So I hopped over to the second phone and bobbed around again. This time I saw the small folded note tucked underneath the metal box, and my heart missed a beat.
“Can I help you?”
One of the bartenders, drying a glass, had stuck his head into the hall—a tall guy with curly hair and long sideburns. He weighed at least three of me.
“No thanks.”
“You need change for the phone?”
“No. I was just going to the bathroom.”
“Well that’s a phone, honey, not a door opener. Bathroom’s to your left.”
“Not a door opener, huh?” Keith’s warning not to help people see the errors of their ways whispered warning in my mind. I took the three steps to the bathroom door and turned back. He was still looking.
“I collect old phones,” I said, offering him a dumb smile. “Someday they’ll be worth a mint.”
“Huh. Never thought about it that way.”
I ducked into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Took a few calming breaths. Okay, I had to look more natural, not like some junkie searching for loose change and making strange comments about collecting phones. But at least I’d found the note.
“Wow, those boots are adorable.”
I jerked my head to the side. There was an open toilet stall facing me, and on the pot sat a woman. She was peeing. Her eyes were adoring my boots in a way that made me wonder if she wanted to confess a fetish.
“I always liked those kind of boots,” she said. “You get them at the Harley shop?”
The place smelled like fake pine-tree spray and urine, and it occurred to me that with every sharp inhalation I was breathing in thousands, maybe millions, of bathroom bugs.
“I got them online,” I said. “Same with the vest.”
She said something about her birthday, but I was already halfway out the door, relieved to see that the bartender was gone. Using my thumb and finger, I pinch-plucked the note out from under the phone and unfolded it. The sheet was one of those tiny pages ripped out of a spiral-bound notebook. It was too dark to read the words, but I immediately recognized the handwriting.
Sicko.
I edged down the hall into better light and read the four words written in red ink.
Dance with the bear.
I turned the note over. Nothing. That was it.
Dance with the bear.
My mind raced, considering a retreat to the bathroom to think through the meaning of the instructions. But there was a woman who adored my boots peeing in there. Dance with the bear—what was the bear? Wasn’t that Russia? Dance with a Russian bear? I imagined myself doing a Russian folk dance, but no, that couldn’t be what Sicko wanted. He wanted me to steal a million dollars.
Was bear another term for prison? A judge? A powerful woman with a beard? Or was it a who? If so, the note would have said just bear. Dance with Bear with a capital B. Not Dance with the bear with a small B.
I had the note. I should go back out to the street and call Keith, who at least would have an opinion on what Sicko could possibly mean. If he wanted me to rob a bank, why didn’t he just say that? But then I knew, didn’t I? Sicko was more interested in unraveling Danny and me than in getting the million dollars. That was Randell’s interest, not Sicko’s.
I shoved the note into my left jeans pocket and made a beeline for the main room. Head down, eager to get out and breathe some fresh air, I passed by the patrons seated at the bar. But halfway to the door I glanced up. In that single glimpse, I saw the four men gathered around the table closest to the dance floor. They all had tattoos and beards. Three of them wore vests with patches. Two of them were staring at me.
One of them wore a black T-shirt with the words Don’t Screw with the Bear written above an image of a roaring bear head.
The man’s eyes held mine and he winked.
I made it to the street in five seconds flat and had Keith on the phone in another five.
“You good?”
“No, not really. He says ‘dance with the bear.’”
Keith paused. “The note said ‘dance with a bear’?”
My hands were shaking. “There’s a man in there with a T-shirt that says Don’t Screw with the Bear.”
“And the note just reads ‘dance with the bear’?”
“The man winked at me.”
“He winked?”
“Sicko wants me to dance with the fat, bearded man in the T-shirt. The bear-man is working with him.”
“Hold on, we don’t know that. You sure there was nothing else on the note?”
I turned and looked back at the red and blue neon Rough Riders sign. “He wants me to dance with the bear. It’s the man with the shirt.”
“Maybe, but we have to be certain.”
“He winked at me, Keith! What else do you need?”
I could hear Keith’s silence and it only reinforced my conviction.
“If I don’t—”
“It’s a test,” Keith interrupted.
I headed back, walking on feet that seemed to move on their own now. The letter in my apartment claimed I would find my next test at the phone in the Rough Riders. I had found that test. It was to dance with the bear. The man in the T-shirt was that bear. If I was wrong, I would find out soon enough, but if the man was the bear and I didn’t dance with him, Sicko would make Danny pay.
“I have to find out,” I said.
“You’re going to dance with him?”
“I have to. Right?”
A beat.
“Just don’t get yourself in any trouble, Renee. Don’t do anything rash. Stay calm.”
“I have to go.”
“Call me as soon as you get out. Please, just be careful.”
“I’m a very careful person, Keith. You’ll get to know that about me.” I hung up the phone, shoved it into my pocket, and turned into the Rough Riders bar.
For the second time in ten minutes the skinny white girl with the black leather vest and the heavy but adorable Harley boots stepped into the realm of bikers and wannabe bikers. But this time she did not stop at the entrance and take note of how dirty the place was.
This time she walked straight toward the table with the four men closest to the dance floor and looked directly into the eyes of the man wearing the Don’t Screw with the Bear T-shirt.
I was halfway to the table, determined to deal with the bearded man, when another man stepped away from the bar and looked down at me with smiling brown eyes.
“How ’bout I buy you a drink?”
I almost pushed past him but then thought better of it. He looked like a regular here, sidled up to the bar as he’d been, and it occurred to me that he might be able to help me.
“A drink?”
“Sure. Just a friendly drink. You look like you could use one, darling.”
“Well, I guess that depends.”
“It does, does it? Depends on what? ’Cause I’d hate to see a pretty girl like you lost in a bar like this. Are you all right?”
“Of course I am. Do you know Bear?”
He cocked his head. “Bear? Can’t say that I do.”
“That man behind you in the bear T-shirt. You don’t know him?”
He threw a glance over his shoulder, saw that the man in the bear T-shirt was staring at us, and offered a curt nod. “Yup. That’s Bill.” He turned back to me. “Why, you know him?”
“Should I?”
A knowing smile slowly formed on his face. “Well that depends if you like three hundred pounds of man smothering you.”
“You ever see him wear that shirt before?”
He looked again and shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say that I have. You want him? Because I think he could be persuaded.”