ll need it.” I finished off my beer, slammed the glass back on the table, lowered my voice. “Who are you working for?”
“One of the things I get paid for is discretion, something you should learn.”
“Oh, I can be discreet when I want to, but things keep puzzling me. There were two paintings stolen from the Randolph Trust, the Rembrandt and a Monet. You’ve only asked about the Rembrandt. Why?”
“It was only the Rembrandt that was mentioned in the news.”