I finished my drink and headed for the door. Halfway there Skip called my name. I turned and he motioned to me.
I walked back to the bar. He said, "This is the wrong time for it, but I'd like to talk to you soon."
"Oh?"
"Ask youradvice, maybe throw a little work your way. Yoube around Jimmy's tomorrow afternoon?"
"Probably," I said."If I don't go to the funeral."
"Who died?"
"Tillary'swife."
"Oh, the funeral's tomorrow? Are you thinking about going? I didn't know you were that close to the guy."
"I'm not."
"Then why would you want to go? Forget it, not my business. I'll look for you at Armstrong's around two, two-thirty. If you're not there I'll catch you some other time."
I was there when he came in the next day around two-thirty. I had just finished lunch and was sitting over a cup of coffee when Skip came in and scanned the room from the doorway. He saw me and came on over and sat down.
"You didn't go," he said. "Well, it's no day for a funeral. I was just over at the gym, I felt silly sitting in the sauna after. The whole city's a sauna. What have you got there, some of that famousKentucky coffee of yours?"
"Just plain coffee."
"That'll never do." He turned, beckoned the waitress. "Let me have a Prior Dark," he told her, "and bring my father here something to put in his coffee."
She brought a shot for me and a beer for him. He poured it slowly against the side of the glass, examined the half-inch head, took a sip, put the glass down.
He said, "I might have a problem."
I didn't say anything.
"This is confidential, okay?"
"Sure."
"You know much about the bar business?"
"Just from the consumer's point of view."
"I like that. You knowit's all cash."
"Of course."
"A lot of places take plastic. We don't.Strictly cash. Oh, if we know you we'll take your check, or if you run a tab, whatever. But it's basically a cash business. I'd say ninety-five percent of our gross is cash. As a matter of fact it's probably higher than that."
"And?"
He took out a cigarette, tapped the end against his thumbnail. "I hate talking about all this," he said.
"Then don't."
He lit the cigarette. "Everybody skims," he said. "A certain percentage of the take comes right off the top before it gets recorded. It doesn't get listed in the books, it doesn't get deposited,it doesn't exist. The dollar you don't declare is worth two dollars that you do, because you don't pay tax on it. You follow me?"
"It's not all that hard to follow, Skip."
"Everybody does it, Matt.The candy store, thenewsie, everybody who takes in cash. Christ's sake, it's the American way- thepresident'd cheat on his taxes if he could get by with it."
"The last one did."
"Don't remind me. Thatasshole'd give tax fraud a bad name." He sucked hard on the cigarette. "We opened up, couple years ago, John kept the books. I yell at people, do the hiring and firing, he does the buying and keeps the books.Works out about right."
"And?"
"Get to the point, right? Fuck it. From the beginning we keep two sets of books, one for us and one for Uncle." His face darkened and he shook his head."Never made sense to me. I figured keep one phony set and that's that, but he says you need honest books so you'll know how you're doing.That make sense to you? You count your money and you know how you're doing, you don't need two sets of books to tell you, but he's the guy with the business head, he knows these things, so I say fine, do it."
He picked up his glass, drank some beer. "They're gone," he said.
"The books."
"John comes in Saturday mornings, does the week's bookkeeping. Everything was fine this past Saturday. Day before yesterday he has to check something, looks for the books, no books."
"Both sets gone?"
"Only the dark set, the honest set."He drank some beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "He spent a day taking Valium and going nuts byhimself, then told me yesterday. And I been going nuts ever since."
"How bad is it, Skip?"
"Aw, shit," he said. "It's pretty bad. We could go away for it."
"Really?"
He nodded. "It's all our records since we opened, and we been making money from the first week. I don't know why, it's just another joint, but we been pulling 'emin. And we've been stealing with both hands. They come up with the books, we're fucking nailed, you know? You can't call it a mistake, it's all down there in black and white, one set of figures, and there's another completely different set on each year's tax return. You can't even make up astory, all you can do is ask 'emwhere they want you, Atlanta orLeavenworth."
We sat silent for a few moments. I drank some of my coffee. He lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. Music played on the tape deck, something contrapuntal with woodwinds.
I said, "What would you want me to do?"
"Find out who took 'em. Get 'emback."
"Maybe John got rattled, misplaced them. He could have-"
He was shaking his head. "I turned the office upside down yesterday afternoon. They'refuckin ' gone."
"They just disappeared? No signs of forced entry? Where did you keep 'em, under lock and key?"
"They're supposed to be locked up. Sometimes he would forget, leave 'emout,stick 'emin a desk drawer. You get careless, you know what I mean? You never have an incident, you take the whole thing for granted, and if you're rushed, you don't take the trouble to put things away where they belong. He tells me he locked up Saturday but in the next breath he admits maybe he didn't, it's a routine thing,he does the same thing every Saturday, so how do you remember one Saturday from the next? What's the difference? The stuff is capital-G Gone."
"So somebody took it."
"Right."
"If they go to the IRS with it-"
"Then we're dead. That's all. They can plant us next towhatsisname's wife,Tillary's. You miss the funeral, don't worry about it. I'll understand."
"Was anything else missing, Skip?"
"Didn't seem to be."
"So it was a very specific theft. Somebody walked in, took the books, and left."
"Bingo."
I worked it out in my mind. "If it was somebody with a grudge against you, somebody you fired, say-"
"Yeah, I thought of that."
"If they go to the Feds, you'll know about it when a couple of guys in suits come around and show you their ID. They'll take all your records, slap a lien on your bank accounts, and whatever else they do."
"Keep talking, Matt. You're really making my day."
"If it's not somebody who's got ahardon for you, then it's somebody looking to turn a dollar."
"By selling the books."
"Uh-huh."
"To us."
"You're the ideal customers."
"I thought of that. So didKasabian. Sit tight, he tells me. Sit tight, and whoever took 'em'llget in touch, and we worry about it then. Just sit tight in the meantime.Tight's no problem, it's the sitting that's getting to me. Can you get bail for cheating on taxes?"
"Of course."
"Then I suppose I can get it and run out on it. Leave the country. Live the rest of my life inNepal selling hash to hippies."
"All that's still a long ways off."
"I suppose." He looked thoughtfully at his cigarette, drowned it in the dregs of his beer. "I hate it when they do that," he said thoughtfully. "Send back glasses with butts floating in them. Disgusting." He looked at me, his eyes probing mine. "Anything you can do for me on this? I mean for hire."
"I don't see what. Not at this point."
"So in the meantime I just wait. That's always the hard part for me, always has been. I ran track in high school, the quarter-mile. I was lighter then. I smoked heavy, I smoked since I was thirteen, but you can do anything at that age and it doesn't touch you. Nothingtouches kids, that's why they all think they'regonna live forever." He drew another cigarette halfway out of the pack, put it back again. "I loved the races, but waiting for the event to start, I hated that. Some guys would puke. I never puked but I used to feel like it. I would pee and then I'd think I had to pee again five minutes later." He shook his head at the memory."And the same thing overseas, waiting to go into combat. I never minded combat, and there was a lot about it to mind. Things that bother me now, remembering them, but while they were going on it was a different story."