When he came back he said, “None of those ladies has been in here tonight.” There was finality in his tone.
“Albert, we seem to be losing our rapport. Have I done something wrong?”
“Wrong? Wrong? A customer asks about another customer, so I say whether they been in or not. Okay?”
My hand was on the bar, palm up. I pulled my thumb back enough to expose the corner number on the folded twenty.
“A fellow as deft, as kindly, as helpful as you, Albert, would know how to get in touch.”
Strangely, he hesitated, and then the twenty disappeared so quickly I half expected to see a little puff of smoke. He gave a cautious glance down the bar, then leaned over it toward me. His personality suffered an abrupt change. “Friend, what you just bought for the twenty, maybe you won’t like. But you are getting your money’s worth. Advice, you bought. I don’t know if you come in here with a case of the cutes, or if somebody steered you to a busted mouth for laughs. Either way it would be the same. There’s muscle don’t want you poking in that direction, not those broads, not Western and Barntree and Whitney. All I know about that operation, they got no room for what you got in mind. I’m doing you a favor. Forget it. For half a bill I set you up with a good clean hardworking kid. You want to get something you couldn’t forget so quick, hang around until two o’clock, for two bills you get the piano player, if after she looks you over she says okay, which she probably would because she isn’t booked and what she won’t take is fat or old, some kind of a thing about that, and either kid it would be for the night. But you come in here and give me the names you give me, friend, it has to turn me off, You following me?”
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”
“Oh for chrissake!”
“In the vernacular, dear boy, my earlier acquaintance was having me on?”
“He was sending you to play in the traffic.”
“This muscle you mentioned, is it that dangerous?”
“You better believe it. Those broads can put on the cool pretty good, but if somebody doesn’t take a hint, then they get a real good hint, like a kneecap gets kicked loose out in the parking lot.”
“But with no style, dear boy. Punks, no doubt.” He shook his head sadly. “You don’t want to believe me, sir. This is no game. Take my word. I don’t tell anybody about what you asked, I’m doing you a favor.”
I manufactured a shudder and some difficulty in focusing on Albert. I put a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Suddenly, dear friend, I find myself in dire need of an empty bed rather than diversion. I have foundered on the rocks. Plymouth rocks. I trust we may pursue these matters when I have a less overwhelming sense of unreality.”
With an egg-sucking grin Albert said, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, sir?”
“Exactly. We have each made a new friend, and so the evening is not a total waste.” I walked my twelve-inch beam on out the door.
Back in my hall of mirrors, spread-eagled and supine on one of my two double beds under the cave-breath of the air-conditioning, I fit together the pieces I had, and I thought of them in three colors-green for the facts, yellow for the reasonable guesses, red for the ones I had to reach for.
It puzzled me that to be totally stoned and heavily solvent did not make me attractive bait. Perhaps they could handle only so much bait at a time. If they hadn’t replaced VangieTami, the other two might be diligently busy at the moment. They might both be off on cruise ships. They might be lying low until they were certain their previous ventures had not created unwelcome heat and attention. Or they could be setting up new pigeons-provided the execution of Tami had not made the group decide to suspend operations until they were certain she had not left them a little posthumous gift of trouble.