“It’s what I like about you…” Lee came from the back room and talked to the truck driver. Lee tried to look inscrutable, and not advisory, which is easy enough for the average Chinaman. Lee, however, is far from average. “…you’re easy money. Let me sell you a damn tavern.”
No one can guess Lee’s age, but in the very long-ago he must have stood five-nine and weighed one-thirty. Now he’s shrunk to five-seven and gained to one-sixty. His color fades with age, so he’s almost bleached. He sat at the end of the bar. “Petey,” he said, “what’s news from the home front?” Lee wears black suits, gray shirts, orange ties.
“Can’t say,” Petey told him. “I’m just coming off the road.” He watched the truck driver break. The guy popped the rack head on, the way they do late at night in small joints throughout Montana. Nothing dropped.
“Don’t spend that ten,” Petey told the guy, and Petey set to work. To Lee he said, “Haven’t been home in six or seven weeks.”
“Then you don’t know about the mystery girls,” Lee said. “The woods up your way are supposed to be full of them. Our guys keep drifting up that way and looking. I’m losing customers.”
“The woods may be filled with something,” the bartender said, “but not with mystery girls. Rumor is a dreadful thing. Our boys will soon return and again consort with local trollops.”
“Lot of wrecks going on up your way,” the shorter driver said.
“A guy at the truck stop told me.”
“I’m thinking about that problem,” the bartender mused. “Something up there isn’t square.”
“You could square up this table,” Petey said. “The right corner on the breaking end backs up like a plugged drain.”
“Mystery women up that way don’t make sense,” Lee said. “There’s nothing up that way except a few stores and Bertha’s joint. Good-looking babes, my kiester,” and that’s where he scratched himself. Lee’s hands are chubby with short fingers, while the bartender’s hands are slim and reachy; and it isn’t only the hands. Those two are different in about every way, although they’ve worked side by side for a long long time.
“Plus you’ve got that serial murderer,” the shorter driver said. “What’s all that bull about lynchings?”
“What’s the bull about the wrecks?” Petey worked the table, his face shadowed beneath the baseball hat. He seemed sort-of Italian, but too relaxed to be Mafia; a nice deception. He ran six of seven, left the other guy completely hooked. As planned. The guy missed. Petey cued and missed. As planned.
“Somebody’s forcing cars into the water,” Lee said. “It’s gotta be that. There’s too many for a coincidence. The road hasn’t changed, the Canal hasn’t changed. Somebody’s gone ugly.”
“Anybody we know? I mean the wrecks.” Petey watched the other guy make a little run. “You ought to give lessons,” he said to the guy. He watched the guy run the table. As planned. Petey threw down a ten. “I got a lonesome twenty says you won’t do three in a row.”
“Rack ’em,” the guy said. “I’m on a roll.”
“A lot of cars,” Lee told him. “I haven’t heard any familiar names. No one we know.”
The tall driver broke the rack. Nothing dropped. Petey dropped a stripe, pulled the cueball to kick a little cluster, and had his table set. He ran the table while the other guy stood helpless.
“Play for a buck.”
“Twenty,” the guy said. “I got a feeling.”
A low moan sounded from the far end of the bar where a tortured soul wore a dirty suit and stared through a beer glass toward the far end of eternity. The moan sounded adolescent, like the guy had no experience with the suffering that occurs for pool hustlers, bar owners, Jaguar drivers, or poets. The moan sounded sincere but inexperienced.
“We have ninety seconds,” the bartender whispered. “There will be a revelation concerning someone’s infidelity. It will end in a full confession and/or indictment. Perhaps there will be excuses. We may see manly tears.”
“Her name was Georgia,” the voice quavered from the far end of the bar.
“Oooopsy,” the bartender said, “I was off by sixty seconds.”
“Gray,” the guy said. “Georgia Gray. It was a sort of a joke.” The guy looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He straightened his tie. Sniffed back snot. Squared his shoulders like a good soldier.
“You gonna rack ’em or what?” Petey could see his hustle fading. A hustle depends on the undivided attention of the party being hustled.
The tall player racked, but his thoughts clearly drifted elsewhere. Petey had to figure that a mildly promising hustle was going to end in no more than a twenty buck profit.
“Women sure can do it to ya, can’t they?” The tall player lifted the rack and waited for Petey’s break. “You’d think a guy would learn.” He ground chalk onto his cue tip and looked hopeless as a man writing alimony checks.
“I’m glad I’m settled in,” Lee said. “What with all the society diseases running around. It must be a real crapshoot out there.”
“I miss Pinky, too.” The guy in the suit turned on his barstool and his voice held indignation. “Naturally, I do not miss the sad bastard all that much.”
“We’re playing twenty-bucks-a-game pool here.” The driver who was not playing sensed an opportunity. “To make it friendly I’ll play you for ten.”
“Mistake,” the bartender whispered. “Now you’ve extended an invitation. We will endure a tale of hanky-pank between lonesome Georgia and loathsome Pinky. Imagine, if you can, a lover named Pinky.”
“With tax and license,” the drunk guy said, “she came to a little over sixty-seven thou. The shop can do a dry-out and rebuild, but it’ll never be the same. Never.” He belched, then moved along the bar in a plausible imitation of W C. Fields. “Naturally, they’re all having a good laugh at the office.”
“As grandma used to say,” the bartender mused, “‘I swan to glory: He’s talking about machinery.’”
“I’m now driving,” the drunk explained. “…a little Japanese rental thing with vinyl seats for God’s sake…” He looked at Lee, at Lee’s eyefolds. “The Japanese are a great people.”
“The Japanese are assholes,” Lee told him. “And you’re taking a cab, if we have to club you to get the car keys.”
“I got to quit drinking,” the pool-playing driver complained. “I thought we were talking about women.”
“You were,” the bartender told him. “He wasn’t.” The bartender looked the guy over; gray suit, school tie to a school he likely never attended, high-priced haircut. “For a number of reasons,” the bartender told him, “you may be drinking in the wrong bar. Who, may I ask, is Pinky?” The bartender moved to the phone behind the bar and punched in the number of a cab company.
The guy made it to a barstool, planked his rear, and leaned on the bar. He fished in his pocket for car keys. “Some of my best friends are Japanese.” He put the keys on the bar.
“Pinky,” Lee said. “You have a friend named Pinky.”
“Had,” the guy said, and almost yelled. “Had, had, had! Until he got his stupid self drowned.” The guy teetered on the barstool, and spoke in what amounted to shorthand. “…big golf weekend up north… business deal… lots and lots of real estate… big hairy emergency at the office… caught a quick flight back in a puddle jumper… big hush hush… Pinky follows with the car and golf clubs. Splash. Bye bye Pinky.” The guy weaved, which is not that hard to do on a barstool. “Bastard was a liability from the get-go.”